THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE: A Short History

Western schoolchildren have been taught that the crusades were about, “God, Gold and Glory." How much of that is true? Was it the concept of Christendom united against the infidel or heretic that caused men to take up the cause of the cross, to seek a spiritual albeit violent path to salvation? Or was it the lure of plunder and the opportunity to gain material wealth and land, combined perhaps with the opportunity for faster advancement on the battlefield where reputations were made and favors earned (1)?

Whatever the cause, it is certain that of all the crusades, the most inhumane of these holocausts was the Albigensian Crusade, initiated in the year 1209 by Pope Innocent III against the country and people of the Languedoc region of what is now southern France. The crusade lasted from 1209 to 1255. During that time, an estimated one million people were massacred. If translated into today’s population density figures, that would equate to the staggering sum of twelve million people, a holocaust of unprecedented proportions. During the course of the Albigensian Crusade, the culture of the Languedoc, one of the only civilized and truly eclectic culture of the European Dark Ages, was destroyed (2).

The Languedoc was also known as Occitania and comprised the southern part of modern day France, and the language spoken there was Occitane (very similar to present-day Catalan), the first and major derivative language of Vulgar Latin, containing elements of Celtic, Greek, and Arabic. The cultured and cosmopolitan nature of this society and its people was reflected in every aspect of daily life, from their tastes in their furnishings to their love of literature, for the gifted troubadours of Occitania developed poetry so magnificent that Dante used its form and structure for his Divine Comedy.

The people of Occitania lived in an atmosphere of religious tolerance and were free to express their opinions on matters both spiritual and religious. Class antagonism was minimal, and the relationship between landlords and tenants was far more one of equality than what was found in the serfdom to the north. Fierce independence and self-reliance was key for the lords in their castles. Anyone whose heart, word, and deed could be trusted, and who could find himself a sword, could become a knight and freely enter the castles of the nobles to participate in the cultural life of that society, as did many of the troubadours. In the pulsing and vibrant cities, the burghers had their autonomy, freedom, and independent government through councils of their own choosing. Trade and commerce in the ports flourished as it had for centuries.

The only blight on the landscape of this extraordinary culture was the Roman church. As a general rule, its clergy were rampantly corrupt, ignorant, depraved, and greedy. In contrast to the Roman clergy, the holy men and women of the region, known as Les Cathares (Cathars) or Bons Chretiens (Good Christians), lived among the people and worked hard to support themselves, often in manual trades such as farming and weaving. Les Cathares engaged in healing, and in teaching their version of the word of God to any who would listen. Those who consecrated themselves to this way of life were called Parfait in the case of men or Parfaite in the case of women. The Parfait and Parfaite did not eat meat or fowl (rien qui ne marche ni vole), fight, steal, or lie; and asked nothing in return for their services. They believed that the kingdom of God was within everyone’s reach, that priests and churches were unnecessary, and that the cross of crucifixion was a brutal instrument of torture and suffering which should not be worshipped. They also believed in reincarnation, the equality of women and, so that it could be readily understood by the common people, the free instruction and the teaching of the bible in their native language, Occitan,. They were unrelenting in their criticism of the power of the Church, its exploitation of the people and the corruption and degeneracy of its priests. It is small wonder that these Bons Chretiens were held in such high regard by the local population, and such loathing by the Roman church..

The Cathars’ practical example of a moral way of life and the enthusiastic adherence to it by the majority of the population presented a dire threat to the power and modus vivendi of the Church. Far better to brand the Bons Chretiens as heretics, to call for a crusade, and to exterminate them all than to allow the threat to continue. In 1198, Pope Innocent III sent two legates into the Languedoc who, in keeping with church tradition, comported themselves in a very grand and luxurious manner, while they preached virulently but unsuccessfully against les Cathares. Five years later, the pope appointed a native Languedocien, Peter of Castelnau, as legate. Peter quickly became so hated that death threats were frequently made against him. A year later, the Cistercian Abbot of Clairvaux, Arnauld-Amaury, was also sent to the Languedoc. He was similarly loathed by the local populace and in no time found himself in the same standing as Peter. In time, Domingo de Guzman, the founder of the Dominican order, was dispatched in a further desperate attempt to diminish the impact of the Cathars on the local populace. He presented a more ascetic appearance than his predecessors, but achieved no more success or acceptance than they.

In the light of his singular unpopularity (and probably in fear for his life) Peter of Castelnau begged the pope to allow him return to Rome. Permission was granted, and on January 14, 1208, while en route to Rome, he was murdered by a sword thrust to the back. An unknown horseman was the perpetrator. An agent of Raymond V, Count of Toulouse, was blamed by Arnauld-Amaury, who rushed to Rome to personally deliver the news of Peter of Castelnau’s murder to the pope. The murderer could easily have been an agent of Arnauld-Amaury or of the pope himself, so quick was Innocent’s call for crusade just two months later (7). Arnauld-Amaury became chief recruiter, propagandist, and titular leader of the crusade, and began a formal preaching campaign all over northern France (8).

Although the king of France declined to join the crusade, he encouraged his land-hungry nobles to do so. These nobles were second, third and fourth sons such as Simon de Montfort, who, unlike their counterparts in the Languedoc, were not allowed to inherit any land. Riff-raff, rabble-rousers and routiers (mercenaries) who had failed to gain plunder in the Holy Land, and who had gratuitously killed their fellow Christians in prior crusades were also recruited.

The true motive of the people who participated in the Albigensian Crusade (the northern French, Burgundians, Flemish, even Germans and Austrians) was pure greed. If crusaders fulfilled forty days of service, they were offered salvation, remission of sins, cancellation of debt, and all the plunder they could amass. They could perform the requisite service close to home and plunder from “a civilization higher than their own, wealthy cities and splendid castles, a people whose physique astonished them and of whose language they were ignorant” (9).

The crusading army assembled in June 1209 at Lyons. It was enormous. Various sources put the number at anywhere from 10,000 to 100,000, but realistically it was probably about 30,000. The assembled company stretched out for four miles and was a terrifying sight (10). Count Raymond of Toulouse, realizing the immediacy of the threat, had already submitted to the pope, been publicly beaten, lost seven of his castles, dismissed all Jews from his service, given the legates full authority over him and promised to, in future, treat all those as heretics who the church so designated (11). More from fear of the destruction of his own lands than through any crusading zeal, he joined the crusading army. This put Arnauld-Amaury in somewhat of a quandary, for he had been hoping to attack Toulouse, the richest city in the region. Forced to accept Raymond’s offer of help and whether in collusion with him or in spite of him, Arnauld-Amaury turned his attention to the lands of the Viscount of Carcassonne and Beziers, the twenty-four year old nephew of Count Raymond, Raymond-Roger de Trencavel. At the news of the encroaching army, Raymond-Roger rode out to submit his lands to the authority of the Church, but Arnauld-Amaury would have none of it. He did not want to end the crusade before it began, so he sent a message to Beziers offering to spare the town if the burghers of Beziers handed over the 222 Parfaits and Parfaites who were known to reside there. The burghers refused: they believed that they had enough provisions to be able to withstand a siege until Raymond-Roger returned from Carcassonne where he would amass more troops. Raymond-Roger promptly left Bezier and returned to Carcasssonne escorting all the Jews of the town, many of whom were in his employ.

The crusaders chose to attack Beziers on July 22, 1209, the feast of Mary Magdalene, the most loved and admired of the saints in Occitania. When the commander of the crusading forces asked how to distinguish the 222 Parfaits and Parfaites from the other 20,000 inhabitants, Arnauld-Amaury replied with chilling barbarity, “Kill them all, God will recognize his own!” (12) Between eight o’clock in the morning and twelve o’clock noon, the crusaders engaged in the bloody slaughter of the town’s inhabitants. As the murderous mob progressed further into the town, thousands of the town’s residents attempted to take sanctuary in the Church of Mary Magdalene. There was no holy sanctuary that day; the mob broke down the doors, slaughtered everyone inside and burned the church; the bones of the victims were discovered under the floor of the church during the renovations in 1840 (13).

It is very possible that the massacre of the entire town was premeditated in Rome between the pope and his henchman, for Arnauld-Amaury in a self-congratulatory letter to the pope wrote, “Nearly twenty thousand of the citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age and sex. The workings of divine vengeance have been wondrous” (14). Such was his idea of Christian love and compassion.

After the massacre at Beziers, the crusaders marched on to besiege Carcassonne in August. Although he withstood the siege for a time, Raymond-Roger was eventually driven, due to disease and thirst in the town, to negotiate with the crusaders. Although he was promised safe conduct by the papal legates, instead he was thrown into a dungeon, manacled to the wall of his cell, and found dead three months later with no explanation. The people of Carcassonne were forced to flee with nothing but their lives. Rather than burning the city as he had done in Beziers, the “self-righteous and sanctimonious prig” (15) Simon de Montfort, the captain-general of the French forces, realized that he would need the urban infrastructure to serve his own purpose, which was the annexation of all Raymond-Roger’s lands.

The increasingly dispossessed nobility of the Languedoc were obliged to resort to guerilla warfare (faidits) in an attempt to protect their land. They and the pacifist Parfaits and Parfaites sought refuge in the rocky citadel of Cabaret, whose inhospitable terrain proved difficult for the crusaders to besiege. In April 1210, the people of Cabaret saw a line of people moving hesitantly towards the city. The people consisted of the surviving inhabitants of the castle of Bram who had had their eyes gouged out, their noses sliced off and their lips mutilated, save for one man who was allowed to keep one eye to lead them the twenty miles across the mountains and so, horrifyingly, demonstrate the brutal tactics of Simon de Montfort.

The people of the region, including the Parfaits and Parfaites, fled before the crusading army. The cities of Castelnaudary, Fanjeaux, Montreal, Limoux, Casters, Albi and Lombers all surrendered to the crusaders. Some of the displaced became refugees in far off Montsegur, a seemingly impregnable fortress in the mountains; others sought shelter in nearby Minerve, which underwent the terrors inflicted by the latest medieval siege engines. After weeks of suffering, in July 1210, William of Minerve realized that his position was untenable and offered all his lands to Montfort in exchange for the lives of the town’s inhabitants. Just as this agreement was about to be concluded, Arnauld-Amaury arrived and insisted that everyone in the town swear an oath of allegiance to the Church. Although most of the people of the town agreed to this, the Parfaits and Parfaites refused rather than betray their honor. On the orders of Arnauld-Amaury, all 140 Parfaits and Parfaites were burned alive at the stake on July 22, again the feast of Mary Magdalene.

A few days later, more than sixty more Parfaits and Parfaites were burned at Les Casses. Montfort went on to besiege Termes, which held out for four months before running out of water, at which point its lord surrendered and was taken to a dungeon in Carcassonne, where he eventually died. Terror, hangings and burnings ravaged the land, and the Parfaits and Parfaites no longer sought refuge in castles, apart from Montsegur, but rather in houses and caves.

In January, horrified at the extent of damage to the Languedoc and its people, Raymond V of Toulouse asked his overlord, Pedro of Aragon, for help. The two tried to negotiate with Arnauld-Amaury, but the outrageous conditions of a truce would have annihilated the region’s way of life and replaced it with foreign occupiers, foreign taxes, and foreign oppression. These terms were deemed unacceptable. So, in April, Simon de Montfort began the siege of Lavaur. Its walls were finally breached in May and, against the rules of warfare, all eighty knights who had fought in its defense were hanged. The most shocking fate was reserved for the widow, Lady Geralda of Lavaur. “The most beloved noblewoman in the Languedoc” was thrown down a well and stoned to death (16). The crusaders completed their butchery with the largest mass burning of the period. All four hundred Parfait and Parfaites who had taken shelter within the walls of Lavaur were burned alive on one bonfire.

While Simon de Montfort continued to carve out his personal secular empire. Arnauld-Amaury enforced his religious one. They sought to conquer Toulouse and its surrounding counties, slowly picking off castle after castle. The extent of their ambitions became clear in 1212 at Pamiers: complete political and social upheaval, the eradication of southern law and the substitution of “usages and customs observed in France around Paris” (17). As a result of their actions, Occitania essentially regressed from an open autonomous land to a closed feudal one.

In 1212, King Pedro of Aragon won a significant victory against the Moors of Spain at Las Navas de Tolosa and became a hero in the eyes of the pope. Pedro was also the overlord of much of the Languedoc and did not take kindly to Montfort’s blatant ambitions. He complained to Pope Innocent who, in January 1213, called for an end to the crusade, rebuking Montfort and Arnauld-Amaury, “You have extended greedy hands into lands which have no ill reputation for heresy…you have usurped the possession of others indiscriminately, unjustly and without proper cause” (18).

Arnauld-Amaury’s ambitions were not to be thwarted; he dashed to Rome to persuade the pope otherwise. He may well have inferred that Pedro himself was seeking the unification of Catalonia and Occitania, which would increase the chances of continuing the Cathar heresy. Arnauld-Amaury virtually browbeat Innocent into changing his mind and so, without losing a season of murder and mayhem, the crusade was reinstated in May 1213.

Montfort lost no time in again taking up the sword. The crusaders and the knights of Occitania formed their battalions at Muret, twelve miles north of Toulouse. In the battle which followed, Pedro of Aragon was killed; his men lost heart. The ensuing carnage was dreadful as the crusaders rode down and butchered the survivors. From a mass grave discovered in the nineteenth century, it was conservatively estimated that the casualties ran to 7,000 people (19). In all probability, the number was far greater. Count Raymond fled to England with his young son. Montfort had succeeded in his aim and in 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council, he was formally chosen as ruler over all the lands of the Languedoc, with Toulouse as his capital.

A triumphant tour of the Languedoc by Louis, Crown Prince of France was undertaken that summer. Meanwhile, the authentic nobles of the Languedoc were preparing anew for battle led by the son of Count Raymond, Young Raymond, who captured Beaucaire from the crusaders and repulsed the efforts of Montfort to recapture it. Toulouse was growing restive, and Montfort arrived on the scene in full battle dress to start a siege.

Fulk, the Catholic Bishop of Toulouse harbored deep grudges after experiencing a failed career as a troubadour. He turned to religion as a result. After making a deal with Montfort to keep citizens as hostages and return them after the defensive walls were torn down, Fulk persuaded several hundred of the town’s richest and most influential citizens to negotiate with him while Montfort was out of the city. He promised them safe conduct (20). When the citizens would not agree to demands he made, Montfort ordered a massive sack and rape of the city. Everything was destroyed or stolen, although there were no mass killings as Montfort and Fulk had decided to bleed the people to death with taxes rather than kill them outright. Resentment against Montfort and Fulk was enormous; the latter was seen as a stooge of the French for having turned against his countrymen.

In September 1217, Count Raymond returned secretly to Toulouse and was met with great rejoicing by its citizens, who immediately started reinforcing the city walls against the inevitable forthcoming siege by Montfort. As soon as he heard that Count Raymond had returned, Montfort came charging back to inflict the same punishment on the Toulousains as he had on the citizens of Beziers, “to let neither man nor woman escape alive” (21). The siege lasted for nine months, and Montfort decided to build an enormous siege engine to destroy the fortifications. As it was being rolled into place, a stone from a mangonel aimed by a woman shattered Montfort’s skull. So overjoyed were all the people of Toulouse that it was the Catholic priests who rang the bells (22). His death decidedly shifted the balance of power, for his son Amaury de Montfort was no leader.

Young Raymond pressed the advantage and took Baziege. Innocent had died in 1216, and his successor decided in 1218 that a new crusade should take place. This was led by Crown Prince Louis of France whose only triumph was the barbaric slaughter of the entire 7,000 inhabitants of the market town of Marmande. Although Louis made a desultory attempt at besieging Toulouse, as soon as his required forty days of service was completed, he removed to Paris, leaving Amaury to deal with the South as best he could.

Amaury faced stiff opposition. Slowly, the people of the region regained their castles, the towns refused to allow the French to enter, the hated Catholic bishops fled, and the Parfaits and Parfaites began to preach openly again. Montfort and Innocent were dead. Count Raymond died in 1222, Raymond Roger de Foix in 1223, and the loathed Arnauld Amaury followed them to the grave in 1225. Amaury de Montfort made his retreat to Paris in 1224 and renounced all his claims in favor of Louis, the new King of France.

Louis was far more interested in consolidating his rule in Occitania than his father had been, and he persuaded the new pope to call yet another crusade in 1226. Avignon fell after a long and costly siege, and many other towns in the lowlands readily capitulated before the young king, who the people saw as their legitimate overlord in his position as King of France. Returning to his capital, Louis fell ill and died in November. His mother, Blanche of Castille, was a devout Catholic who took on the mission of exterminating any remaining heretics.

She sent Humbert de Beaujeu to lead the northern army in an ugly and savage war. In 1227, he set fire to the town of Labecede and massacred its inhabitants. Yet he was unable to defeat the people of the region. He and the vengeful Fulk decided instead to wage war on the land itself. They turned the entire countryside into a huge desert by destroying orchards, vineyards, and olive groves, by poisoning wells, by burning the land and razing the villages. After two decades of sustained vandalism, Count Raymond of Toulouse, like his father, was forced to sue for peace in the Treaty of Paris of 1299. As was his father, he was publicly beaten, then imprisoned in the Louvre while the fortifications of Toulouse were destroyed. He lost of all his castles, and his wife was expelled from Toulouse. His lands eventually passed to the French king.

In May 1242, two of the hated Dominican inquisitors were murdered with axes in Avignonet. The murderers, led by Peter Roger de Mirepoix, fled to Montsegur, which was the virtually impenetrable Cathar mountain fortress where the remaining Parfaits and Parfaites spent their days praying, fasting, and working. As the murder of Peter of Castelnau had presented an ideal opportunity to begin the crusade, this act was the ideal opportunity to end it.

The crusading army beseiged Montsegur. The siege was to last for ten months before a troop of shepherds showed the crusaders the way to the top of the mountain and into Montsegur. The bastion was overrun and Montsegur was surrendered. Peter Roger negotiated a two week truce with the crusaders, with the understanding that anyone who abjured heresy would be allowed to leave unharmed. The two hundred Parfaits and Parfaites of Montsegur refused to abjure and were condemned to be burned to death (23). On Sunday, March 13, 1244 all two hundred and twenty-one Parfait and Parfaites were burned alive at the stake in the crusades’ final tribute to man’s inhumanity to his fellow men and his disdain for God. This was the true end of the Albigensian Crusade.

In retrospect, the crusades were not about "God, Gold and Glory." While there is no question that they were about the lust for wealth and power, God and glory were not the motivation. Without love, there is no God, without honor, there is no glory; and most certainly both were missing in the actions of the crusaders. Rather, the crusades were sustained campaigns of genocide; holocausts of carnage and suffering where hordes of greedy and savage men were driven by their own ambition, bloodlust, and self interest - and the goading of a power-driven pope and his henchmen - to the rape, torture, and murder of other human beings and the total destruction of their belief system and culture. And, perhaps worst of all, this all took place quite cynically in the name of Jesus Christ.

Footnotes:

1. Tyerman, Christopher. God’s War, (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2006).xviii.
2. Figures based on J. C. Russell, Late Ancient and Medieval Population (Philadelphia, 1958.) http://www.tulane.edu/~august/H303/handouts/Population.htm
3. María Rosa Menocal, The Culture of Translation, a translation and adaptation of "La culture des traductions: l'arabisation invisible de l'Europe et l'invention du moderne," one in a series of six lectures given during May and June 2003 at the Institut du monde arabe in Paris. http://www.wordswithoutborders.org/article.php?lab=Culture
4. New Advent Catholic Encyclopedia, http://www.newadvent.org
5. Tyerman, p. 65
6. Medieval Sourcebook. http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/raymond- cde.ht6l#jerusalem2
7. Tyerman, p 583-588
8. ibid, p.588
9. Daniel-Rops, Henri. Cathedral and Crusade, vol II (New York: Image Books, 1963) 301
10. O’Shea, Stephen, The Perfect Heresy, (London: Profile Books: 2001) 71
11. ibid, p. 69
12. The Albigensian Crusades. http://xenophongroup.com/montjoie/albigens.htm
13. O’Shea, p. 85
14. Tyerman, p. 591
15. ibid., p. 593
16. O’Shea, p. 131
17. Tyerman, p. 592
18. ibid. p. 597
19. O’Shea, p. 149
20. ibid. p. 160
21. ibid. p. 163
22. ibid. p. 172
23. ibid., p. 218

The Albigensian Crusade ©2007 de Quillan/Crewe