The Perfect Heresy (39 page)

51
“I’d rather be a priest.”: The anecdote is told by William of Puylaurens in his prologue to the
Chronica
. William, perhaps exaggerating the plight of the Church in order to justify the subsequent calling of a crusade, went on to say: “When the clergy showed themselves in public they concealed their small tonsures by combing the long hair forward from the back of their head” (source: Zoé Oldenbourg,
Massacre at Montségur
, trans. Peter Green, p. 54).

52
Stadtluft macht frei
: The expression also had the literal meaning of freeing serfs. In Germanic custom, any serf who took up residence for one year and one day in a town would automatically be exempted from his former manorial obligations (source: Charles T. Wood,
The Quest for Eternity
, p. 88).

52
“for reason of adultery …”: For scholarly evaluations of medieval Toulouse’s remarkable climate of freedom, see the work of J. H. Mundy, particularly his
Men and Women at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars
.

4. The Conversation

56
“O dolorous case …”: The lamentation comes from William of Puylaurens. His chronicle is the major source for our knowledge of the debates.

56
“Go back to your spinning, Madame …”: Scholarly opinion is divided over whether the female Perfect so rudely addressed was Esclarmonde of Foix. Proponents of the “Cathar country” myths outlined in the epilogue naturally assume that it had to be Esclarmonde who was doing the talking. Others believe that it was her cousin.

56
“the mother of fornication and abomination”: In a debate of 1207, Arnold Hot loosed an impressive volley. The St. John to whom he refers is not the evangelist but John of Patmos, the mystic who authored
Revelations: “[The] Roman Church is the devil’s church and her doctrines are those of demons, she is the Babylon whom St. John called the mother of fornication and abomination, drunk with the blood of saints and martyrs… . neither Christ nor the apostles has established the existing order of the mass” (cited in Joseph R. Strayer,
The Albigensian Crusades
, p. 22).

57
Innocent attempted again and again to organize a punitive campaign: Historian Michel Roquebert has effectively exploded the notion, long held by the apologists of orthodoxy, that Innocent’s hand was forced by the murder of Peter of Castelnau. In fact, Innocent was trying to organize a crusade against Languedoc from the very outset of his pontificate. See Michel Roquebert,
L’Epopée cathare
, vol. 1, pp. 132–33.

63
The paper then wafted upward, charring a ceiling beam: When I visited Fanjeaux in the summer of 1998, a Korean Dominican nun kindly showed me around her convent and indicated where the miracle had taken place. As I was leaving, she asked me to sign the guest book. I saw that the last visitor had been a Spaniard, whose entry dated from several months previously. He/she had written: “Te perdono, Domingo, burro, no supiste lo que hacías” (I forgive you, Dominic, you mule, for you knew not what you did).

64
“the conversation of old ladies …”: Dominic’s deathbed admission about liking the company of pretty young women is related in Georges Bernanos’s
Les Prédestines
, p. 77.

64
The Spaniard’s ceaseless wanderings … brought him deep within dualist country: Those old enough to remember the warbling Belgian nun who performed a hit song of 1963 about St. Dominic may be surprised to learn that one verse dealt with the Cathars. The chorus and verse in the original French: “Dominique, nique, nique/ S’en allait tout simplement/ Routier pauvre et chantant/ En tous chemins, en tous lieux/ Il ne parle que du bon Dieu/ Il ne parle que du bon Dieu…. A l’epoque ou Jean-sans-Terre/ D’Angleterre était le roi/ Dominique, notre Pere/ Combattit les Albigeois.” The same again, in the English version: “Dominique, nique, nique/ Over land he plods along/ And sings a little song/ Never asking for reward/ He just talks about the Lord/ He just talks about the Lord.... At a time when Johnny Lackland/Over England
was the king/ Dominique was in the backland/ Fighting sin like anything.” Unfortunately, Noel Rigney’s English adaptation neglects the mention of
Albigeois
found in the original. Then again, finding a snappy rhyme for the English equivalent—
Albigensian
—is not terribly obvious.

64
“I should beg you not to kill me at one blow …”: Dominic’s first biographer, a Dominican friar named Jordanus of Saxony, emphasized the Spaniard’s saintly pacifism. Others were not so sure. Stephen of Salagnac, a Dominican from the middle of the thirteenth century, wrote that an exasperated Dominic once preached at Prouille: “For several years now I have spoken words of peace to you. I have preached to you; I have besought you with tears. But as the common saying goes in Spain, Where a blessing fails, a good thick stick will succeed. Now we shall rouse princes and prelates against you; and they, alas, will in their turn assemble whole nations and peoples, and a mighty number will perish by the sword. Towers will fall, and walls be razed to the ground, and you will all of you be reduced to servitude. Thus force will prevail where gentle persuasion has failed to do so.” Whether Dominic actually said something this prescient can only be a matter of conjecture. It sounds like the invention of someone who is looking back on, and perhaps trying to justify, the Albigensian Crusade.

5. Penance and Crusade

67
the northern chronicler who recorded the episode … must have been pleased to see Raymond so thoroughly humiliated: There can be no doubt that our source, Peter of Vaux de Cernay, would have been delighted at Raymond’s predicament. Elsewhere in his
Hystoria albigensis
, the chronicler calls the count of Toulouse “a limb of Satan, a child of perdition, a hardened criminal, a parcel of sinfulness.”

68
an unsolved murder mystery: The question of who, if not Raymond, ordered the killing of Peter of Castelnau can still inflame some imaginations, in much the same way that Oliver Stone got overheated with
JFK
. In Jean-Jacques Bedu’s historical novel,
Les Terres de feu
, the conspiracy theory circulating in neo-Cathar circles is clearly outlined.
The accused stands as none other than Arnold Amaury, Peter’s colleague. If Arnold was at Peter’s side on that day—as some believe—then why did the murderer kill just one legate? And how did the murderer know who to stab? And why didn’t he get rid of the witnesses? Who sprang the perjury trap so that Raymond could not clear his name? And why wasn’t Raymond charged? Finally, who profited most from the murder? Certainly not Raymond. Who, as a result of the murder, got to lead a crusade, crush the Trencavels, and use armed force to place himself in a very lucrative position as archbishop of Narbonne? Arnold Amaury. It’s not impossible, though no jury outside of Languedoc would convict.

68
Innocent called for a crusade: The clergy did not use the term
crusade
. It was known as
negotium pacis et fidei
(the enterprise of peace and faith).

70
“naked in front of the tomb of the blessed martyr …”: The source is Vaux de Cernay. The tomb can still be viewed.

73
the Christian city of Zara: It is now known as the Croatian port of Zadar.

73
European Jewry, in particular, was subject to slaughter: The First Crusade initiated what would become a sorry tradition. In marching across Europe in 1096, the crusaders murdered 12 Jews in Spier, 22 at Metz, 500 at Worms, and 1,000 at Mainz (source: Paul Johnson,
A History of Christianity
, p. 245).

73
“You ask us urgently …”: This duplicitous scheme of Innocent’s was followed to the letter. The correspondence is cited in most works on the Cathars. I have used Joseph R. Strayer’s translation from
The Albigensian Crusades
, pp. 58–59.

6. Béziers

75
he had rebuffed Count Raymond’s proposal of a defensive alliance: The deviousness of Raymond of Toulouse was not bottomless. In the winter of 1208–9, he tried to reach a common defensive agreement with Raymond Roger Trencavel, but, for reasons unknown, the negotiations broke off and each man went his own way. Whether Count Raymond
was
sincere
in trying to form this alliance still divides historians of the crusade.

78
one of them, William of Tudela, conceded: The three chroniclers for Beziers were Tudela, Vaux de Cernay, and Puylaurens. None of them was an eyewitness to the events. In this chapter, unless otherwise stated, the fullest account—that of William of Tudela in the
Canso
—forms the basis of the narrative. I have used Janet Shirley’s excellent translation (pp. 19–22) for direct quotations about the incidents at Beziers.

79
222 names: Debate rages over whether this list included all of the Cathars of the town or just the Perfect. Most believe that the number is too low to encompass all the credentes of Béziers, which was a fairly sizable town at the time. Notations appear alongside a couple of names indicating that some of the heretics sought may have been Waldensians rather than Cathars.

80
Mary Magdalene had an even better reputation among the gnostics: As described in Elaine Pagels’s landmark
The Gnostic Gospels
, the ancient writings unearthed in 1945 at Nag Hammadi, Egypt, attest to the wide range of Christian beliefs that were squelched by the emergent orthodoxy of Rome. Of particular interest concerning the Magdalene’s status as the first of the apostles are the Gospel of Mary, the Gospel of Thomas, and Dialogue of the Saviour, the last stating that Mary was “the woman who knew the All.”

85
Not even Count Raymond: There is a rock-solid consensus among historians that Raymond did not participate actively in the actions of the crusaders. Given his subsequent military incompetence, it is unlikely that he saddled up and rode anywhere when battle beckoned. Also, he seems to have been universally beloved in Languedoc; had he joined in the massacre at Béziers, there would have been Occitans who bore him a grudge. Lastly, Raymond always showed a reluctance to harm fellow southerners.

7. Carcassonne