Lesson from France - Massacre of the Cathars of Carcassonne, or How Christians Settled Theological Differences

Slideshow code developed in collaboration with ChatGPT3 at https://chat.openai.com/

Street below the Cité De Carcassonne with the Citadel on the Hill

We've just spent a day in Carcassonne, in southern France, just north of the Spanish border. It's a place every Christian should visit as a reminder of the blood-soaked history of their religion because Carcassonne was the site of one of the most brutal periods of Catholic history until the conquest of the Americas, the Albigensian Crusade.

The Albigensian crusade was conducted on the orders of Pope Innocent III, surely one of the most misnamed Popes in history; a crusade with the objective of nothing less than a total genocide of the Cathars and their religion.

The technique put into practice many of the methods used to terrorize populations and force them into submission that had been developed in the Crusades against the Moslems of the Eastern Mediterranean, where the method was to promise land to the barons and noblemen who led the armies, and the spoils of looting and pillage to the mobs of mercenaries that comprised to soldiery. There were no provisions for feeding and supplying the rag-taggle mobs as they raged through the countryside, so they had to take wheat they needed from the local populations. Towns and villages were ransacked, and the inhabitants slaughtered as a matter of routine.


And bloodletting was encouraged and glorified, to the extent that one observer recorded enthusiastically how the streets of Jerusalem were ankle-deep in blood when the Christian mob over-ran it.
The origins of Catharism are somewhat obscure, as it contained several different ideas fused into a loose system of beliefs with no central authority, so it tended to vary in different communities. A central idea was the essentially Gnostic belief in two gods - a good god of the spiritual domain and an evil god (Satan) who created the physical world and trapped angels inside human bodies. The creator (evil) god was the god of the Old Testament and the good god was the god of the New Testament, who Jesus was sent to tell us about. Escape from the physical world was through death and a special form of baptism to enable reunion with the god of the spiritual realm.

Like Catholicism does today, Catharism was obsessed with sex and saw sexual intercourse as sinful unless performed in the prescribed manner and pre-blessed by a priest in a special ceremony.

A consequence of their belief that the physical world was the domain of Satan and created by him to keep people away from God, was that everything to do with sexual intercourse was to be avoided because it produces more physical reality and more angels trapped in human bodies, so they were Pescatarians, believing that meat, cheese, milk and eggs were the result of sexual intercourse, but fish spontaneously generated and thus were safe to eat. The general disapproval of sexual intercourse caused some obvious problems for some Cathar communities, but others had found a way round it in a legend that the origins of the battle between good and evil in Heaven was because Satan had seduced one of God's wives (he has two, apparently), or maybe it was God who seduced one of Satan's two wives. This was sufficient evidence that God has sexual intercourse, so doesn't prohibit it.

The Cathars believed they were the true Christians and described themselves as 'Good Christians'. They rejected the authority of the Pope and, the worst of all sins, refused to pay tithes to the Catholic Church. Pope Innocent III declared Catharism heretical and adherents to it, heretics (penalty - death at the stake).

The River Aude, diverted during the siege to deprive the defenders of fresh water.

Other Cathar beliefs the Pope considered dangerous included rejection of the doctrines of transubstantiation, purgatory, intercession of saints and prayers for the dead (a nice little earner for the church in those days when rich people would leave a large sum of money for monks and nuns to say daily prayers for them after they died, in the belief that the more prayers that were said for a 'soul' , the closer it got to Heaven.

What probably upset the Pope most was the loss of whole congregations to Catharism, including the Bishop of Albi (after whom the Albigensian Crusade was named) and his entire congregation, and the regular conversions by the power of their theological arguments, especially the Gnostic argument based on the Old and New Testaments where the gods of the two parts of the Bible seem to change character. The mean, violent, unforgiving, and irascible creator god with his jealous and vengeful personality, regular genocides and advocacy of slavery and misogyny, and the kinder, forgiving, loving god Jesus supposedly taught about. As a Gnostic source book, the Bible served the Cathars well.

And of course, the remote and independently-minded Languedoc region of France slipping away from the control of the French Crown, with whom the Catholic Church worked hand in glove in a mutual support society to keep the faithful faithful and the tithe money flowing, was especially worrying for King Philip II of France, so he was an enthusiastic supporter of the crusade, supplying its leadership in the form of the French nobleman Simon de Montfort and most of its soldiers. A particular concern of Philip II's was the increasingly independent Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, with connections to the Spanish Crown. Phillip II suspected that Raymond IV was behind the Cathars' success and was plotting to take the Languedoc out of France.

And so, the murderous Albigensian Crusade was underway, with a lot at stake for the French Crown and for the Catholic Church. No mercy was to be shown in its persecution and eradication of a dangerous idea. Neither theology nor respectful theological debate was to be used, instead, a brutal power struggle and a demonstration of the power of the Church was going to determine the outcome. Besides, the Pope and his legates had already lost too many respectful theological debates with Cathars to risk it. Nothing short of total annihilation of the heretical belief would suffice. The theological merits of the two faiths were irrelevant; it was the force of arms that would determine right and wrong.

The siege of Carcassonne was a significant event during the Albigensian Crusade in 1209. Led by Simon de Montfort on behalf of the Catholic Church, the crusaders sought to capture the stronghold of Carcassonne, which was a key center of Cathar influence in the Languedoc region of southern France.

The siege of Carcassonne began in August 1209. The city was heavily fortified, surrounded by formidable defensive walls and towers, making it a challenging target for the crusaders. Within the walls, many Cathars, as well as sympathizers and defenders, had sought refuge.

The defenders of Carcassonne were led by Viscount Raymond-Roger Trencavel, a powerful nobleman who had been sympathetic to the Cathar cause. He put up a determined defense, but the strength and persistence of the crusaders eventually took their toll.

The siege lasted for several weeks, during which the crusaders faced difficulties in breaking through Carcassonne's defenses. However, they managed to cut off the city's water supply by diverting the nearby river, the Aude. The defenders were forced to rely on their limited water reserves, leading to a desperate situation.

In the face of a dire situation and seeing no imminent relief, Viscount Raymond-Roger Trencavel finally negotiated a surrender in September 1209. According to various accounts, the terms of the surrender were not entirely honored by Simon de Montfort. Instead, the viscount was imprisoned, and Carcassonne fell into the hands of the Catholic forces.

Following the fall of Carcassonne, the Albigensian Crusade continued, and the crusaders gained control over many other towns and castles in the region. The campaign led to significant persecution and suppression of the Cathars and their beliefs, effectively quelling the Cathar movement in the Languedoc.

The siege of Carcassonne marked a turning point in the Albigensian Crusade, solidifying the Catholic Church's influence in the Languedoc and establishing the authority of Simon de Montfort and the French crown over the region. The city's fall represented a major victory for the crusaders, furthering their goal of eradicating the Cathar heresy from the southern territories of France.

ChatGPT3 "Describe the siege of Carcassonne and its eventual fall" [Response to user request] Retrieved from https://chat.openai.com/

Although the exact number killed is not known with any certainty, an eye-witness, Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay, claimed the massacre was extensive. It included both Cathars and Catholic residents of the citadel. Other historical sources also describe the killing as extensive, without giving exact figures. Probably no one thought it was worth recording.

With the fall of Carcassonne, the Albigensian crusaders were free to repeat their success in several more town and cities in the Languedoc, including the notorious and even more brutal siege and massacre of Bezier, which will be my next lesson from France.

1. Pegg, Mark Gregory. "A Most Holy War: The Albigensian Crusade and the Battle for Christendom." Oxford University Press, 2008.
2. Lambert, Malcolm. "The Cathars." Blackwell Publishing, 1998.
3. Le Roy Ladurie, Emmanuel. "Montaillou: The Promised Land of Error." Translated by Barbara Bray. Vintage Books, 1978.

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