Fathers and Sons

Raymond VI’s excommunication had been lifted in 1209 when he recognized the threat of the forces gathering against them. However, he was excommunicated again in 1211. Raymond was excommunicated several times. Raymond-Roger de Trencavel had gone to the leaders of the crusade and sought accommodation from them but was refused audience. The lords of the Languedoc banded together and had retaken many towns captured by the crusaders during the early years under the leadership of Raymond VI. However, the crusaders would return and take them back. The fortunes of the battle see-sawed back and forth like this for several years until the battle of Muret and Simon de Montfort’s eventual end in 1218.

The Fourth Council of the Lateran was convoked by Pope Innocent III by a papal bull dated April 19, 1213. The council was to gather at Rome’s Lateran Palace in November of 1215. The Third Crusade had failed miserably, resulting in the capture of Constantinople and large portions of the Byzantine empire by the Muslims. The results of the Fourth Crusade to this point had alienated the Church to the people and major lords of the Languedoc. Innocent felt was time to reinstate and reformulate papal involvement with the Crusades both in the Holy Land and on European soil. The Council declared the Fifth Crusade to free the Holy Land of the powerful Ayyubid Muslims of Egypt. Measures dealing with heretics were re-opened and discussed, as well.

The Council was attended by Raymond VI of Toulouse, his son Raymond (VII) and Raymond-Roger de Foix. They were there to dispute the threat of their territories being confiscated by the Church. Guy de Montfort, the brother of Simon de Montfort argued that the Church should confiscate their territories. Raymond’s son-in-law, Pierre-Bermond II of Sauve attempted to lay claim to Toulouse and was rejected.  Toulouse was awarded to Simon de Montfort. The lordship of Megueil was separated from Toulouse, entrusted to the bishops of Maguellone. The lordship of Megueil was Raymond VI’s by his marriage to Ermessenda, the Countess of Megueil. Provence, also one of Raymond VI’s possessions was also confiscated and kept in trust for Raymond VII – if he showed himself worthy of having it. That is, if he denounced the heretical Cathars and no longer aided them.

It was in 1215, the year of the Council that Simon was awarded Toulouse and Narbonne. In April of 1216, Simon ceded these lands to Philip Augustus II, the French King.

Innocent III died in July of 1216 and was succeeded by Honorius III, who was by all accounts a ‘kinder and gentler’ man, but the Fifth Crusade and the war on heresy were still high on his agenda. Philip Augustus was more concerned about his newly acquired lands of Toulouse and Narbonne than he was about the Cathars, for Raymond VI had retaken Toulouse in 1218. Amaury de Montfort, Simon’s son had taken up his father’s leadership of the Fourth Crusade, but Amaury was not the tactician or the warrior his father was. His attempts to retake Toulouse in 1219 failed and several more of Simon’s holds fell to the embattled Raymond and his allies.

In 1221, Raymond and his forces retook Montréal and Fanjeaux, forcing the Catholics to leave. Raymond VI died in 1222 and his son Raymond VII who had also been fighting battles to regain their territories took up where his father left off. Like his father, Raymond VII of Toulouse was excommunicated by the Council of Bourges in 1225 for his continuing fight against the forces of the Church.

Philip Augustus II died in 1223 and was succeeded by his son Louis VIII. Louis mounted a campaign in 1226 to take back his father’s lands. Louis was already well seasoned in battle, having spent his earlier years fending off John Lackland of England’s attempts to take back Normandy. You might know John better as the ‘evil King John’ the brother of Richard the Lionheart from tales of Robin Hood.

Roger-Bernard the Great, Count of Foix went to Louis ‘the Lion’ suing to keep the peace but Louis rejected his overtures. Roger-Bernard and Raymond VII had no choice but to take up arms against the new king. Many fortified towns and castles surrendered to Louis’ forces without a fight, until he came to Avignon. There Louis engaged in a three month siege and finally took Avignon in September of 1226. Louis returned to Paris after taking Avignon, but contracted dysentery on the way home. He died in November of 1226 in his chateau at Montpensier in Auvergne and was succeeded by his son Louis IX.

Louis IX was not of the age of majority to take the throne himself, and so the throne was taken by Queen Regent Blanche of Castile, Louis VIII’s widow. Blanche allowed the Crusade to go on under the leadership of Humbert de Beaujeau. Humbert took Labécède and Vereilles in 1227 and Toulouse in 1228. Queen Blanche then offered Raymond VII a treaty. She would recognize him as the ruler of Toulouse if he would enjoin the fight against the Cathars, return the Church’s properties that they’d seized, turn over his castles and destroy the walls and defenses of Toulouse. She also stipulated that he had to marry his daughter Jeanne to Alphonse, the brother of Louis VIII. This made Alphonse the Count of Toulouse and Poitiers. Their heirs would inherit Toulouse and Poitiers upon Raymond VII’s death. If they had no issue, which they did not, the inheritance would revert to the King of France. With little choice in the matter, if he wanted peace at long last, Raymond VII signed the treaty at Meaux in April of 1229. It is reported that he was then seized, flogged and imprisoned for a short time. The treaty nominally brought an end to the Albigensian Crusade, and put Raymond VII in a position that was not to be envied.

Simon de Montfort

If Philip II Augustus, the King of France was not interested in taking up arms against the Cathars and the lords of Languedoc, a northern noble named Simon de Montfort was keen on it. The Seigneur de Montfort-l'Amaury, was also the 5th Earl of Leicester. The de Montfort family were descendants of the Counts of Flanders.

Simon was said to be a very pious man – at least from a Catholic point of view. In 1209, he took on the role of the Captain-General of the Albigensian Crusade. He went with Philip’s blessing, but Phillip apparently turned a blind eye to Simon's methods. Simon’s first target was Béziers a territory which fell under the lordship of Raymond VI of Toulouse. Béziers became a hallmark of what was to come, as well as Simon’s ruthless character.

 

 

On July 22, 1209 Simon and his forces came to the town of Béziers. The Catholics were given the opportunity to leave before the Crusaders besieged the city. They refused and fought with the Cathars. Their combined forces were defeated outside the walls and those left were pursued back inside the walls of the town. Those who took refuge in the Cathedral of St. Nazaire and the Eglise de la Madeleine were not spared. The Cathedral was set ablaze and those inside the Church were mercilessly butchered. As the Cathedral collapsed, those who escaped were also slain. Those who remained inside were either crushed or burned to death.

Simon became notorious, and not in a good way. He was seen as a cruel, harsh and treacherous man of no honor and bad faith. He was a terror, with a reputation for slaughtering entire villages. In the village of Minerve, Simon burned 140 Cathars who refused to recant their faith. Prior to the sack of the village of Lastours, it was reported that he took prisoners from the nearby village of Bram and had their ears, noses and lips cut off, and gouged out their eyes. He left one poor soul with one eye, to lead them into the village – a warning to those who would not recant.

Simon de Montfort went on to defeat Peter II of Aragon in the Battle of Muret. The counts of the Languedoc were vassals of the King of Aragon. In 1212, Peter learned that de Montfort had partially sacked Toulouse and exiled Raymond. Raymond happened to be Peter’s brother in law at that time. Raymond went to Peter, asking for assistance. Together they crossed the Pyrenees and arrived at Muret in September 1213 to confront de Montfort's army. They were joined there by Raymond’s militia he had gathered from Toulouse, and the armies of the counts of Comminges and Foix. Raymond tried to convince Peter to starve out Simon’s forces, but Peter rejected the idea and proceeded to mount the battle. The number of Peter’s forces far exceeded those of Simon’s, which no doubt led him to be more than a bit over-confident. Simon’s forces numbered less than a thousand, but approximately a fourth of those were knights and not just regular cavalry or infantrymen. They were also battle-hardened and Simon was – for whatever else might be said of him – a savvy tactician.

Peter was so over-confident he refused his royal armor and instead donned the armor of a common cavalryman. In the disarray and madness that followed, Peter was thrown from his horse and was killed – in spite of or perhaps because of his protestations that he was the king. With their king and leader gone, the Aragonese and Catalan armies fled back over the mountains and deserted the battle. Simon de Montfort had won yet another victory. In military terms, it was a hollow victory, but that never stopped Simon from counting. He was appointed the Count of Toulouse and Duke of Narbonne in 1215.

Raymond and his allies continued their battles to regain their lands with some successes. The battles raged on in the years 1216 and 1217. In the later quarter of 1217, Raymond returned to Toulouse and Simon saw his chance to get Raymond once and for all. Simon besieged Toulouse for nine months. He finally met his end on the 25th of June, 1218. According to a song or chanson written about the Albigensian Crusade, his head was smashed by a rock catapulted from a mangonel operated by the women of Toulouse.

Simon was buried in the Cathedral of Saint-Nazaire at Carcassonne. His body was later moved home to Montfort l'Amaury by his son. There is still a tombstone in the Cathedral called "of Simon de Montfort" in the South Transept. Reportedly the inscription on the stone envisaged Simon as a saint in heaven, enjoying the favor of God's reward for his deeds in life. His enemies left him a far different epitaph:

The epitaph says, for those who can read it
That he is a saint and martyr who shall breathe again
And shall in wondrous joy inherit and flourish
And wear a crown and sit on a heavenly throne.
And I have heard it said that this must be so -
If by killing men and spilling blood,
By wasting souls, and preaching murder,
By following evil counsel, and raising fires,
By ruining noblemen and besmirching paratage,
By pillaging the country, and by exalting Pride,
By stoking up wickedness and stifling good,
By massacring women and their infants,
A man can win Jesus in this world,
Then Simon surely wears a crown, resplendent in heaven.

[http://www.midi-france.info/190403_paratge.htm]

I invite you to read the page from which the above quote was taken and compare the idea of ‘paratage’ that was espoused by the Cathars to the principles and practices of ‘God’s warrior’ Simon de Montfort and his Church.

Until we meet again, walk in peace and love my dears,

Rayvn

By the Powers Invested...

Many people are not aware of the various intrigues and outright manipulations that went on in Rome. They are possibly aware of some of the more infamous popes like the Borgias through the popular media, but in reality, the Church of Rome was rife with such things and still is. The Papacy is not, as they would have you believe, infallible.

Pope Innocent III held various ecclesiastical positions through the short reigns of four different popes before he became a Cardinal-Deacon in 1190. That is to say that he was well acquainted with how things worked from within the Church. As Pope, he played a major role in shaping canonical laws. He did this through the issuance of conciliar canons and decretal letters. Whatever he, as the Pope, said was the law. It is said that he believed fervently in the supremacy of the Church and its universal authority to rule the empire, but in retrospect it might be more properly said that he was an over-zealous control freak who put his position to good use. He became increasingly involved in imperial/royal elections. I have no doubt that he felt justified in doing so by the Donation of Constantine.

 

The Donation of Constantine is a forged Roman imperial decree by which the emperor Constantine I supposedly transferred authority over Rome and the western part of the Roman Empire to the pope. During the Middle Ages, the document was often cited in support of the Church of Rome’s claims to spiritual and earthly authority over the right of kings. The Italian humanist Lorenzo Valla is credited with first exposing the forgery with solid philological arguments. Doubts on the document's authenticity had already been cast by the time Valla exposed it. Scholars have since dated the forgery between the eighth and ninth centuries.

Purportedly issued by the fourth century Roman Emperor Constantine I, the Donation grants Pope Sylvester I and his successors, as inheritors of St. Peter, dominion over lands in Judea, Greece, Asia, Thrace, and Africa as well as the city of Rome with Italy and the entire Western Roman Empire, while Constantine would retain imperial authority in the Eastern Roman Empire from his new imperial capital of Constantinople. The text claims that the Donation was Constantine's gift to Sylvester for instructing him in the Christian faith, baptizing him, and miraculously curing him of leprosy. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Donation_of_Constantine]

Keep in mind that this is a forgery – one of many that is included amongst the collection of documents known as “The False Derectals of Isisdore”. Constantine’s leprosy and miraculous cure are a fiction, as most likely is his vision that caused him to convert. Constantine was in fact baptized only on his death-bed, and by an unorthodox bishop at that. This completely undermined the authority of the Papacy as far as the Latin Rite Catholics were concerned. Something needed to be done about it. That something was the Donation of Constantine and the lies that went with it. The dating of the Donation seems to have appeared during the pontificate of Pope Stephen II between 752 and 757 CE. Constantine died in the year 377 CE. Given that there is a collection of these false derectals, it would seem that the Church was at this point in time doing any and everything conceivable to consolidate its authority over the known world.

Constantine did not ever in his life give Rome the right to choose kings. Rome gave itself that right, so it could control the masses through the kings it chose that would be more amenable and agreeable to its purpose. This fact becomes evident, when one puts the history of the Church and the nobility of Europe and Asia under the microscope.

As an example of Innocent’s involvement in the election of Kings and a matter of public notice, I provide for you here his papal decree known as “Papal Decree on the choice of a German King, 1201”. There were three men vying for the emperor of Germany. They are named in the document:

“It is the business of the pope to look after the interests of the Roman empire, since the empire derives its origin and its final authority from the papacy; its origin, because it was originally transferred from Greece by and for the sake of the papacy...its final authority, because the emperor is raised to his position by the pope who blesses him, crowns him and invests him with the empire....Therefore, since three persons have lately been elected king by different parties, namely the youth [Frederick, son of Henry VI], Philip [of Hohenstaufen, brother of Henry VI], and Otto [of Brunswick, of the Welf family], so also three things must be taken into account in regard to each one, namely: the legality, the suitability and the expediency of his election......Far be it from us that we should defer to man rather than to God, or that we should fear the countenance of the powerful....On the foregoing grounds, then, we decide that the youth should not at present be given the empire; we utterly reject Philip for his manifest unfitness and we order his usurpation to be resisted by all....since Otto is not only himself devoted to the church, but comes from devout ancestors on both sides.....therefore we decree that he ought to be accepted and supported as king, and ought to be given the crown of empire, after the rights of the Roman church have been secured.” (from Medieval Sourcebook: Innocent III: Letters on Papal Policies)

        

Pope Innocent III was fond of using derectals himself. A derectal is a pontifical decision on matters of discipline, or a papal exegis or interpretation of what should be done in the case of an apparent violation or transgression of the general laws of the Church. This allowed for a great deal of leeway for the pope who authored the derectal to put his personal spin on canonical law. The recipient of his letter, usually a bishop, was expected to communicate the papal answer to the authorities in the district to which he belonged. These authorities were expected to act in conformity with that decree when these analogous cases arose. Innocent III in this fashion became one of the great legislators of papal law in his time.

Innocent III was also fond of writing letters to powerful people. While he never came out and stated his intentions or agendas directly, the overall intent is contained within the gist of the letter. Let me provide you with an example here:

“Just as the founder of the universe established two great lights in the firmament of heaven, the greater light to rule the day and the lesser light to rule the night, so too He set two great dignities in the firmament of the universal church..., the greater one to rule the day, that is, souls, and the lesser to rule the night, that is, bodies. These dignities are the papal authority and the royal power. Now just as the moon derives its light from the sun and is indeed lower than it in quantity and quality, in position and in power, so too the royal power derives the splendor of its dignity from the pontifical authority....” (from Medieval Sourcebook: Innocent III: Letters on Papal Policies)

     

He most definitely had a way with words.

Perhaps now you can better understand the mind of this man and the circumstances of the age in which we find him zealously rooting out heresies and in particular this one known as Catharism. It would seem he was so intent upon quashing the Cathars that he was even willing to throw one of his most devoted archdeacons Pierre de Castelnau under the proverbial bus to accomplish this. When we look at Innocent’s intellect, mind-set and the information he had at hand, he must have known what would happen – that is, if he did not make it happen himself in the name of expedience.  

Until next time my friends, be well and take care.

The not so innocent Pope & the Cathars

Before going any further with this, I want to reiterate that I went into this all as a skeptic and a bit of a cynic because there were too many holes in the things I’d read – at least as near as I knew. I am a dogmatist’s nightmare. I live by Fox Mulder’s credos of “Question everything!” and “The Truth is Out There.” I have since before Fox Mulder even existed. My father raised me to be like that.

This tends to be a double-edged sword that cuts both ways. I consider it one of my strengths, but it’s also one of my weaknesses. I will seldom take anyone’s word for anything – unless I know from experience that they do their homework fairly thoroughly. This leaves me room to learn and figure out things for myself, which is the whole point of undertaking one’s own ‘grail quest’. You don’t find your own grail by reading about someone else’s adventure. That is to say, you can use these things as sign-posts and maps, but the map is not the territory, and you shouldn’t throw the baby out with the bathwater. For you see, there are bits of truth mixed in with all the fallacies and outright fictions.  On the negative side, it takes a lot longer to ‘get there’ but once you have arrived, the journey and the conclusions are yours and yours alone. You made them and you ‘own’ them. They don’t belong to anyone else but you. This is the difference between ‘knowledge’ and ‘wisdom’. Knowledge is knowing the things other people say. Wisdom is learning and knowing it for your-self and therefore equal to ‘understanding’.   

 

That being said let us continue now with the story.

Albi is a commune in Southern France in the department of Tarn. It is also a city on the Tarn River, located about 85 kilometers northeast of Toulouse. Albi is an Occitan word but it is also a Latin word, meaning ‘white’ or ‘fair’. This word is the root of other words like Albany, and Alban – another name for Scotland. The root word gens means ‘people’ or a lineage of people. Albi is also an Arabic word that means ‘my heart’ or ‘beloved’.

This region was first settled in historical times in the Bronze Age, somewhere between 3000 and 600 BCE. It would seem that those who came there were coming back to a place buried deep in their ancestral memories from the days when people lived in caves and drew interesting pictures on the walls. That period of time was, ironically enough, called “the Magdalenian.” The Magdalenian period was named after the type site of La Madeleine, a rock shelter located in the Vézère valley, in the commune of Tursac, in the Dordogne department of France. Before it was called the Magdalenian period, it was originally termed "L'âge du renne" (the Age of the Reindeer). This might seem an odd bit of information to throw in at the moment, but it becomes a link to the Scythians later on in the story. Or perhaps I should say ‘earlier on’ in the story.

Toulouse, located in the department of Albi was the capitol of the Languedoc, a region that was once separate from France. It was the seat of Catharism and in fact the flag and coat of arms of the Languedoc is the Cathar cross. The name Languedoc comes from “langue d’oc”, for the people there spoke the Occitan language.

Catharism (from Greek: katharos, pure) was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and the Bogomils of Bulgaria which took influences from the Paulicians. Though the term "Cathar" has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether the movement identified itself with this name is debatable. In Cathar texts, the terms "Good Men" (Bons Hommes) or "Good Christians" are the common terms of self-identification.

Like many medieval movements, there were various schools of thought and practice amongst the Cathari; some were dualistic (believing in a God of Good and a God of Evil), others Gnostic, some closer to orthodoxy while abstaining from an acceptance of Catholicism. The dualist theology was the most prominent, however, and was based upon an asserted complete incompatibility of love and power. As matter was seen as a manifestation of power, it was believed to be incompatible with love.

The Cathari did not believe in one all-encompassing god, but in two, both equal and comparable in status. They held that the physical world was evil and created by Rex Mundi (translated from Latin as "king of the world"), who encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful; the second god, the one whom they worshipped, was entirely disincarnate: a being or principle of pure spirit and completely unsullied by the taint of matter. He was the god of love, order and peace.

According to some Cathars, the purpose of man's life on Earth was to transcend matter, perpetually renouncing anything connected with the principle of power and thereby attaining union with the principle of love. According to others, man's purpose was to reclaim or redeem matter, spiritualising and transforming it.

This placed them at odds with the Catholic Church regarding material creation, on behalf of which Jesus had died, as being intrinsically evil and implying that God, whose word had created the world in the beginning, was a usurper. Furthermore, as the Cathars saw matter as intrinsically evil, they denied that Jesus could become incarnate and still be the son of God. Cathars vehemently repudiated the significance of the crucifixion and the cross. In fact, to the Cathars, Rome's opulent and luxurious Church seemed a palpable embodiment and manifestation on Earth of Rex Mundi's sovereignty.

The Catholic Church regarded the sect as dangerously heretical, although the actual reason for its spread was most likely the discredit of the Church itself in the medieval society. [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism]

Pope Innocent III, reigned as Pope from 1198 to his death in 1216. He was one of the most powerful and influential popes in the history of the papacy. He claimed supremacy over all the kings and royal houses of Europe. He used his position well to his advantage and that of advancing the interests of the Church of Rome. A strong opponent of anything that threatened the Church, he declared the Third Crusade, to once again attempt to stop the intrusion of the Muslims into the Holy Land. He also knew about the Cathars and knew that this ‘heretical’ movement was growing uncomfortably popular – not only amongst the people, but amongst his own clergy. He himself estimated that probably 80% of his clergy were at least sympathetic to the ideas of the Cathars. The royal houses of the Languedoc were also very sympathetic to the Cathars, if not Cathars themselves. Not only was the Roman form of Christianity being threatened, but he feared the Church itself would implode from within, if he did not stop this heresy dead in its tracks.

The Lords of the Languedoc and Toulouse moved into his sites, because of their Cathar allegiances and sympathies. Being the cunning, ambitious, power-mad and clever man that he was, he devised a plan to enable him to declare yet another crusade – this time on European soil. We shall learn more of that in the next installment.

Have a beautiful day/evening my friends!

Love, Rayvn