Life on the Pog

Montségur was far from a monastic sort of enclave, such as we might think of today – i.e. as in a Buddhist monastery. In point of fact the fortress itself was a garrison and most of the people who lived in the village were not Cathars themselves. This can be said because large quantities of animal bones were found buried around and on the pog, and Cathars we are told did not eat meat except fish. The perfecti and credenti that lived there most likely lived in the village and only went into the fortress in times of siege for protection. Certainly the soldiers in the garrison were not Cathars, or they could and would not have been soldiers. Their wives and children may have been, but not the soldiers themselves.Village life was like life in any other village that supported itself and its people of the time. There were chores to be done, clothing to be made, things to be fixed and fashioned, as well as livestock to care for.

Cathars were spread all over the Languedoc-Rousillon and not all congregated in one area. There were even Cathars in Italy and other countries. They were however centered predominantly in what is now southern France. The lords of the Languedoc remained independent lords and answered to no king. This coupled with the fact that heretics lived in the lands of, and were protected by these lords was a recipe for trouble and a thorn in the sides of both Rome and the French monarchy. The monarchy wanted those lands and the Church wanted the heretics gone.

Given what we think the Cathars believe and the principles by which they lived, it is fairly well certain that the lords of the Languedoc were not Cathars themselves. They owned property and they engaged in warfare. They were powerful local lords fighting to keep control of their hereditary holdings and titles. We know they were at least nominally Catholic by the fact that several of them were excommunicated not just once but many times. That is not to say however that some of their wives and children were Cathars. We know that the daughter of Roger-Bernard I de Foix was a Cathar, Esclarmonde de Foix, who was a perfecti and is known as such in historical records. At the time she took her consolamentum, she did so with three other ladies of high rank, Aude de Fanjeaux, Fays de Durfort and Raymonde de Saint-Germain. Esclarmonde de Foix was present at the Conference of Montreal in 1207, an attempt at a peaceful debate and settlement with the Catholic Church, represented by Dominic Guzman. Dominic Guzman would become Saint Dominic, who later led the Inquisition. The year after the debate, Innocent III declared the Albigensian Crusade.

It is necessary as well to understand that women of noble status often retired to convents when they became widowed or divorced in these times and in times previous to this. By Salic Law women rarely inherited their husbands’ lands or titles upon the lord’s death, unless they were a ‘queen regent’ themselves – i.e. they were the daughter and heir of a king or a lord. Blanche of Castile was a queen regent, for she was the daughter of a king, Alfonso VIII of Castile and Eleanor of Aragon, who was also a queen regent. Even in this case, they acted only as regents in the kingly sense if the heir, a son, was in his minority – under aged. When the son reached his majority, he became king but his mother was still ‘the Queen Regent’, while his wife was simply ‘the Queen’. A ‘lady’ married to a king who became his widow was called a ‘dowager queen’, and inherited nothing unless it was her father’s lands and titles and she had no surviving brothers. While the lords of the Languedoc did not adhere to monarchies and their rules, they too inherited by Salic Law established by Clovis I, the first historically verifiable King of the Salian Franks, who came to be known as the Merovingians.

Esclarmonde de Foix was a widow in 1200 when she turned to the Cathar faith, which infers that before that she was probably a Catholic herself. It is therefore nothing exceptional or extraordinary in the fact that she ‘retired’ to live a more or less monastic life as a perfecti and spiritual leader. What is unique and extraordinary about her is that she became the symbol and the legend that she remains to this day. That however, is not entirely due to anything in particular that she did in her life. She was a good woman who made every attempt to help people: she established schools for girls and hospitals as well as a home for the elder parfaits. As far as anyone knows for certain, that is the extent of her doings. Such acts did qualify one for sainthood in those times on occasion, but Esclarmonde de Foix was not a Catholic. The story of her turning into a dove and flying away with the equally legendary Cathar Treasure, the Holy Grail, was most likely a fiction invented by Otto Rahn, the Nazi medievalist. To my knowledge, there is no mention of it before his telling of it. If indeed, as he claimed, he was told this by local shepherds it may have been a legend that had risen up around the fortress, the pog and the Cathars in the neighborhood. Places like Montségur tend to engender and invite legends, and not without good reason. But truly, it was the pog, the fortress and the crusade and its circumstances more than anything else that brought a certain fame, or infamy, upon the place – depending on whose side you’re on – and made it and Esclarmonde icons of the times and the Cathars themselves.

The reason for this will be revealed in the next installment. Until then, my friends, take care and be kind to one another.

Rayvn