The fall of Montségur appeared to break the back of the the Cathars’ faith. Raymond VII, Count of Toulouse, champion of the Cathars for many years, deserted them and in 1249 helped the Inquisition to organize more burnings at Agen, northwest of Toulouse.
Exhausted by Terror
Elsewhere, thousands of Cathar credentes, the ordinary believers, also surrendered to the demands of the Papal Inquisition.
Exhausted by years of secrecy, suspense and the fear of discovery, the Cathars had become terrified by the power of inquisitors to ruin lives, condemn and kill.
To save themselves, they recanted and to confirm their new devotion to the Church, they betrayed neighbours, friends and even members of their own families to the pope’s remorseless operatives.
Betrayal by Cathar Perfects
A small number of captured Perfects, the much-respected Cathar leaders, were also “persuaded” to renounce their beliefs, turn Catholic and provide long lists of Cathar sympathizers.
They, in turn, fell into the hands of the Inquisition whose powers had been increased in 1252. In that year, Pope Innocent IV gave his permission for inquisitors to use torture as a means of getting at the truth.
The Cathars suffered yet another disaster to their morale in August 1255, with the capture of their very last stronghold, Quéribus in the Aude département between the Mediterranean Sea and the Pyrenees.
By these various means, Cathar beliefs and believers were gradually ground down by well-trained, zealous inquisitors backed by a bureaucracy of informers, torturers, registers of suspects and, of course, the all-pervasive horror the Inquisition inspired.
Thousands of Cathars disappeared into dungeons, never to be seen again or if they were, they emerged as compliant shadows of their former selves, too terrified of the stake to speak their minds.
The Last Trumpet of the Cathars
And yet, despite this punishing pressure, the Inquisition which had pursued them so mercilessly for almost fifty years did not quickly achieve its ultimate aim of wiping the Cathars from the face of the Earth.
Sounding the last trumpet for the Cathar faith did not occur until more than fifty years after the fall of Quéribus when two eccentric brothers from Languedoc in southern France and a one time murderer suddenly “found religion”.
The brothers were Pierre and Guilllaume Autier, both in their fifties, both well educated and well-to-do but not in the least devout. On the contrary: they could be blasphemous. Pierre Autier, for example, was fond of saying that making the sign of the Cross was useful only for swatting flies.
Then, in 1296, to the amazement of all who knew them, the Autier brothers embarked upon a new, ascetic life as small-time pedlars.
Catharism returns to Languedoc
They spent some time in Italy, but in 1300 resurfaced in their native Languedoc, where Pierre began to preach the Cathar faith. He was very successful. Before the Inquisition caught up with him, he had converted around a thousand families.
Then, in 1305, Pierre was betrayed to the Inquisition, but somehow managed to escape. However, his brother Guillaume was apprehended and burned at the stake together all but one of the new Cathar Perfects Pierre had converted.
The Perfect who eluded capture on this occasion was possibly a young weaver named Sanchez Mercadier. Mercadier committed suicide in around 1309 rather than experience the agony of burning to death.
Pierre Autier managed to remain at large for another four years. In April of 1310, he was burned in public in front of the cathedral of St. Stephen in Toulouse.
The Cathars in Spain
The murderer turned Cathar was Guillaume Bélibaste, a shepherd who tended his flocks high up in the Corbière hills near the River Aude in Languedoc. In 1306, Bélibaste killed another shepherd in a brawl and went on the run to escape the law.
During his wanderings, he encountered Philippe d’Alayrac, another of Pierre Autier’s Cathar Perfects who was hiding from the Inquisition. Together, the shepherd and the Perfect fled over the Pyrenees into Catalonia, in northeast Spain. Before he was hunted down by inquisitors and burned at the stake, d’Alayrac initiated Bélibaste into the Cathar faith.
By this means, Bélibaste came to believe that not only was the world a wicked, evil place but that it was ruled by four demons: King Philip IV of France, Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Palmiers, Pope Boniface VIII and Bernard Gui, a merciless inquisitor based at Carcassonne in Languedoc.
Before long, Bélibaste had gathered in a flock of credentes who, like himself, had fled for safety to Spain. For nearly five years, this Cathar community in Spain was undisturbed or so it seemed.
The Cathars betrayed
What these Cathars did not realise was that in 1317, they had admitted to their ranks a certain Arnold Sicre who was, in reality, a secret agent employed by Bishop Jacques Fournier.
Sicre bided his time until he could betray Guillaume Bélibaste to the Inquisition . His chance came in the Spring of 1321, when, with others, he accompanied Bélibaste on a journey into France to see
Bélibaste’s aged aunt Alazais who had generously financed her nephew’s small Cathar community.
Two days into their journey, armed men, tipped off by Sicre, broke down the door of the house in Tirvia, on the Spanish side of the Pyrenees, where Bélibaste and his companions were staying. All of them were arrested.
The burning of Guillaume Bélibaste,
Guillaume Bélibaste completed his journey over the mountains and into France in chains. He was put on trial for heresy, but the verdict was never in doubt. In the autumn of 1321, he was led into the courtyard of the castle at Villerouge-Termenès in Corbières where a stake awaited him, planted in a pile of straw, vine twigs and logs.
A blazing torch was applied, the flames surged upwards and in a matter of minutes, the last of the Cathar Perfects was nothing but cinders and ashes. After 112 years and 19 popes, the Church and its Inquisition had finally achieved its purpose.
Sources
- Martin, Sean: The Cathars: The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages (New York, NY: Thunder's Mouth Press, 2005) ISBN-10: 1560256745/ASIN: B00127UIW0
- Markale, Jean: Montségur and the Mystery of the Cathars by Jean Markale (Rochester, Vermont: Inner Traditions publishing, 2003) ISBN-10: 0892810904/ISBN-13: 978-0892810901
Brenda Ralph Lewis - My interest in history dates from childhood. I am presently the author of 120 books and hundreds of articles, all on historical ...
