They lived easy lives of austerity and abstinence and suffered horrifying deaths, reduce down by marauding armies and burned on the stake as heretics — or so the legend goes.
For his or her appreciable pains, the Cathars have been memorialized and celebrated as martyred non secular rebels by a area of southern France that, eight centuries later, nonetheless promotes itself beneath their identify: Pays Cathare.
However in latest weeks, a debate has erupted throughout this area in newspapers, tourism places of work, and in analysis conferences following an educational exhibition that explored a extra modern-day heresy: The Cathars by no means existed.
“Individuals think about that these individuals died as heroes, in protection of their religion and in opposition to corrupt powers,” mentioned Alessia Trivellone, a historical past professor at Paul-Valery College in Montpellier who organized the exhibit. “They really feel that the very concept of going again to analyze this painful story is insufferable.”
Trivellone is certainly one of a rising variety of early trendy Europe students who've forged doubt on the Cathars’ existence, and her function as organizer of the exhibit has made her the goal of critics who name her a “negationist.” Together with different maverick historians, she is dismissed as an upstart simply making an attempt to generate buzz and additional her profession.
But the depth of the backlash reveals one thing deeper: the lingering regional resentments over Paris’ domination of the nation’s tradition and financial system.
The thirteenth century slaughter of the Cathars is related to the area’s lack of autonomy to the dominion of France, which proceeded to systematically wipe out the language and tradition of the south in favor of northern values.
Such wounds stay recent in a extremely rural area that struggles economically, the place individuals consider the north’s elite view them as unrefined hillbillies with odd accents. The anger bubbled to the floor in latest weeks with the “yellow vest” protests in opposition to President Emmanuel Macron.
“To individuals right here, the campaign in opposition to the Cathars appears slightly like a colonial warfare,” mentioned Monique Boulze, who's accountable for promotion on the vacationer workplace in Beziers, which was burned to the bottom in one of many campaign’s most notorious episodes. “It’s one thing nonetheless current and alive in native historical past.”
Any vacationer visiting this area would discover it exhausting to overlook the ever-present indicators and historic markers recounting the tragic story of the Cathars.
The town of Albi is dominated by the large Cathedral Basilica of St. Cecilia, a 200-year development mission launched by the Catholic Church after the Cathar campaign, supposedly to remind locals who was boss. Farther south, the city of Mazamet is dwelling to the Cathar Museum. And in Beziers every August, the city exhibits a sound and lightweight spectacular referred to as: “The Cathars, the Treasure of Beziers.”
“What our area has retained from the tragedy of the Cathars,” says the narrator, “is the style of revolt. And the style of liberty.”
At first blush, the Cathars make for unlikely modern-day heroes. They're mentioned to have been fundamentalists who believed there have been two gods: A superb one who presided over the religious world, and an evil one who dominated the bodily world. Cathars seen even intercourse inside marriage and replica as evil, and so lived strict lives of abstention.
Extra interesting as we speak, nonetheless, is the concept that the Cathars mounted the primary main revolt in opposition to the Catholic Church. They noticed Rome as corrupt, rejected the church’s hierarchy, and didn't construct cathedrals however slightly worshiped outside. This lack of construction gave ladies extra prominence and freedom, and since they have been pacifists who repudiated all killing, they have been vegetarians.
A lot concerning the historical past of twelfth and thirteenth century France might as we speak be fuzzy. However there is no such thing as a dispute that in 1209, on the urging of Pope Harmless III, a band of northern French nobles rallied a military that swept into the south, the place they unleashed a campaign so bloody it could make “Sport of Thrones” look tame by comparability.
This included the sacking of Beziers in July 1209 by a military beneath papal authority. Simply earlier than the assault, which might kill as many as 20,000 males, ladies and kids, the pope’s man on the scene, Arnaud Amalric, is reported to have uttered certainly one of historical past’s most well-known orders: “Kill all of them. God will know his personal.”
To wrap issues up after nearly all of combating was finished, church leaders started a grand inquisition in Toulouse. Suspects have been rounded up, compelled to admit, after which generally burned on the stake. This grew to become the blueprint for the a lot bigger inquisitions carried out within the centuries to come back.
In mid-October, as a part of an annual nationwide science pageant, Trivellone organized an exhibition referred to as, “Les Cathares, une idee recue?” That interprets actually as “The Cathars, an concept acquired” however implies one thing that's broadly accepted as truth however most likely not true.
The exhibition is modest, consisting of a handful of posters, a video, a comic book e book, and some objects that summarize the conclusions of some medieval students: There are not any important information from the time that help the concept that a single non secular motion referred to as the “Cathars” ever existed throughout southern France.
The topic, together with the exhibit’s considerably provocative title, proved to be catnip to regional journalists, and shortly native newspapers have been publishing dueling interviews with students who have been hashing out the main points of historic texts.
“Myths are the very basis of a social group or of a civilization, a generally indispensable cement of societies,” Trivellone mentioned. “The parable of the Cathars is even stronger as a result of it permits individuals to determine with the vanquished of historical past.”
This newest wave of consideration has been vexing to native Cathar students who've spent many years battling to have their work taken critically. College of Toulouse historical past professor Pilar Jimenez-Sanchez, as an illustration, has been amongst these medieval students within the south who've been scouring what restricted archives exist from that point to sew collectively an image of the Cathars.
It’s been a battle, she mentioned, as a result of there was a sense the broader French academy didn’t take the work critically.
Cathar students say doubters are too hung up on the identify. They acknowledge that on the time, such heretical teams generally used a wide range of totally different names and that some rituals various. However references to “Cathars” in letters by the pope in addition to another contemporaries, together with depth of the campaign and the inquisition, provide ample help to show the group as an entire existed.
Reasonably than being a advertising and marketing ploy, the reemergence of curiosity within the Cathars during the last half a century has been the fruit of that scholarship and digging, Jimenez-Sanchez mentioned. Within the wake of the Montpellier exhibition and the media consideration, she organized a late October presentation in Carcassonne to rebut the concept that the Cathars have been a latter-day invention.
The Cathar defenders pose a query to the skeptics: If the campaign was not about quashing this non secular motion, then what motivated so many Christians to take up arms and kills hundreds of different Christians?
“How can we resolve this query?” Pilar-Jimenez mentioned. “How might individuals right now have reacted on this method?”
The Cathar debate doesn’t appear to be hurting the area — the revival of curiosity in its cultural historical past exhibits no signal of slowing. Two years in the past, in an effort to shift some energy away from Paris, the French authorities fused collectively regional governments to create far bigger administrative zones.
Within the south, the areas of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrenees have been merged into France’s largest regional authorities by land dimension. In a vote to call the brand new area, the primary alternative of residents was clear: Occitanie — an homage to the language, Occitan (“langue d’oc”), a cousin of Catalan that was broadly spoken in Cathar territory earlier than the campaign.
And so, greater than 800 years after the brutal campaign, Occitanie is the identify of a geographic territory that's roughly the dimensions of Austria.
“The medieval historical past of Occitanie is wealthy and interesting,” Trivellone mentioned. “It doesn't want the ghost of the Cathars to arouse curiosity.”
O’Brien is a particular correspondent.
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