The Perfect Heresy

by Stephen O'Shea

  Accompanying the count of Toulouse was a large delegation of lords from Languedoc, led by an indignant Raymond Roger of Foix, who had been forced the year before to place his castles in escrow to the Church. There was even a nobleman of dubious Cathar lineage with the southern embassy, Arnold of Villemur. It is impossible to conceive of a worse place for a suspected heretic to linger than in the biggest convention of churchmen of the Middle Ages.

  The pope invited all the concerned parties in the Cathar wars, lay and religious, to a special audience, a caucus of sorts, away from the larger deliberative body of the Lateran. The men of Languedoc were given permission to speak their minds freely before the referee of Christendom. Given the strife and bloodshed of the past six years, Innocent’s hope for dispassionate discussion was, at best, pious. Too many deaths separated the two camps; too much horror had scarred the face of Languedoc. A chronicler told of how the session immediately turned nasty.

  It was Fulk, the bishop of Toulouse, who opened the hostilities. The eloquent prelate launched an attack on Raymond Roger, claiming that the advocate for the southern cause should not be allowed to speak, much less to regain his castles. The count of Foix, Fulk pointed out, had long had heretics in his family and had permitted Montségur to be rebuilt as a citadel of sedition. Raymond Roger retorted, disingenuously, that he was not responsible for the actions of his Perfect sister Esclarmonde and that he was not the suzerain lord of the country over which Montségur stood guard. Undeterred, Fulk reminded everyone of the count’s role in the infamous massacre of the crusaders at Montgey. The bishop addressed the pope directly:

  And your pilgrims, who were serving God by driving out the heretics, mercenaries and dispossessed men, he has killed so many of them, slashed and broken and hacked them in two, that their bodies lie thick on the field of Montgey, the French still weep for them, and it is upon you that the dishonor falls! Out there at the gateway rise the moans and cries of blinded men, of the wounded, of men who have lost their limbs or cannot walk unless someone leads them! He who broke those men, maimed and tortured them, does not deserve ever to hold land again!

  Raymond Roger held a radically different opinion of the crusaders in question. He wasted no time in diplomatic circumlocution:

  Those robbers, those traitors and oath-breakers adorned with the cross who have destroyed me, neither I nor mine have laid hold on one of them who has not lost his eyes, his feet, his fingers and his hands! And I rejoice to think of those I have killed and regret the escape of those who got away.

  After making this terrible admission, he turned his ire on Fulk. Innocent listened as Raymond Roger thundered out his indictment of the bishop of Toulouse:

  And I tell you that the bishop, who is so violent that in all he does he is a traitor to God and to ourselves, has gained by means of lying songs and beguiling phrases which kill the very soul of any who sing them, by means of those verbal quips he polishes and sharpens, by means too of our own gifts through which he first became an entertainer, and through his evil teaching, this bishop has gained such power, such riches, that no one dares breathe a word to challenge his lies… . once he was elected bishop of Toulouse, a fire has raged throughout the land that no water anywhere can quench, for he has destroyed the souls and bodies of more than five hundred people, great and small. In his deeds, his words and his whole conduct, I promise you he is more like Antichrist than a messenger from Rome.

  The venomous debate was adjourned by the pontiff. He had at last seen for himself what his zeal for crusade had wrought. The Christians of Languedoc hated each other and were unafraid to shout out their hatred in the holiest halls of Christendom. Upset and angry, the pope rushed out of the meeting room and headed toward his private quarters. “There now,” a chronicler has one of Raymond Roger’s nephews remarking, “haven’t we done well? We can all go home, for we have driven the pope indoors.”

  In his search for quieter surroundings, Innocent retreated to the gardens of the Lateran. The calm was temporary—a number of southern clergy invested the cloistered quadrangle and demanded to hear the pope’s judgment. Innocent, in an effort to set an example of Christian mercy, suggested that only the lands and goods of proven heretics be ceded to Simon de Montfort and the rest of Languedoc be returned to the various highland counts and to the young Raymond of Toulouse. He spoke at length of the noble and Christian demeanor of the youthful Raymond, echoing the arguments made by the ill-fated Pedro three years earlier: The son should not suffer for the sins of the father.

  The southern clergy howled in protest. Fulk, once again, stepped forward, his language of dissent veering toward disrespect:

  My lord, true pope, dear Father Innocent, how can you covertly disinherit the count de Montfort, a truly obedient son of holy Church, one who supports yourself, who is enduring such wearisome strife and conflict and is driving out heresy, mercenaries and men of war? Yet you take from him the fief, its lands and castles, which he has won by the cross and his own bright sword, you take away Montauban and Toulouse if you separate the lands of heretics from those of true believers … and that is not the smaller share. Never have such cruel sophisms or such obscure pronouncements been declared, nor such absolute nonsense!

  Others followed Fulk’s lead. The pope was beseeched to give Simon the entire prize. Even if Catholics were dispossessed, the churchmen argued, the stain of heresy had splattered everyone in Languedoc. Innocent, although the pontiff, could not defy the wishes of an entire province of his clergy. A Cistercian from Southampton reminded the pope that the younger Raymond’s mother had been Joan of England, whose dowry had included several inalienable territories in Provence. Innocent seized on this information to deliver his verdict: Simon retained all the lands of the Trencavels and the Saint Gilles, save the scattered possessions in Provence which went to the young Raymond. His father received a handsome pension from Simon. Innocent demanded, as ever, that the hunt for the Cathars be intensified.

  The victory of Muret was thus writ large, affixed with a leaden papal seal. Amid much solemnity, the decision was promulgated in mid-December 1215. Simon de Montfort was now, legally, the lord of Languedoc. He held more land than the king of France.

  The defeated embassy of Occitan nobles left Rome just before Christmas. The merchant ships docking in the ports of Languedoc brought the news of Innocent’s decision. Everywhere in the south, from the Garonne to the Rhône, partisans of Raymond and protectors of the Cathars had to decide whether to shed tears or to sharpen swords.

  12.

  Toulouse

  IN JUNE OF 1218, a full two and a half years after the Lateran had handed him Languedoc, Simon de Montfort was still in his armor. For the past nine months he had been waging a stationary war, thundering out orders, leading charges, fighting off counterattacks, laying siege to his perennial enemy: the city of Toulouse. The property transfer Innocent decreed in 1215 had made Toulouse the capital of Simon’s territory, the crown jewel of his conquest, the ruby metropolis that would make him rich. Such was the intent of the Lateran verdict; its consequence was wholly different, for Toulouse had rejected the lease granted by the pope. The staunch followers of the Saint Gilles, the outraged vassals of the Trencavels, the fierce warriors of Foix, the dispossessed nobles of the Corbières and the Montagne Noire, the friends of the Cathars—all had gathered in the proud city on the Garonne to thwart their new, papally approved, French overlord.

  The siege of Toulouse was a long, ugly engagement, truly medieval in its cruelty. Both sides knew that this time they were locked in a fight to the death. Any unlucky besieger captured by the defenders, according to a chronicler, had his eyes gouged out and tongue cut off before being dragged half-dead through the streets tied to a horse’s tail. Dogs and crows finished him off, after which his severed hands and feet would be placed in the spoon of a trebuchet and sent whistling back to his comrades.

  Simon de Montfort, no stranger to such tactics, had plans to obliterate the city. The tents and workshops of his arm
y were deployed in a settlement dubbed “New Toulouse,” the area where the wrathful northerner promised to build a new capital once he had killed all of his subjects and burned their houses to the ground.

  How Simon’s triumph in Rome in 1215 became a test before Toulouse in 1218 had nothing of the inevitable about it. Count Raymond’s son, the youth who had so impressed the pope with his Christian piety and noble bearing, turned out to be startlingly unlike his father. Raymond the younger was a born warrior, and it was in his birthplace that he first showed his belligerent talent. On returning from the Lateran Council to Avignon in the winter of 1216, he rallied hitherto apathetic Provençal nobles to his cause and boldly captured the crusader-held city of Beaucaire, the Rhône river citadel where his mother, Joan of England, had been delivered of him nineteen years earlier. In storming the town, the young Raymond announced that the Church had no business depriving him of his birthright.

  When Simon arrived at Beaucaire to punish the upstart, he was repulsed, repeatedly, by a foe who did not flinch at riding out to clash with the fearsome northerner in open country. The south had lost a hero at Muret but found a new one at Beaucaire. Throughout the summer of 1216, Raymond the younger held Simon at bay, humiliating the man who had just been made lord of all of Languedoc. On the heels of crusader frustration came calamity. On July 16, 1216—the fourth anniversary of King Pedro’s decisive victory at Las Navas de Tolosa—Innocent III died, carried off by a sudden fever in Perugia.

  The news of victory in Beaucaire and death in Perugia caused stirrings of revolt, which Simon only exacerbated by reverting to his tactics of quick strike and sudden atrocity. Whereas the task of managing his enormous Lateran windfall cried out for shrewd diplomacy, Simon blithely trod on the toes of potential allies. Even Arnold Amaury, the legate turned archbishop, came out against his onetime crusader partner, excommunicating Simon for pressing his prerogatives too hard in the see of Narbonne. Arnold had wrested the wealthy bishopric from a corrupt prelate, the man once denounced by Innocent as a “dumb dog,” only to watch in alarm as Simon, the new count, demanded a share of the power and revenue never claimed by his predecessor. Arnold Amaury, of all people, gradually became a partisan of Raymond the younger.

  Yet Toulouse, not Narbonne, was the key to Simon’s legitimacy, and it was there that his failings as a statesman became most evident. In August 1216, Simon reluctantly raised the siege of Beaucaire, then raced cross-country—200 miles in three days—to stifle Toulouse’s growing restiveness. The Toulousains had not forgiven the crazed manhunt and needless butchery of their citizen militia at Muret, yet they were unwilling to risk defying Simon openly. If anything, their hardheaded merchants were amenable to suggestion as to how their tolerant, prosperous burg might fit into his dominion. Simon had other plans. He approached the town in battle array and sent word that only money and hostages could deter him from attacking. Within hours, barricades sprang up throughout an indignant Toulouse, and furious street fights began. Following a night of violence, Bishop Fulk persuaded an assembly of notables to negotiate with their new count in a meadow far beyond the turmoil of the city. Such an act, the bishop suavely argued, would dramatically demonstrate their trust in Simon’s sense of equity.

  Even given past crusader actions, the depth of Fulk’s treachery impresses. Several hundred emissaries, the richest and most influential men of Toulouse, duly marched out of the protective embrace of their city—and were immediately clapped in irons by the gleeful French. Simon and Fulk had effortlessly made a rich harvest of hostages. To regain its leading citizens, Toulouse was ordered to tear down its remaining defensive walls, demolish its fortified mansions, and scrape together enormous ransom payments. When rebellion broke out anew at these terms, Simon ordered his troops to sack the city. Everything—money, arms, goods, food—was taken in a monthlong rape of Toulouse. Scores of great houses were picked clean, then smashed to their foundations. And the hostages were not handed back to their families; they were loosed in the countryside and instructed never to return.

  There was, significantly, no wholesale slaughter. By late October of 1216, Simon’s designs had become clear: The capital was to be allowed to survive as a milch-cow, financing his campaigns of pacification and bowing to his absolute authority. He abolished the institution of the capitouls, the city’s hallowed system of self-governance, and imposed crippling taxes on an already beggared populace. When he departed in November, leaving behind a garrison, the city was prostrate, in need of time to heal. There were no longer any Black and White Brotherhoods—Bishop Fulk and Count Simon were now universally, infinitely loathed.

  Simon’s tyranny might have taken root had he not elected to spend most of the following year bringing war to far-off Provence. He tried to expand his holdings, to go beyond the already generous terms of Innocent’s decree. As Simon battled in the shadow of the Alps, Toulouse recovered. Grain-bearing barges on the Garonne smuggled weapons into the city, deposed consuls crept secretly into welcoming cellars, tradesmen hoarded supplies in back rooms, and servants and whores spied on the French garrison. Throughout Languedoc the network of Cathar believers, a grapevine untainted by orthodoxy, spread the word about the gathering storm.

  On September 13, 1217, a small party of horsemen took advantage of a murky dawn fog to splash across the Garonne at a ford downstream from the sleeping city. They had ridden stealthily northward from the Pyrenees, past Foix and Muret, successfully avoiding detection by the occupying French. Before the mists had lifted, they were in the streets of Toulouse, and the pages of the foremost rider had unfurled scarlet pennons emblazoned with a twelve-point gold cross, the symbol of Count Raymond VI. An eyewitness wrote:

  When the count entered through the arched gateway all the people flocked to him. Great and small, lords and ladies, wives and husbands, they knelt before him and kissed his clothing, his feet and legs, his arms and fingers. With tears of delight and in joy they welcomed him, for joy regained bears both flower and fruit. “Now we have Jesus Christ,” they said to each other, “now we have the morning star risen and shining upon us! This is our lord who was lost!”

  A few unfortunate French soldiers caught out in the streets by surprise were summarily cut down. Others managed to fight their way back through the clamor to the castle on the outskirts of the city, where Alice of Montmorency lived with Simon’s younger children. The fortress, once the residence of the Saint Gilles, was a high-security enclave, safe from the passions and politics of the town. The Toulousains did not give chase, for almost immediately Raymond and the consuls issued orders. The townspeople were to drop their peacetime occupations at once and rebuild the walls and dig the moats of the defenseless city. When Simon got wind of the uprising, everyone knew, he and his barons would come roaring back through the valleys of Languedoc, intent on mass murder.

  September of the year 1217 was the city’s finest, most terrified hour. A chronicler told of the frenzy of united action:

  Never in any town have I seen such magnificent laborers, for the counts were hard at work there, with all the knights, the citizens and their wives and valiant merchants, men, women and courteous money-changers, small children, boys and girls, servants, running messengers, every one had a pick, a shovel or a garden fork, every one of them joined eagerly in the work. And at night they all kept watch together, lights and candlesticks were placed along the streets, drums and tabors sounded and bugles played. In heartfelt joy, women and girls sang and danced to merry tunes.

  On October 8, the banner with the dreaded red lion fluttered in the fields to the north of the city. Simon de Montfort decided to attack immediately, before moats deepened and walls thickened. The senior churchman in Simon’s company, remembering Beziers, exhorted the northerners to “let neither man nor woman escape alive.”

  The ensuing savagery, like the half-dozen battles in the months to follow, failed to breach the defenses. As the French armored horsemen and infantry hurtled past an obstacle course of sharpened stakes and treacherou
s ditches in their headlong rush to the gates, the Toulousains—men, women, girls, and boys—let fly with everything they had. “Sharp fly the javelins, the lances and feathered quarrels,” an eyewitness wrote, “… fast the inlaid spears, the rocks, shafts, arrows, squared staves, spearhafts, and sling-stones, dense as fine rain, darkening the clear skies.” From out of a gate burst the Occitan defenders, led by Roger Bernard of Foix, as much a warrior as his father, the man who had told the pope to his face that he regretted not having mutilated more crusaders at Montgey. Thanks to the gruesome heroics of the besieged, Toulouse fought Simon’s experienced attackers to a standstill. The eyewitness described the scene with medieval relish:

  How many armed knights you’d have seen there, how many good shields cleft, what ribs laid bare, legs smashed and arms cut off, chests torn apart, helmets cracked open, flesh hacked, heads cut in two, what blood spilled, what severed fists, how many men fighting and others struggling to carry away one they’d seen fall! Such wounds, such injuries they suffered, that they strewed the battlefield with white and red.

  Throughout the winter and spring, the same terrible scenario was reenacted—the French charged through a blizzard of missiles until hand-to-hand carnage checked their progress in the lists outside the city walls. Simon attacked from the east, the west, the river, the bridges. His horse drowned in the Garonne, almost taking him with it. He sent his wife and Fulk to France, to convince the warrior nobility that one final crusading quarantine should be undertaken. The call was heeded. From Picardy, Normandy, Ile de France, and England, thousands hurried south to take up their places outside the city. Yet even with superior numbers, Simon could make no headway. Toulouse was no Carcassonne or Minerve; the broad Garonne kept it supplied with water, and its size ruled out a suffocating encirclement. Fresh men and supplies easily slipped through the crusader lines. When Raymond the younger, the hero of Beaucaire, stole past the besiegers and entered Toulouse, the city went into raptures. “Not a girl stayed at home upstairs or downstairs,” a chronicler remarked, “but every soul in the town, great and small, ran to gaze at him as at a flowering rose.”