Roland Routier

In linking Toulouse and Beziers as the start and end point of his canal, maybe PPR was reminding us of their shared 13thC catastrophe when Rome was scandalised by Catharism, with such dangerous doctrines as not needing the intervention of priests to gain salvation and not giving tons of money to Rome, which was attracting too many converts in in Southern France. Pope Innocent III sent preachers to convert the Cathars, but called a crusade after his legate, Pierre of Castelnau, was killed in January 1208.

A Crusading army was formed in Lyon and arrived in Beziers in 1209, motivated more by spiritual umbrage than by Innocent’s declaration that they would be entitled to keep any land seized from heretics. Under the command of another papal legate, Arnaud Amalric, Abbot of Cîteaux the army arrived at Béziers and called for the surrender of the Cathars and local Catholics. Some Catholics to their credit refusing to betray the few hundred Cathars in their midst to the glories of martyrdom, and the heretics took sanctuary in the Holy Catholic Church of St Madeleine. (Only restored last year.) So when the walls fell, it was mostly orthodox Catholics killing orthodox Catholics. Well, what’s a crusading army with other cities to sack supposed to do?

"When they discovered, from the admissions of some of them, that there were Catholics mingled with the heretics they said to the abbot “Sir, what shall we do, for we cannot distinguish between the faithful and the heretics.” The abbot, like the others, was afraid that many, in fear of death, would pretend to be Catholics, and after their departure, would return to their heresy, and is said to have replied “Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His” (2 Tim. ii. 19) and so countless number in that town were slain." (Caesar of Heisterbach)

"And they killed everyone who fled into the church; no cross or altar or crucifix could save them. And these raving beggarly lads, they killed the clergy too, and the women and children. I doubt if one person came out alive … such a slaughter has not been known or consented to, I think, since the time of the Saracens." (William of Tudela, cited in Cathar Castles)

Amarlic and Milo, a fellow legate, in a letter to the Pope, claim that the crusaders "put to the sword almost 20,000 people.

Simon de Montfort, a prominent French nobleman, was then appointed leader of the Crusader army and was granted control of the area encompassing Carcassonne, Albi, and Béziers. After the fall of Carcassonne, other towns surrendered without a fight. Albi, Castelnaudary, Castres, Fanjeaux, Limoux, Lombers and Montréal all fell quickly.
Although his first siege of Toulouse in 1211 was unsuccessful, he defeated the city's army two years later and then appointed himself as count before he himself died at the Siege of Toulouse in 1218. Many more thousands perished.

Following all these disturbances, the University of Toulouse was established by the 1229 Treaty of Paris. Their basic courses in theology and Aristotelian philosophy were beefed up to combat heresy. The Dominican monastic order was founded, with its home in the Couvent des Jacobins de Toulouse. A nearly four-century holy inquisition began, centred in the city.

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