Siege of Montségur
| date | May 1243 to March 16, 1244 |
|---|---|
| place | Montségur |
| Casus Belli | Assassination in Avignonet |
| output | Siege successful |
| consequences | End of the Occitan resistance. Burning of 225 Cathars. |
| Parties to the conflict | |
|---|---|
| Commander | |
| Troop strength | |
| about 1,000 men | slightly more than 100 men including: 20 knights 13 squires 55 other armed men |
| losses | |
|
unknown |
† 9 |
The siege of Montségur was a military conflict in France in the high Middle Ages , in which an army of the French king besieged the castle on Montségur ( French: Mont sûr , German: safe mountain ), the last place of retreat of the during the Albigensian Crusade (1208-1229 ) followers of the Cathar religion persecuted in Languedoc , which the Roman Catholic Church had classified as heretical . The siege lasted ten months from May 1243 to March 16, 1244 and ended with the surrender of its defenders, after which a large number of Cathars were burned at the foot of the mountain cone ( Occitan: Pog ).
background
The castle on Montségur was originally, like almost all fortifications in the Occitan south of what is now France, a fortified town ( castrum ), and today, due to its historical background, is synonymous with the “ Cathar Castle ”. At the beginning of the 13th century, its fortifications were already largely in ruins when the leading clergy of the Catholic Church at a council held in Mirepoix in 1206 commissioned the landlord Raymond de Péreille to rebuild them, in anticipation of the military confrontation with the Roman Church that was already emerging under Pope Innocent III. The fortification that can be seen today on the "Pog" is not the Cathar building from 1206, which was demolished after its fall in 1244 and replaced by the castle, now in ruins, which was built towards the end of the 13th century. Only the terraces on the mountain top remain from the original building, on which the wooden and stone dwellings of the Catholic mountain village had stood. The village was at the western end of the ridge and was protected by a ditch that was believed to have served as a quarry for the permanent housing and fortifications. The castrum was and is accessible via two extremely difficult ascents, both of which were easy to defend. On the one hand there is the normal access route over the southern slope, which led directly to the castrum and from there could easily be defended with a catapult. Then there was the much more difficult ascent over the entire ridge, which was guarded on its east side by a fortified outpost, the "Roc de la Tour", which was also another 300 meters from the castrum and 250 meters below it. The foundations of this post can still be viewed today.
During the Albigensian Crusade from 1208 to 1229, the Montségur served as a safe refuge for the Cathar community of the Ariège and Lauragais . The Catholic Bishop of Toulouse , Guilhabert de Castres , had his seat here from 1209, making Montségur the de facto headquarters of the Cathar religion. The leader of the crusade, Simon de Montfort , had never dared to besiege the castle. Its altitude on the northern edge of the Pyrenees had made a lengthy and laborious siege by the crusade army, suffering from a chronic shortage of personnel, simply impossible. The Montségur originally belonged to the domain of the County of Foix , but in the Treaty of Paris , which ended the Albigensian Crusade, the castle was awarded to the crusader Guy de Lévis , who had also received Mirepoix as a direct crown fief. In fact, however, the Montségur remained in the hands of the Cathars and henceforth formed a kind of autonomous commune from which the Catholic Church was able to maintain its organizational structure. The crusade had only partially damaged the social foundation of Catharism in Occitan society, but with the peace of 1229 the situation began to change for the community, which was now exposed to royal prosecution and a denunciation established by the Inquisition . Accordingly, the importance of the Montségur as a safe domicile for the community grew, which also served as the base of operations for the militant Occitan resistance. The Montségur was home to a large number of Occitans willing to fight, who were referred to as " Faydits " (Catalan / Occitan: faïdits / faidits , German: renegades, outlaws , exiles ), led by Pierre Roger II de Mirepoix , a cousin and son-in-law of Raymond de Péreille. The Faydits of Montségur offered the Cathar clergy protection on their travels or took part in violent uprisings against the royal authorities, for example in the great uprising of Raimund II Trencavel in 1240.
occasion
Since then, Montségur has had the reputation of a notorious heretic stronghold that defied authority. The clergyman Guillaume de Puylaurens called it the "synagogue of Satan" (sathane synagoga) (Rev. 2,9). In 1241 Count Raimund VII of Toulouse had to face King Louis IX. obliged to remove this nest of resistance, as a condition for resumption of royal favor. In the same year the count actually had some soldiers reared at the foot of the "Pog", but after a few days declared the attempt to take it to have failed and then withdrew. In May 1242, the Count of Toulouse, in league with the English king, rose up to revolt against the crown. Apparently encouraged by this, the Faydits of Montségur had struck a blow against the Inquisition jurisdiction when they led the Inquisitors of Toulouse, Étienne de Saint , who resided there to sleep on the night of 28 to 29 May 1242 in Avignonet by Pierre Roger de Mirepoix -Thibery and Guillaume Arnaud , murdered. The attack had shocked the Roman Catholic authorities and the Archbishop of Narbonne , Pierre Amiel , had pronounced the excommunication about the perpetrators, who were celebrated by the local population in some villages on their march home to Montségur. Since its inception there had been repeated violent attacks by the local population against members of the Inquisition, especially against their local examining magistrates, law enforcement officers and informers, but until then no one had dared to lay hands on the chief inquisitors of the Languedoc.
The uprising of the Count of Toulouse failed in the autumn of 1242 due to his military inferiority and the defeat of the English king at Taillebourg, whereupon he had to submit to the French crown and recognize the terms of the Treaty of Paris again. In April 1243, the Archbishops of Narbonne and Arles had called the Occitan and Provencal clergy in Béziers to a council that should deal with the restoration of ecclesiastical order after the uprising. In all likelihood, the decision to campaign against the Montségur in retaliation for the assassination attempt at Avignonet was made at this council, even if this point cannot be found in the only sparsely preserved council documents. The royal seneschal of Carcassonne , Hugues d'Arcis , had called for the cavalgada , the “ride of the king”, which meant the mobilization of all able-bodied men. His officials had, however, had their difficulties in enforcing the draft order among the local population, as they were still very reserved about the relatively young regime of the French crown. The church authorities, for their part, had campaigned for mercenaries with the promise of crusade indulgences, although the characterization of the Montségur campaign as a crusade is controversial to this day, especially since an official sanctioning of such an enterprise was never issued. The size of the army, whose units gradually arrived at the foot of Montségur from the late May days onwards, cannot be determined. The frequently mentioned number of 10,000 is purely hypothetical and, in view of the difficult-to-access location of the place and the associated supply situation, it is clearly too high. It was probably no bigger than 1,000 men. The army was led by the royal seneschal Hugues d'Arcis, whose district was subordinate to the Montségur, the archbishop of Narbonne , Pierre Amiel and the bishop of Albi , Durand de Beaucaire . The two prelates had not stayed on site for the entire duration of the siege; at the beginning of winter they had gone to a church council in Narbonne .
At the beginning of the siege in May 1243, at least 361 people were on the Montségur, about half of whom made up the combat-ready garrison. The castrum was headed by the Péreille-Mirepoix clan, which was present with 29 family members. 15 able-bodied men, including 12 knights, 13 women and a small child, the son of commander Pierre Roger de Mirepoix . There were also eight knights, seven of whom were persecuted as faydits. The knights were supported by 10 squires and 55 other armed men. In addition, 10 reporters, who presumably had participated in the defense, and a catapult designer had arrived at Montségur. In total the garrison should have made up about 100 men. The religious community of Montségur had at least 210 Cathars, so the number of lay people must have been around 150. 49 of the believers are known by name, of whom 34 were perfecti and 15 perfectae . At the head of the parish stood the Cathar Bishop of Toulouse, Bertrand Marty , who had succeeded Guilhabert de Castres around 1240. The Cathar bishop of the Razès, Raymond Agulher , was also present.
The siege
Beginning
Little is known about the beginning of the siege and its course in the seven months of 1243. The French army had gradually gathered at the foot of the “Pog”, but nothing is known of any major fighting during this long period. The fact that the royal army could not have been excessively large is made clear by the fact that it could not seal off the mountain from the outside world with a closed ring of siege. Instead, several guard posts had to be set up around him, the distance between them leaving enough space for loopholes through which the defenders could maintain contact with the outside world. The besiegers must have been careful to cut off supplies to the castrum , which was dependent on food supplies from the surrounding area. In fact, with the arrival of the French, the supply streams were immediately cut off, as the traders no longer dared to go to the "Pog" for fear of them. However, the defenders had already filled up their storerooms and thus prepared themselves for a long siege. Undoubtedly, Pierre Roger de Mirepoix had devised the plan to hold out unconditionally in the hope that the besiegers would give up when winter fell.
The fate of the defenders ultimately depended on Count Raimund VII of Toulouse , on whose support Pierre Roger de Mirepoix relied. Montségur had originally been the domain of the Counts of Foix, but no help could be expected from the current Count, Roger IV , since he had completely submitted to the Crown the previous year. However, the vassalage of the lords of Montségur to the Counts of Foix had been valid for generations only under "reservation of the allegiance owed to the Count of Toulouse", who was therefore the overlord of Montségur. Even before the siege was recorded, Pierre Roger de Mirepoix had received through an intermediary contact with Raymond VII. Of Toulouse, of about the same time after Rome had set out to where the favor of Pope Innocent IV. And Emperor Frederick II. To win . The count had already successfully mediated between the authorities of the French crown and the Faydits during the Trencavel uprising in 1240, what Pierre Roger de Mirepoix now hoped for from him. During the siege he had finally received the message through a messenger who had managed to gain access to Montségur by bypassing the French guards that Count Raimund VII would return before the beginning of winter 1243 and intervene at Montségur to mediate.
Until then, however, little had happened on the “Pog”. The defenders had nevertheless suffered losses in the many small skirmishes. The first to die was Raymond de Ventenac, a squire of the Mirepoix clan, Sergeant Sicard de Puivert fell in June, Sergeant Guillaume Gironda in August and Sergeant Guillaume Claret in October. All four had been able to receive the consolamentum on their deathbed , the consecration for acceptance into the community of the believing Cathars. Five other defense lawyers had been wounded.
decision
In December 1243, the decisive events that led to the fall of the Montségur finally occurred. The Seneschal Hugues d'Arcis, who was under time pressure, had apparently seen himself forced to act in view of the beginning snowfall in order to bring movement to the deadlocked situation. He had not been able to attack over the southern slope, as the defenders could fire a catapult on this path from the castrum . So there was only the more difficult ascent in the east of the ridge. One night a lightly armed squad of besiegers, evidently trained mountain troops, led by men who knew the place, undertook the dangerous ascent up the steep cliffs. The crew of the "Roc de la Tour" was surprised by this coup and had to vacate the post after a short fight. The defenders had apparently undertaken several counter-attacks from the castrum to recapture their outpost, which, among other things, indicated numerous arrowheads and crossbow bolts found at this location, but the attackers had been able to claim it for themselves.
The loss of the "Roc de la Tour" had made the defenders' situation much worse. Because the besiegers had now gained a bridgehead with him, on which they could now gradually and undisturbedly bring their men and siege equipment up to the "Pog". In this situation, Bertrand Marty had considered it appropriate before Christmas to bring the religious community's till to safety. He may have had this idea after the famous letter from the Cathar bishop of Cremona arrived at Montségur around the same time, advising his Occitan fellow believers to exile in the Lombard city because the Cathars could live there in peace. In any case, two Cathars with the money box had descended the rock face at the western end of the ridge, who ran into the arms of a guard of the besiegers at the foot of the "Pog". However, the post was made up of forcibly recruited men from the nearby village of Camon , who now willingly let their two compatriots pass. The two Cathars had brought the money box to an unspecified fortified grotto (spulga) in the upper county of Foix, where it has since inspired the imagination of modern treasure hunters as the “Treasure of Montségur”. The two treasure carriers had returned to the Montségur. In the first days of January 1244, the catapult designer Bertrand de la Bacalaria succeeded in gaining access to the castrum , who supported the defenders with their own gun constructions with which the attackers could respond. It had been sent by an official of the Count of Toulouse, who, contrary to all announcements, was still in Italy.
In the early February days, the besiegers had started the ascent from the “Roc de la Tour” to the castrum and, after a violent struggle, took its outermost defensive structure, the eastern barbican. There they could now set up a catapult, with which they could subject the interior of the castrum to a bombardment over the fortifications . From then on, besiegers and defenders fought real artillery battles on the "Pog", which are still testified by numerous spheres of limestone scattered around the forest that covers the ridge. In mid-February 1244, the besiegers launched a direct attack on the walls of the castrum , which they tried to overcome with ladders. The defenders were able to repel the attack, however, whereby the young knight Jourdain du Mas was mortally wounded, to whom the consolamentum could still be granted. In the following weeks Sergeant Bernard Rouain and the knight Bertrand de Bardenac, who also received the Cathar sacrament, had fallen. One of the injured during this time was the knight Guillaume de Lahille . Towards the end of the month the defense lawyers had received another handful of men as reinforcement; they had been let through by the Camon guard, one of whom was a messenger from brother Pierre Rogers de Mirepoix. This had arranged for him to hold out until April, since by then the Count of Toulouse would arrive at the head of an imperial army to rescue them. Sergeant Bernard de Carcassonne was wounded on February 26 and consoled before his death. On March 1st, the Catalan Ferrer, the bayle Pierre Rogers de Mirepoix, who was the ninth and final victim of the fighting on Montségur, fell.
Surrender and stake
On March 2, Pierre Roger de Mirepoix had already contacted Hugues d'Arcis to negotiate terms of surrender. The food supplies in the castrum must have already been exhausted by this point and the defenders, especially the civilians, must have been physically and mentally exhausted from the winter cold and the constant shelling that had destroyed the roofs of their houses. The Count of Toulouse had not appeared and he would never arrive at Montségur, which in fact played no part in his political intrigues between Pope and Emperor. The surrender negotiations had taken place quickly, as Hugues d'Arcis wanted to set a quick end and therefore immediately accepted the conditions offered by Pierre Roger de Mirepoix. Pierre Roger had agreed to hand over the castrum to the "Church and the King" after a two-week armistice and to immediately position hostages, for which a general amnesty was to be given to him and the other Avignonet attackers. The Seneschal, for his part, also demanded the extradition of all professing Cathars, who should be cremated immediately if they were not ready to renounce their faith. All other men and women were given safe conduct after they had presented themselves to the Inquisition for questioning (inquisitio) . The castrum was then to be handed over to the servants of Guy II. De Lévis , his rightful owner according to the Treaty of Paris.
The day of surrender was set for Wednesday, March 16, 1244. Until then, the devout Cathars had used the time to distribute their last belongings among the lay people. Not one of them had renounced their faith in order to be spared the looming pyre that the besiegers had set up at the foot of the "Pog". Instead, on March 13, twenty-one men and women came before Bishops Bertrand Marty and Raymond Agulher to ask them to grant consolamentum . Among them were the wife and daughter and a cousin of Raymond de Péreille. On the morning of March 16, Pierre Roger de Mirepoix, his garrison and all laypeople left Montségur, while Archbishop Pierre Amiel rounded up the believers and called on them to convert to the Catholic faith. After none of them had accepted the change of faith, the stake was lit, into which the Cathars threw themselves climbing ladders in order to go over to the "fires of Tartarus " following the words of Guillaume de Puylauren . He had given the number of those burned as “almost 200”, while Guillaume Pelhisson specified the number as 211. On the basis of the testimony that has been handed down to us, Michel Roquebert determined the number of 225 of which 63 are named, whereby a Perfecta was brought to her home town of Bram to be cremated there. Since the middle of the 20th century, a memorial stone erected on the “Field of the Burned” (Prat des Cremats) commemorates this event. Four Cathars, however, had survived the fall of Montségur. They were roped down the mountain by Pierre Roger de Mirepoix on the night of March 15th with the task of recovering their community treasury, which had been brought to safety for Christmas. We know of them that they later stayed in Caussou, then in Prades d'Ailon and then in Usson. Two of them finally emigrated to Italy, perhaps carrying the “Cathar treasure” with them.
The Montségur pyre was not the Inquisition's pyre. The Inquisitor Ferrer was probably there, but neither Archbishop Pierre Amiel nor Seneschal Hugues d'Arcis had given him the opportunity to question the Cathars in court, after which he could have passed individual judgments. Archbishop and Seneschal had insisted on an immediate execution without a previous tribunal and thus resorted to the actions of Arnaud Amaury and Simons de Montfort during the Albigensian Crusade.
Conclusion
Montségur was the last retreat of the Cathar community in Occitania . In a broader sense, his fall had marked the final military point in a thirty-six year struggle that cemented the political and religious order of the Languedoc in southern France, which had already been established in the Treaty of Paris in 1229 . With his loss and the persecution by the Inquisition, the Cathars were no longer able to maintain their church organization and social networking. In the early 14th century, Catharism had finally completely disappeared in France. Quéribus Castle in the southern Corbières is often referred to as the “last Cathar fortress”, which was captured by royal troops in 1255 after a coup d'état. Although its lord Xacbert de Barbaira was a notorious Faydit and had temporarily protected Cathar dignitaries, this castle had not hosted a Cathar community in the year it was taken. Their capture only marked the beginning of a political settlement that the kings of France and Aragón had to tackle as a result of the new balance of power created by the Albigensian Crusade in Languedoc and which had been decided in the Treaty of Corbeil in 1258 by drawing a border.
swell
The siege of Montségur is not mentioned in any chronicle written north of the Loire , neither in the simplest church annals nor in the royal chronicles. The significance of this event was simply of too little relevance for the great national and international political events of that time to be worth mentioning. The focus of the historians of that time was entirely on King Louis IX's taking of the cross . to the sixth crusade . In southern France alone, Guillaume de Puylaurens had devoted a short chapter in his chronicle to the siege, and the Dominican brother Guillaume Pelhisson had completed his chronicle with it in a few sentences.
The fact that posterity still has a detailed insight into what happened on and on the Montségur in 1243/44 is thanks to the meticulous documentation of the Inquisition . For under the direction of the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, Ferrer , eighteen of the surviving defenders were subjected to an interrogation between March 10 and May 27, 1244, the statements of which have been recorded to this day. The inquisitor Bernard de Caux had recorded a nineteenth testimony in May 1245 . It is thanks to this fact that the fight and fall of Montségur has been handed down from the perspective of the loser, while no eyewitness reports are known from the winners' side. Incidentally, all nineteen interrogations ended with the issuing of the penance letter by the Inquisition, that is, an acquittal for the interviewees of any suspicion of heresy. It is not known whether other witnesses were interviewed beyond the nineteen known cases.
reception
The siege inspired the British heavy metal band Iron Maiden to write the song Montségur on their 2003 album Dance of Death .
The German author Peter Berling has made the fall of Montségur the starting point of the plot of his five-volume novel series The Children of the Grail (1991-2005).
literature
- Laurent Albaret: Ferrer ou Ferrier (1229-1244), la mémoire de Montségur , in: Les inquisiteurs. Portraits de défenseurs de la foi en Languedoc (XIIIe-XIVe siècles). Toulouse 2001, pp. 31-39.
- Michel Roquebert: The History of the Cathars, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Languedoc (German translation by Ursula Blank-Sangmeister), Reclam, Stuttgart 2012, ISBN 978-3-15-010765-2 (French first edition, Histoire des Cathares. Hérésie, Croisade, Inquisition du XIe au XIVe siècle. Éditions Perrin, Paris 1999).
- Jörg Oberste : The crusade against the Albigensians. Heresy and Power Politics in the Middle Ages. Scientific book club, Darmstadt 2003, ISBN 978-3-534-16265-9 .
Remarks
- ↑ Le Dictionnaire de l'Occitan (Occitan-Français) de Communication
- ↑ a b c Historiae Albigensium auctore Guillelmo de Podio Laurentii , In: Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France , Vol. 20 (1840), p. 770.
- ↑ Histoire générale de Languedoc avec des notes et les pièces justificatives , Vol. 6, ed. by Claude Devic and Joseph Vaissète (1879), pp. 757–758.
- ↑ In April 1243 the papacy had been vacant for almost a year and a half. It was not until June 1243 that a new Pope was elected, Innocent IV.
- ↑ Roquebert, p. 368.
- ↑ The bayle Ferrer should not be confused with the eponymous Inquisitor, who also came from Catalonia.
- ^ Raymond VII of Toulouse was still in Rome on March 31, 1244.
- ↑ a b Guillaume Pelhisson: Chronique, 1229-1244; suivie de Récit des troubles d'Albi 1234 , ed. by Jean Duvernoy (1994), pp. 106-108.
- ↑ a b Roquebert, p. 382.
- ↑ Roquebert, pp. 427–428, note 79.
- ↑ The interrogations of the Montségur survivors were edited and translated into French by Jean Duvernoy: Le Dossier Montségur. Toulouse: Le Pérégrinateur, 1998 (translation); Carcassonne: Center de valorisation du patrimoine médiéval (Latin text).