Esclarmonde de Foix

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Esclarmonde de Foix (* around 1151 , † around 1215 ) was a prominent member of the medieval Cathar community in France in the 13th century. Its Occitan name means something like "light of the world" (French: éclair du monde ).

biography

She was a daughter of Count Roger Bernard I von Foix and his wife Cecile von Béziers, who came from the House of Trencavel . Her brother was Count Raimund Roger von Foix . She was married to Seigneur Jourdain II. De l'Isle-Jourdain, with whom she had several children.

After her husband's death in 1200, Esclarmonde joined the Cathar denomination, which was classified as a heretical sect by the Catholic Church . Together with her sister-in-law, Philippa de Montcada, she ran a Cathar convent for the education of young girls in the mountains of the Pyrenees near Dun (Ariège) . Following this model, hospitals and schools were soon run throughout the Languedoc region by the Catholic Church, which brought it a correspondingly large influx of people. In 1204 she received the Consolamentum from the Cathar Bishop of Toulouse, Guilhabert de Castres , in Fanjeaux , through which she was admitted to the community of the Perfectas (perfect) . At the Cathar Council of Mirepoix in 1206, in anticipation of a military conflict with the Catholic Church, she spoke out in favor of expanding Montségur Castle .

In 1207 she was next to Benoît de Termes a spokeswoman for the Cathars in the last peaceful dispute with the Catholic Church in Pamiers . When she spoke up, Etienne de Miséricorde stopped her and sent her to a spinning mill because, as a woman, it was not her place to speak to clerics in a theological dispute. This insulting objection, however, contributed to a negative outcome of the dispute; in the following year was Pope Innocent III. the Albigensian Crusade proclaimed.

Others

Esclarmonde was identified by the German esoteric Otto Rahn as the historical role model for the guardian of the Grail “ Repanse de Schoye ” from Eschenbach's “ Parzival ” , who enclosed the Grail in the mountain of Munsalvaesche ( Montségur ) in order to protect it from Lucifer's host . Today she is a saint of the Gnostics , who run the "Order of the Holy Esclarmonde" among other things. The University of Winnipeg in Canada is offering the Esclamonde de Foix Memorial Travel Scholarship in her memory.

Fiction

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ Otto Rahn, Crusade against the Grail, the history of the Albigensians. (1933) New edition: Verlag Zeitenwende , Dresden 2002 ISBN 978-39279-4071-0
personal data
SURNAME Esclarmonde de Foix
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Cathar follower
DATE OF BIRTH around 1151
DATE OF DEATH around 1215