Wilhelm Belibaste

Wilhelm Belibaste ( Latin Guilielmus Belibasta , Occitan Guilhèm Belibaste , French Guillaume Bélibaste , * around 1280 in Cubières-sur-Cinoble ; † 1321 in Villerouge-Termenès ) was the last “perfect” (wandering basket) of the southern French Cathars ; he died at the stake .

Life

Belibaste came from a sheep farming family from the Corbières , whose members were all Cathar supporters. He had a sister and at least four brothers who traveled frequently with the family's herds and were often accompanied by Catharic itinerant preachers. Around 1305 he killed the shepherd Bartholomeus Garnerii ( Barthélémy Garnier ) from Villerouge ( Vilaroja ) in a dispute . He was recognized and sentenced to death as a murderer by the bailiff of the Archbishop of Narbonne , but was able to escape, leaving behind his wife and child, who both died a few years later (before 1311). The family's property was presumably confiscated because of heresy .

Wilhelm joined the wandering Cathar ascetics. He received his training from the brothers Peter and Wilhelm Auterii ( Pèire / Pierre and Guilhèm / Guillaume Autier ), who, as Perfecti, have been reorganizing the Catholic Church underground since the 1290s and providing shelter in areas in the south of Languedoc that are difficult to access found among supporters. Even the Perfectus Raimund ( Raimon / Raymond ) from Castelnau accompanied Belibaste traveling. He himself was apparently received in Rabastens by Philipp von Alayracho ( Felip d'Alairac / Philippe d'Alayrac ), who had taken him in after his escape and to whom he was particularly close, to the Perfectus ("reception" is the reception of the also as Consolamentum or "Baptism of the soul" called Cathar sacrament of purity called, which required a way of life in perfect purity without sexual intercourse , meat consumption, lies and oaths , which Belibaste, however, demonstrably did not always adhere to, especially in later times).

In the spring and summer of 1309 raids took place in numerous places in Languedoc , during which hiding places were discovered and many followers of the heretics were imprisoned, interrogated, expropriated and sentenced to various sentences. In the course of the search that followed, almost all of the remaining Cathar ascetics were betrayed and apprehended. Philipp von Alayracho and Wilhelm Belibaste were also captured and imprisoned in the "Mur", the inquisition prison of Carcassonne , from which they, however, at the end of March together with Wilhelm's older brother Bernhard ( Bernardus / Bernat / Bernard , † 1310) and two other men the escape succeeded. The group left for Catalonia . On August 10, 1309, Bernard Gui , the Inquisitor of Toulouse , launched a search for Peter Auterii, the leader and elder ( ancianus ) of the Perfecti active in Languedoc . There were again mass arrests, including in the mountain village of Montaillou in Sabartès, a remote landscape in the south of the County of Foix on the upper reaches of the Ariège , where the ascetics had often hid with certain families. Just a few days after the appeal, Peter Auterii was caught and burned in Toulouse on April 9, 1310. Also in August 1309, Philipp von Alayracho was arrested again on his way back to Donnezan and soon afterwards executed. Only in the course of the year 1311, however, was the hitherto fleeing Wilhelm Auterii captured; he died at the stake in 1312. In 1312 Wilhelm Belibaste's younger brother Arnald ( Arnaut / Arnaud ), about whom nothing else is known, was sentenced to death for heresy and his property was confiscated in favor of the Archbishop of Narbonne.

Wilhelm Belibaste meanwhile continued to hide in Spain and after several changes of location and a three-year stay in Tortosa , settled in Morella in the Kingdom of Valencia in 1315 , where there was a small Occitan exiled community in the surrounding villages, with a focus on the nearby town of San Mateu There were Cathars, the majority of whom came from the Sabartès. He practiced the craft of the wool comb maker and had his own workshop. For better camouflage, he sometimes had a false name and was called Petrus Pencherius ("Peter the comb maker"). He also made baskets for transporting wool, which he sold, and occasionally hired himself as a shepherd. Through traveling shepherds and artisans, there were occasional contacts between the exiled Occitanians and relatives and Cathar believers who had stayed in their home country or had found shelter in other places. Outwardly, one adapted to the habits and religious rites of the area. When another Perfectus died on a hike , Belibaste fetched a priest , carried the holy water kettle at the funeral and then received the host . The ecclesiastical and secular authorities in the Crown of Aragon pursued heretic persecution at this time only inconsistently and left the community of exiles from southern France in the Maestrat's mountainous country largely unmolested.

During these years, Belibaste lived with Ramunda Martini ( Raimonda Marti / Raymonde Marty ), who also came from Occitania, and her daughter Wilhelma ( Guillelma ) and, for a time, her sister Condor (called Bianca), who ran his household. They had also fled Junac (Foix County, where Ramunda's husband apparently still lived) on charges of heresy. Outwardly, the Perfectus passed Ramunda off as his wife in order not to attract attention as a heretical ascetic in the Catholic community. Only Condor knew of an actual love affair between her sister and the preacher from the time she began her flight in Catalonia. This had to be rededicated at the time after Condor had caught the two in a precarious situation.

Apparently because Ramunda could become pregnant by him, Belibaste briefly married her in the winter of 1319/20 to the Catharian wandering shepherd Peter Maurini ( Pèire Maurin / Pierre Maury ), who temporarily lived with his aunt Wilhelmine Maurini ( Guillelma / Guillemeta / Guillermina / Guillelmine ) in San Mateu lived, in whose house the preacher often stayed. In this way Belibaste tried to hide the breach of his chastity obligation from the Cathar believers, since his position as Perfectus was thus nullified, so that he could no longer validly donate the Cathar death sacrament ( Consolamentum ). Obviously out of jealousy, however, he canceled this “marriage” to his companion a few days after the execution . The foundation of marriages was actually not one of the traditional tasks of Cathar pastors, but was regularly practiced by Belibaste. In his doctrinal conversations handed down by witnesses, he also represented various idiosyncratic views on other issues. In any case, at the end of October 1320, Ramunda gave birth to a son in Morella, whose father thought Peter Maurini was, but who was probably descended from Belibaste.

He spent Christmas 1320 with the shepherd Peter Maurini and a mutual friend, the shoemaker Arnald Cicredi ( Arnaut / Arnaud Sicre ), who came from Cathar circles in Occitania and had settled in San Mateu at the end of 1318. Secretly, however, Arnald was a familiare (servant) of the Bishop of Pamiers and on his behalf (motivated by the hope of the return of the confiscated property of his mother, who was burned as a heretic in 1309), he was an informant in the Aragonese territory to find escaped heretics. Arnald had also accompanied the heretic preacher Raimund von Castelnau for a while and then betrayed them to the Inquisition. He was part of a dense network of denunciators who supported the investigative work of Bishop Jacques Fournier , and some time after Wilhelm Belibaste's death also delivered the shepherd Peter Maurini and his brother Johannes to the episcopal investigative authority.

In the spring of 1321 Belibaste was persuaded by this acquaintance to travel to the County of Foix , where a lucrative marriage between Arnald's sister and a son of Wilhelmine Maurini could supposedly take place. The ulterior motive was perhaps also that Belibaste could meet another Perfectus there and receive himself again and have his “pure” state restored as a Cathar clergyman. Belibaste and his traveling companions doubted whether Arnald could be trusted and whether the preacher should take the risk. But although a fortune-teller who was interviewed advised against the venture, they began the journey north. In Tírvia, in the territory of the Count of Foix, the informant betrayed the heretic ascetic to the authorities, and both were first detained in the tower of the castle of Castellbò near Urgel and then extradited to the Inquisition in Carcassonne. In the case of such denunciations, it was quite common to detain both the accused and the complainant in order to prevent possible false accusations and to be able to punish false witnesses if necessary. The two other fellow travelers, the shepherd Peter Maurini and his cousin willing to marry, escaped arrest and reported the betrayal to the community that had stayed behind.

While in captivity, Wilhelm suggested that his companion commit suicide . With this proposal, which is unusual for Cathars, he may have speculated on the fact that Arnald was not aware that Belibaste could not validly donate the Cathar sacrament of purification because of his way of life. Wilhelm Belibaste was tried and burned at the stake in Villerouge in the autumn of the same year in the presence of the Archbishop of Narbonne. The fact that the choice of the place of execution fell on the castle of Villerouge - the bailiff's seat and secondary residence of the archbishop - is probably due to the punishments imposed on Wilhelm Belibaste in his home diocese of Narbonne for previous crimes, especially since the victim of the homicide he committed came from this place.

Belibaste was the last Cathar ascetic to be executed in Languedoc . At the news of his capture, the Cathar exiles in Catalonia and Valencia fled their homes and went into hiding elsewhere. Without Perfecti , who, as traveling preachers, gave the believers the consolamentum necessary for the redemption of the soul according to the Cathar faith , the Cathar religion in Occitania could not survive and died out completely in the following decades under persistent persecution by the church.

literature

• Matthias Benad: Domus and religion in Montaillou. The Catholic Church and Catharism in the struggle for survival of the family of Pastor Petrus Clerici at the beginning of the 14th century. Tübingen 1990 (Habilitation, University of Frankfurt / M. 1987).
• Lidia Flöss: Il caso Belibasta: Fine dell'ultimo perfetto cataro (series: Storia Medievale , vol. 251). Milan: Luni Editrice, 1997. (Italian, with a foreword by Jean Duvernoy, the only monograph on Belibaste, contains the Latin edition of Arnald Cicredi's statement from the Jacques Fournier register with an Italian translation.)
• Henri Gougaud: The Metamorphoses of the Bélibaste. The life story of the last Cathar. Novel. Translated from the French by Ilse Winter. Bad Münstereifel and Trilla: edition Tramontane, 1988.
• Gauthier Langlois: Note sur quelques documents inédits concernant le parfait Guilhem Bélibaste et sa famille . In: Heresis , 25, 130-134 (1995). - Ders .: Bélibaste, l'imparfait. In: Pays Cathare , 1st year (December 1997), p. 70f.
• Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (Ed.): Histoire et Religosité d'une communauté villageoise au Moyen Âge. Actes du colloque de Montaillou, 25-26-27 Août 2000 (results of a conference from 25-27 August 2000). L'Hydre, Castelnaud la Chapelle 2001.

Remarks

Note: All information that is not individually documented comes from the above-mentioned monographs by Benads and Flöss and the contributions by Langlois.

1. ↑ Cf. Anne Brenon: Pèire Autier: (1245-1310); le dernier des cathares. Paris 2006.
2. ↑ A Cathar ascetic priest was called Perfectus (plural Perfecti , Latin for 'perfect').
3. ↑ Cf. Michael Borgolte : Christians, Jews, Muslims. The heirs of antiquity and the rise of the West 300 to 1400 AD.Settlers, Munich 2006, p. 238: Autier's missionary work at the beginning of the 14th century achieved quite considerable success: 125 places with a total of around 1000 followers have been identified.
4. ↑ Jean Duvernoy gives the number of burned Cathar ascetics ( perfecti ) between 1308 and 1321 with a total of 25 ( Histoire des Cathares , p. 332; Jörg Oberste gives this information in: The crusade against the Albigensians. Heresy and power politics in the Middle Ages. Darmstadt 2003, p. 201 and note 2).
5. ↑ Since death sentences were pronounced relatively seldom, it must have been a convinced heretic who had either refused the renunciation oath, relapsed or, like his brother , had been ordained to the Perfectus (cf. G. Langlois, in: Heresis 1995, p . 132).
6. ↑ Essentially the testimony of the eyewitnesses Arnald Cicredi and Peter Maurini before the Inquisition in Carcassonne and Pamiers, which are documented in the interrogation register of Bishop Jacques Fournier ( Codex Vaticanus latinus 4030 of the Vatican Library , edited by Jean Duvernoy: Le Registre d'Inquisition de Jacques Fournier, évêque de Pamiers (1318–1325), manuscrit latin n. 4030 de la Bibliothèque vaticane. 3 vol., Toulouse: Private 1965; French transl . (ed.): Le registre d'inquisition de Jacques Fournier (Évêque de Pamiers), 1318-1325. Traduit et annoté par Jean Duvernoy. 3 vols., Paris: Mouton 1978).
7. ↑ Cf. Gerd Schwerhoff : God and the world challenge. Theological construction, legal fight and social practice of blasphemy from the 13th to the beginning of the 17th century. Habilitation thesis, submitted in November 1996, corrected and abridged online version ( Memento from February 2, 2014 in the Internet Archive ). Bielefeld University 2004. p. 40 u. Note 121.
8. ↑ Amalie Fößel : Denunciation in the trial against heretics. In: Günter Jerouschek , Inge Marßolek, Hedwig Röckelein (eds.): Denunciation. Historical, legal and psychological aspects. Tübingen 1997, pp. 48-63 (here: p. 50). See also p. 57: “The arrests of Belibasta and Petrus Maurini mark the beginning of the end of Catharism in southern France. This last spectacular success was the result of systematic denunciation. "
9. ↑ Günter Jerouschek: The development of the embarrassing inquisition process in the late Middle Ages and in the early modern period. In: Journal for the entire criminal law science, vol. 104 (1992), p. 342 u. Note 76.
10. ↑ Jason Webster: Sacred Sierra: A Year on a Spanish Mountain. London: Chatton & Windus 2009, p. 202 ( online preview ), ISBN 978-0-7011-8157-4 .

Web links

• Gauthier Langlois: Bélibaste, le dernier parfait cathare occitan . In: Paratge , 2012.