The the Cathars by Sean Martin

Author:Sean Martin
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781842435687
Publisher: Oldcastle Books
Published: 2012-01-15T16:00:00+00:00

The Inquisition

While French troops reduced the Languedoc to the sort of barren wasteland we might more readily associate with Arthurian myth or the nightmares of Bosch and Breughel, a nightmare of another sort was being planned in the Lateran Palace. Pope Honorius had died in 1227, and was succeeded by Gregory IX, who was as much an activist pope as his great forebears Gregory VII and Innocent III had been. Gregory – born Ugolino dei Conti di Segni – was one of Innocent’s nephews, and was as legally minded as his uncle had been. Gregory realised that if the Cathars were to be effectively destroyed, then the Church needed the tools to pursue individuals as much as, and perhaps even more than, the ability to intervene militarily, as it was apparent that the dualists were still active in the Languedoc and in other parts of Europe; the discovery of Cathars in Rome in 1231 can only have hardened Gregory’s resolve.

The Inquisition was based on procedures drawn up under Innocent to tackle wayward priests which gave Inquisitors – usually Dominican friars – the powers of arrest and trial. What started as a method for keeping the clergy in line was to become ‘one of the most effective means of thought control that Europe has ever known.’73

The First Inquisitors

The Rhineland, the haunt of the earliest known Cathars in 1143, was to receive the attentions of the first Inquisitor, Conrad of Marburg. Conrad was an extreme ascetic who brought a campaign of terror to the Rhineland with his two henchmen, Conrad Tors, a Dominican, and a one-eyed, one-handed layman called John. Almost everywhere they went, they found heretics of all denominations. Due to a combination of his own blinkered zealotry, and ignorance of what actually constituted Cathar belief, Conrad thought he had unearthed a heresy that he dubbed ‘Luciferanism’. No doubt he remembered – or had it pointed out to him – that ‘Cathar’ meant someone who indulged in satanic rites which included obscene kisses on the rear ends of cats. On top of this fiction, Conrad constructed an elaborate demonology that possibly also contained elements of undigested Cathar doctrine, such as the belief that the devil had created the world. The heretics were thought to worship the devil and engage in sexual orgies. Such beliefs were not new: exactly the same accusations (minus the cats) had been levelled at the Orléans heretics in 1022. Conrad relayed his findings to Gregory, who promptly issued the bull Vox in Rama in June 1233 denouncing the Luciferans.

Conrad’s procedure, if it can be called that, was swift and brutal. If the unfortunates whom the trio apprehended were adjudged guilty, they were burnt the same day without any further enquiries taking place. Hundreds, perhaps thousands, of innocent people – most of them simple, unlettered believers – met their deaths. In amongst them were a small percentage of Cathars. The level of hatred Conrad generated was astonishing. He achieved a notoriety of de Montfortesque proportions within months. He went a step too far, however, when he accused Count Henry II of Seyn of heresy.

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