Flex Mentallo

Parsifal made a powerful impression on its early audiences. "Parsifal is without doubt by far the most beautiful and sublime work in the whole field of Art." Hugo Wolf

Wagner’s version of Parsifal is a deeply meditative opera about sin, redemption, pain, and healing loosely based on von Eschenbach’s Parzival.

“When religion becomes artificial, art has a duty to rescue it. Art can show that the symbols which religions would have us believe literally true are actually figurative. Art can idealize those symbols, and so reveal the profound truths they contain.” Richard Wagner

PARSIFAL ...I could not Speak, and my eyes failed, I was neither Living nor dead, and I knew nothing, Looking into the heart of light, the silence. The Wasteland, by T.S Eliot

After 35 years, the Cathar rebellion was over, but the indelible impression it left on the collective psyche saw the wasteland theme reappear in numerous contemporary romances, including King Arthur, Parsifal and Tristan and Isolde.

The crusaders systematically laid waste to the surrounding landscape of the Languedoc: uprooting vineyards, burning fields and farms, slaughtering livestock. It is estimated that an area the size of Wales was so utterly devastated that in a contemporary text it was written that “not a bird sang for a generation.”

On 16 March 1244, over 200 Cathar Perfects were burnt in an enormous pyre at the prat dels cremats ("field of the burned") near the foot of the castle.

From May 1243 to March 1244, the Cathar fortress of Montségur was besieged by the troops of the seneschal of Carcassonne and the archbishop of Narbonne.

Cathars who refused to recant were hanged, or burnt at the stake.

Resistance continued, and in 1234 The Inquisition was established to uproot the remaining Cathars. Operating in the south at Toulouse, Albi, Carcassonne and other towns during the whole of the 13th century, and a great part of the 14th, it succeeded in crushing Catharism as a popular movement and driving its remaining adherents underground.

In 1218, while besieging Toulouse, Montfort was struck and killed by a stone hurled from defensive siege equipment. Popular accounts state that the city's artillery was operated by the women and girls of Toulouse.

In 1213, forces led by King Peter II of Aragon came to the aid of Toulouse. The force besieged Muret, but in September the Battle of Muret led to the death of King Peter, and his army fled.

In June 1210 the well-fortified city of Minerve was besieged. It withstood a heavy bombardment, but in late June the main well was destroyed and on July 22, the city surrendered. The Cathars were given the opportunity to convert to Catholicism. Most did. The 140 who refused were burned at the stake.

Simon de Montfort was then appointed leader of the crusader army, and was granted control of the area encompassing Carcassonne, Albi, and Béziers.

By 7 August they had cut the city's water supply. Raymond-Roger, Comte de Toulouse, sought negotiations but was taken prisoner while under truce, and Carcasonne surrendered on 15 August. The people were not killed, but were forced to leave the town — naked according to Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, "In their shifts and breeches" according to another source.

The crusaders arrived on 1 August 1209. The siege did not last long.

The next major target was Carcassonne. The city was well fortified, but vulnerable, and overflowing with refugees.

The crusaders captured the small village of Servian and then headed for Béziers, arriving on 21 July 1209. Under the command of the papal legate, Arnaud-Amaury, they started to besiege the city, calling on the Catholics within to come out, and demanding that the Cathars surrender. Both groups refused. The city fell the following day when an abortive sortie was pursued back through the open gates. When asked whether the Catholic townsfolk should be spared, Arnaud-Amaury is supposed to have said "Kill them all. God will know his own." The entire population was slaughtered and the city burned to the ground.

While discussions were still going on with the barons about the release of those in the city who were deemed to be Catholics, the servants and other persons of low rank and unarmed attacked the city without waiting for orders from their leaders. To our amazement, crying "to arms, to arms!" within the space of two or three hours they crossed the ditches and the walls and Béziers was taken. Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt… Arnaud-Amaury

The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) was a 20-year military campaign initiated by Pope Innocent to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc, in the south of France. By mid-1209, around 10,000 crusaders had gathered in Lyon before marching south.

Civil authority had no claim on a Cathar, since this was the rule of the physical world. The goal of a Cathar was to become perfect. Cathar missionaries would point out examples of clerical immorality and would contrast that behaviour with the uprightness of their own actions. On becoming Pope in 1198, Innocent III resolved to deal with the Cathars. To them he would have been the representative on Earth not of God, but Rex Mundi.

Their understanding of God was entirely dis-incarnate: a being or principle of pure spirit and completely unsullied by the taint of matter. He was the god of love, order and peace. Jesus was an angel with only a phantom body, and the accounts of him in the New Testament were to be understood allegorically.

The Cathars believed in two equal and comparable transcendental principles; God, the force of good, and Satan, or the demiurge, that of evil. They held that the physical world was evil and created by this demiurge Rex Mundi ("King of the World"), who encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful.

In western Mediterranean France, one of the most urbanized areas of Europe at the time, the Cathars grew to represent a popular mass movement, and the belief was spreading to other areas. They became known as the Albigensians, because there were many adherents in the city of Albi and the surrounding area in the 12th and 13th centuries. Following the crusade the great St Cecile cathedral was built at Albi, which has a fresco of the last judgement.

Organized groups of dissidents, such as the Waldensians and Cathars, were beginning to appear in the towns and cities of newly urbanized areas. The Waldensians originated in the late twelfth century as the Poor Men of Lyons, a band organized by Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant who gave away his property around 1173, preaching apostolic poverty as the way to perfection.The Roman Catholic Church declared them heretics, stating that the group's principal error was contempt for ecclesiastical power. As a result there were many atrocities committed against them.