Tales from the Island of Serendip 4 4

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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.

 

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

 

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

 

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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.

 

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

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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

 

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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.

 

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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.

 

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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.”

 

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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.

 

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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

 

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“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

 

 

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

 

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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

 

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"I can hardly describe my present state to you. When I came out of the Festspielhaus, completely spellbound, I understood that the greatest and most painful revelation had just been made to me, and that I would carry it unspoiled for the rest of my life."

Gustav Mahler

 

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Claude Debussy thought the characters and plot ludicrous, but nevertheless in 1903 wrote that musically it was "Incomparable and bewildering, splendid and strong. Parsifal is one of the loveliest monuments of sound ever raised to the serene glory of music."