Secrets of civilization. The Cathars and the Mystery of Montsegur Castle

God does not create new souls for little children. He would have too much work. The soul of the deceased passes from body to body until it falls into the hands of good people [perfect Cathars].

Resident of Toulouse (From the protocols of the courts of the Inquisition 1273)

Hello. Here I would like to present an excerpt from the book "Reincarnation: The Missing Link in Christianity" by Elizabeth Clare Prophet. about the teachings of the Cathars, who in the dark Middle Ages kept purity in their lives and in their hearts and, being Christians, knew about reincarnation. Elizabeth Prophet in this book generally traces the development of the idea of ​​reincarnation from ancient times to Jesus, the early Christians, Church Councils and the persecution of so-called heretics. Using the latest research and evidence, she convincingly argues that Jesus, based on the knowledge of reincarnation of the soul, taught that our destiny is eternal life in union with God.
"I imagine the Earth as a classroom. Each of us must learn our lessons, such as tolerance, love, forgiveness. The requirement of the final exam is to achieve union with God, the same God who lives in every heart. In this book we intend to understand, how to pass the final exam and move on to the next class, and also why we need reincarnation if we have not done it in this life.
Reincarnation is a favorable opportunity not only to learn from our mistakes on Earth, but also to strive for God. It represents the key to understanding the paths of our soul.
I invite you to come with me on a journey and discover that reincarnation was once consistent with Christian concepts such as baptism, resurrection and the Kingdom of God. We will also see how the church fathers removed the idea of ​​reincarnation from Christian theology and how knowledge of reincarnation could solve many of the problems plaguing Christianity today
I offer this study as a complement to your reading and fellowship with God. I am confident that as you seek to find the heart of Jesus' message, you will find the answers within yourself - for they are already written in your own heart."

So, Qatari civilization...

The town of Provins, in Ile-de-France, where a community apparently lived believers. Abbess Gisla of Provins was burned at Mont-Aime.

Heresy also flourished in Burgundy. A dozen publicans were captured and burned at Vasle on Easter 1167. We only know about them that they denied the sacraments and recognized only the divine nature of Christ. In 1198, at Nevers, Bernard, dean of the cathedral chapter, and Raynald, abbot of Saint-Martin, were imprisoned in a monastery. Another canon from Nevers, Archdeacon Guillaume, chose to flee. He was condemned in absentia in 1201, while his uncle, the knight Evrard de Chateneuf, was burned. Guillaume fled to his Occitan brothers: we meet him in 1206, in Servian, as kind person, under the name Thierry, he " opened his own school” and debated with the papal legates and Dominic; in 1207 we see him near the Qatari bishop of Carcasses. But during the events of the crusade, his trace is lost. However, these illustrative cases are just the tip of the iceberg. At first XIII century, Charite-sur-Loire had a strong reputation as a heretical region. Around 1200, Bishop Auxerre persecuted heretics " mounds"(Bulgarians), who were deprived of their property, expelled or burned. In 1211, two brothers of the baili Count of Nevers, Colin, a knight from Auxerre, were burned in front of his eyes, while the third, the canon of Langres and the local curé, fled to the Milanese Cathars...

Cathar "heresy"

The Cathars themselves did not call themselves Cathars. “For a long time it was believed,” says the historian of Catharism M. Roquebert, “that the term “Cathars” comes from the Greek “Katharos”, which means “pure”. Today there is no doubt that the Cathars themselves never called themselves that. This term was used in relation to them only by their enemies, and, as we can judge, was used in an offensive sense by the German monk Ecbert of Schonau, who first mentioned it in his sermons in 1163. Thirty-five years later, the Catholic critic Alan of Lille writes that they were given this nickname from the Latin word "catus" - cat, because, "as they say about them, when Lucifer appears to them in the form of a cat, they kiss his ass ..." This is an insult was explained by the fact that the Cathars attributed the creation of the visible world to the principle of Evil, and in many medieval traditions, especially in Germany, the cat was a symbolic animal of the Devil. Rumors spread that if the Cathars believed that the world was created by the Devil, then they worshiped him in the form of a cat, although in fact the Cathars were far from worshiping the Devil like anyone else. It should be noted that the medieval German word Ketter, meaning "heretic", comes from the word Katte - "Cat" (in modern German Ketzer and Katze). The dualists were also given other nicknames: if in Germany they were called “Cathars”, then in Flanders “poplicans” and “pifls”, in Italy and Bosnia “patarens”, in the North of France - “hillocks” or “bulgrs” - a particularly offensive expression , which meant not only “Bulgarians”, but was often synonymous with the word “sodomites”. But they were also given harmless nicknames. For example, in the Oc region they were often called "weavers" because this was their preferred profession. Regional designations were also used: “heretics from Agen, Toulouse, Albi...” The last word, together with the word “Cathars”, gained enormous popularity, and over time the word “Albigensians” became the equivalent of the word “Cathars” and they began to call people living far from the Albigeois region... However, the Cathars called themselves “Christians” and “good Christians.” Ordinary believers sometimes called them “perfect”, “good people”, but the word “friends of God” was especially often used, of which there is a lot of evidence in Languedoc of the 13th century. This was a literal translation of the Slavic word “god-mil”. So it is absolutely fair and in accordance with the vocabulary of the time to call this dualistic Church, known as the “Bogomils” in the Balkans and the “Cathars” in the West, the “Church of the Friends of God.”

In general, the teaching of the Cathars and Albigenses is very simple. They believed that earthly life serves only to prepare for entry into the Kingdom of God and the human soul, enclosed in a bodily shell, must achieve purification in order for God to allow it to return to heaven. The way to achieve this goal is a simple life, solitude, purity of thoughts and actions, and, if possible, renunciation of carnal joys. Of course, the simple life was strict and ascetic, and solitude was more like a hermitage, often with a vow of silence, but if you consider how corrupt and unattractive the official church was at that time, it is quite understandable why the inhabitants of the French South preferred the teachings of the Cathars - sincere and spiritual. The God that the Cathars believed in was not the strange triune deity that the Christian Church invented during the long debates of the early Middle Ages. This was the God of Light who did not send his son to die on the cross. For the Cathars, the cross itself was not a sacred symbol, since it was used as an instrument of torture. The God of the Cathars was a good god, and the god who would allow his son to die on the cross is Satan. The enlightenment that the Cathars sought was not achieved by prayers to the cross and the crucified son; it could only be achieved through one’s own efforts, opening one’s soul to meet the One God (and not the Trinity), through individual communication with this God-Absolute. In this regard, the faith of the Cathars is reminiscent of the faith of the Essenes, who also spoke about the individual path to God and believed that a “pure” life contributed to the enlightenment of the soul. Both of them presented their teachings in allegorical form, which is why it can be assumed that some ancient Jewish texts served as the source for such a worldview. And here it is important to remember that the south of France for a long time was the place where Jewish emigrants fled, and especially members of the Qumran community of Essenes, which was known in the 1st century as the community of Damascus (that was the name of the place where the Essenes lived). If you believe even the canonical Gospels, purged by the church to the utmost, then they mention Christ’s brother James. It is believed that Jacob was the leader of the Essene community. And then it was not by chance that one of the first orders of knighthood received the name of the Order of St. James. This name meant a lot to Middle Easterners and unorthodox Christians. Many Essenes were forced to move to the south of France due to persecution - here are the roots of the Cathars... and the first knight-monks. It is likely that the Order of Zion grew from the followers of the Essenes, which raised the Knights Templar, Jacobites and Knights

Holy Sepulcher. For a thousand years, the descendants of the Essenes maintained their true faith and remembered their true history.

But let's return to the Cathars and Albigensians.

The Cathars believed that the church deliberately perverted Christianity and likened it to the synagogue of Satan. In their opinion, there should be no mediator between God and man, and all church sacraments are only a way to confuse a person’s mind and control his soul, turning it away from the true path of the enlightened. They did not believe that the souls of the dead go to purgatory; they considered the existence of icons and crosses unnecessary and harmful, because there is nothing sacred in them and they will not help a person become better and purer. And there was no talk about the tithe collected by the church, since this is clear evidence that the church is the power of Satan. Holy water cannot protect from evil and sin, because it is just water and there is no holy power in it. Indulgences cannot absolve a person of his sins, because he is trying to buy purity with money, but it cannot be bought, it can only be achieved. They opposed baptism with water, believing that this was clearly not enough, and they completely denied the baptism of children, since the acceptance of faith is a conscious act: “the evil Church of Rome, spreading deception and fiction, says that Christ taught to baptize with material water, as this John the Baptist did before Christ began to preach. But this can be refuted on many points; for if the baptism practiced by the Roman Church is the baptism which Christ taught their Church, then all those who have not received their baptism will be condemned. After all, they baptize small children who cannot yet believe or see the difference between good and evil, but even without baptism, according to them, they will be condemned. Moreover, if baptism with transient water brings salvation, then Christ came and died in vain, for even before Him baptism with water was performed…. As for the two baptisms, St. Paul clearly indicates that only one brings salvation, saying (Eph. 4:5): “one Lord, one faith, one baptism.” St. Luke in the Acts of the Apostles describes what kind of baptism is practiced by the Church of God, and well shows what price the apostles had to pay in agreeing to baptism by water, saying (Acts 19:1-6): “When Paul arrived at Ephesus, he found some disciples, said to them: Have you received the Holy Spirit when you believed? They said to him: we have not even heard whether there is a Holy Spirit. And Paul said to them, “What then were you baptized into?” They answered: in John's baptism. Paul said: John baptized with a baptism of repentance, telling the people that they should believe in him who would come after him, that is, in Jesus. When they heard this, they were baptized in the name of the Lord Jesus, and when Paul laid his hands on them, the Holy Spirit came upon them.” They believed that baptism performed by an unworthy person does not provide any goodness (and given the moral corruption of the contemporary church fathers, we had to admit that they were right - it does not provide). They denied the church sacrament of marriage, since marriage is a completely earthly event and has nothing to do with the life of the soul. But the main disagreement was in the recognition and non-recognition of the Eucharist. The Roman Church claimed that repeating the rite of the Last Supper gave each communicant the “transubstantiation” of the soul. The Cathars did not believe in such stupidity. Yes, they blessed the bread before eating and broke it into pieces so that everyone could get it, but at the same time they did not call the bread the flesh of Christ, they generally avoided eating any flesh, even symbolic. Instead of all the abundance of church sacraments, they practiced only the baptism of Fire and the Holy Spirit; various types of such baptisms were carried out by a simple laying on of hands. The Cathars saw in the power of the church what it really was - a huge machine that sought to subjugate all people who had the misfortune of being baptized. They perceived the power of the church as violence. In the 12th–13th centuries, the Cathar faith was the first powerful resistance to the power of the church, when the population of a vast territory suddenly turned out to be heretics, and people of various classes - peasants, townspeople, knights and even large feudal lords. Since the official church branded the Cathars as heretics, they created a system of managing their supporters and a system of secret temples.

Dressed in white robes, with luminous eyes and spiritual faces, the “perfects” were so reminiscent of the monks of the first century of Christianity that the Cistercians and Benedictines succumbed to their charm. It was not for nothing that they - few of the monks - wore a white cassock with a hood under a black robe. White color is the color of purity. The Templars chose the same color for themselves, although they crowned their chest or left shoulder with a scarlet cross - something no Cathar would ever do. The Templar striving for perfection reminds many of the similar striving of the Cathars. Only, unlike the knights in white cloaks, the Cathars would never take up arms, preferring to be with the killed, but not with those who kill. The text, code-named “Apology,” written in the Occitan language, says the following about the murder: “This Church (Catari - Author) is wary of murder and does not accept murder in any form. Our Lord Jesus Christ truly said (cf. Mt. 5:20): “If you want to enter eternal life, keep the commandments.” And He also said (Matt. 5:21-22): “You have heard that it was said to the ancients: Do not kill; whoever kills will be subject to judgment, but I tell you that everyone who is angry with his brother without a cause will be subject to judgment.” And St. Paul said, “Thou shalt not kill.” And Saint John wrote to the apostles (1 John 3:15): “You know that no murderer has eternal life.” And in the Apocalypse it is said (Rev. 22:15): “The murderers are outside the gates of the holy city.” And it is also said (Rev. 21:8): The fate of murderers is in the lake that burns with fire and brimstone.” And St. Paul wrote to the Romans about those who are obsessed with murder, who are contradictory, deceiving and evil (Rom. 1:32): “They know that those who do such things are worthy of death, but not only do they do them, but they also approve of those who do them.” Therefore, you should not see in the Templars disguised as Cathars. However, the Templars could, and most likely did, share some of the Cathar views on religion. The point is different - with a sword in their hand, they simply could not be “perfect”!

“The number of ‘perfecti’ heretics,” wrote Otto Rahn in The Grail Crusade, “was probably small. By the time of the First Crusade (during the heyday of Catharism), there were no more than seven to eight hundred of them. This should not come as a surprise, since their doctrine required the renunciation of everything earthly and long-term ascetic activities, leading to the erosion of the physical health of even the most physically strong people. The number of “believers” (sgedentes) was much larger. Together with the Waldenses (followers of the 12th-century Lyon merchant Peter Waldo, who wanted to revive the primitive purity of Christian morals), there were more of them than devout Catholics, who belonged almost exclusively to the Roman Catholic Church. Of course, all of the above applies only to Southern France. The Cathar believers were also called simply “Christians.” Like the Druids, the Cathars lived in forests and caves, spending almost all their time in worship. A table covered with a white cloth served as an altar. On it lay the New Testament in Provençal, opened at the first chapter of the Gospel of John: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God.” The service was equally simple. It began with reading passages from the New Testament. Then came the “blessing.” The “believers” present at the service folded their hands, knelt down, bowed three times and said to the “perfect”: - Bless us. The third time they added: “Pray to God for us sinners, to make us good Christians and lead us to a good end.” “The Perfect Ones” each time extended their hands for blessing and answered:

Diaus Vos benesiga (“May God bless you! May he make you good Christians and lead you to a good end”). After the blessing, everyone read aloud the “Our Father” - the only prayer recognized in the Church of Love. Instead of “You will give us our daily bread this day,” they said “Our spiritual bread...”, because they considered asking for earthly bread in prayer unacceptable.”

/…/ “There is not one god,” the Cathars believed, “there are two who dispute dominance over the world. God of Love and Prince of This World. In terms of spirit, which constitutes his greatness, man belongs to the first; in terms of his mortal body, he submits to the second...”

/…/ “The world exists forever,” the Cathars argued, “it has neither beginning nor end... The earth could not have been created by God, for this would mean that God created something vicious... Christ never died on the cross, the gospel story about Christ is an invention of the priests... Baptism is useless, because it is carried out on infants who do not have reason, and does not in any way protect a person from future sins... The cross is not a symbol of faith, but an instrument of torture; people were crucified on it..."

They had some kind of deeply personal relationship with Jesus. According to Anne Brannon, “The Father did not send His Son to earth to suffer and die on the cross, but as a messenger who took on the form of a man, but not in flesh laden with evil. With the word of the Gospel, “Good News,” Christ came to remind the fallen angels of the lost paradise and of the Father’s love. And the task of the apostles was to carry and spread this message of awakening, addressed to all people. In addition, before ascending, Christ taught the apostles the rules of the “law of life”, that is, the “path of justice and truth” of Good people who renounced violence, lies and oaths - as well as the sacrament that ensures salvation. The direct successors of the apostles, the Good Christians, in their turn, claimed to be the custodians of the gift of binding and loosing and remission of sins, which Christ gave to His Church. This is the main characteristic of the Christian Church, and they demonstrated this heritage by saying the Lord's Prayer, blessing and breaking the bread of the Word of God at their table in memory of Christ. Like the Protestants, they did not believe in his real transformation into the body of Christ.”

As Henry Lee writes in the book “History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages,” “... there was nothing attractive in the teaching of the Cathars for sensual people, rather, it should have repelled them, and if Catharism could spread with amazing speed, then the explanation for this fact one must look for it in the dissatisfaction of the masses with the church for its moral insignificance and for its tyranny. Although the asceticism elevated to law by the Cathars was completely inapplicable in the real life of a huge mass of people, the moral side of this teaching was truly amazing; and in general, its main provisions were strictly observed in life, and those who remained faithful to the church admitted with a feeling of shame and regret that in this respect the heretics stood much higher than them. But, on the other hand, the condemnation of marriage, the teaching that intercourse between a man and a woman is tantamount to incest, and other similar exaggerations, gave rise to rumors that incest was common among heretics; Unprecedented stories were told about night orgies, in which all the lights were immediately extinguished, and people indulged in rampant sin; and if after this a child was born, then he was held over the fire until he gave up the ghost, and then from the body of this child they made hellish gifts that had such power that anyone who tasted them could no longer leave the sect.”

The Cathars, of course, did not organize any orgies and did not smoke babies over fire; they were rather ascetic, like the first Christians or the desert fathers - they refused meat, eggs, fish, milk, trying to eat only plant foods, or observed a very strict fast; if they received a laying on of hands similar to baptism (a rite of passage), they even tried to avoid touching a woman so as not to be defiled by sin. Young people in Qatari communities were allowed to conceive and give birth to a child only once (a sin, but a forced measure - otherwise the human race would die out), and then they did not touch each other. Death in this teaching was perceived as liberation from the shackles of the flesh and was welcomed, which is why, when the persecution of the Cathars began, their tormentors were horrified by the willingness of these people to endure suffering and die, but not to betray the faith.

“We can hardly imagine,” adds Lee, “what, in fact, in the teachings of the Cathars gave rise to enthusiasm and a zealous search for martyrdom; but no other creed can give us such a long list of people who would prefer a terrible death at the stake to apostasy. If it were true that from the blood of martyrs the seeds of the church would be born, then Manichaeism would at present be the dominant religion of Europe. During the first persecution of which news has been preserved, namely, during the persecution at Orleans in 1017, thirteen of the fifteen Cathars remained unshaken before the blazing fires - they refused to renounce their errors, despite the fact that they were promised forgiveness, and their the firmness surprised the audience. When in 1040 the heretics were discovered in Monforte and the Archbishop of Milan summoned their head, Gerardo, the latter did not hesitate to appear and voluntarily expounded his teaching, happy that he had the opportunity to seal his faith at the cost of his life.”

Very few Qatari texts have reached us from that remarkable era. The most famous document from Carcassonne is called The Secret Book of the Albigenses. This text dates back to the 10th–12th centuries; it was very popular at that time and, fortunately, has been preserved without distortion. What does it say? About the search for the Path. The text has a second title: Questions of John at the secret meal of the King of Heaven. This refers to John the Evangelist, beloved by the Cathars.

Folk legends assigned the name to the pentagonal castle of Montsegur - “Cursed place on the holy mountain.” The castle itself is located on a hill in southwestern France. It was built on the site of a sanctuary that existed in pre-Christian times. The hill itself was small, but had steep slopes, so the castle was considered impregnable (in the ancient dialect the name Montsegur sounds like Montsur - Reliable Mountain).

Legends and tales about the knight Parsifal, the Holy Grail and, of course, the magical castle of Montsegur are associated with this region. The surroundings of Montsegur amaze with their mystery and mysticism. Tragic historical events are also associated with Montsegur.

In 1944, during stubborn and bloody battles, the Allies occupied positions recaptured from the Germans. Especially many French and English soldiers died at the strategically important height of Monte Cassino, trying to take possession of the Mosegur castle, where the remnants of the 10th German army settled. The siege of the castle lasted 4 months. Finally, after massive bombing and landings, the Allies launched a decisive assault.

The castle was destroyed almost to the ground. However, the Germans continued to resist, although their fate had already been decided. When the Allied soldiers approached the walls of Montsegur, something inexplicable happened. A large flag with an ancient pagan symbol - the Celtic cross - hoisted on one of the towers.

This ancient Germanic ritual was usually resorted to only when the help of higher powers was needed. But everything was in vain, and nothing could help the invaders.

This incident was far from the only one in the long and mystical history of the castle. And it began in the 6th century, when a monastery was founded by Saint Benedict in 1529 on Mount Cassino, considered a sacred place since pre-Christian times. Cassino was not very high and was more like a hill, but its slopes were steep - it was on such mountains that in the old days impregnable castles were built. It is not for nothing that in the classical French dialect Montsegur sounds like Mont-sur - Reliable Mountain.

850 years ago, one of the most dramatic episodes in European history took place at Montsegur Castle. The Inquisition of the Holy See and the army of the French king Louis IX waged a siege of the castle for almost a year. But they were never able to cope with the two hundred Cathar heretics who had settled in it. The defenders of the castle could have repented and left in peace, but instead they chose to voluntarily go to the stake, thereby keeping their mysterious faith pure.

And to this day there is no clear answer to the question: where did the Cathar heresy penetrate into southern France? Its first traces appeared in these parts in the 11th century. At that time, the southern part of the country, which was part of the Languedoc county, stretching from Aquitaine to Provence and from the Pyrenees to Crecy, was practically independent.

This vast territory was ruled by Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. Nominally he was considered a vassal of the French and Aragonese kings, as well as the Holy Roman Emperor, but in nobility, wealth and power he was not inferior to any of his overlords.

While Catholicism dominated in the north of France, the dangerous Cathar heresy was spreading more and more widely in the possessions of the counts of Toulouse. According to some historians, it penetrated there from Italy, which, in turn, borrowed this religious teaching from the Bulgarian Bogomils, and they from the Manichaeans of Asia Minor and Syria. The number of those who were later called Cathars (in Greek - “pure”) multiplied like mushrooms after rain.

“There is not one god, there are two who dispute dominance over the world. This is the god of good and the god of evil. The immortal spirit of humanity is directed towards the god of good, but its mortal shell reaches out to the dark god,” this is what the Cathars taught. At the same time, they considered our earthly world to be the kingdom of Evil, and the heavenly world, where the souls of people live, as a space in which Good triumphs. Therefore, the Cathars easily parted with their lives, rejoicing at the transition of their souls to the domains of Good and Light.

Strange people in the pointed caps of Chaldean astrologers, in clothes belted with rope, traveled along the dusty roads of France - the Cathars preached their teachings everywhere. The so-called “perfects”—ascetics of the faith who took a vow of asceticism—took on such an honorable mission. They completely broke with their previous life, renounced property, and adhered to food and ritual prohibitions. But all the secrets of the teaching were revealed to them.

Another group of Cathars included the so-called “laymen”, that is, ordinary followers. They lived an ordinary life, cheerful and noisy, they sinned like all people, but at the same time they reverently kept the few commandments that the “perfect” ones taught them.

The knights and nobility especially readily accepted the new faith. Most of the noble families in Toulouse, Languedoc, Gascony, and Rousillon became its adherents. They did not recognize the Catholic Church, considering it the spawn of the devil. Such a confrontation could only end in bloodshed...

The first clash between Catholics and heretics took place on January 14, 1208 on the banks of the Rhone, when, during the crossing, one of the squires of Raymond VI mortally wounded the papal nuncio with a spear. Dying, the priest whispered to his killer: “May the Lord forgive you, as I forgive.” But the Catholic Church did not forgive anything. In addition, French monarchs had long had their sights on the rich County of Toulouse: both Philip II and Louis VIII dreamed of annexing the richest lands to their possessions.

The Count of Toulouse was declared a heretic and a follower of Satan. The Catholic bishops shouted: “The Cathars are vile heretics! We must burn them out with fire, so that no seed remains...” For this purpose, the Holy Inquisition was created, which the Pope subordinated to the Dominican Order - these “dogs of the Lord” (Dominicanus - domini canus - Lord's dogs).

Thus a crusade was declared, which for the first time was directed not so much against infidels as against Christian lands. It is interesting that when asked by a soldier how to distinguish the Cathars from good Catholics, the papal legate Arnold da Sato replied: “Kill everyone: God will recognize his own!”

The crusaders devastated the flourishing southern region. In the city of Beziers alone, having driven the inhabitants to the Church of St. Nazarius, they killed 20 thousand people. The Cathars were slaughtered in entire cities. The lands of Raymond VI of Toulouse were taken from him.

In 1243, the only stronghold of the Cathars remained only the ancient Montsegur - their sanctuary, turned into a military citadel. Almost all the surviving “perfects” gathered here. They did not have the right to carry weapons, since, in accordance with their teachings, they were considered a direct symbol of evil.

However, this small (two hundred people) unarmed garrison fought off attacks by a 10,000-strong crusader army for almost 11 months! What happened on a tiny spot on the top of the mountain became known thanks to the surviving recordings of interrogations of the surviving defenders of the castle. They conceal an amazing story of courage and perseverance of the Cathars, which still amazes the imagination of historians. Yes, and there is enough mysticism in it.

Bishop Bertrand Marty, who organized the defense of the castle, was well aware that its surrender was inevitable. Therefore, even before Christmas 1243, he sent two faithful servants from the fortress, who carried with them a certain treasure of the Cathars. They say that it is still hidden in one of the many grottoes in the county of Foix.

On March 2, 1244, when the situation of the besieged became unbearable, the bishop began to negotiate with the crusaders. He had no intention of surrendering the fortress, but he really needed a reprieve. And he got it. During two weeks of respite, the besieged manage to drag a heavy catapult onto a tiny rocky platform. And the day before the castle is handed over, an almost incredible event occurs.

At night, four “perfect ones” descend on a rope from a mountain 1200 meters high and take with them a certain package. The crusaders hastily set out in pursuit, but the fugitives seemed to disappear into thin air. Soon two of them showed up in Cremona. They proudly talked about the successful outcome of their mission, but what they managed to save is still unknown.
Only the Cathars, fanatics and mystics, doomed to death, would hardly risk their lives for the sake of gold and silver. And what kind of load could four desperate “perfects” carry? This means that the “treasure” of the Cathars was of a different nature.

Montsegur has always been a holy place for the “perfect”. It was they who erected a pentagonal castle on the top of the mountain, asking the former owner, their co-religionist Ramon de Pirella, for permission to rebuild the fortress according to their drawings. Here, in deep secrecy, the Cathars performed their rituals and kept sacred relics.

The walls and embrasures of Montsegur were strictly oriented according to the cardinal points, like Stonehenge, so the “perfect” could calculate the days of the solstice. The architecture of the castle makes a strange impression. Inside the fortress you feel like you are on a ship: a low, square tower at one end, long walls enclosing a narrow space in the middle, and a blunt prow reminiscent of the stem of a caravel.

The remains of some now incomprehensible structures are piled up at one end of the narrow courtyard. Now all that remains is their foundations. They look either like the base of stone cisterns for collecting water, or like entrances to filled-in dungeons.

How many books have been written about the strange architecture of the castle without trying to interpret its resemblance to a ship! It was seen as both a temple of sun worshipers and a forerunner of Masonic lodges. However, so far the castle has not given up any of its secrets.

Directly opposite the main entrance, an equally narrow and low passage was made in the second wall. It leads to the opposite end of the platform crowning the mountain. There is barely enough space here for a narrow path that stretches along the wall and ends in an abyss.

800 years ago, it was along this path and on the steep slopes of the mountain near the top that stone and wooden buildings were built, in which lived the defenders of Montsegur, selected Cathars, members of their families and peasants from the village lying at the foot of the mountain. How did they survive here, on this tiny spot, under a piercing wind, showered with a hail of huge stones, with melting supplies of food and water? Mystery. Now there are no traces left of these flimsy buildings.

In August 1964, speleologists discovered some icons, notches and a drawing on one of the walls. It turned out to be a plan for an underground passage running from the foot of the wall to the gorge. Then the passage itself was opened, in which skeletons with halberds were found. New mystery: who were these people who died in the dungeon? Under the foundation of the wall, researchers discovered several interesting objects with Qatari symbols printed on them.

The buckles and buttons featured a bee. For the “perfect” it symbolized the mystery of fertilization without physical contact. A strange lead plate 40 centimeters long was also found, folded into a pentagon, which was considered the distinctive sign of the “perfect” apostles. The Cathars did not recognize the Latin cross and deified the pentagon - a symbol of dispersion, dispersion of matter, the human body (this, apparently, is where the strange architecture of Montsegur comes from).

Analyzing it, a prominent specialist on the Cathars, Fernand Niel, emphasized that it was in the castle itself that “the key to the rituals was laid - a secret that the “perfect” took with them to the grave.”

There are still many enthusiasts who are looking for buried treasures, gold and jewelry of the Cathars in the surrounding area and on Mount Cassino itself. But most of all, researchers are interested in the shrine that was saved from desecration by four brave men. Some suggest that the “perfect ones” were in possession of the famous Grail. It’s not without reason that even now in the Pyrenees you can hear the following legend:

“When the walls of Montsegur still stood, the Cathars guarded the Holy Grail. But Montsegur was in danger. The armies of Lucifer settled under its walls. They needed the Grail to re-enclose it in the crown of their lord, from which it had fallen when the fallen angel was cast from heaven to earth. At the moment of greatest danger for Montsegur, a dove appeared from the sky and split Mount Tabor with its beak. The Guardian of the Grail threw a valuable relic into the depths of the mountain. The mountain closed and the Grail was saved."

For some, the Grail is the vessel in which Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood of Christ, for others it is the dish of the Last Supper, for others it is something like a cornucopia. And in the legend of Montsegur he appears in the form of a golden image of Noah's Ark. According to legend, the Grail had magical properties: it could heal people from serious illnesses and reveal secret knowledge to them. The Holy Grail could only be seen by those who were pure in soul and heart, and it brought down great misfortunes on the wicked.

Today, almost nothing remains of the once impregnable citadel: only fragments of dilapidated walls, piles of stones whitened by rain, somehow cleared courtyards with the remains of stairs and towers. But this is what gives it a special flavor, as well as the difficult climb to it along a narrow mountain path. However, there is a museum in the castle where you can watch a video reconstruction of the home and life of the Cathars.

So who are the CATARS?

A number of legends are associated with the Cathar movement, reflected in works of European art and folklore. From the Age of Enlightenment to the present day, Catharism is assessed by most researchers as the most serious opponent of the Roman Catholic Church before the Reformation, which largely influenced the religious processes of the 14th-16th centuries. Traditional history claims that a new Christian faith, whose supporters were called Cathars, arose in Western Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Cathar position was especially strong in the Albi region in southern France. Therefore, they got another name - Albigensians. Historians believe that the Cathar religion was closely connected with the ideas of the Bulgarian sect - the Bogomils.

As encyclopedias report, Bulgarian Bogomilism of the eleventh century and Catharism known in the West from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries are one and the same religion. It is believed that, coming from the east, the Cathar heresy developed in Bulgaria, and the name Bulgarians was retained as the name used to describe its original origin. Religious historians and priests believe that both Bogomilism and the beliefs of the Cathars contained serious contradictions with the tenets of Christianity. For example, they were accused of allegedly refusing to recognize the sacraments and the main dogma of Christianity - the triune God.

On this basis, the Catholic Church declared the beliefs of the Cathars to be heresy. And opposition to Catharism was for a long time the main policy of the popes. Despite the many years of struggle of the Catholic Church against the Cathars, among their many supporters there were a large number of Catholics. They were attracted by both the everyday and religious lifestyle of the Cathars. Moreover, many Catholic believers belonged to both churches. Both Catholic and Qatari. And in areas where Catharism had a great influence, there were never religious clashes. Historians claim that the confrontation between the Cathars and Catholics reached its climax, allegedly at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Especially to combat heretics, Pope Innocent III established a church inquisition, and then authorized a crusade against the Qatari regions. The campaign was led by the papal legate Arnaud Amaury. However, the local population of the Qatari regions supported their legitimate rulers and actively resisted the crusaders. This confrontation resulted in a twenty-year war that completely devastated the south of France. Subsequently, historians wrote that these battles were too numerous to list. The Cathars defended themselves especially fiercely in Toulouse and Carcassonne. The intensity of these battles can be judged from one source that has come down to us from ancient times.

The Crusader warriors turned to Arnaud Amaury with the question of how to distinguish a heretic from a devout Catholic? To which the abbot replied “kill everyone, God will recognize his own.” In this war, the Cathars and their supporters from among the Catholic feudal lords were defeated. And the systematic repression that followed ended with the complete defeat of the Cathar movement. In the end, the Cathars disappeared from the historical scene of the Middle Ages, and their majestic castle-fortresses were destroyed by the victors.

The mysterious destruction of Qatari castles

So, the traditional historical version claims that the confrontation between secular and ecclesiastical authorities with the Cathars is an event of the thirteenth century. In the same era, the castles of the vanquished were also destroyed. However, there is plenty of evidence that back in the seventeenth century, Qatari castles existed. And not as monuments of forgotten antiquity, but as active military fortresses. Historians have their own explanation for this. They say that after the barbaric destruction, the French authorities restored the castles and made them their military fortresses. The castles remained in this capacity until the beginning of the seventeenth century. And then they were destroyed again for the second time. Purely theoretically, this is probably possible: destroyed, restored, destroyed again, restored again. But in practice, restoration and even destruction of such gigantic structures is very expensive. But in this strange version proposed by historians, what is surprising is not only the ordinary fate of these fortresses, but also the fact that all these metamorphoses occurred only with Qatari castles. Here, for example, is what historians say about the fate of the Qatari castle Rokfixat.

It turns out that in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after the defeat of the Cathars, it was a functioning royal fortress. And, of course, the royal garrison served in well-equipped fortifications, and not on gray ruins. But the following story resembles a bad joke. Allegedly in 1632, King Louis 13, heading from Paris to Toulouse, passed by this castle. He stopped and stood in thought for some time. And then he suddenly ordered the castle to be completely destroyed, since it was no longer of any use and it had become too expensive to maintain. Although if the royal treasury really turned out to be unable to maintain the castle in a combat-ready condition, then it would be natural to simply recall the garrison, board up the barracks and leave the castle to collapse under the influence of time and bad weather. So, for example, quietly and naturally, according to traditional history, the castle of Perpituso collapsed. Most likely, this semi-fantastic story was invented by Scaligerian historians, after 1632, in order to somehow explain the true reasons for the destruction of the castle during the wars of the first half of the seventeenth century. They could not admit that in fact the crusades against the Cathars were waged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After all, historians have already sent these events back to the thirteenth century. That's why they had to make up an absurd fable about the king's strange order.

But if historians came up with at least such an absurd explanation for the ruins of Roquefixada, then they didn’t come up with anything at all about Montsegur Castle. It is known that it was an active royal fortress until the sixteenth century, and then it was allegedly simply abandoned. But if the king did not give the order to destroy it, why did the castle end up in such a deplorable state. After all, today they are just ruins.

Only the outer belt of the walls survived from the castle. There can be no question that such a structure could collapse on its own. Even today you can see how strong it was. Huge stone blocks are neatly fitted to each other and firmly welded with cement. The massive walls and towers are a single stone monolith. Such walls do not fall apart on their own. To destroy them, you need gunpowder and cannons. But why was it necessary to spend so much effort and money on destroying these powerful fortifications, even if they had lost their strategic purpose? Historians cannot answer this question.

Cathars. New chronology version

As we have already said, secular and Christian historians believe that the beliefs of the Cathars are closely related to the ideas of the religious Bulgarian sect of the Bogomils. Just like Catharism, the Christian Church considers the teachings of the Bogomils to be heresy. It is known that the religious teachings of the Bogomils came to Bulgaria from the east. But who were these people and where exactly did they come from? In the history of Paul the Deacon and in the chronicles of the dukes and princes of Benivena, there is such information. These peoples were Bulgars, who came from that part of Sarmatia, which is irrigated by the Volga. This means that the Bogomils came from the Volga, which is why they were called Bulgars, that is, Volgars or Bulgarians. And the territory of their settlement began to be called Bulgaria. In the thirteenth century the great Mongol conquest began.

Maps compiled by modern historians show the distribution of the Bogomil Cathars. Spain, France, England, Germany, Greece, Türkiye, Balkans. The Cathars came to western Europe in the wake of the great conquest of the fourteenth century and remained there until the seventeenth century. Until the victory of the Reformation rebellion. After the victory of the Reformation rebellion, Western European rebels began a fierce struggle with the Rus-horde and with the remnants of people from Rus'. With the remnants of the Russian-Horde troops, including the Tatars. And some of the crusades that supposedly took place in the thirteenth century and were directed against the Cathars in western Europe were actually seventeenth-century campaigns in which the Cathars were defeated and destroyed. This version answers the question of who built more than a hundred castles called Qatari.

It is quite obvious that it was not possible for a large national state to build such a powerful network of military fortifications. Moreover, such fortresses could not be built, and most importantly maintained, by petty princes and barons. Only a very strong and rich state could afford this. Qatari castles were strongholds of the Russian-Horde empire in the territories of Western Europe it conquered and colonized. It was a vast network of fortifications that controlled all movement throughout Western Europe. During the Reformation rebellion, all these castles were captured and destroyed by the rebels. In the surviving documents it was discovered that these castles, the Cathar castles, stood completely undamaged until the sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.

They were defeated only starting in the second half of the seventeenth century. Although historians today claim that these castles were destroyed a long time ago, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Of course, texts written by the inhabitants of the castles themselves could completely restore the picture of those events. But after their defeat, there were practically no written documents left. Historians say that the Cathar writings were probably quite numerous. However, severe persecution led to the disappearance of most of the texts, as the Catholic Church subjected Catharism to the most horrific repression. Indeed, for the rebel reformers, not only living bearers of the idea of ​​the great Cathar empire were dangerous, but also any material evidence of the lives of these people, their true purpose and faith.

Are the Cathars heretics or saints?

In the modern world, attitudes towards the Cathars are mixed. On the one hand, in southern France the loud and tragic story of the unconquered Cathars is widely advertised. Qatari cities and castles, the story of the fires of the Inquisition, attract the attention of tourists. On the other hand, they constantly emphasize that Catharism is a very harmful heresy and it existed for so long that not a trace remains of it. Meanwhile, images of Qatari and Christian symbols are still preserved in some Gothic cathedrals in France.

This is what a Qatari cross looks like, inscribed in a circle. The same crosses can be seen in the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Moreover, Qatari crosses are present here even in two types. Both flat and prominently convex. They are depicted on stone sculptures, on mosaics, on stained glass windows, on the main columns inside the temple. Even above the main entrance to the cathedral on the central portal, with the image of the Last Judgment, there is a sculptural image of Christ. Behind his head on the wall is a stone Qatari cross. Let us compare this image with Orthodox icons, which usually depict a halo behind the head of Christ, and a cross against the background of the halo. As you can see, these images are almost identical. This means there is nothing heretical in the Qatari cross. Why then has the Christian Church been claiming for several centuries that the Cathar faith is a heresy?

Are Qatari symbols heretical? And why are these symbols proudly displayed not in some provincial church, but on the colonnade of one of the most important churches not only in Paris, but throughout France. Today it is believed that the construction of the cathedral began in the thirteenth century. Moreover, historians emphasize that it was built during the era of the fight against the Cathars. But why, while fighting them, did the church allow the walls of churches to be covered with the crosses of their enemies - the heretics of the Cathars? Is it because Catharism was not a heresy at all, but completely Orthodox Christianity of that time? But after the victory of the Reformation rebellion, as often happens, the victors declared the vanquished heretics. Today, even on the pages of textbooks, the Cathars are presented as heretics who needed to be destroyed. It was all done simply on paper. This is pure paper political and ideological activity of the seventeenth century. In fact, in life this was not at all like that. It was Orthodox Christianity, and its symbols were Orthodox. The appearance of Qatari crosses also corresponds to Orthodox crosses from Russian churches of the fifteenth century.

So who were the Cathars?

The Cathars are conquerors who came to Western Europe from the Russian horde of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. They were not heretics and professed Orthodox Christianity, the single religion of the entire empire at that time. In the seventeenth century, during the rebellion of the Reformation, the Cathars remained completely faithful to their faith, their ideas, and the idea of ​​a great empire. They fought to the last against the rebels in Western Europe. Unfortunately, the Cathars were not the only and not the last victims

“In Narbonne, where faith once flourished, the enemy of faith began to sow tares: the people lost their minds, desecrated the sacraments of Christ, the salt and wisdom of the Lord; Having become distraught, he turned away from true wisdom and wandered into an unknown place along the winding and confusing paths of error, along lost paths, turning away from the straight path.”

Thus begins the “Albigensian History” of the Cistercian monk Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay (c. 1193 - after 1218). This author, before beginning the story of the crusade against the Cathar heresy, which had been bleeding Languedoc since 1209, gives brief information about the teachings of the Cathars: the “faith” that once flourished is the Christian Catholic faith, which has long been rooted in the south of France; The “delusion” into which the people of Occitania fell is none other than the teaching of the Cathars, which appeared almost secretly on this land shortly after the beginning of the millennium (the first Cathar heretics were burned at the stake of Orleans and Toulouse in 1022: we are talking about ten canons).

The deepest error, the main mistake of these heretics, according to the Roman Catholic Church, was their dualistic theology, which Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay sets out as follows:

“The heretics believed in the existence of two creators: one was invisible, they called him the “good” God, the other was visible, and they called him the “evil” God. To the good God they attributed the New Testament, to the evil God the Old Testament, which they therefore completely rejected, with the exception of a few passages inserted into the New Testament, considering them for this reason worthy of being preserved in memory. They considered the [unknown] author of the Old Testament to be a “liar”: in fact, he said about our first parents Adam and Eve that on the day they ate the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, they would die; however, having eaten the fruit, they did not die as he predicted. These heretics said in their secret meetings that Christ, who was born in earthly and visible Bethlehem and died crucified, was a bad Christ and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine: she was the woman taken in adultery of whom the Gospels speak. In fact, they said, the good Christ never ate or drank or took on real flesh: he came into the world only in a purely spiritual way, incarnate in the body of St. Paul. That is why we wrote “in earthly and visible Bethlehem,” because the heretics imagined another land, new and invisible, where, according to some of them, the good Christ was born and crucified. They also said that the good God had two wives, Oolla and Ooliba, who bore him sons and daughters. Other heretics said that there was one creator, but that he had two sons, Christ and the Devil [...]"

The Cathar preachers actually argued that there were two Gods, a good God, a pure, immaculate spirit, and the God of Evil, whom they called Satan or Lucifer, who created the material and unclean world - the sun, stars, earth, the bodies of animals and people; the latter, accordingly, turned out to be the satanic world, and from this it followed that the good God was not omnipotent. As for humans (the descendants of Adam and Eve), they were also twofold creatures: as beings of flesh, and therefore material, they were the creations of the Devil, and each of them contained a soul, which the good God breathed into each body and which he longed to free her in order to return her to the heavenly world. Unfortunately, God himself could not free these souls, since the abyss separates the divine spirit from the material world created by Lucifer: and then in order to do this, he created a Mediator, Jesus, who was at the same time His son, His image and the most beautiful, the most impeccable and perfect of the angels (Catari theologians did not recognize the dogma of the Holy Trinity). Jesus descended into the impure world of matter to free human souls from their carnal prison and return them to heavenly purity; but Satan recognized in him God’s Messenger and wanted to destroy him, which is why the Passion of Christ and the crucifixion of the divine Messenger happened. However, the non-flesh body of Christ cannot actually suffer or die; Having shown the Apostles the path to salvation, Christ again ascended to heaven, leaving His Church on earth, the soul of which is the Holy Spirit. However, the Lord of Evil, who remained in the earthly world, continues to lead people onto the path of error: he destroyed the pure Church of Christ and replaced it with a false Church, the Roman Church, which was called “Christian”, but in reality it is the Church of the Devil, and what it teaches is the opposite what Jesus taught: she is the unclean beast of Revelation, the Babylonian harlot, while the true and pure Church, possessing the Holy Spirit, is the Cathar Church.

From these theological constructions it follows: 1) that the sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church (baptism, communion, marriage, unction) are just material rites, traps of Satan; the kind of baptism is just water, the wafer cannot be the body of Christ, it is only dough, the cross should not be worshiped, it should be hated and cursed, since it was an instrument of the humiliation and torment of Jesus; 2) that the Blessed Virgin could not be the mother of Jesus, since he never had a body, he, like the good God, is a pure spirit; 3) that the human soul, until the Holy Spirit descended into it, until it received saving illumination that makes a person pure, remains under the power of Satan and passes in each subsequent life into one of the many bodies of people or animals (the doctrine of transmigration shower); 4) that for those who have become pure, death brings the final deliverance of the soul and that at the end of time, when all souls will be liberated from the Darkness of bodies, the Light will again be completely separated and saved from the intolerable domination of matter. And then the material world will disappear, the sun and stars will go out and fire will consume the souls of demons: only eternal life in God will continue.

Superimposed on this confused doctrine of the purpose of the soul was a set of prayers and rituals known to us as the Cathar Breviary, two versions of which dating back to the 13th century, one in Latin, the other in Occitan, escaped the common fate of almost complete destruction of all that was associated with the teachings of the Cathars, after the so-called Albigensian Crusade. The Cathar Church, which taught that marriage was prostitution, denied the resurrection of the flesh and composed, in the words of Pierre de Vaux de Cernay, “strange fables,” was in reality modeled on the Roman Catholic Church.

It included two categories of faithful: priests who led an ascetic life full of hardships, and laymen who lived an ordinary life, could marry, engage in some craft, have personal property and only try to live righteously and honestly. The first were called perfect: invariably dressed in black, they observed impeccable chastity; they refused meat, since the body of any animal could contain a human soul; They also did not eat eggs, milk, butter and cheese, because all these products were obtained from the sexual activity of living beings, but they were allowed to eat fish. This way of life, if led without the slightest deviation, ensured the perfect liberation of the soul after the death of the body. The latter were called believers: they did not seek to imitate the life of the perfect, but hoped that the faith of the latter would bring salvation to them, and they had to lead an honest, righteous and worthy life.

The perfect men and women, who could be called militant Cathars, were most often wandering hermits, they went from village to village, from castle to castle and everywhere evoked respect due to their severity, kindness, moral strength and asceticism, because strictly observed fasts; their pale, emaciated faces, their thinness, which must have been in no way inferior to the exhaustion of venerable gurus and eastern fakirs, the gentle, quiet voice with which they preached - in all this the people saw evidence of their holiness, calling them good people.

Those Cathars who remained in the cities led an equally monastic lifestyle in communities, settling in special houses, which the hostile part of the population called “houses of heretics”; in such a house there was invariably a large, austere hall with bare walls, most often whitewashed with lime, where the faithful gathered for prayer. The entire furnishings of this room consisted of a wooden table covered with a white tablecloth, on which lay the Gospel, and another, smaller table, on which stood a jug and a basin for washing hands; White candles were constantly burning in the hall, the flame of which symbolized the flame of the Holy Spirit.

We do not know how the Qatari Church was structured, whose origins and development took place mainly underground. Only Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay gives us a few and brief information about this at the beginning of his Albigensian History:

“The perfect heretics had representatives of power, whom they called “deacons” and “bishops”; they were asked for the laying on of hands, so that every dying person would consider it possible to save his soul, but in reality, if they laid hands on a dying person, no matter what his guilt, if only he was able to read the Pater Noster, they considered him saved and, to use their expression, “consoled” to such an extent that without any penance, without any other atonement for his sins, he ascended to heaven. On this occasion we heard the following funny story: a certain believer, lying on his deathbed, received a consolamentum from his teacher through the laying on of hands, but could not read the Pater Noster and gave up the ghost. His comforter did not know what to say: the deceased was saved because he accepted the laying on of hands, but he was cursed because he could not say the prayer! [...] And then the heretics went for advice to a knight named Bertrand de Cessac and asked him how they should reason. The knight gave them the following advice and answer: “We will talk about this man and claim that he is saved. As for everyone else, if they don’t read the Pater Noster at the last minute, we will consider them damned.”

This passage perfectly demonstrates the spirit of the times. The people of that era and the generations that came after them were obsessed with the thought of saving their souls after death, and the Christians of the Roman Catholic Church had a remedy to help cope with this persistent anxiety: the death on the cross of Jesus, the Son of Man, and his resurrection as the Son of God soon after execution was for them a guarantee of eternal life and salvation, provided that these Christians during their lifetime were introduced to the sacraments of the Church (in particular and first of all, they received baptism - a necessary and sufficient condition for a person to be accepted into the fold Church - and then, before death, remission of sins and unction).

For their part, the Cathars, who argued that the Catholic theogony was incorrect and that it should be replaced by the dualistic theogony, the same one that we briefly outlined above, considered the rites and sacraments of the Roman Catholic Church to be devoid of all meaning and value. In other words, the Christians, whom we will call traditional - in order to distinguish them from the Cathars, who also called themselves "Christians" - were deeply convinced of the truth of the saying "Outside the Church (implying the Roman Catholic) there is no salvation" and They saw in the adherents of the new Church (the Cathar) minions of Satan, doomed to burn forever in hell. And conversely, these latter were no less deeply convinced that their duty in earthly life was to return the lost souls of Catholic Christians to the right path of the pure religion of the true God - the good God - from which the Lord of Evil had forced them to turn.

Apart from this meager information about the heretical teaching of the Cathars and about the above-mentioned "Trebnik", a few hints of their dogmas contained in the statutes of the councils convened to combat this heresy between 1179 (III - ecumenical - council in the Lateran) and 1246 years (the Council of Beziers), as well as several sentences passed on the Cathars by the Inquisition, we know almost nothing about the teachings of the Cathars. But from the texts of the chroniclers already mentioned and from hints made by two Occitan poets who composed the “Song of the Crusade against the Albigensians,” it follows that the heresy spread throughout the south of France, from the Garonne to the Mediterranean Sea. These authors unanimously call Toulouse a hotbed of heresy; Thus, Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay in the very first lines of his “Albigensian History” declares:

“[...] Toulouse, the main source of the poison of heresy, which poisoned the peoples and turned them away from the knowledge of Christ, His true radiance and divine light. The bitter root grew so deep and penetrated so deeply into the hearts of people that it became extremely difficult to pull it out: the inhabitants of Toulouse were repeatedly asked to renounce heresy and expel heretics, but only a few were persuaded - they, having given up life, became so attached to death, so they were touched and infected by a nasty animal wisdom, mundane, devilish, which does not allow that wisdom from above, which calls for good and loves good.”

It would be useful to clarify here that Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay wrote these lines between 1213 and 1218 (extreme dates), two centuries after the Cathar heresy appeared in Languedoc; therefore, we can conclude from his words that by this time the Qatari teaching had spread widely in those parts.

About half a century before the call for a crusade against the Albigenses was made, in 1145, Saint Bernard himself, sent by the abbot of Clairvaux on a mission to Toulouse soil, described the state of religion in this area in these bleak words:

“Churches stand without parishioners, parishioners do without priests, priests have lost their honor. There are only Christians left here without Christ. The sacraments have been trampled into the dirt, major holidays are no longer celebrated. People die in sin, without repentance. Children are deprived of life in Christ by denying them the grace of baptism.” (Messages, CCXLI)

Around the same time that Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay was writing his History of the Albigenses, the Occitan poet Guilhem of Tudela began composing his Song of the Crusade against the Albigensians, which sounds the same alarming tone:

Let's get started. Heresy has risen like a reptile from the bottom of the seas

(May the Lord strike her with his right hand!)

The entire Albigensian region fell into the reach of her claws -

Both Carcassonne and Loragais. Lay down across the entire width -

From the walls of Beziers to the walls of Bordeaux - traces of her paths!

She stuck to true believers like a burr,

And there were - I won’t lie - everyone was under her thumb.

On the other hand, the huge number of areas attacked by the Crusaders under the leadership of their merciless commander, Simon de Montfort, suggests that the Cathars settled everywhere south of the Garonne: Pierre de Vaudet-Cernay lists about one and a half hundred inhabited points of Occitania that suffered during the Albigensian Crusade. The most significant of them (in chronological order) are Beziers, Carcassonne, Castres, Pamiers, Ombert, Albi, Limoux, Montreal, Monge, Montferrand, Castelnaudary, Cahuzac, Narbonne, Moissac, Castelsarrazin, Hauterives, Muret, Marmande, Rodez and, of course, , Narbonne and Toulouse, not counting the Provençal cities (Beaucaire, Nimes, Montelimar). In all these cities where the perfect ones lived and preached, there were many Cathars, and it can be assumed that because of their appearance, because of the secrecy surrounding the “houses of heretics,” and also because of their works of mercy and preaching, they attracted attention and , must have often aroused the curiosity of the people, thereby causing discontent among the local clergy.

Not a single official or secret document has reached us that would talk about the structure of the Qatari Church, except for the already mentioned Trebnik. However, we know from the writings of Pierre de Vaudé-Cernay and Guillaume de Puylorand that it consisted of two stages: each region had its own Cathar bishop, assisted by an “eldest son” and a “younger son.” Before his death, this bishop transferred his episcopal office through the ritual laying on of hands to his eldest son, who was succeeded in this rank by a younger son, whose duties were entrusted to a new younger son chosen from among the local perfects. Each city or other large population center was entrusted to the care of a deacon, who was appointed by the bishop and who was assisted by a more or less significant number of perfect people, including - it must be emphasized - perfect women: let's not forget that Occitania was a country of troubadours and courtly love and women enjoyed much greater moral independence there than in the French kingdom. At the same time, the very nature of the Qatari religious system of concepts was not combined with an outward-looking cultural life, as well as with the gold and luxury of the Catholic Church; the Cathars had neither mass, nor vespers, nor joint prayer, nor processions, nor open sacraments accessible to all (baptism, communion, marriage); everything happened behind closed doors, in the silence and secrecy of the “houses of heretics,” as outsiders usually called them.

As for the Cathar teaching, it was partly based on the Gospels (but rejected the dogma of the Trinity, coming close in this matter to the Arian heresy, which was mentioned above), as well as on the teaching of the Apostles and the Manichaeism of the Bogomils; The very modest rites of the Cathars associated with the acceptance of a man or woman into the Cathar Church as believers or the transition from the state of a believer to the state of a perfect (or perfect) were subject to strict rules known to us from the code of prayers and rituals of initiation, usually referred to as the “Cathar Breviary” "

This is how this “Trebnik” describes the rite preceding entry into the Cathar Church:

“If the believer [Catholic] remains in abstinence [waiting to be accepted into the ranks of the Cathars] and if the Christians [this word was used by perfect to designate themselves, since they considered themselves the only true followers of Christ, refusing this to Catholics] agree to give him prayer [accept him into their ranks], let them wash their hands, and the believers [Cathars who are not among the perfect], if there are any among those present, will also do this. Then one of the perfect ones, the one who follows the Elder [the Qatari cleric who receives those admitted to initiation], must bow to the Elder three times, then prepare the table, and then bow again three times. Then he must say: “Benedicite, parcite nobis.” The believer must then perform melioramentum and take the book [the Gospel] from the hands of the Elder. And the Elder should then read him an instruction with evidence appropriate to the occasion [read the relevant passages from the New Testament].

Afterwards, the Elder must say a prayer, and the believer must repeat it after him. Then the Elder must say to him: “We give you this holy prayer, accept it from God, from us and from the Church, now you can say this prayer at every hour of your life, day and night, alone or with others, and never touch neither food nor drink without saying this prayer. And if you don’t do this, you will have to repent.” And the believer should answer: “I receive prayer from God, from you and from the Church.” Then he must perform melioramentum and give thanks, after which the [perfect] Christians will pray twice with bows and genuflections, and the believer will do it after them.”

After performing this ritual, the neophyte Cathars, who were in the position of ordinary “believers” in the sense given to this concept above, continued to lead ordinary lives, trying to live righteously and honestly. Some were engaged in some worthy and profitable craft, which allowed them to provide financial management of the organization, buy and maintain “communal houses” (such houses existed in almost all cities of Occitania, where they served simultaneously as schools, hospitals, orphanages, and monasteries) , and pay for the work of ordinary people who served as guards, guides or messengers for them. There were others - young people entrusted to the perfect by their parents, or converts to the Cathar faith of people of all ages who hoped to one day receive a consolamentum and in their turn become perfect. However, with the exception of these militant Cathars, most of the believers in the towns or villages of southern France lived much like the Catholic Christians, content to attend worship services and venerate the "good people", those stern, black-clad perfections who walked throughout the region, preaching the Qatari teaching.

The main rite, a necessary condition for the salvation of the soul, was the consolamentum, a rite that made the believer (or believer) a full member of the Cathar Church - a perfect one - partly in the same way that Christian baptism symbolically introduces a newborn baby into the Roman Catholic Church, but with the essential difference that for Cathar, this rite was not just a symbolic action: it had the power to transform an ordinary person, whose soul remained captive, imprisoned in the body, into a person in whom the Holy Spirit actually dwells (hence the definition of the rite as spiritual baptism, as it is sometimes called). Having received such “consolation”, the soul of a man or woman on the day of his or her death avoided transmigration into another body and joined the divine Spirit in heaven, provided that from the day of his baptism the owner of this soul led a holy and virtuous life, that is, without the slightest concessions and without the slightest reservation he obeyed the strict rules of the Cathar religion. The believer who received the consolamentum, thanks to this, became a new being, perfect, and his soul calmed down: after the death of the body in which it lived, it will be freed and will regain the Light that it lost at birth.

And yet, having received the promise of eternal bliss, the soul was exposed to great danger: after this spiritual baptism, the smallest sin committed would turn into sacrilege, and he would lose the Holy Spirit that dwelt in him.

In order to return to the state of perfection, one must again receive consolamentum. It was for this reason that some believers waited until they were close to death to be “consoled”: then they could be sure that they would not lose the benefit of this rite in their last moments of life, which thus corresponded at the same time to the Catholic sacraments of baptism (making the baptized a Christian, that is, the guardian of the Holy Spirit) and communion (renewing this union with God) with ordination (transforming a layman into a clergyman) and unction.

The solemn ceremony of “spiritual baptism” took place in the large prayer hall of the Qatari house described above, where the faithful came to pray; All white candles were lit in the hall; they were supposed to symbolize the Light of the Holy Spirit that descended on the Apostles on the day of Pentecost, after the Ascension of Christ into heaven. The elder of the house first addressed the believer who wished to become a member of the Cathar Church with an opening speech, reminding him of the supernatural significance of the rite that was soon to take place. The Qatari Breviary has preserved for us the contents of this speech:

“Peter [presumed name of the believer], you want to receive spiritual baptism, through which the Holy Spirit is given in the Church of God, with holy prayer, with the laying on of hands of good people [perfect]. Our Lord Jesus Christ speaks about this baptism in the Gospel of Matthew to his disciples: “Go therefore and make disciples of all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father and of the Son and of the Holy Spirit, teaching them to observe everything that I have commanded you; and lo, I am with you always, even to the end of the age.” And in the Gospel of Mark He says:

“Go into all the world and preach the Gospel to every creature. Whoever believes and is baptized will be saved; and whoever does not believe will be condemned.” And in the Gospel of John, He says to Nicodemus: “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God.” [...] This holy baptism, through which the Holy Spirit is given, has been preserved by the Church of God from the time of the apostles to the present day, and it is passed on from some good people to other good people, and so it has come down to us, and so it will be as long as the light lasts; You should also know that the Church of God has been given the power to bind and loose, to forgive sins and to forgive them. [...] And in the Gospel of Mark He says: “These signs will follow those who believe: In My name they will cast out demons; they will speak in new tongues; they will take snakes; and if they drink anything deadly, it will not harm them; They will lay hands on the sick, and they will recover.” And in the Gospel of Luke He says: “Behold, I give you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and over all the power of the enemy, and nothing will harm you.” [...]"

After this, the Elder told the believer about the tenets of the Cathar religion, about what obligations he would be bound for the rest of his life, and read the Pater Noster, explaining each line of this prayer, which the one preparing to join had to repeat after him. Then the believer solemnly renounced the Catholic faith, in which he had been since childhood, promised that from now on he would not touch meat, eggs, or any other food of animal origin, would abstain from carnal pleasures, would never lie, never will not take an oath and will never renounce the Cathar faith. Then he had to say these words:

“I receive this holy prayer from God, from you and from the Church,” and then loudly and clearly announce that he wants to be baptized. After this, he performed melioramentum (knelt down three times and asked for a blessing) before the Elder and asked God to forgive him everything in which he had sinned in thought, deed or omission. Then the good people (perfect) present in chorus pronounced the formula for the remission of sins:

“In the name of the Lord, ours and the name of the Church, may your sins be forgiven you.” And finally, the solemn moment of performing the ritual, which was supposed to make the believer perfect, would come: the Elder took the Gospel and placed it on the head of the new member of the Church, and on top he and his assistants each laid their right hand and prayed to God that this person the Holy Spirit descended, while all those gathered read aloud the Pater Noster and other Cathar prayers appropriate to the occasion. Then the Elder read the first seventeen verses of the Gospel of John, said again, this time alone, Pater Noster, and the new perfect received from him, and then from the other perfects, a kiss of peace, which he then gave to the one of those gathered who stood closest to him , and he passed the kiss to his neighbor, and so, from one to another, this kiss went around all those gathered.

The “Comforted One,” now made perfect, dressed in black clothes, signifying his new state, donated all his property to the Cathar community and began to lead the wandering life of a merciful preacher following the example of Jesus and his apostles. The city deacon or the Cathar bishop of the province had to choose for him, among other perfect companions, who was called socius (or association, if it was a woman), with whom he, surrounded by the veneration and worship of the peasants, townspeople and nobility, was henceforth to share his life, his labors and adversities.

The crusade against the Cathars, the so-called “Albigensian Crusade”, was in fact a pretext invented by Philip Augustus in order to seize the lands of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, that is, the County of Toulouse itself and its possessions, such as the Viscountates of Béziers and Albi , with the sole purpose of expanding the territory of the French kingdom. It wouldn't hurt to say a few words about this man here. He was born in 1156 and died in 1222 in Toulouse, was married five times, his wives were Ermessinde de Pele (died in 1176), Beatrice, sister of the Viscount of Béziers (he married her before 1193), Burginda de Ausignan (the wedding took place in 1193)" Jeanne, the sister of Richard the Lionheart (she brought him Agen as a dowry) and finally, in 1211, he married Eleanor, the sister of the Aragonese king.

Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse and Saint-Gilles, Duke of Narbonne and Marquis of Provence, succeeded his father, Raymond V, in 1194. The profitable treaty he concluded put an end to the war that the latter waged with the English Plantagenets (with Henry II, then with his son, Richard the Lionheart), from whom he took Quercy. In 1198 he allied with his brother-in-law, Richard the Lionheart, and several major vassals against Philip Augustus; in subsequent years, he continually entered into armed conflicts with various lords of the south. When Raymond VI was not in arms and was not at war, he maintained a brilliant court where troubadours flocked, and showed sympathy for the Cathars, who, taking advantage of his patronage, settled on his lands. In 1205 or 1206, the count, frightened by the actions of Pope Innocent III, who persuaded Philip Augustus to launch a crusade against these heretics (that is, on his, Raymond's, lands), promised the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau, whom we will talk about later, that he would not tolerate longer than the Cathars in their possessions; however, he never kept his promise, and in the future we will see how the mission of Pierre de Castelnau, the papal legate, will end with the terrible Albigensian crusade.

This brief information allows us to outline the following two circumstances, which, in turn, will help us understand the meaning of this unworthy religious war: 1) the power of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, whose possessions were almost as extensive and rich as those of his overlord, the king of France, and the fact that, among other things, he was the brother-in-law of Richard the Lionheart (with whom he, as we have already said, allied against Philip Augustus, who was a distant relative of the count), made him a natural opponent of the king; 2) the freedom of his morals and his disposition towards the Cathars, which everyone knew, made Count Raymond VI and the enemy of God (and therefore Pope Innocent III), which in 1207 led to his excommunication from the Church by the decision of Pierre de Castelnau, confirmed dad next May.

As a result of all this, Count Raymond VI, both for the pope and for the French king, was a man who had to be dealt with. The Crusade against the Cathars provided a pretext and justification for this crime, since there were a lot of heretics both in the county of Toulouse and throughout Occitania. Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay, who fiercely pursued the Cathars with his only weapon - a strong quill pen in his hand, explains this to us with undisguised bias, but vividly and vividly, and along the way gives some precious information to which we will draw the reader’s attention along the way affairs:

“Let us note to begin with that he [Count Raymond VI], one might say, loved heretics from the cradle and favored them, and he revered those who lived on his lands as best he could. Until this day [before 1209; the murder of the papal legate, which became the occasion for the crusade, occurred in 1208], it is said that wherever he goes, he leads with him heretics, dressed in ordinary clothes, so that if he has to die, he can die at in their hands: in fact, it seemed to him that he could be saved without any repentance if, on his deathbed, he could accept the laying on of hands from them. He always carried the New Testament with him in order, if necessary, to obtain the laying on of hands with this book from the heretics. [...] The Count of Toulouse, and we know this for certain, once told the heretics that he would like to raise his son [the future Raymond VII] in Toulouse, among the heretics, so that he would be brought up in their faith. The Count of Toulouse once told the heretics that he would willingly give a hundred silver coins to convert one of his knights to the faith of the heretics, whom he often persuaded to convert to this faith by forcing him to listen to sermons. In addition, when the heretics sent him gifts or food supplies, he accepted it all with the liveliest gratitude and kept it with the greatest care: he did not allow anyone to touch them except himself and several of his associates. And very often, as we learned with great certainty, he even worshiped the heretics, kneeling, and asked their blessing, and gave them the kiss of peace. [...] One day the count was in a church where mass was being celebrated: he was accompanied by a mime, who, according to the custom of jesters of this kind, mocked people, grimacing and making feigned movements. When the priest turned to the crowd with the words "Dominus vobiscum", the vile count ordered his histrion to imitate the priest and mock him. Another time, this same count also said that he would prefer to be like a certain dangerous heretic from Castres, in the diocese of Albi, who had neither arms nor legs, and lived in poverty, than to be a king or emperor.”

These last words of the Count of Toulouse may be true, but they do not at all indicate the “abomination” of Raymond VI - they rather serve as proof that this ruler, no matter how libertine he was, was able to admire, and even envied, an almost mystical the purity of faith of the perfect, doomed to ascend to the bonfires that he may someday have to light for them. And in fact, it did not take the Cathars even two centuries to finally create in Occitanie, and mainly in the county of Toulouse, a Church firmly rooted in all its districts and in all its cities, and this Church was not a secret , nor underground, and found adherents both among the village common people and among the townspeople, and among its members, as well as its sympathizers, were powerful barons and noble nobles of Languedoc.

However, the Cathar teaching was not the only heresy of Languedoc. In fact, Pierre de Vaux-de-Cernay informs us of the existence of a Christian sect that arose in the south of France around 1170 and began with the sermons of one Pierre Waldo, a wealthy Lyon merchant who abandoned everything he had acquired in order to call for a return to the original gospel ethics; his followers were called Waldensians, forming this name from the name of the founder of the sect.

“These people were undoubtedly bad,” he writes, “but if you compare them with the Cathar heretics, they were much less corrupt. In fact, they agreed with us on many issues, but disagreed on others. Their error concerned mainly four points: they were obliged, like the apostles, to wear sandals, they said that in no case should one swear an oath or kill, and they asserted that any of them could, if necessary and under condition, who wears sandals, to celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist, even if this person was not a clergyman and was not ordained by a bishop.”

The Waldenses were persecuted by Rome and a crusade was launched against them in 1487, but they managed to survive and find shelter in the Alpine villages of Piedmont, Savoy and Luberon. When they began to be persecuted again in the 17th century (under Louis XIV), they joined the Calvinist reformed Church. Let us clarify that the Waldenses had nothing to do with the Cathars: in particular, they never supported any Manichaean theories.