BATTLE OF MURET, THE CATHAR CRUSADE IN LANGUEDOC

The Grandma arrives to Muret

After commemorating September 11, the Catalan National Day, today, The Grandma has visited Muret, near Tolosa in Occitania. She has arrived to this beautiful town to commemorate another tragic date, September 12, the Battle of Muret.

Catharism, from the Greek καθαροί, that means the pure ones, was a Christian dualist or Gnostic revival movement that thrived in some areas of Southern Europe, particularly what is now northern Italy and southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries. The followers were known as Cathars and are now mainly remembered for a prolonged period of persecution by the Catholic Church, which did not recognise their belief as being Christian.

Catharism appeared in Europe in Languedoc in the 11th century and this is when the name first appears. The adherents were sometimes known as Albigensians, after the city Albi where the movement first took hold.

The Grandma loves Catharism and Cathar History and she has wanted to homage this Occitan community visiting Muret, the little town where on a day like today in 1213, the Crusader army of Simó IV de Montfort defeated the Catharist, Aragonese and Catalan forces of Pere II El Catòlic, King of Aragon and Count of Barcelona, in the well-known Battle of Muret.

This was the begining of the end of the Cathars, but not Catharism because as The Grandma always remembers something lives as time as the last person who remembers it and nowadays we still remember Cathars and their incredible and important influence over our current cultures, especially Occitan and Catalan ones.

During the travel from Barcelona to Muret, The Grandma has studied a new lesson of her Ms. Excel course.

18. Macros (II) (Spanish Version)

Muret is a commune in the Haute-Garonne department, of which it is a subprefecture, in Occitania. Its inhabitants are called Muretains. It is an outer suburb of the city of Tolosa (Toulouse) and is the largest component of the intercommunality of Muretain.

Muret is generally known for the Battle of Muret (1213) and as the birthplace of Clément Ader (1841-1925), inventor and aviation pioneer. It is also the birthplace of the Niel family from which Adolphe Niel, Marshal of France and Minister of War, was derived.

More information: Ville de Muret (French Version)

The Albigensian Crusade or the Cathar Crusade (1209–1229), in Occitan Crosada dels albigeses, was a 20-year military campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III to eliminate Catharism in Languedoc.

The Crusade was prosecuted primarily by the French crown and promptly took on a political flavour, resulting in not only a significant reduction in the number of practising Cathars, but also a realignment of the County of Tolosa in Languedoc, bringing it into the sphere of the French crown and diminishing the distinct regional culture and high level of influence of the Counts of Barcelona.

The Battle of Muret, 1213

The Cathars originated from an anti-materialist reform movement within the Bogomil churches of Dalmatia and Bulgaria calling for a return to the Christian message of perfection, poverty and preaching, combined with a rejection of the physical to the point of starvation.

The reforms were a reaction against the often scandalous and dissolute lifestyles of the Catholic clergye. Their theology, neo-Gnostic in many ways, was basically dualist. Several of their practices, especially their belief in the inherent evil of the physical world, conflicted with the doctrines of the Incarnation of Christ and sacraments, initiated accusations of Gnosticism and brought them the ire of the Catholic establishment. They became known as the Albigensians, because there were many adherents in the city of Albi and the surrounding area in the 12th and 13th centuries.

Between 1022 and 1163, the Cathars were condemned by eight local church councils, the last of which, held at Tours, declared that all Albigenses should be put into prison and have their property confiscated. The Third Lateran Council of 1179 repeated the condemnation. Innocent III's diplomatic attempts to roll back Catharism were met with little success. After the murder of his legate Pierre de Castelnau, in 1208, Innocent III declared a crusade against the Cathars. He offered the lands of the Cathar heretics to any French nobleman willing to take up arms.

More information: Cathar

From 1209 to 1215, the Crusaders experienced great success, capturing Cathar lands and perpetrating acts of extreme violence, often against civilians.

From 1215 to 1225, a series of revolts caused many of the lands to be lost. A renewed crusade resulted in the recapturing of the territory and effectively drove Catharism underground by 1244.

The Albigensian Crusade also had a role in the creation and institutionalization of both the Dominican Order and the Medieval Inquisition. The Dominicans promulgated the message of the Church to combat alleged heresies by preaching the Church's teachings in towns and villages, while the Inquisition investigated heresies. Because of these efforts, by the middle of the 14th century, any discernible traces of the Cathar movement had been eradicated.

Derived in part from earlier forms of Gnosticism, the theology of the Cathars was dualistic, a belief in two equal and comparable transcendental principles: God, the force of good, and the demiurge, the force of evil. Cathars held that the physical world was evil and created by this demiurge, which they called Rex Mundi. Rex Mundi encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful. 

The Cathar understanding of God was entirely disincarnate: they viewed God as a being or principle of pure spirit and completely unsullied by the taint of matter. He was the God of love, order, and peace. Jesus was an angel with only a phantom body, and the accounts of him in the New Testament were to be understood allegorically.

Visiting the exposition about Cathars

As the physical world and the human body were the creation of the evil principle, sexual abstinence, even in marriage, was encouraged. Civil authority had no claim on a Cathar, since this was the rule of the physical world.

Accordingly, the Cathars refused to take oaths of allegiance or volunteer for military service. Cathar doctrine opposed killing animals and consuming meat.

Cathars rejected the Catholic priesthood, labelling its members, including the pope, unworthy and corrupted. Disagreeing on the Catholic concept of the unique role of the priesthood, they taught that anyone, not just the priest, could consecrate the Eucharistic host or hear a confession. They rejected the dogma of the Real presence of Christ in the Eucharist and Catholic teaching on the existence of Purgatory.

Catharism developed its own unique form of sacrament known as the consolamentum, to replace the Catholic rite of baptism. Instead of receiving baptism through water, one received the consolamentum by the laying on of hands. They regarded water as unclean because it had been corrupted by the earth, and therefore refused to use it in their ceremonies. The act was typically received just before death, as Cathars believed that this increased one's chances for salvation by wiping away all previous sins.

After taking the sacrament, the recipient became known as perfectus. Prior to becoming a perfect, believing Cathars were encouraged but not required to follow Cathar teaching on abstaining from sex and meat, and most chose not to do so. Once an individual received the consolamentum, these rules became binding.

Cathar perfects often went through a ritual fast called the endura. After receiving the consolamentum, a believer would sometimes take no food and rely only on cold water, a practice eventually resulting in death. The procedure was typically performed only by those close to death already. Some members of the Church claimed that if a Cathar upon receiving the consolamentum showed signs of recovery, the person would be smothered to death in order to ensure entry into Heaven. This did sometimes happen but there is little evidence that it was common practice.

More information: Learn Religions

Despite Cathar anti-clericalism, there were men selected amongst the Cathars to serve as bishops and deacons. The bishops were selected from among the perfect.

The Cathars were part of a widespread spiritual reform movement in medieval Europe which began about 653 when Constantine-Silvanus brought a copy of the Gospels to Armenia. In the following centuries a number of dissenting groups arose, gathered around charismatic preachers, who rejected the authority of the Catholic Church. These groups based their beliefs and practices on the Gospels rather than on Church dogma and sought a return to the early church and the faith of the Apostles. They claimed that their teaching was rooted in Scripture and part of Apostolic tradition. Sects such as the Paulicians in Armenia, Bogomils from Bulgaria and the Balkans, Arnoldists in northern Italy, Petrobrusians in southern France, Henricans in Switzerland and France, and Waldensians of the Piedmont area on the border of France and Italy, were violently persecuted and repressed.

Cathars and the Consolamentum

The Paulicians were ordered to be burned to death as heretics; the Bogomils were expelled from Serbia and later subjected to the Inquisition and the Bosnian Crusade; Peter of Bruys, leader of the Petrobrusians, was pushed into a bonfire by an angry mob in 1131; A number of prominent 12th century preachers insisted on it being the responsibility of the individual to develop a relationship with God, independent of an established clergy. Henry of Lausanne criticized the priesthood and called for lay reform of the Church. He gained a large following. Henry's preaching focused on condemning clerical corruption and clerical hierarchy, although there is no evidence that he subscribed to Cathar teachings on dualism. He was arrested around 1146 and never heard from again. Arnold of Brescia, leader of the Arnoldists, was hanged in 1155 and his body burnt and thrown into the Tiber River, for fear, one chronicler says, lest the people might collect them and honour them as the ashes of a martyr. The Waldensians, followers of Peter Waldo, experienced burnings and massacres.

Although these dissenting groups shared some common features with the Cathars, such as anti-clericalism and rejection the sacraments, they did not, except perhaps the Paulicians and Bogomils, subscribe to Cathar dualist beliefs. They did not specifically invoke dualism as a tenet. The Cathars may have originated from the Bogomils, as some scholars believe in a continuous Manichaen tradition which encompassed both groups. That view is not universally shared.

More information: Cathar Castles

By the 12th century, organized groups of dissidents, such as the Waldensians and Cathars, were beginning to appear in the towns and cities of newly urbanized areas. In western Mediterranean France, one of the most urbanized areas of Europe at the time, the Cathars grew to represent a popular mass movement, and the belief was spreading to other areas. One such area was Lombardy, which by the 1170s was sustaining a community of Cathars.

The Cathar movement was seen by some as a reaction against the corrupt and earthly lifestyles of the clergy. It has also been viewed as a manifestation of dissatisfaction with papal power. In Cologne in 1163, four Cathar men and a girl who had traveled to the city from Flanders were burned after refusing to repent. Burnings for heresy had been very uncommon, and in the past had sometimes taken place at the behest of noblemen over the objections of leading Catholic clergy. After this event however, they grew more frequent.

Catharism continued to spread. Cathar theology found its greatest success in the Languedoc.

The Cathars were known as Albigensians because of their association with the city of Albi, and because the 1176 Church Council which declared the Cathar doctrine heretical was held near Albi. The condemnation was repeated through the Third Lateran Council of 1179. In Languedoc, political control and land ownership was divided among many local lords and heirs. Before the crusade, there was little fighting in the area and it had a fairly sophisticated polity. Western Mediterranean France itself was at that time divided between the Crown of Aragon and County of Barcelona; and the County of Tolosa.

The Albigensian Crusade, 1209-1229

On becoming Pope in 1198, Innocent III resolved to deal with the Cathars and sent a delegation of friars to the province of Languedoc to assess the situation.

The Cathars of Languedoc were seen as not showing proper respect for the authority of the French king or the local Catholic Church, and their leaders were being protected by powerful nobles, who had clear interest in independence from the king. At least in part for this reason, many powerful noblemen embraced Catharism despite making little attempt to follow its strict lifestyle restrictions. In desperation, Innocent turned to Philip II of France, urging him to either force Raymond to deal with the heresy or depose him militarily. By 1204, he offered to bless those willing to go on a military campaign against the Cathars with the same indulgence given to crusaders travelling to the Holy Land. However, Philip was engaged in conflict with King John of England, and was unwilling to get involved in a separate conflict in the Languedoc. Hence, the plan stalled.

One of the most powerful noblemen, Count Raymond VI, Count of Tolosa, did not openly embrace Cathar beliefs, but was sympathetic to Catharism and its independence movement. He refused to assist the delegation. He was excommunicated in May 1207 and an interdict was placed on his lands. Innocent tried to deal with the situation diplomatically by sending a number of preachers, many of them monks of the Cistercian order, to convert the Cathars. They were under the direction of the senior papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau. The preachers managed to bring some people back into the Catholic faith, but for the most part, were renounced. Pierre himself was extremely unpopular, and once had to flee the region for fear that he would be assassinated.

More information: Camí dels Bons Homes

On January 13, 1208, Raymond met Pierre in the hope of gaining absolution. The discussion did not go well. Raymond expelled him and threatened his safety. The following morning, Pierre was killed by one of Raymond's knights. Innocent III claimed that Raymond ordered his execution; William of Tudela blames the murder entirely on an evil-hearted squire hoping to win the Count's approval.

Pope Innocent declared Raymond anathematized and released all of his subjects from their oaths of obedience to him. However, Raymond soon attempted to reconcile with the Church by sending legates to Rome. They exchanged gifts, reconciled, and the excommunication was lifted. At the Council of Avignon (1209) Raymond was again excommunicated for not fulfilling the conditions of ecclesiastical reconciliation. After this, Innocent III called for a crusade against the Albigensians, with the view that a Europe free of heresy could better defend its borders against invading Muslims. The time period of the Crusade coincided with the Fifth and Sixth Crusades in the Holy Land.

At the Battle of Muret on 12 September 1213 the Crusader army of Simó IV de Montfort defeated the Catharist, Aragonese and Catalan forces of Pere I El Catòlic, Count of Barcelona, at Muret near Tolosa.

The Battle of Muret, 1213

Simó IV de Montfort was the leader of the Albigensian Crusade to destroy the Cathar heresy and incidentally to join the Languedoc to the crown of France. He invaded Tolosa and exiled its count, Raymond VI.

Count Raymond sought assistance from his brother-in-law, Pere I El Catòlic Count of Barcelona (aka Pere II King of Aragon), who felt threatened by de Montfort's conquests in Languedoc, which de Montfort pledged to the crown of France. He decided to cross the Pyrenees and deal with Montfort at Muret.

On 10 September, Pere's army arrived at Muret, and was joined by a Tolosan militia. He chose to position his army so their right flank was protected by the Saudrune River, and the left protected by a marsh. He left the militia to assault the walls of the city.

Simó de Montfort led an army of 1,000–1,700 French Crusaders, including a small contingent of knights brought by his ally, the Viscount of Corbeil. Montfort had 900 cavalry, of which 260 were knights. His 300–700 infantry stayed behind at Muret to hold the town and tie down the Toulousain militia.

Pere I El Catòlic had brought 800 to 1,000 Aragonese cavalry, joined by a militia of 2,000–4,000 infantry from Tolosa and cavalry from the counts of Comminges and Foix. Pere's combined forces possibly numbered 2,000 cavalry and 2,000–4,000 infantry.

More information: War on the Rocks

Montfort led his knights and horse sergeants out of the walled town and divided his cavalry army into three lines, with his half-brother William of Barres commanding the first line and Montfort himself commanding the third for purposes of tactical command and control. Pere had arranged his men in the same formation, with the Count of Foix commanding the first line and Pere disguising himself in a borrowed suit of armor in the second line. Once deployed, Pere's army remained stationary and waited for the Crusaders' approach.

Crossing a stream, William of Barres' cavalry rode for the center of the Count of Foix's line, with the second Crusader line following him. The coalition's first line was crushed by the impetus of the charge and the Crusaders broke through to the second. At the same time, Montfort maneuvered his unit to outflank the coalition cavalry from the left and crashed into them. Confused and disorganized, the coalition cavalrymen began to retreat.

More information: BBC

Pere may have been killed in the initial clash or the Crusaders may have headed for his standard in the second line during the battle, seeking to kill him. According to one contemporary account, he shouted Here is your King!, but was not heard. Knowledge of his death contributed to the rout of his army.

Montfort's first two lines pursued the defeated coalition cavalry, while Montfort himself rallied his third line and kept them in reserve in case the pursuers encountered resistance. This proved unnecessary, as the fleeing cavalrymen put up no such effort.

Montfort then returned to the besieged Muret. The militia from Tolosa renewed their assault on the city. When they saw the Crusader horsemen returning and learned that Pere had been killed they broke and fled their fortified camp toward the Garonne River, but were slaughtered in the rout.

This would be the last major battle of the Albigensian Crusade, which did not officially end until the 1229 Treaty of Paris. In addition, with de Montfort's victory as well as the death of Pere El Catòlic, the ambitions of Aragon Crown and Catalan County in Languedoc were effectively ended.

Download Tòpics i llocs comuns d’una batalla decisiva: Muret, 1213

Our Father, which art in Heaven. Hallowed be Thy name.
Thy kingdom come. Thy will be done on Earth as it is in Heaven.
 

The Cathar Pater Noster