Cathar History

The Languedoc Roussillion region of France is a wilderness of majestic and raw beauty, unfortunately stained by the Catholic Church’s systematic genocide of the naive Cathar during the Albigensian Crusade. This was the only Christian crusade to have ever taken place in Europe.

This Albigensian Crusade was named after the town of Albi and includes such horrific deeds exemplified by the Crusading forces which when they broke through the town’s defences to ransack the town of Narbonne, they asked their Commander who to kill and he replied, ‘kill them all as God will spare those he wants’.

The Cathar were Gnostics who believed in dualism, which simply put is that good and evil reside simultaneously in everyone and that there is a daily battle between these two warring aspect of our personality for control of our souls.

They occupied previously built castles on majestic peaks guarding either side of the Aude valley that reaches out from Carcassonne down to Perpignan.  Requesting only to be left alone to practise their faith, flanked either side by the two major Catholic powers of the time France and Spain, why did they place themselves in so much danger?

Various theories exist, some so volatile that if they could ever be proven would pull away that very cornerstone of Christianity, the resurrection of Jesus. It is now well known that this part of France was a Roman Empire penal colony and various gospels outlawed and suppressed by the Catholic Church refer to Jesus not being crucified due to the Roman fear of martyrdom, but instead sent into exile to France with his wife Mary Magdalene and her sons.

The royal bloodline of the House of David perhaps continues to this day, which may explain why King Louie X1V maintained that he was a direct descendant through the Bourbon lineage to Jesus of Nazareth. If the Cathars were aware of this simplified non-messianic concept of Christianity and knew of their mortal teacher’s burial place which some researchers are intent on discovering and believed to be in this immediate area, then we can conjecture perhaps why they lived here and of the non-materialistic treasure they protected.

It is interesting to observe that Holy Grail in French is ‘San Graal’ and Holy Blood is ‘Sang Raal’ and how this supports the emerging fact that perhaps the ‘grail’ concept as the chalice from which Jesus drank from was only supported by the fertile imagination of various authors and rather instead refers to the blood line with the chalice being the womb of Mary.

Another interesting event is the construction of 5 churches in this immediate area, each situated exactly on the point of a pentagram, all dedicated to what the Pauline gospels call a prostitute, the Mary Magdalene which the ‘forgotten’ or ‘ignored’ gospels refer to either as Jesus’ wife or consort.

All these facts and conjectures can be explored by walking the routes of the Parfaits, who were the Councillors of the Cathars.