What kinds of people were they - those people, who shocked the holy mother church and the kingdom of France? Heretics! Really?! Generally the cathars believed what the adheres of Zarathustra said: « There are two powers in this universe, the good one and the evil, darkness and light ». The spiritual world is the one of God's beauty, the material one is the devil's world. People in the Languedoc followed this sect of the chastes, which spread all around Europe, suddenly becoming a serious rival of the catholic church. Those cathars thought this world to be made by the devil, they refused the sacrament, Jesus as Our Saviour and all the saints. They had their own bishops and divided into the adepts « parfaits » and their simple followers « croyants ». One thought them to have found their sect in the city of Albi, therefore they were also called Albigense.
The poor and the rich joint them, the nobility and the people. For a long time the South had suffered from the guardianship of Paris in the North. And those in the North by no way liked what happened in their Southern province: love, mine-singers, proud women and willful nobility. The churchmen prayed abstinence and meekness and acted contrary, the people were poor, the church was rich - just a few years and the people of the South had become followers of the new sect of the cathars who did not only talk of the simple live, but who lived it. Those cathars, who were looking for Christian perfection, became the new saints of the people and the nobility of the Languedoc. Empty churches, proud talks - too much for pope Innocence III. In 1208 he announced the first crusade against those heretics. An unbelievably crude and bloody crusade
When Béziers was conquered, the pious church officer Arnaud Amary said:« Kill them all, God will find his souls ». When Simon de Montfort became leader, this holy war changed into a war of conquest - bloody battles and endless sieges. The crusaders of the North were merciless, there was no difference to be made between cathars and the people of the South - they all were heretics, and they had to be killed. The South resisted for nearly 200 years, but the combatants with the holy order triumphated at least. Some of the cathars took refuge in the castles in the inaccessible Corbières, in the Montagne Noir or the Cevennes. But at least all the castles with proud names such as Aguilar, Quéribus, Peyrepertuse and Puislaurens had been conquered. In 1361, Bélibaste, the last of the cathars died at the stake: Jubilation in Rome and Paris.For more information concerning the sect of the cathars, please check the website of Cathares.org.