Eight hundred years ago, a vast territory of fiefdoms stretched between the Pyrénées Mountains, the Massif Central, and the Mediterranean Sea. The region was united by langue d’oc—the linguistic precursor to modern Occitan that is spoken throughout southern France and Catalunya in northern Spain. Languedoc, as the area is now known, was largely independent of the French kingdom to the north. It was here that a new faith based on ancient Gnostic traditions took shape. That faith came to be known as Catharism and its followers, Cathars.
The Cathars believed if one’s earthly life had not fulfilled its purpose in a worthy manner, the soul would be condemned to a perpetual cycle of rebirth, trapped in a corruptible body, until God declared the soul redeemed. Heaven was a release from the hell of reincarnation.
Catharism differed radically from the social and moral code of the Catholic Church, and in the twelfth century, the Church declared Catharism a heretical faith. Yet the Cathars continued to grow in number and influence. Until January 1208, when, on the border between Provence and Languedoc, a murder changed Europe forever.