I was hardly aware of the drive to the high Pyrenees. Since yesterday, it has poured rain; it seems that here, too, autumn wants to halt its march. In the end, I rode in the post bus. My traveling companions were farmers who were carrying their wares to market. They quickly got out of me that I am German and that I want to stay in the mountains. They wanted to show me the mountain stronghold of Montsegur and how it dominates the surrounding countryside, but the clouds concealed it. “Are you also looking for the treasure of the Albigenses?” they asked in turn. Then I learned of an article about the treasure seekers that had appeared in a Toulouse newspaper shortly before.
A well-kept inn is my shelter for the night. Toward ten o’clock in the morning, the son of the innkeeper—a doctor—will drive me first to the town of Montferrier (Iron Mountain) and then on up to the hamlet of Montsegur. He has some patients to attend to.
After dinner, an eighty-six-year-old townsman offered to show me his collection: For decades he has been digging in the castle ruins and caves of his narrow homeland. Without any hesitation and with shameless pride, he showed me the bones of cave-dwelling bears and lions; prehistoric stone tools; arrowheads in bone, bronze, and iron; shards; and much more. He has also searched the rubble of the citadel of Montsegur, if somewhat superficially. His principal discoveries were weapons, seals, and stone balls that were rolled by the defenders onto the besiegers in the valley below.1 Finally, with great care, he removed several small, clay doves from a shrine. He found them in the ruins of Montsegur. My host could not tell me what purpose they had served. Apart from that, I learned to my astonishment that a deceased friend of his had found in the rubble of the stronghold a book in a foreign script—possibly Chinese or Arabic; he didn’t remember anymore. The book with the unusual script was lost.
As I reflect upon this evening and anticipate my journey to
Montsegur with even greater eagerness, all this makes me think of a story that was told to me on the doorstep as I was bidding my hosts farewell: Sometime in the twelfth century, a powerful viscount named Raimundo Jordan lived in the vicinity of Cahors, north of Toulouse. In those days, it was befitting for accomplished knights to cultivate the Minne and compose poetry to honor noble ladies—in other words, to be a troubadour. Adelaide was Raimundo’s choice; she was the wife of the nobleman Baronet Pena, who knew, and approved of, this Minne. When the terrible Albigensian war broke out, both Raimundo and the nobleman took up arms to confront the enemy. Pena fell in battle and, soon afterward, Raimundo went missing. Adelaide awaited in apprehension, yearning for news of the troubadour. Believing that he had fallen in the war, she renounced her worldly possessions and retired, as the heretic I hat she was, to the castle in the clouds, Montsegur. She wanted to pass her last days there. Nevertheless, Raimundo was still alive. Although he had been seriously wounded, he had found shelter and care with friends. After a long, drawn-out recovery, he asked to see Adelaide again and rode to Pena’s castle along secret trails in the forest. He discovered that the castle had fallen to the enemy long ago and its mistress had vanished without a trace. Raimundo was now condemned as an outlaw; I here was no refuge left for him other than Montsegur—where he found Adelaide.
On my way home, some verses by Ludwig Uhland came to mind. As a schoolboy I had to learn them by heart. Who would have thought then ihat I would make my home in the “Valleys of Provence!”:
In the Valleys of Provence
Sprouted the song of the Minne, Child of Springtime,
and the Minne
The holder more intimately enjoyed
I came to this land because of the Albigenses, who, like my ances-tors, were heretics. That a close relationship existed between heretics and Minnesingers was completely unknown to me before I came here.
~ MONTSEGURIN THE PYRENEES -
I am living in a more-than-humble farmhouse, where I am obliged to fetch my water from a well located to the side on a pathway that leads to the so-called Camp des Cremats (Field of Fires). There, Dominican monks burned alive 205 heretics on a gigantic pyre. Not far from the well, jutting out of a stone block, is a wrought-iron cross with two swords positioned across it. Hanging from the upright beam of the cross are a whip, a cane, and a crown of thorns—as well as the keys of St. Peter. Directly behind, a colossal mountain rises; atop it, the ruins of Montsegur repose in grandiose solitude.
Dizzily overlooking a deep gorge, the hamlet of Montsegur has at most thirty homes. The upper part of the town has fallen down. Anyone who can pulls up and leaves for the towns in the valleys, forsaking his property. Only pasture, potatoes, and a little fruit are cultivated here. The people are terribly poor. My landlord, the village priest, complains about this. He sits over his accounts and calculates incessantly because Peter’s Pence is not enough to make ends meet. Every once in a while, he visits relatives in nearby Belesta. When he returns, he is loaded with bread and sausages.
The church, a miserable construction, is frequented almost exclusively by schoolchildren. Apart from a few wizened dotards, adults visit the place only on the feast of Toussaint on November l.2 That is the only time in the year when this congregation comes together—to remember the dead. On my first day here, I met the engineer from Bordeaux who is looking for the gold of the Albigenses, and who lives next to the church.3 He explained that the castle is the property of the municipality and that he has obtained their permission in a written contract, which, if his project is successful, awards to him half of the treasure (he is convinced that it is gold and silver). Furthermore, he hopes to find the authentic Book of Revelation, the Apocalypse According to John, which should contain the true message of Jesus Christ and was believed to be in the possession of the Albigenses. The Cathars believed that the Church of Rome wanted to destroy the only
true message of the Son of God because the Catholics had falsified it.
How does he know all this? I asked. He made it clear that he couldn’t tell me because he belonged to a secret association that demanded silence from its members.4 Even though the Albigenses were exterminated almost to the last man by the Inquisition and its executioners, the true Book of Revelation was placed in a safe resting place inside the mountain, which is hollow. Long after the castle had fallen, the Roman Catholics were still digging up the place in their search for the holy scriptures of John—but in vain. In addition, he told me that he knew the location of Esclarmonde’s grave. A man with a divining rod had revealed the place to him, and thanks to the way the rod turned, he was able to describe the sarcophagus: It was stone with a golden dove decorating the top. I had to stop myself from smiling.
Never before this morning have I seen such a stunning view from the summit of the castle mountain. From Carcassonne, where the Visigoth kings once held court, to Toulouse the plains were free to the eye. To the east, I thought that I could make out the sea somewhere between Montagne Noire and Alaric’s Mountain, where I noticed a silvery glimmer. Toward my feet, I could see the rich flora of the abbey of Notre-Dame-de-Prouille, the mother monastery of the Dominican order, home of the Rosary of the Blessed Virgin Mary and cradle of the Inquisition. After his vision of the Mother of God on the occasion of her celebration day (when she ordered the invention of the Rosary and the annihilation of the heretics), St. Dominic founded the abbey to keep an eye on Montsegur. Yet he never visited the heretical mountain. Before the citadel fell, his eyes closed forever and, if the Church is right, he entered into the company of saints. But St. Dominic had a lot of lives on his conscience . . .
Northeast from Toulouse, a light mist hangs in the air where lies Albi, the town that gave its name to the heretical movement because so many Albigensians lived there. I noticed the town of Mirepoix very clearly at my feet. In pre-Christian times it was called Beli Cartha, the “city of light,” because Belis and Abellio were names for the gods of light. Between the peaks, directly north perhaps four hours from here, I
could make out the castle of Foix. Its towers reflected the morning sun. In the west and the south, the Pyrenean peaks stretched toward the sky, one more proud and bold than the other: Canigou, Carlitte, Soularac, and the majestic St. Bartholomew’s Peak—the Tabor, as the farmers call it. But is it a mountain of enlightenment, like the Palestinian Tabor? Its almost three-thousand-meter summit5 is almost always enveloped in clouds.
Over the course of thirty years, the pilgrims and soldiers of the crusade against the Albigenses, and later the Dominicans, united with the French who hurried to Montsegur. Behind its thick walls, as we know, the last free heretics and Occitan knights had found refuge. They managed to hold out until Palm Sunday of 1244. Then, shepherds who had taken Catholic money pointed out a stone ridge from which the besiegers could reach the summit without any fear. Sole access to the castle was on the western face of the mountain, which was less steep but, thanks to defensive works, was well protected. Yet here, too, danger threatened the besieged inhabitants of the citadel. The aggressors constructed a machine called a gatta, a siege tower, which, day after day, crawled a few feet closer to the summit to menace the castle walls.6 The betrayal of the shepherds caused the collapse of resistance inside the citadel. All who refused to recognize the supremacy of Yahweh, the authority of Peter’s keys, and Rome’s dogma were burned alive on Palm Sunday on a gigantic pyre erected at the foot of the mountain. Among the 205 victims were the castellan’s daughter, Esclarmonde de Belissena, a relative of Esclarmonde de Foix. The other prisoners, about 400 in total, were thrown in the dungeons of the fortress of Carcassonne, where the vast majority perished in misery.7
I decided to rest alongside a shepherd I encountered on the Pic du Soularac. He gave me some of his cheese to eat, and I let him drink red wine from my gourde (a sort of flask made from animal hide), which I carried in case I lost my way. Even if the sun glowed from a cloudless sky, a southern storm howled. The shepherd and I talked of Montsegur and the treasure of the Cathars.
My shepherd had wanted to know the truth—if the Grail had really been kept at Montsegur—so he began to tell me a story: When Montsegur’s walls were still standing, the pure ones kept the Holy Grail there. But the devil’s followers coveted the Grail for a reason: They wanted to restore it to their lord’s diadem, from which it had plunged to earth during the fall of the angels. The castle was threatened—Lucifer’s armies had camped beneath its ramparts. In this great emergency, a dove Hew down from the heavens and split open the mighty Tabor with its beak. At that moment, Esclarmonde, who was the keeper of the Grail, t hrew the precious relic into the mountain gorge, which then closed upon ii again. In this way, the Grail was saved. When the devils finally forced their way into the castle, they were too late. In a frenzy, they burned all i he pure ones not far from the castle mountain at the Camp des Cremats, I he Field of Fires. All were burned, except of course Esclarmonde. When .he realized the Grail was safe, she climbed to the top of the Tabor and became a dove; then she flew off to the mountains of Asia. In this way, Esclarmonde escaped death and still lives on in Paradise. That is the reason, said my shepherd, why her grave will never be found.8
When I asked him what he thought of the man with the divining rod and his description of Esclarmonde’s sarcophagus, he snarled, “Ce sont tons des fumistes!”—“They are all crazies!”
Together with the priest’s nephew and a few farmers, I sat at the fireplace in a low-ceilinged kitchen. In the next room, young fellows were playing cards loudly. It was dismal outside; the castle and the hamlet of Montsegur were enveloped in clouds. Even today, three days later, they have still not given way. It is autumn and bitter cold. Everyone knows ihat Montsegur was the castle of the Grail. The whole region of Foix
thinks so. The engineer scoffed when they spoke of it with him. That is why they didn’t mention it to me.
Because of my enthusiasm, our talk became bolder and I learned more: The engineer will never find his treasure. It lies in a cave in the Tabor forest. A massive stone block protects the cave’s entrance from intruders, and the treasure itself is guarded by hundreds of vipers inside. Whoever wishes to enter can do so only during Mass on Palm Sunday— on the Fete des Rameaux. That is the moment when it is possible to lift the stone slab, because the snakes are fast asleep. But God help the person who has not left the cave before the priest has sung Ite Missa Est! At the end of Mass the slab closes again, and the intruder suffers a terrible end as he is bitten to death by the newly awakened vipers.
One of the fellows in the circle said that his grandfather, who was a shepherd, had found, deep in the forest, just such a stone slab with an iron ring. It was so heavy, however, that it was impossible for him to lift it. So he hurried back to town for help, but then he couldn’t find the spot again. Strange country!
Winter has arrived; it has snowed for eight days straight. When I left my home in the north, I would never have dreamed that in order to get my meals, I would have to shovel my way to the small inn through a snowdrift. Were it not for the southern French farmhouses, I could easily forget that I am residing in France’s most southerly region, only a few hours from Spain—a region that we erroneously think is a garden filled with lemon and orange trees. Instead, there are colossal mountains that look like they belong in the Bavarian Alps, snow-covered elm trees, and pine forests—so “northern” is this south. Until now, I had never before seen the blue of the sky and the clarity of the sunlight. The nights are brutally cold, and the stars are so close that you could easily think that you might grab them with your hand.
I am shoveling one log after another into the fireplace, only to realize that though it is glowing hot near the fire, a few steps away, you can freeze to ice. If you sit in front of the fireplace, you are covered in gooseflesh and sweat at the same time. I, like the country folk, prefer to stay in the innkeeper’s kitchen, where an oven spreads the heat evenly. The kitchen has become the innkeeper’s dining room.
It is impossible to climb the castle mountain. I tried, but the snow
is far too deep. When I finally could get through, I discovered to my astonishment that the northern slope under the castle had become an unassailable wall of ice—but I could hardly get through against the storm that swirled around the mountain. Faced with this, I decided to have a few books sent from Germany: Parzival, the epic of narrative poetry by the German Minnesinger Wolfram von Eschenbach; the ode Her Wartburgkrieg; and French and German works on the Grail legend and the Minne. Wolfram’s poetry fills me with unbridled joy. Isn’t every man who seeks justice just like Parzival? Isn’t every mother who must commend her son to the demands of life just like Herzeloyde? Isn’t every lorthright man who seeks the beacon of truth drawn irresistibly to the land of the Grail?
I am not so attracted by the narrative of Der Wartburgkrieg, which was written anonymously.18 It does not have the resolution, timelessness, and profound strength of Wolfram’s work. Nevertheless, significant passages of the book illustrate perfectly those troubled times of the thirteenth century of the Christian era. The cry “Free from Rome!” found an echo here. Although it is bound by its time, the book earned its place in German literature.
The object of Parzival’s longing is the Gral (Grail), a stone of light. < Ampared to it, earthly brilliance is nothing. The Grail represents the ful-lillment of all worldly desires: in other words, Paradise. He who beholds ii will never die. Hercules, Alexander the Great, and other heroic figures of Greek antiquity knew of its existence. Moreover, a “pagan and astrologer”19 read its name among the starry lights, and announced its <oining to mankind. How the Gral fell from the star-filled heavens to earth Wolfram doesn’t say. But the stone remained: “[A] troop left it on earth, and then rose high above the stars, if their innocence drew them back again.” Since then, the Grail has been kept in a castle called Muntsalvatsche, guarded by Grail knights and a king who is attended by Grail maidens. Only their leader may carry the precious stone. A
'"|/)er Wartburgkrieg, or Sangerkriegauf der Wartburg, was composed around 1206 and ilr .< ribes a contest of Minnesingers at Wartburg Castle, which belonged to the landgrave id I huringia. Built in 1070, the castle is remembered as the place were Martin Luther hid iillcr the Diet of Worms and translated the Bible into German. —Trans.] 1'I I legetanis in Parzival. —Trans. |
young hero, Parzival, sets off in search of the Gral. Leaving his mother, Herzeloyde, he seeks knighthood; then, as a knight of King Arthur’s Round Table, Parzival continues to seek the highest earthly reward: the Grail. He finds it at the castle, and becomes the Grail King. When Parzival’s son Lohengrin comes of age, he becomes the Grail’s herald, traveling in a boat pulled by a swan to all people suffering injustice.
The publisher of my Parzival edition believes that Wolfram’s Gral Castle must lie in the Pyrenees.9 References to places such as Aragon and Katelangen (Catalonia)10 must have led him to this conclusion. So my Pyrenean farmers are not wrong after all when they call the ruins of Montsegur the castle of the Saint-Graal, and the snow that Parzival’s steed trots upon to the holy castle is very probably Pyrenean snow. Muntsalvatsche, which was the only name Wolfram gave the Grail Castle, means, as many accept, “wild mountain.” The French word sauvage, or “wild,” is based on the Latin silvaticus (from silva, or “forest”)—and there is no lack of forests around Montsegur. In the spoken dialect of the Pyrenees, “wild mountain” translates as mont salvatge, contradicting Wolfram. On his authority, Richard Wagner, the composer of Lohengrin and Parzifal called the Grail Castle by the name Montsalvat, which means “mountain of light.” Both Montsalvat and Muntsalvatsche can translate as mont segur, “secure mountain” or “peace mountain.” In this regard, Montsegur, that ruin with which I live, is present also in the much-sought-after Grail Castle.
Only in Wolfram’s epic can you find the name Muntsalvatsche. Other early medieval Grail poets, and there were many, selected different designations. In an Old French novel, the goal the Grail knights were striving for is the paradisal Eden—Eden, Chastiax de Joie, joy, togetherness, or chastiax des armes (“soul” or “togetherness”). Poetry is the final goal of the Olympians themselves. Therefore, the seekers of the Grail became Olympians, as the Greek gods and heroes were. In all the great literary works of the early Middle Ages, the mountain and castle of the Grail were regarded as sources of light and as a place of enlightenment. Perhaps this is the reason why the Pic du Saint Barthelemy, on
whose easternmost outpost stands the castle of Montsegur, carries the name Tabor, as the biblical mountain of the enlightenment is called.
A sharp, multicolored picture representing Jesus Christ on the Mount of Olives was hanging on the wall of my room until now. It depicted a winged angel, emerging halfway out from a cloud and holding out to i he faithful a monstrous cup. I have removed the picture and replaced it with a sheet of my best writing paper, upon which I wrote, as carefully and beautifully as I could, some verses of Wolfram von Eschenbach: “The authentic tale with the conclusion to the Romance has been sent to us in German lands from Provence: When Lucifer made his descent to hell with his following, humans developed. Consider what Lucifer and his comrades achieved! They were innocent and pure.”
I prefer to believe that Satan’s, not Lucifer’s, armies stood before the walls of Montsegur to steal the Grail, which had fallen from the Light Bringer, from Lucifer’s crown, and was kept by the pure ones. These were the Cathars, not those clerics and adventurers who, cross on chest, wanted to prepare the Languedoc for a new caste—their own.
I left the hamlet of Montsegur a few hours ago. A mule cart carried my luggage down into the valley. My workbench is located in the front garden of the small hotel beside a fig tree. In the large and famous weaving mills, the sirens howl. It is shift change. I am told that nearly half of all inhabitants of this small town are weavers, and the spinning wheel is domestic from primeval times. The Cathars were also called Tisserands—the Weavers . . .
I was again the guest of the eighty-year-old Monsieur Rives, as I prefer to call him. I found out some important details: Minnesingers and heresy belonged together even before the time of the Albigensian crusade. He confirmed that the Cathars constituted a gleyza d’amors, or a church of the Minne, and that the ritual in which a troubadour swore fidelity to his lady was called, in German, the Consolament-Trostung, the same name as the well-known ritual in which a heretical believer, or credens, was ordained a perfectus. In the same way, a singing and min-streling chevalier errant, or wandering knight, could aspire to become a chevalier parfait, or a perfect knight; either bitterly or gently, a pregaire could become a trobador, a finder.11 The level of chevalier errant was the same as that of a heretical believer, and a chevalier parfait was equal to a heretical perfectus. All these Latin designations were introduced by the Inquisitors, who took down the confessions of the heretics in that language. Regarding the Table Ronde, or Round Table, whose miracles were exalted in most of the literary works of the Middle Ages, it has the perfect form: a circle, the symbol of the community of the perfecti and the chevaliers errants.12 The Arthurian and Grail legends must be treated as the culmination of the exalted, poetical world of the Cathars.
When I asked him if he believes that Montsegur was the legendary Grail Castle and whether he takes seriously this assessment, Monsieur Rives gave me a frank answer: yes. In schools and universities, he con-
tinued, we learn that the troubadours were a sentimental, effusive group of unattached males who left the concerns of everyday life to their patrons and sponsors; they had no interest other than winning the favor of a lady, often a married woman, through songs, and courtoisie. That Rome consciously distorted the truth after the Albigensian crusade is tact. Anyone who reads the verses of the early Provencal Minnesingers must admit that a troubadour never called his lady by name—rather he sang the praises of the “blonde lady,” or the “lady with the beautiful lace,” or the “light of the world.” These idealized ladies were nothing other than the symbolic embodiment of the church of the Minne. I or example, when troubadours celebrated their “blonde lady from loulouse” or their “lady from Carcassonne,” it meant nothing other I han the Cathar community in Toulouse or Carcassonne. When, through
I lie threat of the stake, Rome’s Inquisitors finally imposed the cult of the Blessed Virgin Mary and, through force, the custom of the Rosary, the
II oubadours dutifully addressed their verses to Maria. Secretly, however,
i hey were referring to their church of the Minne. This is revealed quite • learly in the documents of the Inquisition: The domina, or “lady,” of ilu- Minnesingers was a “goddess” whose divine wisdom was praised in song. She was not a human being. It was initially the upper (north ill Rome) Italian Minnesingers known as Fedeli d’Amore (greatly influ-■ need by the Provencal Minnesingers) who, with fervent praise, pledged ilicir loyalty to the Madonna Intelligenzia: Lady Wisdom.
Upon examining the biographies of the troubadours, I note that Il .1 domina or madonna was married, her knightly husband is always mentioned—but never by his full name or with any indication of his
ii sidence or sphere of influence. This married man (which can be easily proved from contemporary sources) was generally recognized as the protector of the Cathar community within the sovereignty of his area. In I he sad story of Lady Adelaide (that is, our name Adelheid, “noble h il lire”), which was told to me during my last visit, the woman was pro-in ted by Lord Pena (his full name does not add anything to the story), who protected and promoted the Cathars in his Albigensian district. Adel,lide’s admirer, troubadour Raimund, composed his minne in her honor with the full knowledge and approval of Lord Pena. That means th.it she gave him the Consolamentum: On his knees, the troubadour
had to swear loyalty to her unto death, and she then gave him a ring or garment as indication of her acceptance of his Minne.
I aked my host why the German word Minne doesn’t appear in Provencal Catharism and the songs of the minstrels. I was mistaken, my host answered. The word for the ceremony of Consolamentum contains the word manisola in the language of the Albigensians. In the festival of the consoling Mani, the word mani has the same root as the German word Minne—the cognate Gothic word munni, which is what we call “memories.” The Minne was never absolute love! It meant a “memory of love.” In addition, in Sanskrit, the written language of ancient India, it has the same meaning and designates a legendary stone that allegedly illuminates the world and drives out the night of terror. It is perhaps a well-known fact that many seekers of this stone, who usually see it as a stone table that provides food and drink, regard it as the archetype of the image of the Gral, since the powers of the gral are many and include providing both food and drink. Finally, I asked my host whether Provencal minstreling was of Germanic inspiration. My question was answered: The manisola and Consolamentum were reflections of Germanic Minne, and because they were celebrated in May, they are related to the custom of the Germanic May dances. Since west Gothic times, the custom remained here in the Land of the Goths—the Languedoc.
Before I said good-bye to Monsieur Rives, he gave me a book that would expand on his points. He also pressed my hand heartily and said: “Don’t forget that the troubadours practiced a gai saber, ‘the joyous wisdom’ that should be cherished!” My head spun. If what I came to learn now applies, I must throw onto the garbage heap all my previous beliefs. I would have to unlearn and relearn, as it is said.
So it is!
Our word Minne does not mean “love,” but “remembrance” and “commemoration”! Because my ancestors were thinkers and romantics and poets, I myself want to be a poet of the Minne. I am seeking. I would like to be a trobador—a finder! My “knowledge,” which sometimes may seem hard or arbitrary, should be cheerful and should make mankind happy—but at the right moment; I don’t want to make it easy for those who will read this book.
I am a guest of Countess P., an elderly lady.24 Nobody knows the his-lory, legends, and customs of her homeland better than she. Her library is unusual in its uniformity and completeness. The countess frequently visited me at Montsegur. Now I am returning the visit.
Today, we spent the late afternooon at the Mediterranean coast. As we returned leisurely in the early evening, we passed by Mont d’Alaric, a melancholy and bleak mountain that owes its name to the Gothic king Alaric. On the right-of-way was a covered wagon in the shade of a tree, and before it stood a slim man with snow-white hair. Beside him, a young blonde woman sat on a stone. With bright eyes, the old person urgently looked at us. “That is a Cagot,” exclaimed my companion, “a nomadic < dgot. There is also a permanent population of them high up in the Pyrenees. If you ask the farmers about them, they usually reply that they are poorly regarded people. The name Cagot is probably a mixture of ( athares and Gots, or Cathars and Goths. We just saw a descendant of ilie last Albigensian.”25
In the evening, we sat before the fireplace. The countess knitted. I read from a book the fact that graves from the Albigensian era were lound in the area of the Montagne Noire.26 One of them was a mass r.i.ive. Twelve skeletons lay in such a way that they formed a kind of wheel: The heads were grouped together at the hub and the bodies formed the spokes. The author’s reckoning that this suggests sun admi-i .mon was probably correctly.27
Then we talked. My hostess was raised with the legend that identi-lns Montsegur as the Grail Castle. She is convinced that the Gral was kept at this castle and that her ancestors had been Gral knights who laid down their lives in defense of the Gral. Many of them fell in the siege of Montsegur; some were even burned. Finally, she offered this: “The great l .«larmonde was my bloodline. I am proud to see her in spirit on the platform of the keep of Montsegur, gazing into the stars. The heretics
'|< omtesse Miryanne Pujol-Murat. —Trans.]
| < agot or Canis Gothi were also called Chrestians. —Trans.]
"| Black Mountain.—Trans.]
|The book is Magiciens et illumines, by Maurice Magre (Paris: Fasquelle, 1930). —Trans.]
loved the stars. They believed that after death, a soul wandered from star to star until it approached the stages of divinization of the spirit. In the morning, the heretics prayed to the rising sun. In the evening, they turned devoutly about-face at its departure. At night, they turned to the silvery moon or the north, because the north was holy to them. They regarded the south as the dwelling place of Satan. Satan is not Lucifer, because Lucifer means “light bringer”! The Cathars had another name for him: Lucibel. He was not the devil. First the Jews and then the papists downgraded him to that. The Grail was a stone that fell from Lucifer’s crown. This made the Cathar church, as they themselves stressed it, a Luciferian-Christian one.
“If Montsegur was the mountain of the Grail Castle, then Esclarmonde was the lady of the Grail. After her death, the destruction of Montsegur and the extermination of the Cathars orphaned both the Grail Castle and the Grail. The Catholics who waged the crusade against the Albigenses, which was a war of the cross against the Grail, did not fail to acquire the non-Catholic symbol of faith for their own purposes. But it was not enough that they proclaimed the Grail to be the cup from which Jesus gave his disciples the last Communion and which caught his blood on Golgotha. They even declared the Benedictine cloister Montserrat, conveniently south of the Pyrenees, to be the temple of the Grail. After it became known that the Cathars, who were often called the Luciferians by inquisitors, had kept the Luciferian Grail stone north of the Pyrenees, Catholic monks claimed to keep it south of those same mountains—but they made it into a relic for the believers of Jesus who vanquished the princes of hell.”
We both fell silent. Then the countess continued: “I do not need to remind you that the Basque Ignatius of Loyola was the founder of the Society of Jesus. Did you know that he invented the Jesuit Spiritual Exercises, the organization of the Jesuit order and, if I do not err, the adoration of the bleeding heart of Jesus on Montserrat near Barcelona? You should follow up these connections.”
My hostess gave a few books to me as a gift. I am especially pleased with a German book, published seventy years earlier, with the title Caesarius von Heisterbach. The author calls it a contribution to the cultural history of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Perhaps I will place
Castle L. in the Toulouse Region 31 in my next book a sentence from St. John the Evangelist that appears at i he beginning: “Gather together the pieces (hunks, scraps, tidbits); on that nothing dies!”
My ancestors were heroes and my relatives were heretics. For their vindication, I am gathering the pieces that were left by Rome.
Thirty-five years before Montsegur’s fall, on August 15, 1209, the day that commemorates the Virgin Mary’s ascension to heaven, this city fell to the pilgrims of the Albigensian crusade—thanks to the intervention of the Blessed Virgin, as one chronicler noted.
A long siege had preceded the event, and terrible scenes had taken place; Carcassonne was confronted with the most dreadful of all deaths: Before its gates, “Christ’s soldiers” lay ready to ignite execution pyres, and within its mighty walls, the accumulation of people and their livestock seeking refuge had caused an outbreak of the plague, which ravaged Carcassonne’s beleaguered inhabitants, probably as a result of hunger, clouds of mosquitoes, and a lack of fresh water.
Two days before the fall, an envoy of Rome appeared at the eastern gate. He asked Viscount Raimund-Roger Trencavel, lord of Carcassonne, to begin peace negotiations within the crusader camp, swearing before God the almighty that free passage was assured the people within the town’s walls and would be respected. After a short discussion with his barons and consuls, Trencavel decided to accept this request. He hoped to save his city. Accompanied by a hundred knights, he went to the tent of the leader of the crusaders, the archabbot Arnauld de Citeaux. There he was taken by surprise, and captured with his companions. The archabbot allowed only a few knights to escape, so that they would bring the news of the capture of their prince to the city’s inhabitants.
The next morning, Arnauld expected Carcassonne to surrender. But the drawbridges were not lowered and the gates remained locked. The crusaders, suspecting a ruse, approached the walls distrustfully. They listened. No noise. Then they rammed open the east gate. The city was empty. Ghostlike, the footsteps of the intruders echoed in the deserted lanes. What had happened? The besieged had saved themselves by fleeing to the mountains through an underground tunnel. The crusaders found in cellars only five hundred old men, women, and children for whom escape would have been too arduous. Hundreds of them, who confessed to the Catholics out of fear of death, were stripped to their skin and then let loose, “clad only in their sins.” The others, however, were condemned to death at the stake because they refused to swear off
I lie heresy. As the crusaders celebrated a thankgiving service to God in (lie Church of Saint Nazaire, the screams of the burning heretics could he heard. Incense mixed itself with the smoke of the pyres. When the howls of the victims had faded away, the archabbot of Citeaux read the Mass of the Holy Spirit and recounted the birth of Jesus Christ. After l he northern French knight Simon of Montfort was selected as the new secular lord of the conquered country “under the obvious influence of i lie holy spirit” and “for the fame of God, the honor of the Church, and I he fall the heresy,” Montfort had Viscount Trencavel poisoned. In this way, the cross triumphed in Carcassonne. It was raised on the highest lower of the city as a sign of their triumph . . .
Beautiful and solemn Carcassonne! Nowhere in the Western world i diere anything comparable. The massive walls of your towers and parapets rise up defiantly, and they speak.
I stood today at the Tour de l’Inquisition—Inquisition Tower. Within its walls, the Albigensian drama was played out to its bitter end. I his is where the inquisitors imprisoned those defenders who had not been burned on the funeral pyre at Montsegur—four hundred in total. Among the prisoners was a knight who had once proclaimed in full view ol a cross that he never wanted to be saved by that symbol. Which holy symbol would he have preferred to the cross? The Grail?
I stood before the Tours des Visigots, the Visigoth Towers, and the lour du Tresor, Treasure Tower. Perhaps this Visigoth structure once housed the Gral. As old romances recount, it formed part of a famous
< mt hie treasure that had a strange destiny. The Goths stole it from the Homans, and it remained in their possession until the Visigoth king A 1.1 ric founded Carcassonne. Then the Ostrogoth king Theodoric, also named Dietrich von Bern, had it transported to Ravenna about a hundred years later.28 Part of the treasure, however, remained in
< nrcassonne.
Mysterious Grail!
It is night. Sultriness weighs on city and country. Over the Pyrenees lip,liming flashes, and there is low thunder. A thunderstorm seems to Im approaching. One star after the other is wiped away by the racing
'| I'heodoric the Great (AD 454-526), king of the Ostrogoths, appears in the Niebelun-pviMns Dietrich von Bern. 7hw.«.|
clouds. A scorching wind from the south floors me. I would like to work and am not able to do so. My explorations suddenly seem useless to me. Secretly, I scold myself as a foolish dreamer.
In three hours I travel farther—to Saint-Germain in Paris. I must note a few things, so that they are not lost.
First, Wolfram von Eschenbach named the Grail seeker and Grail king Parzival, a name that means “cut well.” (The old Provencal words trenca vel mean exactly the same.) In this way, Wolfram anointed Carcassonne’s viscount Raimund-Roger Trencavel as Parzival.
Second, Trencavel’s mother was named Adelaide. She was the model for Wolfram’s Herzeloyde. Before her marriage to Raimund-Roger’s father, she was courted by the king of Aragon, Alfonse le Chaste. This “chaste king” must have been the model for Wolfram’s deceased king Kastis, who was first engaged to Herzeloyde.
Third, Adelaide and her son were devoted to the Cathar heresy. They rejected the cross as a holy symbol. As Wolfram von Eschenbach notes several times, the Gral was the symbol of the heretical faith left on earth by pure ones. He meant the Cathars, because the Cathars are often called pure ones.
Fourth, Wolfram von Eschenbach calls Anfortas (the Grail King whose suffering is ended by Parzival) guotman and guoten one. The Cathars were honored by their followers and patrons with the name Good Men, or Bonshommes.
Fifth, Wolfram von Eschenbach asserts that the true legend of the Grail came to Germany from Provence, thus from southern France. The minstreling poet Kyot of Provence recounted the tale. Around the turn of the twelfth century, a troubadour named Guiot of Provins stayed at the Carcassonne court as a guest of the house of Trencavel. This wandering Minnesinger was none other than Wolfram’s Kyot. As was common at that time, to express his thanks to his hosts of the house of Trencavel, the Minnesinger composed a tale in which Adelaide and her son, Raimund-Roger Trencavel, appear as Herzeloyde and Parzival, respectively. Wolfram simply merged Guiot into his Kyot.
Sixth, Adelaide of Carcassonne and her son Trencavel were closely related to Esclarmonde de Foix, the mistress of Montsegur Castle, or the Grail Castle of Munsalvat! In Wolfram’s Parzival she appears as
Rcpanse de Schoye, the only person permitted to carry the Grail. She is also Parzival’s cousin.
Seventh, Wolfram von Eschenbach and troubadour Guiot of Provins may have met one another in Mainz, because both were there when I ivderick Barbarossa organized a chivalric celebration. Therefore, the ■ haracters of Parzival and Herzeloyde are not the creations of Kyot-Guiot, because the tales of the Grail and Parzival were uncommonly popular and beloved at that time. The legends are probably much older i han seven hundred years. I can say only that Kyot-Guiot made his hosts Into the characters Herzeloyde and Parzival.
Eighth, although Rome destroyed the writings of the Cathars, we possess in Wolfram’s Parzival a literary work that was certainly dictated by Cathars!
[Fernand Niel describes in Montsegur: la montagne sacree how these stone balls remain scattered about the castle of Montsegur. They were used not by the defenders, as Rahn says, but rather by the besiegers, who launched them on catapults to demolish the castle walls. —Trans.]
[All Saints Day. —Trans.]
[His name was Arthur Caussou. —Trans.]
"| Rahn is referring to the Polaires, a secret theosophical society based on the Hyperborean tradition, whose members included the writer Maurice Magre and the countess Miryanne Pujol-Murat. —Trans.]
“[Approximately ninety-eight hundred feet. —Ed.]
[Rahn has based his version of the siege quite clearly on Napoleon Peyrat’s monumental six-volume I’Histoire des Albigeois. But as historian Fernand Niel has pointed out in Montsegur: la montagne sacree (Paris: Editions La Colombe, 1954), Peyrat mistranslated the word machina into the so-called gatta, or siege towers, that were used in the assault on Jerusalem. In fact, the besiegers of Montsegur used catapults, which were known as trebuchets. These machines launched stone balls against the walls of the fortress. To this very day, nearly 750 years later, the vicinity of Montsegur is littered with these neatly chiseled stone balls. —Trans.]
“[Many served under Louis IX by converting to Catholicism. —Trans.]
1 | Perhaps this tale lies at the heart of Rahn’s fascination with the Grail, and the Cathars. In fact, the legend, as it is told by the shepherd, appears almost entirely in Wolfram von l.chenbach’s Parzival. —Trans.]
[Wolfram von Eschenbach, Parzival, trans. A. T. Hatto (New York: Penguin Classics, 1980). — Trans.]
[Cataluna in Spanish. —Ed.]
[Once a troubadour had chosen his “lady,” there were a series of “levels” that defined his relationship with her. The first grade was feignaire, which meant that the troubadour dared not approach his lady directly; a pregaire was a supplicant who received discreet encouragement from her; an entendaire had achieved an understanding with his lady and a drutz, a friend who had a right to a kiss. —Trans.]
[Curiously, here Rahn touches on the subject of the Grail and anti-Grail shapes. —Trans. |