Cathar country: Foix
[Relative nomadism, day 50]
[Lastours, France]
In the early Middle Ages, France was a much smaller country than now; the area that is France today was then a hotchpotch of kingdoms, duchies and counties, some with allegiance to the French crown, others with different loyalties. "Languedoc" was the generic name given to the southern half of the country, where they did not speak French at all, but a family of languages between French and Spanish known as "les langues d'oc", or Occitanian. Some areas in this "Occitania" were largely independent, others belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, others - including parts of "Cathar country" to the kingdom of Aragon. Above all, territories in this frontier region far from the power houses of Europe - Paris, London and Rome - changed hands frequently following alliances and power struggles, marriages and deaths, among the local rulers, the most important of whom were the Counts of Toulouse.
As in later centuries, religious dissent was not just a theological statement; it was a way by which local rulers and people could assert their differences and their cultural independence from the great European powers of the day, the Catholic church and the Kings of France.
Thus a large part of the Languedoc, people and nobles, adopted the Cathar heresy, and by so doing distanced themselves from the French and from Rome. By the early 13th century, Catharism had taken such a strong hold in the area, that in 1208 Pope Innocent III launched the notorious Albigensian Crusade - a crusade aimed not against the Infidels, but against the "heretical" Cathars. For twenty years, crusaders, led by the Barons of France including Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, sacked and pillaged the area, massacring Cathars or converting them by force to Catholicism. In the early 1220s, the Cathars' fortunes revived, prompting a second wave of Crusading this time led by King Louis VIII and later Louis IX. Finally, most of the area was subjugated, and in 1229, the Treaty of Meaux-Paris was signed, bringing almost the whole of Occitania into the realm of the French crown. Pockets of Cathar resistance held out for the next twenty-six years.
"Cathar country's" fortified hilltops, castles, villages and towns remain to this day as a stark reminder of the the area's turbulent history.
Cathar country: Foix
[Relative nomadism, day 50]
[Lastours, France]
In the early Middle Ages, France was a much smaller country than now; the area that is France today was then a hotchpotch of kingdoms, duchies and counties, some with allegiance to the French crown, others with different loyalties. "Languedoc" was the generic name given to the southern half of the country, where they did not speak French at all, but a family of languages between French and Spanish known as "les langues d'oc", or Occitanian. Some areas in this "Occitania" were largely independent, others belonged to the Holy Roman Empire, others - including parts of "Cathar country" to the kingdom of Aragon. Above all, territories in this frontier region far from the power houses of Europe - Paris, London and Rome - changed hands frequently following alliances and power struggles, marriages and deaths, among the local rulers, the most important of whom were the Counts of Toulouse.
As in later centuries, religious dissent was not just a theological statement; it was a way by which local rulers and people could assert their differences and their cultural independence from the great European powers of the day, the Catholic church and the Kings of France.
Thus a large part of the Languedoc, people and nobles, adopted the Cathar heresy, and by so doing distanced themselves from the French and from Rome. By the early 13th century, Catharism had taken such a strong hold in the area, that in 1208 Pope Innocent III launched the notorious Albigensian Crusade - a crusade aimed not against the Infidels, but against the "heretical" Cathars. For twenty years, crusaders, led by the Barons of France including Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, sacked and pillaged the area, massacring Cathars or converting them by force to Catholicism. In the early 1220s, the Cathars' fortunes revived, prompting a second wave of Crusading this time led by King Louis VIII and later Louis IX. Finally, most of the area was subjugated, and in 1229, the Treaty of Meaux-Paris was signed, bringing almost the whole of Occitania into the realm of the French crown. Pockets of Cathar resistance held out for the next twenty-six years.
"Cathar country's" fortified hilltops, castles, villages and towns remain to this day as a stark reminder of the the area's turbulent history.