Historically, Western Christians have always abandoned their faith en masse whenever they have been put under pressure to do so. From early Christians during the reign of Diocletian to priests during the French Revolution, believers have preferred to abandon their faith rather than loose their lives. Throughout the Middles Ages the masses were fed fanciful tales of heroic martyrdom, but no amount of propaganda could conceal the fact that even Christian armies (including priests) would generally recant under pressure. Anyone who had already been on crusade to the Holy Land would have firsthand knowledge of colleagues who had converted to Islam when captured and pressed by their Moslem captors.
Western Christendom was therefore surprised to find that Cathar Parfaits consistently opted to be burned alive rather than renounce their faith when faced with greater pressure than Catholics faced at Moslem hands. The pattern was established early one. When some of the "new heretics" were burned alive in Cologne a full century before the siege of Montsegur, the way they met their deaths immediately made an impression. Eberwin, a prior at the Premonstratensian Abbey of Steinfeld, wrote to Bernard, Abbot of Clairvaux (St Bernard)*. He reported that the heretics were "... thrown into the fire and burned. What is more marvellous, they met and bore the agony of the fire not only with patience but even with joy. At this point, Holy Father, were I with you, I should like you to explain whence comes to those limbs of the devil constancy such as is hardly to be found even in men most devoted to the faith of Christ." By the siege of the Château of Montsegur ( |
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The rendition of the Montsegur offered what must have looked like one final opportunity to win mass Parfait converts. When the terms of surrender were negotiated, the Church was willing to offer life and freedom not only to all members of the garrison, but also to any Cathar prepared to abandon his or her faith. Surely one of the two hundred Parfaits trapped at Montsegur would weaken. In the event this did not happen. As elsewhere, not a single one renounced their faith. More astonishing yet, around twenty five people in the Castle, including members of the garrison, chose to take the Consolamentum between the formal surrender and the final rendition, so becoming Parfaits, forfeiting their freedom and ensuring themselves a most appalling death. Some 225 Parfaits were burned alive. After all this warfare, torture and bloodshed, the Roman Church had not only failed to win Parfait converts but had done exactly the opposite. Catholic churchmen contented themselves with the pious conviction that the Cathar heretics had passed directly from the fires of this world to the eternal fires of hell. |
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Click on the following link for the names of some of those
who died at Montsegur 
* The quotation is from Sancti Bernardi epistolae, letter 472 (Everwini Steinfeldensis praepositi ad S. Bernardum) cited by Walter L Wakefield & Austin P Evans Heresies of the High Middle Ages, (Columbia, 1991) p. 129.
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