Posts Tagged ‘Raymonde Piquier’

Exploring a Cathar stronghold with a Bengali friend (Photo: My Droid)

“It is rating one’s conjectures at a very high price to roast a man alive on the strength of them,” wrote Michel de Montaigne, and the 16th Frenchman from Dordogne, in the foothills of the Pyrénées, knew what he was talking about.

This is “Pays Cathare,” as mentioned a few days ago, which is a source of local pride and defiance.

No fool.

So my Bengali friend took me to Villerouge Termenes, a castle and military stronghold that dates back to the 13th century, about a dozen kilometers or so from Lagrasse.  The castle has a grisly backstory:  Guillaume Bélibaste, said to be the last Cathar “parfait” in Languedoc, was burned at the stake here, in 1321. That terrifying death would have been the last gasp of Catharism in the Aude region; by the turn of the 14th century, the Church had successfully suppressed the quasi-gnostic heresy with hundreds of burnings and hangings.  A revival of the movement was largely beaten back by about 1310.

“He was the last in a long line of those fervent believers, of those Cathars, who now go by the name of the Perfect ones,” says the rather tendentious sign outside the castle.  “Yes, Bélibaste was the last Perfect Cathar, and he wasn’t cut out for this overwhelming role.  A peasant, that’s what he was…” says the sign (ellipsis and all).

The ellipses continue in another sign: “…A peasant who tended the family’s flocks, a family of heretics, that’s to say people who mistrusted everything at the end of the 13th century. The Catholic church reigned. The Inquisition burned anything suspect. The last heretics were hounded beasts. Which is undoubtedly why Guilhem, around 1305, ended up killing a man…”

Huh?  A quick recourse to Wikipedia:  Bélibaste was the son of a rich farmer. For reasons apparently unknown, he killed a shepherd and was forced to flee his native Cubières.  He then became a shepherd himself, and then a Cathar preacher and parfait.  More signs:

“A Perfect one, Philippe d’Alairac, visited the Bélibaste family in secret of course … and said to Guilhem, ‘You can escape and drag a useful life behind with you, or you can follow me, and come to Rabastens.’ And Bélibaste chose, he left with Philippe, and there in his home, Philippe d’Alairac talked to Guilhem the shepherd.  He initiated him, he made him a perfect one.”

“Fermé.” Castles in these parts don’t keep to regular hours. (Photo: My Droid)

The Cathars were non-violent, and perhaps among the West’s first vegetarian and pacifist movements.  In the usual gnostic fashion, they were, on the whole, somewhat against sex, believing that the world of the flesh was intrinsically evil and stemmed from an evil demi-urge. Undoubtedly, if this were better known, it would put off a lot of those modernday romantics who get misty-eyed about gnosticism.

The Cathars were also against marriage vows, which put them in something of a bind.  So what little is known about Bélibaste concerns a rather tangled and deceitful incident, involving Pierre Maury. His own backstory from Wikipedia:

In Catalonia he came in contact with the small group of Cathar exiles led by the parfait Guillaume Bélibaste. Over the next several years Maury traveled through Catalonia and the eastern Pyrénées. As a skilled shepherd, his services were in demand and he could find work throughout the region. Maury became comparatively wealthy for a peasant due to his skill, hard work, and ability to find the best paying employers. Despite his many travels he frequently met up with Bélibaste, who pressured the nomadic shepherd to settle down. At one point, Belibaste prevailed on him to marry Raymonde Piquier, a blacksmith’s daughter, who was Belibaste’s lover and pregnant with his child. Pierre agreed and the pair were married. But the marriage lasted only a few days. Bélibaste then told Maury to have it annulled. Months later Raymonde gave birth to a child. Most of Maury’s friends were convinced that the parfait had used Pierre to cover the breaking of his own vow of chastity. Maury however, continued to trust the parfait.

As the signs at the castle tell us, spies were everywhere.  Eventually Bélibaste was betrayed by the spy Arnaud Sicre, an agent of the Inquisition.  Maury was imprisoned in 1324, and then disappears from history.  I wonder what became of the blacksmith’s daughter, and her baby.