The Last Cathar


Book Description

“I have a story to tell so you must listen very carefully with your ears to hear, your soul to remember, your faith to inspire and your heart to judge, for I will never repeat these words again.” - India Serras, 1290. 13th Century France, a time of intolerance and bloodshed as the inquisition ruthlessly hunts down heretics. Renier de Beynac the Papal Inquisitor will not stop until their villages are burned and the streets run scarlet with their blood. India Serras, the last surviving Cathar knows this better than most, for she protects a treasure so precious the Vatican would kill to destroy it. Renier is well aware of the legend of the treasure of Montségur and will stop at nothing to find India, steal the treasure and use this ultimate power for his own dangerous secrets. For the second time in her life, fate intervenes. Jourdain LeTardif a poor merchant wounded in the dark streets of Carcassonne, collapses at India’s doorstep. Against all odds, she realizes who he is, the untold circumstances of his birth and the events that will ultimately change both their lives. India will face her greatest challenge and Jourdain will forever bind his fate to a stranger’s and in doing so will discover his own true purpose. A page-turning novel about one of the most intriguing periods of history, characters come alive in a tale of love, evil, heresy and destiny against the fascinating historical backdrop of the turbulent 13th Century.




The Last Cathar


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The Yellow Cross


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This work aims to reconstruct one of the most vividly documented fragments of medieval life concerning the late Cathar community in south-west France. Following the inquisition of the 1240s in which 10,000 Cathars were burned at the stake, it seemed this early heretical movement had been fully quashed. Fifty years later however, a revival was started, centred around the small town of Montaillou and led by the charismatic Authies brothers. It would be another 30 years before Rome finally stamped out the movement.




The Cathars


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The Cathars are one of the most famous heretical movements of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries. They infiltrated the highest ranks of society and posed a major threat not only to the Catholic Church but also to secular authorities as well. The movement was finally smashed by the crusade and the inquisitional proceedings that followed. This new study is the first comprehensive history of the Cathars. It addresses major topics in medieval history including heresy, orthodoxy and the Crusades as well as providing a history of the social and political history of Languedoc and the rise of the Capetian dynasty. A fascinating study of the development of radical religious belief and its violent suppression.




Cathars


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Catharism was the most successful heresy of the Middle Ages. Flourishing principally in the Languedoc and Italy, the Cathars taught that the world is evil and must be transcended through a simple life of prayer, work, fasting, and non-violence. They believed themselves to be the heirs of the true heritage of Christianity going back to apostolic times, and completely rejected the Catholic Church and all its trappings, regarding it as the Church of Satan. Cathar services and ceremonies, by contrast, were held in fields, barns, and in people's homes. Finding support from the nobility in the fractious political situation in southern France, the Cathars also found widespread popularity among peasants and artisans. And, unlike the Church, the Cathars respected women; they played a major role in the movement. Alarmed at the success of Catharism, the Church founded the Inquisition and launched the Albigensian Crusade to exterminate the heresy. While previous Crusades had been directed against Muslims in the Middle East, the Albigensian Crusade was the first Crusade to be directed against fellow Christians, and was also the first European genocide. With the fall of the Cathar fortress of Montségur in 1244, Catharism was largely obliterated, although the faith survived into the early fourteenth century. Today, the mystique surrounding the Cathars is as strong as ever, and Sean Martin recounts their story and the myths associated with them in this lively and gripping book.




The Cathar Prophecy


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The Friar of Carcassonne


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In 1300, the French region of Languedoc had been cowed under the authority of both Rome and France since Pope Innocent III 's Albigensian Crusade nearly a century earlier. That crusade almost wiped out the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians whose beliefs threatened the authority of the Catholic Church. But decades of harrowing repression-enforced by the ruthless Pope Boniface VIII , the Machiavellian French King Philip the Fair of France, and the pitiless grand inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui (the villain in The Name of the Rose)-had bred resentment. In the city of Carcassonne, anger at the abuses of the Inquisition reached a boiling point and a great orator and fearless rebel emerged to unite the resistance among Cathar and Catholic alike. The people rose up, led by the charismatic Franciscan friar Bernard Délicieux and for a time reclaimed control of their lives and communities. Having written the acclaimed chronicle of the Cathars The Perfect Heresy , Stephen O'Shea returns to the medieval world to chronicle a rare and remarkable story of personal courage and principle standing up to power, amidst the last vestiges of the endlessly fascinating Cathar world. Praise for The Perfect Heresy : "At once a cautionary tale about the corruption of temporal power...and an accounting of the power of faith ...It is also just a darn good read."-Baltimore Sun "An accessible, readable history with lessons ...that were not learned by broad humanity until it saw 20th-century tyrants applying the goals and methods of the Inquisition on a universal scale."-New York Times




Cathars in Question


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The question of the reality of Cathars and other heresies is debated in this provocative collection.




Crusade Against the Grail


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The first English translation of the book that reveals the Cathar stronghold at Montségur to be the repository of the Holy Grail • Presents the history of the Papal persecution of the Cathars that lies hidden in the medieval epic Parzival and in the poetry of the troubadours • Provides new insights into the life and death of this gifted and controversial author Crusade Against the Grail is the daring book that popularized the legend of the Cathars and the Holy Grail. The first edition appeared in Germany in 1933 and drew upon Rahn’s account of his explorations of the Pyrenean caves where the heretical Cathar sect sought refuge during the 13th century. Over the years the book has been translated into many languages and exerted a large influence on such authors as Trevor Ravenscroft and Jean-Michel Angebert, but it has never appeared in English until now. Much as German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann used Homer’s Iliad to locate ancient Troy, Rahn believed that Wolfram von Eschenbach’s medieval epic Parzival held the keys to the mysteries of the Cathars and the secret location of the Holy Grail. Rahn saw Parzival not as a work of fiction, but as a historical account of the Cathars and the Knights Templar and their guardianship of the Grail, a “stone from the stars.” The Crusade that the Vatican led against the Cathars became a war pitting Roma (Rome) against Amor (love), in which the Church triumphed with flame and sword over the pure faith of the Cathars.




The Treasure of Montsegur


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