Montségur is a commune in the
AriègeAriège is a department in southwestern France named after the Ariège River.- History :Ariège is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from the counties of Foix and Couserans....
department in south-western
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
.
It is famous for its
fortFortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defense in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
and was one of the last strongholds of the
CatharCatharism was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and...
s. The present fortress on the site, though described as one of the "
Cathar castlesCathar castles is a modern term used by the tourism industry to designate a series of fortresses built by the French king on the southern border of his lands at the end of the Albigensian Crusade...
," is actually of a later period. It has been listed as a
monument historiqueMonument historique is a State procedure in France by which heritage protection is extended to a building or a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings or an entire neighborhood, or gardens, bridges, and other structures, because of their architectural and historical importance...
by the French Ministry of Culture since 1862.
The ruins of Montségur are perched at a precarious 3000-foot (1207 m) altitude in the south of France near the
PyreneesThe Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain...
Mountains.
Montségur is a commune in the
AriègeAriège is a department in southwestern France named after the Ariège River.- History :Ariège is one of the original 83 departments created during the French Revolution on March 4, 1790. It was created from the counties of Foix and Couserans....
department in south-western
FranceFrance , officially the French Republic , is a country located in Western Europe, with several overseas islands and territories located on other continents. Metropolitan France extends from the Mediterranean Sea to the English Channel and the North Sea, and from the Rhine to the Atlantic Ocean...
.
It is famous for its
fortFortifications are military constructions and buildings designed for defense in warfare and military bases. Humans have constructed defensive works for many thousands of years, in a variety of increasingly complex designs...
and was one of the last strongholds of the
CatharCatharism was a name given to a Christian religious sect with dualistic and gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France and other parts of Europe in the 11th century and flourished in the 12th and 13th centuries. Catharism had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and...
s. The present fortress on the site, though described as one of the "
Cathar castlesCathar castles is a modern term used by the tourism industry to designate a series of fortresses built by the French king on the southern border of his lands at the end of the Albigensian Crusade...
," is actually of a later period. It has been listed as a
monument historiqueMonument historique is a State procedure in France by which heritage protection is extended to a building or a specific part of a building, a collection of buildings or an entire neighborhood, or gardens, bridges, and other structures, because of their architectural and historical importance...
by the French Ministry of Culture since 1862.
Geography
The ruins of Montségur are perched at a precarious 3000-foot (1207 m) altitude in the south of France near the
PyreneesThe Pyrenees are a range of mountains in southwest Europe that form a natural border between France and Spain...
Mountains. Located in the heart of France's
LanguedocLanguedoc is a former province of France, now continued in the modern-day régions of Languedoc-Roussillon and Midi-Pyrénées in the south of France, and whose capital city was Toulouse, now in Midi-Pyrénées. It had an area of approximately 42,700 km² Languedoc is a former...
-
Midi-PyrénéesMidi-Pyrénées is the largest region of metropolitan France by area, larger than the Netherlands or Denmark.Midi-Pyrénées has no historical or geographical unity...
regions, southwest of
CarcassonneCarcassonne is a fortified French town in the Aude département, of which it is the prefecture, in the former province of Languedoc.It is separated into the fortified Cité de Carcassonne and the more expansive lower city, the ville basse...
, Montségur dominates a rock formation known as a
pog — a term derived from the local Occitan dialect —
pueg, or
puog, meaning "peak," "hill," "mountain."
History
The earliest signs of human settlement in the area date back to the stone age, around 80,000 years ago. Evidence of Roman occupation such as
Roman currencyThe Roman currency during most of the Roman Republic and the western half of the Roman Empire consisted of coins including the aureus , the denarius , the sestertius , the dupondius , and the as...
and tools have also been found in and around the site. In the
Middle AgesThe Middle Ages of European history is a period of European history covering roughly a millennium in the 5th century through 16th centuries. More specific starting and ending points are sometimes adopted by scholars to suit their respective specializations or current focus...
the Montsegur region was ruled by the
Counts of ToulouseThe first comites of Toulouse were the administrators of the city and its environs under the Merovingians. No succession of such royal appointees is known, though a few names survive to the present...
, the Viscounts of Carcassone and finally the
Counts of FoixThe counts of Foix ruled the independent County of Foix, in what is now southern France, during the Middle Ages. Later they extended their power to almost the entire Pyrenees mountain range, moving their court to Pau, in Béarn, until eventually the last count of Foix acceded to the French throne as...
. In 1243–44, the Cathars (a religious sect considered heretical by the Catholic Church) were besieged at Montségur by 10,000 French troops at the end of the
Albigensian CrusadeThe Albigensian Crusade or Cathar Crusade was a 20-year military campaign initiated by the Catholic Church to eliminate the Cathar heresy in Languedoc...
. In March 1244, the Cathars finally surrendered and approximately 220 were burned en masse in a bonfire at the foot of the pog when they refused to renounce their faith. Some 25 actually took the ultimate Cathar vow of
consolamentum perfecti in the two weeks before the final surrender.
In the days prior to the fall of the fortress, several Cathars allegedly slipped through the French lines carrying away a mysterious "treasure" with them. While the nature and fate of this treasure has never been identified, there has been much speculation as to what it might have consisted of — from the treasury of the Cathar Church to esoteric books or even the actual
Holy GrailAccording to Christian mythology, the Holy Grail was the dish, plate, or cup used by Jesus at the Last Supper, said to possess miraculous powers...
.
Montségur is often named as a candidate for the Holy Grail castle — and indeed there are linguistic similarities in the Grail romance
ParzivalParzival is a major medieval German epic poem attributed to the poet Wolfram von Eschenbach, written in the Middle High German language. The poem is commonly dated circa the first quarter of the 13th century...
(circa 1200–1210) written by
Wolfram von EschenbachWolfram von Eschenbach was a German knight and poet, regarded as one of the greatest epic poets of his time. As a Minnesinger, he also wrote lyric poetry.-Life:...
. In
Parzival, the grail castle is called Monsalvat, similar to Montségur and with the same meaning: "safe mountain, secure mountain." The name of Raymond de Péreille, the actual historic seigneur of Montségur, has a slight similarity to the protagonist of Eschenbach's epic, the knight Parzival. In
Jüngerer Titurel (1272) by Albrecht von Scharfenberg, another Grail epic, the first king of the Holy Grail is named Perilla.
Myths and legends apart, the history of Montségur actually is both dramatic and mysterious. The siege was an epic event of heroism and zealotry: a veritable Masada of the Cathar faith whose demise is symbolized by the fall of the mountain-top fortress (although isolated Cathar cells persisted into the 1320s in southern France and northern Italy).
The present fortress ruin at Montségur is not from the Cathar era. The original Cathar fortress of Montségur was entirely pulled down by the victorious royal French forces after its capture in 1244. It was gradually rebuilt and upgraded over the next three centuries by royal forces. The current ruin so dramatically occupying the site, and featured in illustrations, is referred to by French archeologists as "Montsegur III" and is typical of post-medieval royal French defensive architecture of the 1600s. It is not "Montsegur II," the structure in which the Cathars lived and were besieged and of which no trace remains today.
This is a discrepancy that the French tourist authority underplays and one that Cathar enthusiasts often overlook, especially when discussing Montségur's alleged solar alignment characteristics said to be visible on the morning of the summer solstice. This often mentioned solar phenomenon, allegedly occurring in an alignment of two windows in the fortress wall, has not been scientifically surveyed, measured, recorded, or confirmed.
The Groupe de Récherches Archéologiques de Montségur et Environs (GRAME) (Archeological Research Group of Montsegur and Vicinity), which conducted a definitive 13-year archeological excavation of Montségur in 1964–76, concluded in its final report that:
- "There remains no trace within the current ruin of the first fortress which was abandoned before the 13th century (Montsegur I), nor of the one which was built by Raymond de Péreille around 1210 (Montsegur II)..." (Il ne reste aucune trace dans les ruines actuelles ni du premier château qui était à l'abandon au début du XIIIe siècle (Montségur I), ni de celui que construisit Raimon de Pereilles vers 1210 (Montségur II)...)
The small ruins of the terraced dwellings, immediately outside the perimeter of the current fortress walls on the north-eastern flank are, however, confirmed to be traces of authentic former Cathar habitations.
The Nazis at Montségur?
The Nazis learned of the myths surrounding Montségur from a man named
Otto RahnOtto Wilhelm Rahn was a German medievalist and a Obersturmführer of the SS, born in Michelstadt, Germany....
in 1929, one year after the probable formation of the
AhnenerbeThe Ahnenerbe was a Nazi German think tank that promoted itself as a "study society for Intellectual Ancient History." Founded on July 1, 1935 by Heinrich Himmler, Herman Wirth, and Richard Walther Darré, the Ahnenerbe's goal was to research the anthropological and cultural history of the Aryan...
, an institution for research into German racial and cultural ancestry. Rahn wrote two bestseller Grail novels linking Montségur and Cathars with the Holy Grail:
Kreuzzug gegen den Gral ("Crusade Against the Grail") in 1933 and
Luzifers Hofgesind ("Lucifer's Court") in 1937. Rahn joined the SS "Totenkopf" unit as a junior NCO in 1936, the same year that
Heinrich HimmlerHeinrich Luitpold Himmler , one of the most powerful men in Nazi Germany, served as Chief of the German Police and Minister of the Interior...
took overall control of the Ahnenerbe, proclaiming himself chairman of the Kuratorium. Rahn was then seconded on detached duty to the South of France in search of the Grail. Himmler's wish was to try and rediscover and reinvigorate Germanic culture. On 13 March 1939 as reported in the National Socialist newspaper
Völkischer Beobachter — three days before the anniversary of the fall of Montségur — Otto Rahn mysteriously froze to death on a Tyrolean mountain top. His death is believed to be likely a suicide. Some sources claim that the very secretive Ahnenerbe SS, as it was renamed, was part of the Third Reich's plan to win the war by discovering a superweapon such as the Grail, but there is no evidence that the Ahnenerbe was involved in anything other than "racial hereditary research."
Local sources reported that on the 700th anniversary of the fall of Montségur, 16 March 1944, German aircraft overflew Montségur in strange formations, either Celtic crosses or swastikas, depending on the source of the reports. Some claim that
Alfred Rosenberg' was an early and intellectually influential member of the Nazi Party. Rosenberg was first introduced to Adolf Hitler by Dietrich Eckart; he later held several important posts in the Nazi government...
, Nazi Germany's ideologue and author of
The Myth of the Twentieth CenturyThe Myth of the Twentieth Century is a book by Alfred Rosenberg, one of the principal ideologues of the Nazi party and editor of the Nazi paper Völkischer Beobachter. It was the most influential Nazi text after Hitler's Mein Kampf. The titular "myth" is the myth of blood, which under the sign of...
, was aboard one of the aircraft. It is alleged that the purpose of the aerial demonstration was to mark the fulfilment of the prophecy of a 13th century troubadour that at the end of 700 years following the demise of the Cathars, "the laurel will be green once more".
Miscellaneous
- Iron Maiden
Iron Maiden are an English heavy metal band from Leyton in East London, formed in 1975. The band are directed by founder, bassist and songwriter Steve Harris...
published a song titled Montségur about the Catholics' stakes of Cathars, on their 2003 album Dance of DeathDance of Death is Iron Maiden's 13th studio album, released first in Japan on September 2 and rest of the world on September 8, 2003.This album marks the first participation in songwriting by Nicko McBrain, who co-wrote the song "New Frontier" and also is the first time that all members of the...
.
- German thrash metal band Paradox's album Heresy deals with the persecution of the Cathars.
- The Era
Era is a New Age music project by French composer Eric Lévi. Era mixes Gregorian chants with contemporary electronic arrangements and is reminiscent of the Enigma and Deep Forest music projects. The band has sold more than 10 million albums. Their songs are composed in Latin or in an invented...
albums allude to the history of the Cathars, and the first album mentions Montségur on its cover.
- In Peter Berling
Peter Berling is a German actor and writer. He has worked on several occasions with director Werner Herzog, in his collaborations with actor Klaus Kinski....
's pentalogy The Children of the Grail and in Julia Navarro's La sangre de los innocentes, the siege of Montségur is described.
- In Dan McNeil's novel The Judas Apocalypse, set just after the landings at Normandy during the Second World War
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global military conflict which involved a majority of the world's nations, including all great powers, organized into two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, a German archaeologist and a group of American soldiers go looking for the Cathar treasure that was removed from Montségur.
See also
External links