The de Montfort Histories - The Dove and the Devil

The de Montfort
Histories:

The Dove and the Devil

GRADYN

BELL

About the Author

I now call England my home,
once again, after having travelled extensively and lived in England, France,
Canada and the USA.

From a young age, I’d wanted
to write and tell stories.
 
Years
of studying history, French and English, and reading - a great deal - give me
the perfect background for writing my historical stories.
 
I love to tell a tale and bring the
past to life in what I hope you will find is a vivid and compelling
manner.
  

I visit (and often live!) in
the places of that I write about.
 
The De Montfort Histories
begin with “
The Dove and the Devil
” where I was
inspired by the tragic tale of the Occitanian people in 12
^th
and 13
^th
century France.
 
Will goodness and
love conquer evil?

The Goodmount Chronicles
are centered in England and begin with “
The Lady of Lyngford
” and the sufferings
befalling the population during the time of The Great Pestilence (later known
as the Black Death).
 
How will life
be lived and love be found throughout this tumultuous time in history?

I would love to hear from you
– please email me at: [email protected]

All the best!

Gradyn

Contents

Setting the Scene: An Historical Note

List of Characters

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Chapter Seventeen

Chapter Eighteen

Chapter Nineteen

Chapter Twenty

Chapter Twenty One

Chapter Twenty Two

Chapter Twenty Three

Excerpt from
The
de Montfort Histories: The Dove In Flight
– Book Two of The de
Montfort Histories.

Setting the Scene: Historical Note

Most people, in England especially, but also around
the world have heard of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester. Indeed there are
institutions and even a university named after him in England. The Simon they
have heard of is counted a national hero because of his work to bring
parliamentary rule to the people of England. He called his first Parliament in
1264. He was killed in 1265 at the battle of Evesham by Henry the Third’s son
who would later become Edward the First. The first book in the
de Montfort Histories
concerns itself
not with this Simon but with his father, also called Simon, and his younger
brothers, Amaury and Guy.

The de Montforts came from a fairly small estate in
Northern France. They were connected to the Earl of Leicester through Amicia de
Beaumont, who was Simon senior’s mother and the grandmother of the English
hero, Simon. At the time of the opening of
The
Dove and the Devil
, Simon senior had pledged himself to go on a Crusade to
rescue Jerusalem from the so-called Infidels.

As things turned out, the Crusade became a political
football rather than a religious experience for the Crusaders who had set off
for Venice where they intended to take ship for the Holy Land. Because they
could not pay for the ships they had requisitioned, it was suggested they
attack the nearby city of Zara where they would be able to refill their coffers
and pay their debts. Simon was horrified at this suggestion and he declined to
take part in an attack on a largely Christian city.

Following this the Pope called another Crusade in 1208
against a group of people who lived mainly in the South of France. These people
wished nothing more than to live in peace with their neighbours and worship in
freedom. They called themselves Christian but the Church in Rome called them
heretics.
 
It was the first time
ever that a Crusade has been called against a Christian people – although
it was not the first time a Christian city had been attacked by the Soldiers of
Christ, the Crusaders.

The Pope was convinced that the heretical peoples of
the southern part of France were poisoning the Church and weakening its
considerable power.
 
His very real
fear that the Church’s authority was being undermined drove him to allow his
flock - archbishops, bishops and priests - to pursue a course of human
extermination, which might very well be called the first documented genocide in
history.

These people, the Cathars (from the Greek, meaning
“pure ones”), were a group who could never agree with the doctrinal teachings
of the Church and whose beliefs predated those of the Church of Rome.
 
Their religion was pure and had not
become adulterated by powerful, money-seeking clerics.
 
The Cathars refused the sacraments of
the Roman Church; they gave women a place in society equal to men; they
insisted that to know God was to speak with Him personally through prayer, and
not through a priest.

The elders of the Cathar Church were great speakers
who refused to take shelter behind vague religious principles; they sought to
offer an explanation for our existence in clear and certain terms.
 
There were no mysteries in the Cathar’s
doctrine.
 
Everyone could have
access to the Almighty - the only requirement was to live as perfect a life as
possible.
 

It is true that the Crusade was patently about more
than religion.
 
The row was
political in the extreme, and the King of France had much to gain when the
independent area of France, now known as Languedoc, fell into his
clutches.
 
The Count of Toulouse -
premier baron of the area, and himself a cultured and learned man – was
one of the greatest princes of the western world.
 
Tolerant of the Cathars who lived in his domains, and indeed
tolerant of Muslims and Jews, he owed allegiance to kings and emperors alike,
but because his lands were viewed by the Church as a hotbed of heresy, they
were ripe for attack.

Simon senior, because he was remembered by the Pope as
the man of honour who would not attack the Christian city of Zara, was called
to lead the army and put down the heresy. The religious war became a war of
occupation, and by 1244, with the fall of the castrum of Montsegur, the heresy,
as well as most of the heretics, was all but dead.
 
The whole area, once rich, vibrant and above all tolerant,
became French.
 
The language of the
southern peoples, the
Langue d’Oc
-
language of poetry and songs of the troubadours – slowly but surely
became consumed by the language of the northern conquerors, the
Langue d’Oil
, the ancestor of modern-day
French.

Most of the characters in
The Dove and the Devil
were real.
 
I have ascribed to them feelings and thoughts which are
imaginary, though their actions are for the most part fact as we know it.
 
What was reported in the writings at
the time was largely biased in Simon de Montfort’s favour.
 
The destruction wrought by this man and
his armies in the name of the Church still rankles amongst some of the
population of present day Languedoc, the old Occitania.
 
I have heard people, to this day, refer
to him as the “The Devil” and he has entered into the folklore of the area as
the bogeyman with whom parents threaten their naughty children.

The Cathar characters, except for one or two, are
fictional.
 
Esclarmonde was real
and so was Dame Girauda.
 
Guilhebert de Castres was a famous Cathar bishop who did indeed
administer the consolamentum to Esclarmonde.

Depending on where the reader looks, Simon de Montfort
is portrayed as both an angel and a devil.
 
In truth he was only a man, a loving family man, who was
driven to excess by his religious ideals.
 
That these excesses caused so much suffering and the near extermination
of a people, is the price that has to be paid when moderation flies out the
window and we are blind to anyone else’s point of view.
 

As to the Shroud of Turin, there are many theories
regarding the origin and provenance of this piece of linen.
 
It is an historical fact that the
material with the so-called imprint of the body of Jesus Christ disappeared
from view in 1204 for a period of about 150 years.
 
It reappeared in France about 1357 in the hands of one
Geoffrey de Charny.
 
It has been
said that he was the nephew of
the
Geoffrey de Charny, Templar Master of Normandy, who had been burned at the
stake in 1314.

At the time of the main suppression of the Cathar
heresy (1208-1244), many Cathar noblemen joined the Templars and much of their
property was ceded to these bellicose religious knights.
 
Although the Templars pretended to
remain neutral during the Crusade, many of their high-ranking officials came
from Cathar families.
 
It is not
beyond belief, therefore, that the Shroud, having been rescued by one or more
Templar knights from the destruction of Constantinople, could have been brought
to Occitania – the present day Languedoc – in order to prevent its
falling into the hands of the Roman Catholic Church.

When the fortress of Montsegur finally fell in 1244,
it was said that a great treasure had been spirited away two weeks before!
 
I leave it to the reader’s imagination
to discern the identity of this great treasure…

Major Characters

Historical

Simon de Montfort
, Lord of Montfort L’Amaury, Northern France, a Crusader, “
The Devil
”.

Alicia de Montmorency
, wife of Simon de Montfort.

Amaury de Montfort
, eldest son of Simon and Alicia.

Guy de Montfort
, second son of Simon and Alicia.

Domingo da Guzman
, later St Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order.

Esclarmonde
, a Cathar Perfecta.

Raymond-Roger
, Count of Foix, brother of Esclarmonde.

The Count of Toulouse
, the principle nobleman of Occitania.

Arnold Almeric
, Papal Legate and religious leader of the Crusade against the Cathars.

Pope Innocent III
.

Count Thibaut
of Champagne.

Enrico Dandolo
, Doge of Venice.

Fulques de Neuilly
, Papal Legate who preached the Crusade of 1204.

Fictional

Maurina Maury
, a Cathar,
“The Dove”.

Arnaud Maury
, father of Maurina.

Pierre and Saissa Boutarra
, Maurina’s foster parents.

Pons Boutarra
, Maurina’s foster brother.

Bertrand Arsen
, a Cathar Perfectus.

Alain de Toulouse
, illegitimate son of the Count of Toulouse.

Prologue

Occitania, South of France, 1211
AD

Estiers dama Girauda qu’an en un
potz gitat:

De peiras la cubiron, don fo
dols e pecatz

Que ja nulhs hom del segle, so
sapchatz de vertatz

No partira de leis entro agues
manjat

—Guilhem de Tudele. La Canso de la Crusada.

The woman’s screams had finally ceased, silenced forever by the sheer
weight of the rocks which had been hurled into the well after her body had been
tossed there. A few of the soldiers standing around had the grace to look
discomforted, but most of them were smiling at the thought of a job well done.

Perhaps Dame Girauda had not minded dying; believing as she did most
firmly that this life was only one of many she would live. She had undoubtedly
received the consolamentum, as a Cathar of her standing would have done, and
had the soldiers not finished her off in their brutish way, she would likely
have starved herself to death anyway! As the inexorable tide of de Montfort’s
army had swept towards the town of Lavaur, she had never once doubted that her
life in this world was drawing quickly to a close.

When the crusaders had stormed her chateau, capturing hundreds of Cathar
heretics who had sought refuge there, she had begged for the lives of her
ladies. One of de Montfort’s more noble knights had promised them safe conduct
out of the town, but she had not lived to see him keep his promise, for she had
been turned over to the common soldiery to be used as they wished. They had
abused her mercilessly, several of them taking turns to rape one of the
greatest and most charitable women in Occitania. They had made her watch the
ignoble demise of her brother, Aimery of Montreal, as well as the company of
knights who had fought valiantly to withstand the month-long siege of her town.
Then they had begun to beat her. In the end, she, in common with the other
heretics, had welcomed death. It was this fact more than any other that had
annoyed the soldiers.

“As to dame Girauda, they threw her into a
well

And covered her with stones

This was a terrible crime for no one who
turned to her

Ever left her presence without help and
bread to eat.”