To Kill the Pope (33 page)

Le Somail is so tiny that its two main structures are the barn-like bookstore and a small hotel and restaurant on the other side of the canal. Past the bookstore, Tim found only the Hat Museum, a mysterious institution, closed the entire time of his stay in the village, and a few modest houses. He checked in at the hotel, being the only guest there, and climbed the stairs to the first floor and his
minuscule room. From his window, Tim watched the slow passage of a huge barge down the canal toward the Mediterranean. Once a carrier of wheat and wine up and down the waterway, part of a fleet upon which much of the commerce between the two French seacoasts once depended, the barge now carried tourists, a half-dozen of them sitting topside on deck chairs, sipping cocktails. They waved at Tim. Tall plane trees, bordering the length of the canal on both sides, he could see, reflected in the smooth water.

Late in the afternoon, Tim crossed the stone bridge over the canal to visit the bookstore. Monsieur Raymond, the owner, was behind a small desk just inside the entrance, going over credit card slips. His majestic shape—obese would be an understatement—matched perfectly the immensity of the bookstore with its rows of display cases and shelves and stacks of books on the ground floor and along a first-floor galley above.

Monsieur Raymond greeted Tim politely in French, still concentrating on his paperwork. Then he looked up, smiled, and switched into fluent English.

“Oh,” he said, “you must be English. Or perhaps American . . . How can I help you?”

“I am American,” Tim replied with a smile of his own. “And I am interested in Cathar history. I was told by friends in Toulouse that your bookstore here is a treasure trove on the subject. So here I am.”

The bookseller's eyebrows shot up in absolute amazement. With massive effort, he rose from the armchair behind his desk.

“Cathar history?” he asked incredulously. “My God, you are the first American, in fact the first foreigner, to be interested in the Cathars. It's incredible! But, please, tell me why you would care about an obscure heresy seven centuries old?”

“Well,” Tim said, “I am a professor of history of religion at Georgetown University back in Washington where I live, and I'm spending several months in France to see what I can learn, even superficially, about medieval heresies. I think they are relevant to the great religious upheavals of our time. I was also told that you personally,
monsieur,
are enormously knowledgeable about the Cathars. If you can spare the time, I would love to ask you a few things.”

Tim had been on the verge of saying that he was a Jesuit specializing
in Islam, but something in the back of his mind had warned him to conceal his real identity. Perhaps Monsieur Raymond was anticlerical, still a powerful strain in France.

“Why, it will be a pleasure talking to you, sir,” Raymond said. “Come to dinner tonight. It's very rare for us to have guests . . .”

*  *  *

“I must warn you that I'm not impartial when it comes to Cathar history,” René Raymond, the bookseller told Tim as he poured them wine before the meal. “You see, I'm a direct descendant of Viscount Raimond Roger Trencavel, who was hurled down a pit and left to die as a Cathar leader after the pope's barons conquered Carcassonne in 1209. In those days, the name Raymond, my name, was spelled with an ‘i,' making it
Raimond.
The Viscount was a nephew of the ruler of Toulouse, Count Raimond VI. So I'm really part not only of a royal Languedoc family, but Cathar history as well.”

“Well,” Tim said, “this is quite an honor to be with you. And I'm so lucky to have found you. I've been reading, of course, about the Cathars, their doctrine of dualism, their rejection of the orthodox doctrines of the Church in Rome, and so forth. But I must confess that I am completely confused by all that I've read . . . And as I hear you say, as you did a moment ago, that you can't be impartial about Cathar history, I frankly have the impression that you are speaking of the past as well as of the present, that it's all still very much alive. Am I wrong?”

“No, you are not wrong, my friend,” Raymond answered, shifting his huge body on the sofa where he sat in the living room of the house behind the bookstore. Tim was in an ample armchair facing his host. The living room, too, was overflowing with books.

“You are very perceptive and you are quite right in observing that Catharism—let's call it that—is quite alive in a whole variety of ways,” he went on. “People in the Languedoc and elsewhere are very much aware that Catharism and Cathar history remain a reality, and are not merely some heresy from early in the millennium that had been extirpated and basically forgotten. When I say that I'm not impartial about Catharism, I mean that I firmly believe that the Cathars were right in their interpretation of the Christian religion, that they continue to be right today, and that
this whole matter has not been resolved by the crusades, massacres, and burnings at the stake of uncounted thousands of Cathar families in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In fact, I regard myself as a militant Cathar. I am not a
perfect,
but I'm a
believer.”

“This is most extraordinary,” Tim said, not quite sure what else to say. He knew that the Cathars had been the most extreme of all heretic sects to oppose the Roman Church, considered by the Church its greatest enemy, but he had not been prepared to run into a fiery, present-day spokesman for Catharism, preaching the doctrine as if the battle were still actively being waged. And perhaps it was. Tim felt he was in a blur of today's realities and the imagined and remembered past of many centuries ago. And Raymond was deepening this impression as he held forth on the unchanging relevance of Catharism.

“We shall never forgive Rome and the popes for the enormity of the crime they had committed against us, the Cathars, with the crusade of Pope Innocent III, the Inquisition, and the killings that went on and on,” he told Tim. “That was the first act of genocide, the first Holocaust, as we would now call it, in history. It was religious cleansing. And Rome, even with the supposedly progressive popes like Leo XIII, John XXIII, and even Gregory XVII today, has not admitted her error, apologized in a Christian spirit, and extended to us the hand of reconciliation. So Rome remains the enemy.”

“What I haven't quite grasped,” Tim said, “is the reason the Church attacked the Cathars with such fury. Weren't they the kindest, gentlest, most moral of all Christians? Shouldn't Rome have applauded their piety and rigorous morality? If I understand it correctly, they weren't challenging Rome over power or leadership.”

“No, of course, not,” Raymond answered. “The Cathars were not out to grab power in southern France any more than in Lombardy or in Bulgaria or Bosnia where, as you know, the Bogomils are said to have launched what is now known as our Cathar ‘heresy.' You mentioned piety, but even I must admit that piety produces heretics as well as saints—and this was probably what happened with the Cathars, if you insist that they truly were heretics.”

They moved to the table in the adjoining room where a maid awaited them with a huge pot of
cassoulet,
and Tim picked up the thread of their discussion before dinner.

“I understand that the ‘heresy' wasn't a power grab by the Cathars in the normal sense of the word,” he said, “but, at the same time, they seemed to turn into spiritual rivals of the Roman Church, and I assume that if successful, they would deprive the popes, such as Innocent III, of influence and therefore of secular, political power. Would you agree with that, I mean as a process of political dynamics?”

Raymond laughed with appreciation, patting Tim on the shoulder with his left hand while pouring them with the right hand Clos Centeilles, a fine wine from Minerve in northern Languedoc.

“This wine comes from Pouzols-Minervois vineyards,” he said. “I don't want to spoil your dinner, but Minerve, the very old fortress town on a bluff not far from here, on the other side of the Canal, was the site of one of the most savage ravages of the Cathars by the armies of the pope and of the King of France, our other sworn enemy. At least 140 Cathars, men and women, were burned at the stake when Minerve was captured in 1210; it was one of the first massacres of the crusade. Anyway, let us drink a toast of Minervois wine to the memory of the martyrs of Minerve.”

They drank the toast, and Raymond returned to Cathar history.

“Yes, you have a point about the interpretation of religions and political dynamics,” he said. “And you must bear in mind that the Cathars had their own, different ideas about religion and the Church. They did regard themselves as the true Church of God, which naturally rankled Rome. They believed that, like Christ's, their destiny were persecution and martyrdom, and were convinced that, under the doctrine of dualism, the organized Catholic structure represented the devil. And because the Cathar message was very widely accepted in this part of the world in those days, the Cathars, whether they realized it or not, were inviting the reprisals by Rome, which, of course, did understand the political process. When attacked, as they were during that Albigensian crusade that lasted twenty years beginning at the start of the thirteenth century, they fought back like mountain lions. But even if Innocent III resorted to force to protect his power structure, there was no excuse for the wave of inhumane, never mind anti-Christian, destruction of people wrought by such commanders as Simon de Monfort and their armies. Hitler could have learned from them . . .

“The established Church in Rome believes in continuity,” Raymond went on, “and so do we. This means, as I told you before, that the Cathars will regard it as its greatest enemy forever—unless it repents. The Albi Crusade—it's called that because the movement was born in the Languedoc around the town of Albi in the twelfth century—will never be forgotten or forgiven. And, mind you, Professor, that to this day, even as we speak, there are masses of people here, in the south of France, who feel very strongly about it. It is a powerful spiritual force.”

“Still,” Tim insisted, “how do we reconcile this spirit of vengefulness, if I understand you correctly, with the goodness and sweetness of the Cathars, the merciful behavior of the ‘Perfects' as leaders, the chaste life they prescribed, and all their other attributes?”

“We reconcile it,” Raymond answered, “in the same way as the ‘Perfects' and their followers thought it was natural to fight to the death, killing as many enemies as possible to defend their faith. That's why they willingly died and enthusiastically killed in the defense of Béziers, Minerve, Montségur, and all their other towns and fortresses . . . You know, eye for an eye, and so forth . . . And we have very long memories . . .”

“I have one more question before I go back to my hotel,” Tim said with extreme care, articulating an idea that had begun to form in his mind as he listened to Raymond.

“Please, go ahead and ask,” the bookseller encouraged him. “Our stories and our lives are open books.”

“How, in your opinion, would people who think of themselves as Cathars respond if other French Catholics, who hate Rome for other reasons, were to propose the ultimate vengeance—the assassination of the pope?”

Raymond stiffened, his eyes narrowed, and he rose from the table.

“This is one question to which I have no answer and do not wish to contemplate,” he said slowly. “It was a pleasure to have you at my home . . .”

“My next stop is the seminary in Mirepoix,” Tim said, mainly to have the last word. “I'll ask the same question there. . . .”

I
F AN ALLIANCE EXISTED
between the Cathars and the Pius V Fraternity, sharing their hatred of Rome, potentially it could be quite an explosive one, Tim Savage thought as he drove from Le Somail toward Carcassonne over empty Languedoc roads.

The Cathars, if Raymond the bookseller was to be believed, never forgave the papacy for the massacres of the crusade in the thirteenth century and the continued killings well into the next century. Did Raymond's resentful, brusque reaction to Tim's question about likely Cathar sentiments toward conspiracies to assassinate the pope mean that he had hit a nerve and touched upon a reality? Or was he simply insulted, as a “militant Cathar,” over Tim's insinuation?

At the same time, there was no doubt about the Fraternity's hatred of the papal institution over the modernization of the Church by Vatican Council II, hatred that extended to Gregory XVII for moving ahead with the reforms. Conversely, Rome today could not tolerate the Fraternity's rebellion any more than Innocent III tolerated the Cathar heresy.

It was astounding, Tim thought, how differences in the interpretation of faith and liturgy within the same religion could arouse murderous passions, often lasting for centuries. It was true of Christianity, as it was true, among other examples, with Islam, squaring off the Sunis versus the Shiites and the Sufis. Internecine religious hatreds were often deeper than those
between
rival religions; there is nothing worse than feuds within a family, for they have a way of turning into blood feuds, if not stopped early.

There was, however, the danger of jumping to exaggerated conclusions about any alliances. The Cathars were not a structured clandestine organization—they had a scholarly Center of Cathar
studies on a busy shopping street in downtown Carcassonne, and they published a learned quarterly of Cathar Studies in the little town of Fanjeaux where Saint Dominic once preached
against
the Cathars. The
Pays Cathare,
the land of Cathars, was indeed a tourist attraction in the Languedoc, with pamphlets portraying in color the ruins of Montségur, Béziers, Minerve, Montaillou, and other ancient Cathar settlements and fortresses where the “Good Men” and “Good Women,” as the heretics called themselves, were burned at the stake, decapitated, defenestrated, and massacred by papal crusaders. It was medieval folklore, and none of it was even remotely sinister in the modern context.