History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 176, the Crusade, the Crusade against the Cathars Bernard Delicio.

Hello again.

Last week we saw two of the Cathar Perfect, brothers Pierre and Giam Oati,

leave the safety of their exile and return to southern France, in particular to the Sabartez region in the county of

Fois. The brothers busied themselves building on the underground support network already in

place to assist those of the Cathar faith,

meeting with and preaching to local Cathars, and administering the consolumentum to those of the

faith who are close to death. The administration of the

Consolumentum was the brother's most sought after function and it was also the most

dangerous. If a Cathar lay dying and wished to receive the

consolumentum, their family members would have to try and locate one of the Cathar Perfect to notify him or her of the situation.

Then the Perfect would need to travel as quickly as they could to the household to administer the rights before it was too late. The first

problem this posed was establishing the whereabouts of a perfect and the second

was how the perfect would travel to the household without being spotted.

Locating a perfect when you suddenly had need of one was always going to be problematic. In order to stay ahead of the Inquisition, all

the perfect needed to be constantly on the move, staying only briefly in any given location before moving on to the next hiding place.

In his book The Yellow Cross, Renee Weiss lists some of the places in which the Oji brothers hid or spent the night.

Here they are and I quote,

Barnes, dovecoats, lofts, sellers, secret chambers, corn pits, silos, wardrobes and large chests, end quote.

Renee Weiss goes on to describe one of their regular hiding places, a grain silo at a farm owned by a loyal Cathar family.

Apparently from the pantry near the kitchen of the house you could enter the grain silo.

...