History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 183, the crusade against the Cathars, the net closes.

Hello again.

Last week we took time out of the narrative to take a closer look at the little village of Monteu, a community distinguished by the fact that its priest was actually a Cathar.

This week we return to the chronology.

If you cast your minds back to episode 181, an episode entitled Betrayal, you may recall that the network of Cathars painstakingly built up by the Oti brothers in the county of Fwa was betrayed by Pierre

Otis' personal assistant, Gio Umpir, who reported the activities of the Otdey brothers to the head Inquisitor in Carcasson, Jeffrey

Dablie, after becoming annoyed that the Cathar hierarchy hadn't paid a debt he had incurred while he was imprisoned inside the wall.

As the spotlight of the Inquisition turned away from the cities of Albee and Carcasson and focused instead on the county of

Fwaar the ramifications for the Cathars in this region as you could imagine were huge. The reaction of the Cathars in the

Ote network seems to have fallen into one of two categories. They either bunker down, strengthened their networks

and were more stringent than ever in hiding their faith and concealing the Cathar

perfect or they recanted. their faith.

When we left the Cathar perfect, or they recanted their faith.

When we left the narrative in episode 181, a group of Cathars from the town of Arc had come to the momentous decision to travel

to Rome, confess their heresy, and throw themselves at the mercy of the new Pope, Pope Clement the 5th.

Now, actually, as a way of circumventing the Inquisition, a detailed interrogation and perhaps torture by the

Dominican friars, this was quite a good plan. So only a fortnight or so after the two perfects had escaped the trap sprung for them by

the Inquisition in September 1305, and incidentally, around the same time that the

counselors from Carcasson, who had been involved in Friar Bernard Delicia's

doomed Myoken plot, were being brutally executed, the group of Cathars

from Arc set off on their journey to Rome.

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