A Breath of Truth

(Pictured: Ruins of the Cathar citadel of Montségur)

Happily, there are saner viewpoints to be found in print, but not in standard historical works:

By 1244, over 100,000 Cathars were slaughtered by the specially named Albigensian Crusade that began in 1208, in what was effectively the first act of European genocide -- although this fact is rarely, if ever, taught in schools, even in France. Yet this crusade was remarkable for many reasons, not least because it involved Christians murdering other Christians in a Christian country on the pope's orders, and the dignity which the thousands of Cathars met abominable torture and an agonizing, fiery death. . . . The Church -- and in particular Pope Innocent III -- cast its avaricious eyes upon the land of milk and honey that was the Languedoc in those days and decided to take it for itself: the heresy of its inhabitants being a useful excuse for such dire depredations that the area never recovered. Today it is still the most economically depressed area of France, in stark contrast to the more famous 'south of France', the moneyed lushness of neighboring Biarritz and Monte Carlo. The genocide that ended in the killing fields below the citadel of Montségur in 1244 created shock waves that reverberate to this day, including -- although the area is outwardly Catholic, a distinctly wary attitude to the Church.

(Lynn Picknett, Mary Magdelene, Carroll and Graf Publishers, New York, 2003)

Wow! Finally, an author with some grasp of morality and basic human decency; how utterly refreshing after confronting the entrenched lies of the establishment. Note how Picknett's appraisal of Languedoc's "recovery" makes a mockery of C. Warren Hollister's curious notion that everything in "southern France" was swiftly set right once the "real" church had properly triumphed. Amusingly, in Picknett's reporting of these events, Pope Innocent III doesn't come off as so heroic, or dare I say, innocent. And thankfully again, Picknett calls the crusade for what it was -- a holocaust directed against the Cathars, and a ruthless pillaging of Languedoc.