Béziers
How do you write about something as appalling, as inhuman as the massacre at Béziers?
There is a Roman road that runs from Italy to Spain. It is called the via Domitia. It passes by the first city to witness the extent of Catholic savagery employed against heresy - Béziers.
The city stood on a hill overlooking flat lands all around. On 21 July 1209, the Pope's army pitched camp on the banks of the river Orb, below the walls. The Duke of Burgundy and the Count of Nevers, massively powerful northern lords, were among the mass of bishops, knights, soldiers and others nobles.
A list of 222 names of heretics believed to be living within the city walls was passed to the Bishop of Béziers. All but a few of these were parfaits, priests of the heretic Cathar church. The Catholic population of the city refused to give them up to the Pope's forces.
Béziers was far too strong to be taken by frontal assault. The only possible hope of success was that a long siege would starve out the defenders, or at least bring them to the bargaining table. Whatever engines of war the Crusaders might build and install on the steep slopes below the city wall, they would never match the strength of the fortifications themselves. And then …
On 22 July 1209, the feast of St Mary Magdalene, a small party of Biterrois – inhabitants of Béziers – ran down from one of the gates overlooking the Orb, close to the Crusader camp. They killed a French Crusader and threw his body into the river. They taunted the soldiers of the Host before realising they had strayed too far from the safety of the walls.
Mercenaries among the Pope's army, camped nearby, attacked, throwing the defenders into a panic. They scampered desperately back up the steep slope to the gate from which they had emerged. The mercenaries followed on their heels, some of them managing to get inside the city wall through the same gate. The defences were breached.
While the rest of the Pope's army began to attack the walls with siege engines and scaling ladders, a massacre had already begun in the city streets.
In two to three hours the city was taken and its citizens rushed to the cathedral and churches for protection. The Catholic priests vested themselves and began to celebrate Mass. The doors of these Christian sanctuaries were broken in and the priests struck down as they raised a crucifix or chalice in prayer. It is said that, when asked by soldiers how to distinguish heretics from Catholics, the future inquisitor Arnald-Amalric replied:
'Tuez-les tous. Dieu reconnaîtra les siens!'
(Kill them all. God will recognise his own.)
The 20,000 who perished in the massacre were to serve as an example to others. As the Catholic chronicler Guillaume de Tudèle reported at the time:
'The nobles of France, clergy and laity, Princes and Marquises, were agreed amongst themselves that whenever a château … had to be taken by force, the inhabitants were to be put to the sword and slain; thinking afterwards that no man would dare to stand out against them by reason of the fear that would go abroad when it was seen what they had already done.'
How do you write about such an act?
