Perlesvaus

Wolfram von Eschenbach, referring to the Templars, claims this his source Kyot’s research had revealed a genealogical connection between the account of the Grail: “And the sons of baptized men hold It and guard It with humble heart, and the best of mankind shall those knights be who have in such service part.”[1] According to Wolfram, the Grail sustained the lives of a brotherhood of knights called Templeisen, who are guardians of the Temple of the Grail. Like their real-life counterparts, who made their home in a palace near the site of Solomon’s Temple, the Templeisen were headquartered in a castle. This fictional castle was called Munsalvaesche, or “Mountain of Salvation,” a name which recalls Montsegur, the mountain fortress in Languedoc of the Paulician heretics known as the Cathars, who were massacred in in 1244 as part of the Albigensian Crusade.[2]

From Southern France, the Kabbalah was transplanted in the first quarter of the thirteenth century to Aragon and Castile in Spain, where most of its subsequent development took place.[3] According to the earliest sources, Percival, one of King Arthur’s legendary Knights of the Round Table, the original hero in the quest for the Grail, was identified with Raymond-Roger Trencavel, whose mother was said to have later married Alfonso II of Aragon, and brother in-law of Raymond VI of Toulouse, all families who formed part of a series of dynastic unions associated with a form of Luciferianism known as Catharism: the house of Aragon, Toulouse and the Plantagenets, who were at the core of the development of the legends of the Grail.[4]

Rotrou III of Perche—the famous count whose nickname was postulated by the Swiss scholar André de Mandach to have been ‘‘Perceval’’—after completing his service to Alfonso I the Battler, then allied himself politically with Count Geoffrey of Anjou to the west, and with Theobald of Blois to the east. He joined the other great lords of France in the king’s entourage at Poitiers when Louis VII married Eleanor of Aquitaine in 1137. Rotrou’s son, Rotrou IV (1135 – 1191), married Matilda, the daughter of Theobald II, Count of Champagne, the brother of Henry of Blois, and nephew of Templar founder Hugh of Champagne. Matilda’s siblings included Henry I of Champagne, Theobald V of Blois, Adela of Champagne who married Louis VII of France, and Marie of Champagne, married Odo II of Burgundy. Henry of Champagne and Theobald of Blois were married to two daughters of Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie de France and Adelaide, respectively.

Marie de France (fl. 1160 – 1215) was one of chief patrons of Grail author Chrétien de Troyes. Marie’s husband was Henry I of Champagne was a nephew of Henry of Blois, the possible author of the Perlesvaus. According to Michael O’Hagan, Joachim of Fiore’s three ages of history exercised an important influence on the anonymous Perlesvaus, an Old French Arthurian romance dated to the first decade of the thirteenth century. As O’Hagan has outlined, “Perlesvaus is an apocalyptic romance, presenting the whole world locked in a fundamental struggle between good and evil powers. Its systematic incorporation of knights into two great forces doing battle respectively for the New Law and for the Old, and its use of sacred ritual to expand forced beyond the bounds of time and space, leave no doubt of that.”[5] Richard Barber agrees that the Perlesvaus was possibly inspired by the apocalyptic views of Joachim, who saw history as a progression from the age of the Father or the Law, paralleled by the Old Law of the Perlesvaus, to that of the Son or the Gospel, the New Law of the Perlesvaus, and finally the Age of the Spirit, to which end the Perlesvaus points the way.[6]

The grandfather of Henry I of Champagne, and the father of his uncle Henry of Blois was Stephen II, Count of Blois, leader of the Princes’ Crusade, who married Adela, the daughter of William the Conqueror. Stephen II’s stepbrother was Hugh of Champagne, founder of the Templars, who was in contact with Rabbi Rashi of Troyes. Henry of Blois’s brother was Stephen, King of England, who married Matilda, the daughter of Eustace III of Boulogne, brother of Godfrey of Bouillon and Baldwin I of Jerusalem. Matilda’s mother was Mary, brother of David I of Scotland. A supporter of the Templars, Matilda and her husband King Stephen continued their close family association with the Abbey of Cluny.

Henry I of Champagne carried a letter of recommendation from Bernard of Clairvaux addressed to Manuel I Komnenos, Byzantine Emperor. He is listed among the notables present at the Council of Acre held by Baldwin III of Jerusalem at Acre in 1148.[7] Although he was the second son, Henry’s brother Theobald V (1130 – 1191), inherited Blois, while Henry I inherited the more important county of Champagne. Theobald V married Alix of France, daughter of Louis VII of France and his first wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Like his uncle Stephen of England, Theobald V also came to the defense of a blood libel case against the Jews. Implicated in the affair was Theobald V’s mistress, Pulcelina of Blois, a Jewish woman, mistress and moneylender to the count.

Genealogy of Marie of France

• William the Conqueror

  • Henry I of England + Matilda of Scotland (Malcolm III + Margaret of Wessex, d. of Agatha of Bulgaria)

    • Empress Matilda + Geoffrey V, Count of Anjou

      • Henry II of England (close friend of Walter Map, author of the Skull of Sidon legend) + Eleanor of Aquitaine

        • Henry the Young King

        • Richard Lionheart + Berengaria of Navarre (d. of Sancho VI of Navarre and Sancha of Castile, d. of Alfonso VII of León and Castile)

        • Eleanor + Alfonso VIII of Castile

        • Joan + William II of Sicily (g-s of Roger II of Sicily and Elvira of Castile, d. of Alfonso VI of Leon and Castile) and later Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse

        • John, King of England + Isabella of Angoulême

          • Henry III

  • Adela of Normandy + Stephen II, Count of Blois (stepbrother of Hugh of Champagne, founder of the Templars in contact with Rashi)

    • Theobald II of Champagne + Matilda of Carinthia.

      • Theobald V, Count of Blois (involved in blood libel through affair with Jewess Pulcelina of Blois) + Alix of France (d. of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine)

      • Henry I of Champagne + MARIE OF FRANCE (d. of Louis VII and Eleanor of Aquitaine. Hosted Walter Map, and sponsored Grail author Chretien de Troyes)

        • Henry II (1166–1197) + Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem (g-d of Baldwin II and Morphia of Armenia of Walter Map’s “Skull of Sidon” legend)

        • Marie of Champagne + Baldwin I, Latin Emperor

        • Theobald III of Champagne + Blanche of Navarre, Countess of Champagne

      • Adela of Champagne + King Louis VII of France

      • Marie of Champagne + Odo II of Burgundy

    • Stephen, King of England (suppressed blood libel case of William of Norwich) + Matilda I, Countess of Boulogne (d. of Eustace III, b. of Godfrey of Bouillon Baldwin I of Jerusalem)

    • Henry of Blois, Abbot of Glastonbuy, Bishop of Winchester (author of Perlesvaus, and used Geoffrey of Monmouth as a nom de plume to write Historia Regum Britanniae, which was largely responsible for formulating the image of Arthur. The Grail story transferred to Marie of France’s court, which sponsored Chrétien de Troyes, when his nephew Henry I of Champagne visited Glastonbury)

Henry I and Marie’s daughter, Marie of Champagne (c. 1174 – 1204), was the first Latin Empress of Constantinople by marriage to Emperor Baldwin I, one of the most prominent leaders of the Fourth Crusade, which resulted in the sack of Constantinople in 1204, the conquest of large parts of the Byzantine Empire, and the foundation of the Latin Empire. Marie’s brother Henry II of Champagne (1166 – 1197) had been King of Jerusalem in the 1190s, by virtue of his marriage to Queen Isabella I of Jerusalem, the daughter of Amalric I of Jerusalem, the second son of Melisende and Fulk of Jerusalem, the eldest daughter of Baldwin II and Morphia. Amalric was the father of three future rulers of Jerusalem, Baldwin IV, and Isabella I, and Sibylla, who married Guy of Lusignan. In 1190 with his two uncles Philip II of France and Richard the Lionheart. There is a legend that Henry II, during his reign in Outrmer, sought an alliance with the Assassins.[8]

It has been said that it was through Henry of Blois, uncle of Marie’s husband Henry I, Count of Champagne, that the Grail story found its way to her court, which sponsored Chrétien de Troyes, and the transfer of the legends may have taken place when Henry I of Champagne visited Glastonbury to see Henry, his uncle.[9] Walter Map—the original author of the Melusina legend, and the source of the Skull of Sidon legend—was a close friend of Marie’s step-father Henry II of England, and was sent on missions to Louis VII of France and to Pope Alexander III, probably attending the Third Lateran Council in 1179 and encountering a delegation of Waldensians, a movement related to Catharism.[10] On this journey, Map stayed with Marie and Henry I, who was then about to undertake his last journey to the East.[11]

Cathars

Historians use the term “Medieval Inquisition” to describe the various inquisitions that started around 1184, which responded to large popular movements throughout Europe that were considered heretical, in particular the Cathars in Southern France and the related movement of the Waldensians in both Southern France and Northern Italy. The Cathars had established communities in Northern Italy, the Alpine regions. The Cathars were sometimes known as Albigensians, after the city Albi in southern France where the movement first took hold.

According to Malcolm Lambert, “That there was a substantial transmission of ritual and ideas from Bogomilism to Catharism is beyond reasonable doubt.”[12] Their doctrines have numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils and the Paulicians, who influenced them.[13] The idea of two gods or principles, one good and the other evil, was central to Cathar beliefs. They believed the evil God was the God of the Old Testament, creator of the physical world whom many Cathars identified as Satan. Cathars believed human spirits were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god, destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum, a form of baptism performed when death is imminent, by which Cathar individuals were raised to the status of “perfect.”[14]

Though to most scholars the origins of the Cathars remain unclear, the likely provenance of their Gnostic ideas was also the Kabbalah, as both movements emerged simultaneously in the very same region, the Languedoc in Southern France. The Languedoc, the “Judea of France” as it has been called, is a former province of France, whose territory is now contained in the modern-day region of Occitanie in the south of France.[15] Its capital city was Toulouse. The tolerance and favor accorded to the Jews was one of the main complaints of the Catholic Church against the Counts of Toulouse. The position of the Jews in the territories of the Counts of Toulouse was accompanied by the prosperity enjoyed among southern French Jews, whose political land economic status compared favorably to that of Jews in other parts of Europe. Important and powerful Jewish communities flourished in Saint-Gilles, Toulouse, Verdun, Nîmes, Lunel and Posquières. Saint-Gilles even hosted a rabbinical school. As noted by John O’brien, “it is clear, however, that the greater economic political and intellectual freedom enjoyed by the Jews of Languedoc resulted in a freer exchange of ideas between the Jews and Gentiles than elsewhere.”[16] That interaction resulted in the proliferation of the heretical Cathar sect.

As Scholem has pointed out, the Cathars agree with the Kabbalists on a number of points but, “the question of a possible link between the crystallization of the Kabbalah, as we find it in the redaction of the Sepher ha-Bahir, and the Cathar movement must also remain unresolved, at least for the present. This connection is not demonstrable, but the possibility cannot be excluded.”[17] In Jewish Influencewr on Christian Reform Movements, Louis I. Newman concludes:

…that the powerful Jewish culture in Languedoc, which had acquired sufficient strength to assume an aggressive, propagandist policy, created a milieu wherefrom movements of religious independence arose readily and spontaneously. Contact and association between Christian princes and their Jewish officials and friends stimulated the state of mind which facilitated the banishment of orthodoxy, the clearing away of the debris of Catholic theology. Unwilling to receive Jewish thought, the princes and laity turned towards Catharism, then being preached in their domains.[18]

A landmark in the organization of the Cathars was the Council of Saint-Félix, held at Saint-Felix-de-Caraman, now called Saint-Félix-Lauragais, in 1167. The senior figure, who apparently presided and gave the consolamentum to the assembled Cathar bishops, was papa Nicetas, Bogomil bishop of Constantinople. In the 1160s, before arriving in the Languedoc, Nicetas went to Lombardy to reinforce the dualist beliefs of the Cathars of these regions, and, in particular, to throw doubt on the validity of their spiritual lineage or ordo, the sequence of consolamenta by which they were linked to the Apostles. Mark, who then presided over the Cathars of Lombardy, received the consolamentum from Nicetas. In 1167, in the presence of Mark and other representatives of Cathar churches in Languedoc, France and Catalonia, Nicetas presided over the Council of Saint-Félix at which he renewed the consolamenta and confirmed the episcopal office of six Cathar bishops.[19] Among them was Bernard Raymond, who according to Geoffrey of Auxerre confessed under inquisitorial pressure to having practiced sexual liberty and infanticide.[20]

A common name for the Cathars was bougre, a corruption of Bulgar, a reference to the Bogomils, which eventually gave English bugger for sodomy.[21] To the Cathars, since the soul is the divine part of man, it must be freed from evil matter to enter the kingdom of light. On this basis, they rejected marriage, forbade the eating of meat, demanded complete chastity, and denied the resurrection. Virginity and chastity for Cathars was associated with their spiritual interpretation of marriage. More specifically, Cathar doctrine held inter-marital sex in lower esteem than extramarital sex. However, according to Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, a historian of the Crusade against the Cathars, who wrote between 1212-1220, the Cathars “… falsely claimed to keep themselves chaste.”[22] As further explained by Ademar of Chabannes, who wrote at the beginning of the eleventh century.

...Manicheans appeared throughout Aquitaine leading people astray.  They denied baptism and the Cross and every sound doctrine. They abstained from food and seemed like monks;  they pretended chastity, but among themselves they practised every debauchery.[23]

Durand of Huesca, an ex-Waldensian and avowed opponent of the Cathars, wrote after returning to orthodox Christianity:

For God himself, they say, has two wives, Collam and Colibam, and from them He begat sons and daughters in the manner of humans. On the basis of this belief, some of them believe there is no sin in men and women kissing and embracing each other and even having intercourse, if it should be known, nor can one sin in doing so for payment.[24]

The Church charged the Cathars with devil worship, human sacrifice, cannibalism, incest, homosexuality and celebrating the Black Mass. Walter Map, in his De Nugis Curialium, described the Publicani, a sect similar to the Cathars who had sent missionaries from Germany to England, as worshipping Satan in rituals involving the “obscene kiss,” very similar to the Sabbaths later attributed to the witches:

About the first watch of the night… each family sits waiting in silence in each of their synagogues; and there descends by a rope which hangs in their midst a black cat of wondrous size. On sight of it they put out the lights and do not sing or distinctly repeat hymns, but hum them with closed teeth, and draw near to the place where they saw their master, feeling after him and when they have found him they kiss him. The hotter the feelings the lower their aim; some go for his feet, but most for his tail and privy parts. Then as though this noisome contact unleashed their appetites, each lays hold of his neighbor and takes his fill of him or her for all he is worth.[25]

Paul of Chartres, Guibert of Nogent, and Geoffrey of Auxerre accused the Cathars of performing human sacrifice of children. According to Paul of Chartres:

When a child was born of this most filthy union/sexual intercourse during a religious rite, on the eighth day thereafter a great fire was lighted, the child was purified by the fire in the manner of the old pagans, and so was cremated. Its ashes were collected and preserved with as great veneration as Christian reverence is wont to guard the body of Christ…[26]

The Paul of Chartres’ account includes the appearances by a demon in the likeness of a small beast during the ceremony. Among the numerous accusations of sexual indiscretion among the perfects the only ones describing ritual intercourse are made by Paul of Chartres and Guibert of Nogent, according to whom:

They hold meetings in cellars and secret places, the sexes mingling freely, who when candles have been lighted, in the sight of all, fair women with bare buttocks  (it is said) offer themselves to one lying behind them.  The candles are extinguished and immediately they all cry out together “Chaos!” and each one lies with her who comes to hand.[27]

In 1150, Geoffrey of Auxerre wrote that the Cathars taught free sex. The Council of Rheims of 1157 accused them of sex orgies. Caesarius of Heisterbach described the Cathars as holding nocturnal meetings in Verona that included orgies. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, a Cistercian monk, wrote in his Historia Albigensis (c. 1213 - 1218), that the Cathars were the “limbs of the Anti-Christ, the first born of Satan,” and that they claimed that the “perfect” argued that no one could sin from the waist down. In his Disputation between a Catholic and a Patarine Heretic (c. 1240), George Florence accused them of “preferring sodomitic vice or the copulation with men.”

Courtly Love

Like her mother Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie of France was a decisive influence on the culture of Courtly Love, in French Amour Courtois, which developed from the proliferation of the heresy of Catharism. [28] Courtly love poetry emerged in southern France in the twelfth century through the work of the troubadours, poet-minstrels who were either retained by a royal court or traveled from town to town. Cathar themes are pervasive in their songs of the troubadours, with many of the troubadours themselves being Cathars, or simply reflecting the values of their patrons.

The troubadours were inspired by the Sufi mystics of the Islamic world. Wandering Sufis, traveled on foot from city to city, teaching songs and cryptic words, and sometimes not speaking at all. Sufi musical jesters and ariakeens (harlequins) dressed in patchwork costumes, the khirqah of the Sufis, originally made from shreds and patches. P. Hitti, in the History of the Arabs, commented that, “the troubadours… resembled Arab singers not only in sentiment and character but also in the very forms of their minstrelsy. Certain titles which these Provencal singers gave to their songs are but translations from Arabic titles.”[29] According to J. B. Trend, in The Legacy of Islam, the poems of the troubadours “…are, in matter, form and style closely connected with Arabic idealism and Arabic poetry written in Spain.”[30]

In the love poetry of the Sufis, originally inspired by the Song of Solomon, in praise to the bride of God, sometimes God is addressed directly, but often the deity is personified by a woman. It was the goddess worship of the Sufis, expressed in the form of love poetry dedicated to ladies, and a deference towards women, which became known as the art of chivalry. The predominant theme in troubadour poetry was unrequited love for noble ladies, who were usually married. This love took on a quasi-religious tone, their love becoming veneration, elevating the lady to near-divine status.

The most famous of the early troubadours was Eleanor Aquitaine’s grandfather, William IX, Duke of Aquitaine. Throughout her marriage to Louis VII, Eleanor filled her court with poets and artists, and she did the same at Henry’s court in Normandy. She was patron of literary figures such as Wace, Benoît de Sainte-Maure (1154 – 1173), and the young troubadour Bernard de Ventadour, one of the greatest medieval poets, who would follow her to the Plantagenet court of Henry II in 1152, and remain with her there three years, probably as her lover.[31]

The French poet Benoît de Sainte-Maure wrote a 40,000 line poem Le Roman de Troie (“The Romance of Troy”), between 1155 and 1160. “Beneeit,” is mentioned at the end of Roman de Rou by the Norman poet Robert Wace (c. 1110 – after 1174). Wace’s extant works also include the Roman de Brut, which narrates the founding of Britain by Brutus of Troy to the end of the legendary British history of Monmouth’s Historia Regum Britanniae. Wace was the first to mention the legend of King Arthur’s Round Table and the first to ascribe the name Excalibur to Arthur’s sword. A large part of the Roman de Rou, which according to Wace was commissioned by Henry II of England, is devoted to William the Conqueror and the Norman conquest of England.

When she separated from Henry II in 1170, and set up her own court at Poitiers, Eleanor again surrounded herself with artists and, through her daughter Marie, and became instrumental in turning her court, then frequented by the most famous troubadours of the time, into a center of poetry and a model of courtly life and manners. Marie was also the patroness of the Arthurian poet Chretien de Troyes and author Andreas Capellanus. Andreas’ De Amore (usually translated as The Art of Love) written at Marie’s request, describes the courts of love presided over by her and the others while also serving as a kind of manual in the art of seduction.

It was Marie’s influence in the transmission of the culture of Courtly Love across Europe, which encouraged the composition of Chretien de Troyes, who assimilated its language into the legends of the Holy Grail, fashioning a new type of narrative based on the Matter of Britain, writing five romances Erec, Cligès, Lancelot, or Le Chevalier de la charrette, Yvain, or Le Chevalier au lion, and Perceval, or Le Conte du Graal, written about 1190 AD, the earliest extant work on the Grail. Centering on the legendary King Arthur, the Matter of Britain derived from Monmouth’s Historia regum Britanniae.

Chrétien de Troyes credits her with the idea for his Lancelot: The Knight of the Cart. It is one of the first stories of the Arthurian legend to feature Lancelot as a prominent character. The narrative tells of the abduction of Queen Guinevere, and is the first text to feature the love affair between Lancelot and Guinevere. After Chrétien’s version became popular, it was incorporated into the Lancelot-Grail Cycle and eventually into the English writer Thomas Malory’s influential Le Morte d’Arthur, in the fifteenth century, which created the image of Camelot most familiar today. Malory firmly identifies Camelot with the Abbey of Winchester, an identification that remained popular for centuries.

Albigensian Crusade

The Church suspected both Eleanor and Marie as sympathizers of the Cathars, and this suspicion was strengthened by the actions of Eleanor’s son-in-law, Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, the son of Raymond V, one of the leaders of the First Crusade. Under the Carolingians, Septimania became part of the kingdom of Aquitaine, but became a separate duchy in 817. As a separate entity, it disappeared from history in the ninth century, as the territory passed into the hands of the counts of Toulouse, and was known from then on as the Languedoc region of southern France, termed Gothia or the Gothic March (Marca Gothica). Other names became regionally more prominent such as, Roussillon, Conflent, Razès or Foix, and the name Gothia—along with the older name Septimania—faded away during the tenth century, as the region fractured into smaller feudal entities, which sometimes retained Carolingian titles, but lost their Carolingian character, as the culture of Septimania evolved into the culture of Languedoc.

The Counts of Foix, who ruled the independent County of Foix, in what is now southern France, trace their descent to the sons of Bernard-Roger, Count of Bigorre. Bernard-Roger’s daughter Ermesinda married Ramiro I, the first King of Aragon. Their son married Sancho Ramírez, Felicia de Roucy, aunt of Rotrou III, Count of Perche, whose son Stephen du Perche, archbishop of Palermo, hired the services of Joachim of Fiore. Sancho Ramírez and Felicia’s sons included Ferdinand, Alfonso I the Battler and Ramiro II of Aragon, who married Agnes of Aquitaine, the daughter of William IX, Duke of Aquitaine and Philippa, Countess of Toulouse, niece of Raymond IV of Toulouse. Ramiro II’s only daughter, Petronila of Aragon, married Raymond Berengar IV, Count of Barcelona. Their son was Alfonso II of Aragon, whose daughter Eleanor married Raymond VI of Toulouse, and whose other daughter Sancha married Raymond VI’s son Count Raymond VII of Toulouse.

The counts of Toulouse trace their descent to Guillaume of Gellone, who appointed Count of Toulouse by Charlemagne at the diet of Worms in 790. From the time of Raymond IV, a leader of the Princes’ Crusade, the counts of Toulouse were powerful lords in southern France. Raymond IV, assumed the formal titles of Marquis of Provence, Duke of Narbonne and Count of Toulouse. While Raymond IV was away in the Holy Land, the rule of Toulouse was seized by William IX, Duke of Aquitaine, who claimed the city by right of his wife, Philippa, the daughter of Raymond IV’s brother, Count William IV of Toulouse. However, at Raymond’s death, the family’s estates and Toulouse went to Bertrand’s brother, Alfonso Jordan, Raymond IV’s son by his third wife, Elvira of Castile, daughter of Alfonso VI of León and Castile. Alfonso Jordan’s rule, however, was again disturbed by the ambition of William IX and his granddaughter, Eleanor of Aquitaine, who urged her husband Louis VII of France to support her claims to Toulouse by war. Upon her divorce from Louis and her subsequent marriage to Henry II of England, Eleanor pressed her claims through Henry, who at last, in 1173, forced Raymond V to do him homage for Toulouse. In 1196, Raymond V married Eleanor’s daughter, Joan Plantagenet.

Genealogy of Counts of Foix, Toulouse and Aragon

• Bernard-Roger, Count of Bigorre (founder of the House of Foix)

  • Pierre-Bernard

    • Roger II

      • Roger III

        • Roger-Bernard I + Cécile Trencavel (d. Raymond I Trencavel)

          • Esclarmonde of Foix (Cathar parfaite, “Esclaramonde” to Bertran de Born and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival)

          • Raymond-Roger, Count of Foix + Philippa of Montcada (Cathar parfaite)

            • Roger-Bernard II, Count of Foix + Ermesinde, viscountess of Castellbò (Cathar)

  • Ermesinda of Bigorre + Ramiro I (first king of Aragon)

    • Sancho Ramírez + Felicie de Roucy (aunt of Rotrou III, Count of Perche, a.k.a. Perceval, and whose son Stephen du Perche hired Joachim of Fiore)

      • Sancho Ramírez + Felicie de Roucy

        • Alfonso I “the Battler” of Aragon and Navarre + Urraca of Leon and Castile (d. of Alfonso VI + Constance of Burgundy. Earlier married Raymond of Burgundy)

        • Ramiro II + Agnes of Aquitaine (d. of William IX “the Troubadour” Duke of Aquitaine + Philippa, Countess of Toulouse, sister of Raymond IV of Toulouse, leader of the Princes’ Crusade)

          • Petronilla of Aragon + Raymond Berengar IV, Count of Barcelona

            • Alfonso II of Aragon + Sancha of Castile (daughter of Alfonso VII of Castile and Richeza of Poland)

              • Peter II of Aragon

              • Eleanor + Raymond VI of Toulouse

              • Sancha + Count Raymond VII of Toulouse

            • Alfonso II of Aragon + (possibly Adelaide de Burlat, mother of Raymond-Roger Trencavel, Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Perceval)

Raymond V, a patron of the troubadours, died in 1194, and was succeeded by his son, Raymond VI, who married Joan Plantagenet, sister of Richard Lionheart, in 1196, and then Eleanor of Aragon, daughter of Alfonso II of Aragon and Sancha of Castile, in 1204. In 1194, Raymond VI, after he succeeded his father as count of Toulouse, immediately re-established peace with Alfonso II of Aragon, and married his daughter, Eleanor of Aragon, Countess of Tolouse (1182 – 1226), his last wife, in 1204. Eleanor’s mother was Sancha of Castile, the daughter of Alfonso VII of Castile by his second wife, Richeza of Poland. Alfonso II and Sancha had at least eight children who survived into adulthood. Among them were Constance of Aragon (1179 – 1222), who married firstly King Imre of Hungary, the son of Bela III of Hungary, and secondly Frederick II, Holy Roman Emperor, the grandson of Frederick Barbarossa. Alfonso II and Sancha’s other daughter, Sancha of Aragon, married the Cathar Count Raymond VII of Toulouse (1197 – 1249), the son of Raymond VI from Joan Plantagenet. In the times of Alfonso II, the majority of troubadours were members of the Cathars.[32] Alfonso II was a composer himself and was known in consequence as El Trobador.

Raymond VI was the most ardent defender of the Cathars when the Church finally launched the Albigensian Crusade against Southern France in 1209. On becoming pope in 1198, Innocent III resolved to deal with the Cathars and sent a delegation of friars to the Languedoc to assess the situation. Innocent turned to Philip II of France, and urged him to either force Raymond VI to deal with the heresy or depose him militarily. Philip II was the son of King Louis VII and his third wife, Adela of Champagne, the sister of Henry I of Champagne, and was married to Marie of France, the daughter of Louis VII from his previous wife, Eleanor of Aquitaine. Raymond VI had been married to Joan of England, the daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine from of Henry II of England. However, Philip was engaged in conflict with Joan’s brother, King John of England, and was unwilling to get involved in a separate conflict in the Languedoc.[33]

Raymond VI was excommunicated in 1207 and an interdict was placed on his lands. Innocent tried to deal with the situation diplomatically by sending a number of preachers, many of them monks of the Cistercian order, to convert the Cathars. They were under the direction of the senior papal legate, Pierre de Castelnau.  The following morning, Pierre was killed by one of Raymond VI’s knights. Pope Innocent declared Raymond VI anathematized and released all of his subjects from their oaths of obedience to him. However, Raymond VI soon made an attempt a reconciliation with the Church by sending legates to Romeand the excommunication was lifted. However, at the Council of Avignon in 1209, Raymond was again excommunicated for failing to fulfill the conditions of reconciliation. Innocent III then called for a crusade against the Albigensians.

In 1209, an army of some thirty thousand knights and foot soldiers from northern Europe descended on the Languedoc, and in reference to the Languedoc center at Albi, the campaign was called the Albigensian Crusade. The edict of annihilation referred not only to the mystical Cathars themselves, but to all who supported them, which included most of the people of Languedoc. When an officer inquired of the Pope’s representative how he might distinguish heretics from true believers, the infamous reply was, “Kill them all. Let God sort them out.”

It was Raymond VI’s nephew, Raymond-Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne (1185 – 1209), who faced the full force of the first crusade.  The Trencavel family were descended from Bernard Ato IV (d. 1129) who had joined the army of Raymond IV of Tolouse to fight in the First Crusade. Bernard Ato IV’s son Roger I Trencavel (d. 1150) was a notable benefactor of the Templars and a fervent Crusader.[34] In 1138, Roger I swore an oath of fidelity to Alfonso Jordan, Count of Toulouse, along with his brothers Bernard Ato V and Raymond I Trencavel. In 1150, Raymond I made a treaty whereby he swore fealty to Raymond Berengar IV, Count of Barcelona, and agreed to hold Carcassonne, Razès, and Lautrec from the count as a vassal.[35] Throughout his career, Raymond had very good relations with Alfonso Jordan, the son of Raymond IV of Toulouse by his third wife, Elvira of Castile, and the father of Raymond V, and accompanied him on the Second Crusade in 1147.[36] By his wife Saure, Raymond I left a son and successor, Roger II Trencavel (d. 1194), who inherited all his viscounties, but was unable to occupy Béziers until 1168, despite a siege led by Alfonso II of Aragon on his behalf in 1167.[37]

The counts and viscounts of Carcassonne protected their Jewish subjects and granted them many privileges. Although the settlement of Jews at Carcassonne dates back as the early centuries AD, official documents relating to them are not found until the twelfth century. A cartulary of the Templars of Douzens in 1162 mentions a territory called “Honor Judaicus” in the area of Carcassonne. In 1142, a Jew named Bonisach gives his approval as lord of the manor to a donation of a vineyard made by its owners to the Templars. A similar case occurs forty-one years later when four Jews, joint lords of the manor, sign a deed of conveyance of vineyards bought by the Templars. One of the signers, Moses Caranita, held the office of bailiff. Raymond I Trencavel interceded with the bishops of his dominions to abolish the abuses to which the Jews were subjected during Holy Week. His son Roger II Trencavel took the most prominent Jews among under his personal protection. For example, he secured the freedom of Abraham ben David of Posquières, who had been thrown into prison by the lord of Posquières, and gave him shelter at Carcassonne.[38] Abraham ben David, who is regarded as a father of Kabbalah, was the father of Isaac the Blind the purported author of the Sepher ha Bahir, the first work of the Medieval Kabbalah.

As a child in 1153, Roger II was placed in the “custody and service” of Ermengard of Narbonne (1127 or 1129 – 1197).[39] Ermengard corresponded with many troubadours, including Peire Rogier, Giraut de Bornelh, Peire d’Alvergne, Pons d’Ortafa, and Salh d’Escola, as well as the trobairitz Azalais de Porcairagues. Around 1190, a French cleric named André le Chapelain wrote a “Treatise on Courtly Love” making reference to “judgements of love” attributed to Eleanor of Aquitaine, Marie of France and Ermengard. In 1177, Roger joined an alliance with Ermengard and William VIII of Montpellier (d. 1202) to prevent Raymond V from seizing Narbonne. In 1179, he was forced to forswear his former alliance with Raymond V and return to the fold of Alfonso II of Aragon.[40] William VIII of Montpellier was the son of Matilda of Burgundy, the granddaughter of Odo I, Duke of Burgundy, brother of Henry I of Burgundy, Count of Portugal. Matilda’s sister Sibylla married Roger II of Sicily. Raymond-Roger married William VIII’s daughter Agnes.

Roger II Trencavel and Adelaide’s son was Raymond-Roger Trencavel, whose cousin Esclarmonde of Foix was a prominent figure associated with Catharism. Esclarmonde was the daughter of Roger II’s sister, Cécile Trencavel, who married Roger-Bernard I, Count of Foix, the great grandson of Ermesinda of Bigorre’s brother, Pierre-Bernard, Count of Foix. Esclaramonde’s brother was Raymond-Roger, Count of Foix (d. 1223). Raymond-Roger was a staunch ally of Raymond VI of Toulouse and was famed for his generalship, chivalry, fidelity, and affection for haute couture. He accompanied the Philip II, King of France on Crusade to the Holy Land in 1191 and was present at the siege of Ascalon and at the fall of Saint-Jean-d'Acre. Raimond-Roger was a patron of troubadours, an author of verse himself. Though not a Cathar himself, several of his relatives were. His wife, Philippa of Montcada, even became a parfaite.[41] He also installed a house for Cathar perfects, directed by his mother, on one of the estates of the local abbey.[42] Raimond-Roger was a great orator, and attended the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 to defend Raymond VI of Toulouse before Innocent III and the council. He himself was accused of having murdered priests and did not deny it, instead he informed the pope that he regretted not having murdered more.[43] He was succeeded by his son, Roger Bernard II (c. 1195 – 1241), called the Great, who married Ermesinde, viscountess of Castellbò and a Cathar.

The significance of Esclarmonde name’s meaning, i.e. “clarity of the world,” is explored in several medieval epic poems including one referred to as “Esclaramonde,” by Bertran de Born, and in “Parzival” by Wolfram von Eschenbach. She received the Cathar sacrament, the consolamentum, for becoming a Cathar Perfect from the Cathar bishop Guilhabert de Castres. A tradition which is based on a reworking of the Chanson de la croisade albigeoise, written in Languedoc between 1208 and 1219, attributes to her the initiative of the reconstruction of the Cathar fortress of Montségur.[44]

Genealogy of Trencavel

• Bernard Ato IV (joined the army of Raymond IV to Toulouse to fight in the First Crusade) + Cecilia of Provence

  • Bernard Ato V

  • Roger I Trencavel (notable benefactor of the Templars and fervent Crusader)

  • Raymond I Trencavel + Saure

    • Cécile Trencavel + Roger-Bernard I, Count of Foix

      • Esclarmonde of Foix (Cathar parfaite, “Esclaramonde” to Bertran de Born and Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival)

      • Raymond-Roger, Count of Foix + Philippa of Montcada (Cathar parfaite)

        • Roger-Bernard II, Count of Foix + Ermesinde, viscountess of Castellbò (Cathar)

    • Roger II Trencavel + Adelaide of Béziers (d. of Raymond V of Toulouse)

      • Raymond-Roger Trencavel (Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Perceval) + Agnes of Montpellier

        • Raymond II Trencavel (cared for during his youth by Raymond-Roger, Count of Foix and his son Roger-Bernard II)

Some authors have identified Raymond-Roger Trencavel with Percival of Grail legend. Raymond-Roger’s mother Adelaide is named in the poems of several troubadours, including Giraut de Salignac and Pons de la Gardia, who participated in the Siege of Conca on the side of Alfonso II of Aragon, and a later in the campaign against bring Raymond V of Toulouse. Raymond-Roger’s mother Adelaide is called “Countess of Burlats” in the vida of the famous troubadour Arnaut de Mareuil, who was apparently in love with her.[45] Alfonso II of Aragon was a rival to Adelaide’s affections, and according to the razó to one of Arnaut’s poems, the king jealously persuaded her to break off her friendship with Arnaut.[46] Alfonso II was reported to have later proposed marriage to Adelaide.[47]

As was the case with many names of the time, as indicated Adolfo Salazar and Gilbert Chase, “Trencavel” was derived from warlike feats, such that the verb “piercer” (to Pearce) if replaced by the verb “trencar” (to slice), would render Perceval. According to Wolfram von Eschenbach, “thou hast for name Parzival” which name means “that which passes through.”[48] To Wolfram von Eschenbach, Alfonso “el Custis,” as he calls him, married Herzeloyde, the mother of Parsifal. Herzeloyde was the Germanized name of Adelaide, retained in Wagner’s libretto. To Guyot de Provins, Wolffram’s source, Herzeloyde is the Viscontess Adelaide of Carcassone, the domina of Alfonso II. At the beginning of the thirteenth century, Guyot de Provins named his protectors, who included: Fredrick Barbarossa, Louis VII of France, Henry II of England, Henry the Young King, Richard the Lionheart, Alfonso II of Aragon and Raymond V of Toulouse.[49]

Raymond VI’s second wife was Raymond-Roger’s aunt, Beatrice of Béziers. They divorced in 1189 and she retired to a Cathar nunnery.[50] Raymond VI had proposed an alliance with Raymond-Roger, and when the offer was rejected he offered his submission to the Crusaders but was refused and raced back to Carcassonne to prepare for attack, sending all Jews away to safety.[51] When the crusaders, led by a papal legate, Arnaud Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux, laid siege to Carcassonne, Raymond-Roger Trencavel accepted terms of surrender but was taken prisoner and died in his own dungeon.

Following the Crusaders’ successful wars against Raymond VI and his son Raymond VII, the Counts were required to discriminate against Jews as were other Christian rulers. In 1209, Raymond VI, stripped to the waist and barefoot, was obliged to swear in the presence of nineteen bishops and three archbishops, that he would no longer allow Jews to hold public office. In 1229, his son and heir, Raymond VII, underwent a similar ceremony where he was obliged to prohibit the public employment of Jews, this time at Notre Dame in Paris. Explicit provisions on the subject were included in the Treaty of Meaux (1229).[52] Final defeat came upon the Cathars at their famous stronghold of Montsegur in 1244, when more than 200 Cathar perfects were massacred by the Christian forces.

Raymond-Roger’s son, Raymond II Trencavel (1207 – 1263/1267), was only two years old when his father died in prison. Raymond’s youth after his surrender of his hereditary offices and lands was spent in the care of Raymond Roger of Foix and his successor, Roger Bernard II of Foix.[53] Raymond continued to rule Limoux as a vassal of the count of Foix until the Treaty of Meaux, when all formerly Trencavel lands were surrendered to the French crown.

Dominican Order

The Dominicans and the Franciscans had both become powerful in the Languedoc, and gained a preeminent position as inquisitors against the Albigensians.[54] In 1206, Diego of Osma and his canon, the future Saint Dominic, founder of the Dominican Order, began a program of conversion in the Languedoc. Saint Dominic, often called Dominic de Guzmán (1170 – 1221), was born in the kingdom of Leon and Castile. In 1203, Dominic joined Diego de Acebo on an embassy to Denmark for the monarchy of Spain, to arrange the marriage between the son of King Alfonso VIII of Castile (1155 – 1214) and a niece of King Valdemar II of Denmark. Alfonso VIII was the grandson of Alfonso VII of Leon and Castile, and married Eleanor of England, daughter of Eleanor of Aquitaine and Henry II of England.

The envoys traveled to Denmark by way of Aragon and Toulouse, when Dominic became inspired into a reforming zeal after they encountered Albigensian Christians. Dominic believed that the primary reason for the spread of the heretical movement was the leaders of the Church behaved too ostentatiously, in contrast to the Cathars who generally led ascetic lifestyles. He concluded that only preachers who displayed real sanctity, humility and asceticism could win over convinced Cathar believers. In his ten years of preaching, a large number of converts were made.[55]

St. Dominic set up his headquarters in the town of Fanjeaux in 1206, becoming its parish priest and taking charge of its ancient church, Notre Dame de Prouille, France, the “cradle of the Dominicans,” deep in Cathar country, where he attempted to convert the heretics back to the Catholic faith. Diego de Acebo, Bishop of Osma, and St. Dominic were allowed to use the church by Bishop Foulques of Toulouse (c. 1150 – 1231). Before reforming his ways and becoming a fierce opponent of the Cathars, Foulques had been a famous troubadour, known to Raymond Geoffrey II of Marseille, Richard Lionheart, Raymond V of Toulouse, Raimond-Roger of Foix, Alfonso II of Aragon and William VIII of Montpellier. He is most famous for his love songs which were lauded by Dante. In Fanjeaux, St. Dominic founded a convent for young women fleeing the debauchery of the Cathars. Soon after, St. Dominic added monks to his growing community, thus planting the seeds of what would later become the Dominican Order.[56] The most generous donor was Simon de Montfort, leader of the Albigensian Crusade.

Histories of the Holy Rosary often attribute its origin to St. Dominic, inspired by a vision of the Blessed Virgin Mary at Prouille. According to Dominican tradition, in 1206, when St. Dominic was had little success in his attempts to convert the Cathars, a vision of the Blessed Virgin appeared who gave him the rosary as a tool against the heretics. St. Dominic called on Catholics as well as heretics to pray the Rosary. By 1213, many Catholic Crusaders took up his advice, and devotion to the Rosary had spread. That year, a Crusader army under Simon de Montfort confronted a Cathar army under Raymond of Toulouse in the battle of Muret. The heretics were routed. Years later, when the Cathar heresy was finally extinguished, many Catholics attributed this defeat as much to St. Dominic’s zeal as to the Crusaders’ arms.[57]

At Dominic’s request, the Dominican Order was formally established by Pope Honorius III in 1216, to preach in conquered Cathar territory and to combat the spread of heresy. The Dominicans in turn created the first formal Inquisition.  In 1233 the next pope, Gregory IX, charged the Dominican Inquisition with the final solution: the absolute extirpation of the Cathars. Dominic also supported the military campaigns against the Cathars during the Albigensian Crusade.

In 1219, Pope Honorius III invited Dominic and his companions to take up residence at the ancient Roman basilica of Santa Sabina. In 1220, at Bologna the order’s first General Chapter mandated that each new priory maintain its own studium conventuale, thus laying the foundation of the Dominican tradition of sponsoring institutions of learning.[58] This studium was transformed into the order’s first studium provinciale by Saint Thomas Aquinas in 1265. Part of the curriculum of this studium was relocated in 1288 at the studium of Santa Maria sopra Minerva which in the sixteenth century would be transformed into the College of Saint Thomas. The church’s name derives from the fact that the first Christian church structure on the site was built directly over the ruins of a temple dedicated to the Egyptian goddess Isis, which had been equated to the goddess Minerva, the Athena of the Romans.

The Dominican friars quickly spread, including to England, where they appeared in Oxford in 1221. In the thirteenth century, the order reached all classes of Christian society, and by its missions to the north of Europe, to Africa, and Asia passed beyond the frontiers of Christendom. Its schools spread throughout the entire Church; its doctors wrote monumental works in all branches of knowledge, including the highly influential Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinas. Its members included popes, cardinals, bishops, legates, inquisitors, confessors of princes, and ambassadors.

Brethren of the Free Spirit

The appearance of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, hailed as his new spiritual men, reinforced Joachim of Fiore’s reputation as a prophet.[59] Joachim has always had a dual reputation as saint and as heretic. In his lifetime Joachim was acclaimed as a prophet gifted with divine illumination, an image that was perpetuated by the first chroniclers after his death. Pope Alexander IV condemned Joachim’s writings and set up a commission that in 1263 AD at the Synod of Arles declared his theories heretical. Leading mystics of the Middle Ages like Abraham Abulafia, Roger Bacon and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa were influenced by Joachim of Fiore, whose formulations profoundly influenced millenarianism. Roger Bacon also refers to Joachim of Fiore:

I do not wish in this matter to be presumptuous, but I know that if the Church should be willing to consider the sacred text and prophecies, also the prophecies of the Sybil and of Merlin, Aquila, Seston, Joachim, and many others, moreover the histories and the books of philosophers, and should order a study of the paths of astronomy it would gain some idea of greater certainty regarding the time of Antichrist.[60]

A later leader of the Spiritual Franciscans, Pier Giovanni Olivi (d. 1297), revived Joachim’s teachings, as did Ubertino da Casale, who left the order in 1317. The latter plays a role in Umberto Eco’s novel and popular motion picture The Name of the Rose, along with two monks whose past association with the Dulcinians results in their trial and execution for heresy.

Joachim’s views also inspired several subsequent movements, such as the Amalricians, the Dulcinians and the Brethren of the Free Spirit. The Brethren of the Free Spirit were adherents of a loose set of beliefs deemed heretical by the Catholic Church, which sprang up in the provinces of Narbonne and Toulouse in the wake of the suppression of the Cathars.[61] The beliefs of the Free Spirits were first to be found in a text called the Compilatio de novo spiritu put together by Albertus Magnus (1200 – 1280) in the 1270s. Also known as Saint Albert the Great, Albertus Magnus was a German Catholic Dominican friar and bishop, whom the Catholic Church distinguishes as one of the thirty-six Doctors of the Church. The themes found in these documents include a belief that the perfected soul and God are indistinguishably one; denial of the necessity of Christ, the church and its sacraments for salvation; use of the language of erotic union with Christ; and that “Nothing is a sin except what is thought to be a sin.”[62]

The heresy of the Free Spirit spread widely in Champagne, Thüringen, Brussels, Cologne, Bavaria and other areas, disseminated by mendicant religious travelers known as Beghards and Béguines, who were often compared to the Cathars. In the Netherlands the Brethren of the Free Spirit, the Taborites in Bohemia, and in the fourteenth century the Beghards in Germany, revived the practices of the Adamites, or Adamians, adherents of an Early Christian sect in North Africa in the second to the fourth century who wore no clothing during their religious services. According to William of Egmont, who described the ceremonies of “Beghards,” a meeting was held in an underground place which the heretics called “Paradise,” where two people called themselves Jesus and his mother Mary. The leader gave a sermon in the nude in which he exhorted his listeners to disrobe, after which the lights were turned out for the orgy. In the early fourteenth century, John of Viktring described heretical rites in which the Beghards and Béguines of Cologne enacted naked masses at midnight in an underground hideaway which they named a temple in which participants rejoiced that they had returned to the state of Adam and Eve before the fall.[63]

Another person accused, by Henry of Virneburg, Bishop of Cologne, was Meister Eckhart, a German Dominican, one of the most influential thirteenth-century Christian Neoplatonists in his day, and remained widely read in the later Middle Ages. He was accused of heresy and brought up before the local Franciscan-led Inquisition, and tried as a heretic by Pope John XXII. Eckhart came into prominence during the Avignon Papacy, at a time of increased tensions between monastic orders, diocesan clergy, the Franciscan Order, and Eckhart’s Dominican Order of Preachers.

Malleus maleficarum

By the early fifteenth century, when the Catholic Church in Germany viewed heresy as a serious threat, Johannes Nider, a Dominican reformer, in his 1434 work Formicarius, combined the Free Spirit teachings with witchcraft in his condemnation of heresy. Formicarius also became a model for Malleus maleficarum, or Hammer of the Witches, written by two Dominican monks who were members of the Inquisition in 1484, which instigated the infamous medieval witch-hunts.[64] Many of the accusations made against the Cathars, such as the worship of a black cat and the “obscene kiss” were brought against the witches of the Middle Ages. In their ceremonies of devil invocation, witches were reputed to blaspheme the ceremonies of the religion they belonged to. The desecration of the Holy Sacrament was known as the Black Mass, later termed a Sabbat. At these nocturnal celebrations, a pact with the devil was to take place, the participants would defile the Christian sacraments, spit on the cross, denounce Christ, and swear allegiance to Satan.

Eventually, however, the Church of Rome attempted the brutal suppression of witchcraft. Between 1421 and 1440 the Inquisition held a series of trials in the Dauphine district of south-eastern France. Until then the medieval Church had dismissed the witches as ignorant peasants suffering from delusions and worshipping pagan gods, but this document significantly altered that perception. According to Malleus maleficarum, witchcraft was a diabolical heresy which conspired to overthrow the Church and establish the kingdom of Satan on Earth. Pope Innocent VIII agreed with the diagnosis, and in 1486, issued a papal bull condemning witchcraft.

According to their confessions, witches flew by night to meet at “synagogues,” riding on demonic horses, or on broom-sticks smeared with ointment made from the bodies of babies. There, they worshipped Satan, who appeared as a black cat or a man with shining eyes, wearing a crown and black clothes. They feasted, danced and copulated with each other, with their familiar spirits and sometimes with the devil himself. The witches made a formal pact with the devil, paid him homage, gave him the obscene kiss, a kiss on his rectum, and sacrificed children and black cats to him. They made magic potions from children’s bodies. The devil taught them the work of evil magic and they reported on the harm they had done since previous meetings. In some cases he made a mark on their bodies as a sign of their allegiance to him.

[1] Gardner. Bloodline of the Holy Grail, p. 137

[2] Edward Peters, ed (1980). “The Cathars.” Heresy and Authority in Medieval Europe (University of Pennsylvania Press). p. 108.

[3] Scholem. The Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 12.

[4] Adolfo Salazar and Gilbert Chase. “Parsifal in Romanic Lands.” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January, 1939).

[5] Michael O’Hagan. “Joachimite apocalypticism, Cistercian mysticism and the sense of disintegration in Perlesvaus and The queste del saint Graal.” PhD Thesis, University of British Columbia (1983).

[6] Richard Barber. King Arthur: Hero and Legend (Boydell Press, 1986), p. 81.]

[7] Theodore Evergates. Henry the Liberal: Count of Champagne, 1127-1181 (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2016), p. 25.

[8] Napier. A to Z of the Knights Templar.

[9] Justin E. Griffin. Glastonbury and the Grail: Did Joseph of Arimathea Bring the Sacred Relic to Britain? (McFarland, Nov. 12, 2012), p. 167.

[10] “Walter Map.” New Catholic Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.encyclopedia.com/religion/encyclopedias-almanacs-transcripts-and-maps/walter-map

[11] Joshua Byron Smith. Walter Map and the Matter of Britain (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017), p. 218 n. 8.

[12] Malcolm Lambert. The Cathars (Oxford: Blackwell, 1998), p. 31.

[13] Paul Daniel Alphandéry. “Albigenses.” In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica. 1 (11th ed.). (Cambridge University Press, 1911). p. 505.

[14] Margaret Schaus. Women And Gender in Medieval Europe: An Encyclopedia (New York: Taylor and Francis Group, 2006).

[15] Michlet. The History of France.

[16] John M. O’Brien. “Jews and Cathari in Medieval France.” Comparative Studies in Society and History Vol. 10, No. 2 (Jan., 1968), p. 125.

[17] Scholem. Origins of the Kabbalah, p. 197, 234-238.

[18] Louis I. Newman. Jewish Influences on Christian Reform Movements (Columbia University Press, 1925) p. 142-43.

[19] Stephen O’Shea. The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (London: Profile Books, 2000).

[20] Geoffrey of Auxerre, Epistole, PL 185: 410-l6.

[21] Stephen O’Shea. The Perfect Heresy: The Revolutionary Life and Death of the Medieval Cathars (London: Profile Books, 2000).

[22] Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay. Hvstoria albigensis, ed. Pascal Guebin and Ernest Lyon. (Paris: Libraire Ancienne Honore Champion,3 vols., 1926-1939); PL 213:545.

[23] Antoine Dondaine.  “Durand deHuesca et la polemique anti-cathare,” Archivum fratrum praedicatorum. XXIX (1959), p. 270.

[24] Ibid.

[25] Jeffrey Richards. Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (Routledge, 2013) p. 60-61.

[26] Paul of Chartres. Vetus Agnon in Cartulaire de L’Abbave de Saint-Pere de Chartres (ed. M. Guerard; Paris: L'Imprimerie de Crapelet, 2 vols., 1840), I, 112.

[27] Guibert of Nogent, Histoire de sa vie (1053-1121), ed. Georges Bourgin (Paris: Libraire Alphonse Picardet Fils, 1907), p. 213.

[28] Denis de Rougemont. Love in the Western World, trans. Montgomery Belgion (New York: Pantheon, 1956).

[29] cited in Shah. The Sufis, p. 358

[30] Ibid.

[31] Joshua J. Mark. “Courtly Love.” Ancient History Encyclopedia. Retrieved from https://www.ancient.eu/Courtly_Love

[32] Adolfo Salazar and Gilbert Chase. “Parsifal in Romanic Lands.” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January, 1939), p. 88.

[33] Thomas F. Madden. The New Concise History of the Crusades (Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2005), p. 126.

[34] Malcolm Barber. “The Templar Preceptory of Douzens (Aude) in the Twelfth Century.” In Bull, Marcus Graham; Léglu, Catherine (eds.). The World of Eleanor of Aquitaine: Literature and Society in Southern France between the Eleventh and Thirteenth Centuries (The Boydell Press, 2005), p. 39.

[35] Elaine Graham-Leigh. The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade (The Boydell Press, 2005), 99.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid., p. 147.

[38] Richard Gottheil, Isaac Broydé. “Carcassonne.” Jewish Encyclopedia.

[39] Fredric L. Cheyette. Ermengard of Narbonne and the World of the Troubadours (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001), p. 347.

[40] Ibid., 275.

[41] Barber. The Cathars, p. 52.

[42] “Good and Evil: Life in medieval Languedoc was fun-loving. It was also heresy.” The New Yorker (August 6, 2001 Issue). Retrieved from https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2001/08/06/good-and-evil

[43] “The Counts of Foix.” Who’s Who In The Cathar War. Retrieved from https://www.cathar.info/cathar_whoswho.htm#rrdefoix

[44] René Nelli. Les Cathares : L'éternel combat, Paris, Grasset, coll. “Histoire des personnages mystérieux et des sociétés secretes” (1972), p. 244.

[45] H. J. Chaytor. The Troubadours (Good Press, 2019).

[46] Ibid.

[47] Adolfo Salazar and Gilbert Chase. “Parsifal in Romanic Lands.” The Musical Quarterly, Vol. 25, No. 1 (January, 1939).

[48] Ibid.

[49] Otto Rahn. Crusade Against the Grail.

[50] Jo Ann McNamara. Sisters in Arms: Catholic Nuns Through Two Millennia (Harvard University Press, 1996), p. 312.

[51] “Who’s Who In The Cathar War.”

[52] “The Counts of Toulouse and the Jews of the Languedoc.” Retrieved from http://www.midi-france.info/190214_jews.htm

[53] Elaine Graham-Leigh. The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade (Woodbridge: The Boydell Press, 2005), p. 124.

[54] M. D. Costen. The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade (Manchester University Press, 1997), p. 189.

[55] Edward Cuthbert Butler. “Dominic, Saint.” In Chisholm, Hugh (ed.). Encyclopædia Britannica 8 (11th ed.). (Cambridge University Press, 1911). pp. 401–402.

[56] Richard Poe. “History of the Rosary.” Retrieved from https://www.chanttherosary.com/rosary-history/

[57] Richard Poe. “History of the Rosary.” Retrieved from https://www.chanttherosary.com/rosary-history/

[58] William Hinnebusch. The Dominicans: A Short History, 1975, Chapter 1: “By requiring that each priory have a professor it laid the foundation for the Order's schools.” See also Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, Volume 10, p. 701. “In each convent there was also a studium particulare.”

[59] Marjorie E. Reeves. “Joachim Of Fiore” Encyclopedia Britannica.

[60] Opus maius. IV.iv. 16, I:268-9.

[61] Bernard GUI. Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis.

[62] Michael D. Bailey. Battling Demons: Witchcraft, Heresy, and Reform in the Late Middle Ages (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2003), p. 56.

[63] Michael D Magee. “Heresy and the Free Spirit: Beghards and Béguines.” p. 6.

[64] Bailey. Battling Demons, p. 49.

Volume One

Introduction

1. Babylon

2. Ancient Greece

3. The Hellenistic Age

4. The Book of Revelation

5. Gog and Magog

6. Eastern Mystics

7. Septimania

8. Princes' Crusade

9. The Reconquista

10. Ashkenazi Hasidim

11. The Holy Grail

12. Camelot

13. Perceval

14. The Champagne Fairs

15. Baphomet

16. The Order of Santiago

17. War of the Roses

18. The Age of Discovery

19. Renaissance & Reformation

20. Kings of Jerusalem

21. The Mason Word

22. The Order of the Dragon