Crusade Against the Grail - Rennes-le-Chateau Research and ...

186 PART FOUR
Catharism until their death. Many fell in the defense of Montsegur. Still
more perished in the Tower of the Inquisition in Carcassonne. Others had
to wander their desecrated homeland wearing the yellow cross, symbol of
dishonor, on their chest and back. Those who resisted the longest were the
lords of Rabat and Castellum Verdunum, now the miserable survivors of
the Church of Amor, so powerful in other times.
Jacques Fournier personally indicated to his friars-in-arms where to
install their battering rams to force entry into the spulgas. From his manor
house in Tarascon, he directed this holy war against those who remained
entrenched in the caves.
For more than a century, the Cathars could live in this wild Pyrenean
valley without anyone bothering them. They had their huts on the slopes of
the mountains, between pines, fig trees, and acacia trees. When danger
approached, they lit bonfires on the Soudour, a gigantic plateau near
Tarascon that dominates the whole valley, so the smoke could serve as an
alarm. Then the heretics took refuge in the caves, which were fatal for
anybody who didn't know them. When—for example—the executioners of
the Inquisition penetrated the cave of Sacany, before them were six
different pathways. Five of them lead in a zigzag to a precipice whose
depths nobody to this day has been able to explore. It is possible that more
than one henchman's remains rest there after falling in furious pursuit of
some Cathar. Once the Inquisitors found the right pathway, the nest of
heretics was empty.
In all probability, the smoke signals disappeared from the summit of
the Soudour from the moment Jacques Fournier occupied his manor house
at its foot. One day, the Inquisitors torched the spulgas, burning all the
Cathars who couldn't flee. Jacques Fournier imagined he could become
Pope.
A document from 1329 informs us that, after rotting for an eternity in
the dungeons of the Inquisition, Pons-Arnaud, the co-lord of Castellum
Verdunum, was freed under the condition of wearing the yellow crosses.
Falling back into heresy, he was apprehended by the guards of the
Dominicans and jailed, dying finally ab intestato.
With the death of this Son of Belissena, the caves of the Sabarthes, as
remote and inaccessible as they were, could no longer provide security for
the heretics. If the walls of the fortified cave of Bouan, the most impressive
spulga of the Sabarthes that belonged to the lords of Chateau