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

APPENDIX: OBSERVATIONS ON
THE THEORETICAL PART
SOME TIME AGO, I decided to try to shed light on the relatively obscure
relationship between Occitan poetry and mysticism and the mentality of
medieval Germany. Only when I had the occasion to test this thesis in
Occitania itself did I discover the pathway that led directly from
Montsegur, Occitania's "Temple of the supreme Minne," to Wildenberg
near Amorbach, the location of the castle of Wolfram von Eschenbach—
the greatest of all German poets of the Minne. Then I understood that the
German and Occitan worlds, so distant and yet at the same time close to
each other, could not be fully contemplated in their sublime beauty without
recognizing that the mysticism of the Minne had a deep Celtic-Germanic
undercurrent.
Catharism was a dualist movement that extended throughout Europe.
In order to remain within the boundaries that I set down for this work, I
have not dealt with the fact that Cathar sects from the Balkans to Cologne
and Toulouse were all organized in a similar fashion in order to be strong
in their decisive fight against Rome and Paris, powers that had threatened
them for some time. I have also omitted the generalized belief that Occitan
Catharism—the Albigenses—was a branch of the Bogomils, or heretical
Slavs. In this respect, such an opinion, in no way irrefutable, can be read
into any work on Catharism, and above all in the works of Schmidt and
Dollinger, and compared with my own thesis. I was very interested in
bringing the native element of the Cathars to the forefront of my book,
highlighting facts that until now have never
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