Forbidden History - Secrets of the Cathars: Montségur

Episode Date: July 10, 2025

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we explore the dramatic 1244 siege of Montségur, the last stronghold of the Cathars, a heretical Christian sect hunted by the Catholic Church… Cast List: Tim Sutherland: Archaeologist, University of York Dr Marie-Elise Gardel: Archaeologist, Site Medieval De Cabaret a Lastours Frederic Loppe: Archaeologist, Site Medieval De Cabaret a Lastours Fabrice Chambon: Cultural Ambassador, Chateau & Musee De Montsegur Andre Czeski: Archaeologist, Musee De Montsegur Eric Meyers: Narrator  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Forbidden History Podcast. This program is presented solely for educational and entertainment purposes. It contains adult themes. Listener discretion is advised. On a lonely mountain, a remote castle, perched between heaven and earth, a forgotten culture, an outlawed faith, purged in flame, erased from history, The Last Refuge of the Cathars

In this episode of the Forbidden History podcast, we explore the story of the siege of the fortress of Montsegur, the Mide Pyrenees, the southernmost limit of France. But the unified country, as we know it today, did not exist in the medieval period. Instead, in the early 13th century, Its laws and customs were closer to Roman times than to Paris, the north, or to the rest of Western Europe. Europe in the 13th century is changing significantly, and medieval France certainly is.

It wasn't even a united country at this one at this point. And so the political boundaries are changing, the religious boundaries are changing. The secluded valleys and mountains of this part of the midi meant it was naturally separate from the central massive of France. The region's name even derived from its own distinct language, Oksitan. The people of the Long Dock were fiercely independent. Sometime in the 11th century, the remote villages and closed communities had become home to devotees of a new religion, catharism. Religion and one's faith are ideologies. They don't exist as an entity.

but they can be represented by how you live your life and the marks you make on the land. For example, the different types of churches or the buildings or the areas and how you farm, for example. The Cathars. They were Christians, but they were also dualists, believing in two universal principles. A good God and a bad God. An idea already ancient before Christ. The good God was the God of the Spirit, of the eternal world. The bad God represented the material world where those spirits were imprisoned until their release by death.

Men and women were seen as equal. Cathars preached without the trappings and riches of the medieval church. Where they came from isn't known for certain, perhaps Persia or Byzantium in the East. What is sure is they were a threat, and the medieval Roman Catholic Church knew how to respond when threatened. This was the age of the crusade. For more than 100 years since the end of the 11th century, there had been campaigns against Muslims in the East and pagans in the North. The next call to arms wouldn't be directed at Saracen hordes or pagan warlords, but against ordinary men and women in the Long Dock.

When you consider it as a crusade against your own people, then that must have been traumatic at every level. Because, of course, you could have a different doctrine to your family or friends or locals. And of course, it's easy to ostracize somebody locally and just throw them out of the village. But when it becomes a huge area of the south of France, then of course it takes up a national interest. In 1209, an army largely of northern France was led by Simon de Montfort into the... long dock, bent on exterminating the heretic cathars. It became known as the Albigensian crusade. Castles were sieged, villages sacked.

Some Cathars had the chance to recant. Most were burned alive as heretics. At Bezier, the whole town was destroyed, and its entire population of more than 15,000 people massacred whether they were Cathar or not. The Crusaders then attacked the major city of the region, Carcassonne. It's one of the icons of the medieval age. Though it was heavily restored in the 19th century, it's still one of the most beautiful walled cities in Europe.

As soon as you see it, as you come over a first rise and you see Carcasson laid out before you, it almost takes your breath away. It's a typical, almost fantasy fortified city with towers and big gates and walls. And it's magical. It really is a beautiful place. Caucason's fortifications were strong, but the city was packed with refugees fleeing the crusaders. The terror of massacres like Bezier had a useful effect, surrounded and with its water supply cut off. Carcassonne surrendered. The inhabitants who couldn't all have been Cathars

were forced to walk naked out of the city gates. Carcasson is a major attraction in France today, like many other places throughout the Long Dock. It's associated with the Cathars, the fascination for whom brings many visitors each year, and yet the castles that remain to be seen aren't truly Cathar castles. The irony is that when we look on top of these mountains and we see these beautiful castles

all dotted all around the countryside, what we're seeing is not the Cathars and the Cathar castles. We're seeing the later medieval crusader castles. These are the people that dominated, subdued the Cathars and wiped them out. French archaeologists are now researching what remains of the time of the Cathars. Marie-Ais Gardele has led a team at one of the one of the Carthars. led a team at one site for more than three decades. My passion is for people, for human beings, to understand how they built all this and lived here, how they developed an economic and social system, and how suddenly it all ended because of war,

because of the Albujinsean crusade. But this crusade was like no other. It pitted countrymen, even families, against one another. Marie-Aleese's work is centered on Last Tour, seven miles north of Carcassonne. I began the excavations here 36 years ago. starting with the castle called Cabaret on the north side. From this I was able to obtain a chronology, dating the castle and its construction to the mid-13th century

and its abandonment in the revolution. I continued the research on the slopes, realizing it was a 12th century feudal habitation known as a castrum. The castrum, or, fortified village was positioned across the access road, important for its iron ore. The defenses of L'Astur comprised several independent towers. But like Carcasson, they no longer date back directly to the Cathars. All were rebuilt after they fell to the Crusaders.

Marie-Alees studied not just the towers, but the site as a whole, including discoveries underground. ground. There was a whole village with three towers that were halfway up the hill, not at the summit. Inside, there was a cave dwelling, maybe a fortified cave. There are 40 caves on the site. Fortified caves, perhaps were cathars held out against the crusaders.

Medieval archaeology is rare in caves. is more common in castles, dwellings, abbeys, churches, but caves as research areas are relatively new. The finds vary from prehistoric to medieval in a complex pattern of occupation. We found the leftovers of a meal, vertebral ribs, mutton for example. We also found some iron. a fragment of a Ferdetre arrowhead. A human tibia was found this morning,

in a crevice in the rock, and it's interesting for us. It might be prehistoric remains, or it might be medieval remains, from a grave that was not in the cemetery. So it is either the grave of an outcast or a burial made in haste during a conflict. Above the ground in the shadow of Cabaret,

Maria Lise's team found the remains of the rest of the castrum, an entire Cathar village, buried after it was destroyed in the crusade. So it was a rich lordship, the domain of Cabaret, that exploited this area, and established a whole network here. forges, stone masons, mills with millers, maybe textile artisans, and it was a whole way of life that was annihilated by the Crusade. Frederick Lop worked with Marie Alisleis on the excavations. Frederick Lop worked with Marie Elise on the excavations.

We know almost with certainty this medieval village was occupied during the period when Carthus lived here and was destroyed during the crusade, because during our excavations of the houses we found a number of medieval coins, which were precisely dated by coin experts, none of which dated after the mid-13th century, so we are almost certain, looking at the layer of destruction that conceals the demolition of the houses, that no one lived here after the mid-13th century,

that tells us the end of the life of this village. The archaeology confirmed the accounts that the Cathar village was wiped out during the crusade. For the people of that era, the war was a tragedy, because war is always a tragedy. For us archaeologists, the Cathar tragedy gives us an opportunity. If the village had survived the crusade, it might still have been occupied today. And centuries of occupation would have destroyed anything left of the medieval archaeology.

Instead, Frederick and his team were able to form an understanding of the site, how it was 700 years ago. Access to the village was across a river by narrow wooden bridges. We believe that there was a wooden foot bridge that could withstand the risk of floods. From the rise and fall of water that could destroy the bridge sometimes. The stone walls behind are not from the Middle Ages. They were constructed in modern or contemporary times. There were also clues about how the village met in the village met in the village,

end. It was neither destroyed during fighting nor put to the torch by Bezier. In one house we found a bronze candlestick holder, which is a very rare object, very fine workmanship. We only found one. It was undoubtedly expensive and not something you would leave behind if you had time. So there are several signs that tell us that the people here were driven out. They weren't killed here. The houses were not burnt down or set a light because we found no evidence of fire. The houses were deliberately dismantled by hand. That must have taken months, maybe years.

So the people were displaced. We don't know where to, because the text doesn't clearly tell us. The people were not killed here and the houses were not burnt down. There was a lot of evidence that people left in a great hurry because the village was going to be destroyed. This was clear. clinical premeditated depopulation. Yet for all the differences between Cathar and Catholic in ideology,

Marie Elise found that after seven centuries in the ground, there's little to separate them in archaeology. Cathar archaeology does not exist. There is no visible archaeological difference between the Cathars and those practicing Orthodox Christianity. When we excavated their cemetery at the south of the site, on the edge of the village, you can see the way people were buried is the same as other Christians,

orientated towards the west. There is nothing to separate the Cathar from others. But for Cathars who were caught by the Crusaders and who refused to return to Roman Catholicism, there were no burials. only ashes. For more than 30 years, the Crusade ebbed and flowed. One by one the remote fortresses of the long dock fell. By 1243, only one significant Cathar refuge still remained, 50 miles southwest of Carcassonne. Atop a limestone precipice, over 3,000 feet high,

was Montsegur. Few places from the medieval world in their physical location, are as evocative and spectacular. They are the subject of legend and folklore. The Knights Templar, the Holy Grail, lost treasures. We continue the search after the break. I want to talk to you about a new book by author Carl Barney, about something we all strive for. Happiness.

You weren't born to coast through life. you were born to feel alive, to wake up with energy, to live a life that excites you. The new book, The Happiness Experiment, is the tool to help you do just that. It's not fluff, it's a practical system to help you find your unique version of joy, meaning, and drive. It's time to stop surviving and start thriving. If you want to learn more, take a few minutes at the end of this podcast, and listen to an interview about the happiness experiment and how you can bring it to life. Plus, to discover your unique happiness type by taking the free assessment at my happiness type.com.

That's m-y-h-a-p-p------------------------------------------. Then grab your copy of the happiness experiment at book Books a million.com, that's B-O-O-O-K-S-A-M-I-L-I-O-N dot C-O-M. Books-A-Million.com. There are so many myths about Moseguer, and one of the problems we have as archaeologists is to separate the fact from the fiction. We need to be really scientific. We've got to be very, very disciplined and find out what the real evidence is. because there is so much other material that's been super-imposed upon these stories. Fabrice Chambon began his career in archaeology at Montsegur at the age of 16. For more than 15 years, he's guided visitors here as a custodian and cultural attache.

The first time I saw Montsegur, I was a little shocked. The area, this mountain, with a castle perched on top. It was a magic moment. Montsegur village is special because it was constructed in 1204 and was destroyed in 1244. In Montsegur there was no village before the Cathas arrived and there was none after. That's what interests archaeologists in the mountain. When you excavate these houses, You see 40 years of occupation, nothing before, nothing after.

So you have a chronological occupation at Montsegur in this 40 years corresponds to the Cathar period. Like elsewhere, the Montsegur we see today appears as it was rebuilt by the Crusaders and later French kings. In the Cathar period, it looked completely different. The chateau itself, was smaller and all around the peak, defended by successive walls and towers, was a network of many houses and streets, a castrum where the Cathars lived. So in the village of Montsegure, there was a hierarchy. There were those who had come seeking refuge, the exile. There were more expensive houses for the more important people and smaller houses for the poorer folks.

The further you are from the summit, the smaller the house would be. So the nobles or those more fortunate lived in the houses closest to the summit, and poorer people had smaller houses down the slope. The Crusaders began the siege here in May 1243. Traces still remain from the months of fighting that followed. In Montsegur, you can still walk on the field of battle.

the field of battle from the 13th century. When it rains sometimes, you have to be lucky. You can even find an arrowhead. The mountain, centuries after, shows evidence of this vigorous combat. That is unique. In the 1960s, cavers on the south side of Montsegur, found two human skeletons. To date, they're the only bodies ever

were found here. Two human skeletons were found by pottles in the 1960s. In a cave that was 20 meters deep, they found the remains of one man, one woman, around 30 or 40 years of age. They died of violent death, and discovered marks on their bodies from an arrowhead. The arrowhead dates from the mid-13th century. So at the time of the siege, 1242, 43, 44, finally, we have human evidence of the combat at Montsegur.

The man and woman were both killed at some point during the siege, deliberately placed deep in the cave. It was their discovery that inspired one archaeologist to come to this remote site in the long dock. But Andrei Chesky had little idea that he would spend his entire career researching Montsegur. He carried out the first dig in 1973 and has returned almost every year since. It's his work exclusively that provides us with what we know of the Cathars and how they lived here. There were deaths here.

It was bloody. There are traces of combat. It is all very moving. It is all very moving. Also, we found fragments of chain mail. We found small pieces of metal. Fragments of metal found on clothing for war. We found many bolts from crossbows,

the metal tipped from the end of the dart. More than 300, all over the mountain. Everywhere that we excavated, we found crossbow bolts. In archaeological jargon, we call them thirdetre. We also found evidence of military life. We found fragments of a large knife, a sword pommel, and also a sword sheath, all evidence of a military life. The most striking signs of combat related to the terrible artillery duel fought between attackers

and defenders. Scattered up and down the steep slopes were many massive stone projectiles, or Boulaye. Andre's team recovered nearly 250 of these stones. They would have been hurled from the arms of wooden siege engines. From the distribution of the stones, Andre believes they are the remains of the final stage in the siege, when the Crusaders had worked their way close enough to shoot over the defenses at the Cathar houses directly. In March 1244, or end of February 1244, we know the Crusaders had their machines of war, bombard the Cathar village. But then it was only a matter of time.

The Cathars couldn't hold on against such firepower. After almost a year under siege, Montseigneur finally surrendered. Non-Cathars were allowed to go free. But Cathars were offered the chance to recant. None did. On March 16, 1244, they descended the mountain. Some of the non-Cathar soldiers who defended them now went with them to the end. No stakes were required. More than 200 men and women gave themselves willingly to the flames. It's difficult to imagine in the medieval period, especially in this part of France in the medieval period, people who are prepared to die for their beliefs. And of course, we're talking about people who would willingly walk into a fire rather than give up those beliefs.

Thanks for exploring the past with us today. If you like this episode, please be sure to follow for more. We post new episodes every Tuesday and Thursday. Don't forget to leave a comment below and feel free to leave us a rating or review. Your feedback helps us reach more listeners like you. And now, an interview with Carl Barney about his new book, The Happiness Experiment.

Our sister, I'm going to bring forward and yours and give it to you now. And he said, oh, wow, that's great. Thank you. That's so generous of you, Carl. That's great. But his wife, my sister-in-law, went ballistic. She said, this is too much money, this is wrong. I don't want anything to do with and stormed out of the room. And I thought, well, that's not what I expected. Oh, my God.

So I realized from that that this was not an easy thing to do. So I learned a lesson from that, and I knew that I had to do this authentically. I had to do it right. Otherwise, it was not going to work. So that that happened. And then the third thing that happened was that I was looking at my finance. statements and I had more money there than I was really using. It was sitting there. I mean, it was growing, making profits and so forth, but it wasn't being used. I wasn't using it for me.

I wasn't unique for things that I really cared about, not for my people. So I thought, well, if I have all this money now, why should I wait until I die? Why don't I bring it forward? And then, you know, it was a long process for me to come around to that. But that's what finally started this. And I said, well, I'll do it now. Let's back up just a bit. Tell us a little bit about your new book. What is the happiness experiment? Well, this is a recording of the real events with real people who I decided that I would bring forward the inheritance, the money I had for them in my will, and made it a prequest. So it was a chunk of money that they were going to get while they were still young enough to enjoy it. And I was still alive to see it happening.

So I saw what they were doing. So when I sat down with them, I talked about money and happy. and how one can connect. I said, look, I'm going to bring this forward and give it to you. But what I want from you is a plan so that you use this money. So it's really a big benefit for you. I don't want this to overwhelm you. And they said, what kind of plan?

I said, I want a happiness plan. And they said, a happiness plan? What's that? So nobody seems to have a happiness plan. But it's one of the most important plans you can get. And it doesn't have to be very complex. What is it that makes you happy? What values do you want to pursue?

You know, what goals and dreams do you have? And you can pursue them. And so I got them to write a happiness plan. And then when I saw the plan, I gave them all the money all at one time. And so then they took it. And I watched them with their plan. I saw all their plans, what they did and how they became happier. And so, you know, that had to be written about. So because I wanted other people to see what they did so that they too could do the same thing. Which pre-quest is the most unique one you've you've come across. Well, it was a very, very painful and sad story because two dear friends of mine had a beloved daughter and she was head on by a drunk driver and killed. She happened to be eight months pregnant at the time so that killed the granddaughter too and and also their daughter.

They were totally, totally wiped out, devastated and they died emotionally. They had decided that they could never be happy again. They would be wrong to be happy. They didn't deserve to be happy because their darling daughter had been killed. Tremendously painful, awful, awful story. So they were grieving six years later. And I met with them, and I told them how much

they had added to my life and how much I was so grateful to them and that I wanted to express the gratitude. And I put them in my will, and they could accept that. And I said, but I want you to have it now. And they said, oh, no, no, we can't. accepted. They turned it down. They turned it down. Well, we worked on and I said, look, I'm leaving it open. So several months later, I think his wife persuaded him to do it actually. You know, and

you know, so they said, okay, we'll do it because if we're going to wait until you die, why not do it now? And it wasn't the money interesting enough. They said it was the coaching that made the big difference. That changed their mind, their mindset from being so negative. You know, we'll never be happy again. We don't deserve to be happy. And the coach turned their thinking, their mindset around and said, look, you know, it can be, you can be happy again. And they started to get the mindset of happy people. And now you cannot believe what these people are traveling all over the world.

They're in Tahiti right down. They climbed Kiliman Gera. These people are loving life. And it was a major change. That is one of the most heartfelt, wonderful results of the, and in a sense, and in a sense, she said, the wife said, this prequest changed or saved my life. Because we were no longer living. We were dead. And this brought us back to life. Yeah, I mean, dealing with grief and many of us have, I have, you know, when you're in those depths, it's really, it could be really difficult to find

your way out of it. And, you know, often it looks like there isn't a way out of it. And, you know, sometimes you want a map, right? And it looks like this concept could be a good map for you. If, it sounds like it was for these folks. I always like to end interviews by asking, is there anything that I didn't ask that I should have? How can my listeners benefit from this book? What should they do? What would be good for them?

And so I'll answer that question. First off, think about happiness. Think about being happiness. You deserve to be happy, and you can be happy, but you have to make it as a choice. I'm going to increase my happiness. Just that, if you make that realistically, I want to and I'm going to increase my happiness, that choice.

And then talk to people about it. Talk to a husband, a wife, or a girlfriend or a friend, a therapist or coach. Talk to somebody about it and say, look, I made the decision that I want to be happier and I'm like you to help me create a happiness plan. And then work on it. It's not that hard, but it is challenging.

but it's a wonderful exercise. And if they do it, I guarantee they will increase their happiness. I guarantee it. Carl Barney is the author and the book is called The Happiness Experiment, a revolutionary way to increase happiness. Carl, where can people find the book? Wherever books are sold and it's now available for pre-order from Amazon and they can go to the Happiness Experiment.com

and they can pre-order it there and I hope they will. Carl, thanks so much for the time. I really appreciate it. Yeah, thank you, Dan. It's been fun.