Cathar Castles
Château Comtal de Carcassonne ( Castèl de Carcassona)

The Château Comtal (Count’s Castle) is a medieval castle within the Cité of Carcassonne, the largest city in Europe with its city walls still intact. The Medieval Cité lies within the modern city of Carcassonne in the Aude department, of which Carcassonne is the prefecture, in the former province of Languedoc.

Although the outer curtain wall of the cité is French, and the whole site has been substantially restored, the Château Comtal has a strong claim to be called a "Cathar Castle". When the Catholic Crusader army arrived in 1209 they first attacked Raymond-Roger Trencavel's castrum at Bèziers and then moved on to his main stronghold at Carcassonne.

The castle was restored in 1853 by the architect Eugène Viollet-le-Duc. It was added to the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites in 1997.You can visit the medieval cite (free) and the Château Comtal (entry fee).

Carcassonne was besieged from 1st to 15th of August 1209 during the early phase of the War against the  Cathars of the Languedoc. The siege followed soon after the Crusaders' massacre of the entire population of Béziers, an act of terror designed to terrify the people of the area. Raymond-Roger Trencavel was Viscount of Béziers as well as Carcassonne - his cities were deliberately targeted by the Crusaders, as the Count of Toulouse had joined the Crusade himself, gaining immunity for his own lands.

Here is a description of the event, from the contemporary Song of the Cathar Wars , laisse 15, written in Occitan, by a poet sympathetic to the crusader cause. He recognises Raymond-Roger's nobility but carefully skates over what happened at Carcassonne, and afterwards:

Lo vescoms de Bezers no fina noit ni jorn
De sa terra establir, car mot avoit gran cor.
En tant cant lo mons dura n'a cavalier milhor,
Ni plus pros ni plus larg, plus cortes ni gensor.
Nebs fo del coms Ramon e filhs de sa seror.
Sest fo catholicals: de so trag az auctor
Mot clerc e mot canonge qu'estan en refrechor;
Mans, car era trop joves, avia ab totz amor
E sels de son païs, de cui era senhor,
No avian de lui ni regart ni temor,
Enans jogan am lui co li fos companhor.
E tuit sei cavalier e l'autre valvassor
Tenian los eretges, qui en castel, qui en tor;
Per que foron destruit e mort a desonor.
El meteis ne morig, a mot granda dolor,
Dont fo pecatz e dans, per cela fort error.

[Raymond Roger] the Viscount of Béziers worked day and night
To defend his lands, for he was a man of great courage.
Nowhere in the wide world is there a better knight
Nor one more generous and open handed, more courteous or better bred.
Nephew to Count Raymond, the son of his sister.
And he was certainly Catholic; I call to witness
Many a clerk and many a cannon in their cloisters;
But he was very young and therefore friendly to all
And his vassals were not at all afraid of or in awe of him,
But laughed and joked with him
As they would with any comrade.
And all his knights and vavassors
Maintained the heretics in their castles and towers,
So they caused their own ruin and their shameful deaths.
The Viscount himself died in great anguish,
a sad and sorry loss, because of this grievous error.

Google map showing Château Comptal de Carcassonne

Raymond-Roger came out to parley with the Crusaders, then under the command of the Abbott-Comander Arnaud Amaury. He was offered the opportunity to leave the city with a few of his senior nobles, but declined the offer. What the author of the Song of the Cathar Wars conceals in his narrative is that the city and its castle were taken by deceit, when Raymond-Roger came out to parley. Scandalously, the Viscount was seized and taken prisoner. Without his leadership, resistance crumbled and the city surrendered.

The Crusaders expelled the inhabitants with a day's safe conduct, so that God's army could loot at leisure. Their lesson from Béziers had been that massacres risked the total destruction of the city, including the loss of all loot by fire. Arnaud wrote to the pope, Innocent III, to explain why on this occasion no-one had been killed. It is at this stage that Simon de Montfort was appointed to hold Raymond-Roger's territories.

Soon afterwards, on the 10th November, Roger-Raymond died in mysterious circumstances in his own prison. He had reigned for fifteen years and was aged just 24 at the time of his death in the custody of the French Catholic Crusaders.   According to a rumour current at the time (mentioned in the contemporary Song of the Cathar Wars, laisse 37) he was murdered during the night. Later, the pope himself referred to the disgraceful killing of the Viscount in letter that still survives. Do not expect to hear about this, or anything else about the period, if you take the guided tour.

When Raymond-Roger died he left a young son, now the rightful Viscount of Béziers and Carcassonne, but dispossessed of his inheritance by Simon de Montfort who took the Trencavel titles contrary to all feudal law but with the blessing of the Catholic Church. The son, Raymond Trencavel II, took refuge with his kin, the Count of Foix, and his suzerain, the King of Aragon. Years later, in 1240, Raymond II attempted to regain his patrimony by force of arms, and almost succeeded in taking Carcassonne. After his failure he broke his seal as a token to his submission to the King of France, releasing his vassals from their allegiance, and the great The House of Trencavel disappeared from history.

Ramparts. The Cité's outer ramparts, complete with turrets, towers, and crenellations, were built during the reign of Louis IX.  His son, Philip III, continued the work.  He also added a main gate, called the Porte Narbonnaise, to the inner walls.  The Porte is the only entry into the Cité by road.  It is guarded by two flanking towers and a double barbican.

Château Comtal. 12th century castle belong to the Viscounts.  It is located within the Cité's ramparts.   Its fortifications are among Europe's finest medieval remains.  You can take a guided tour, but don't expect too much by way of historical expertise.

Click here for more about the Cité of Carcassonne

Click on the following link to visit a Carcassonne Photo Gallery

After the initial attacks of the Crusaders, the Roman Catholic Church soon recognised the need for a way to keep the local population subjugated and compliant. The solution was the Inquisition - the first papal Inquisition in Europe - largely manned by the new Dominical Order, founded by Dominic Guzman. Though Inquisitors travelled extensively, they were based in major power centres like Carcassonne. You can still see their headquarters in Carcassonne and a tower they used.

For accused first offender "heretics" willing to repent the penalty was not death, at least not a formal sentence of death. Inquisitors had a range of punishments, including close imprisonment on a diet of bread and water which generally killed people within a few months. Occasionally people might survive for a year or two, despite the poor diet, lack of heat and light, and lack of any hygiene or medical facilities. To create enough prison space Inquisitors at Carcassonne would wall up their victims - a punishment known as strict immuration.

The only Catholic Churchman generally recognised outside the Church as having acquitted himself with honour during the whole period of Cathar repression was a Franciscan friar called Bernard Delicieux. He is shown here on the right releasing prisoners who had been condemned by Inquisitors to imurration. Delicieux was eventually charged with treason by his Dominican enemies and himself condemned to the wall where, predictably, he died under the harsh conditions.

Two, more fortunate, victims in the early fourteenth century were a Catholic priest named Barthélemy Amilhac and his wife Béatrice de Planissolles, sometime chatelaine of Montaillou. They were sentenced to the wall in perpetuity but survived for more than a year and were released. They had been questioned by Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers sitting with Inquisitors from Carcassonne. Click on the following links to read English transcripts of the interrogation of Barthélemy Amilhac and Béatrice de Planissolles.