Merging Streams of Interest

Do you not want to be here (anymore)? If so:

This is a story in several parts.

The first part explains my 2002 readings and travel plans that expanded my knowledge of history of the Cathar heresy, a history that has been an interest for several decades. The expanded readings in 2002 showed me there was interesting history after the fall of Montsegur, in the Languedoc, well into the next century.

A little addendum to the first part explains my discovery, at this same time, that my earlier interest in the Beguine movement could have also led me to the same time and place, had I done my homework. I learned that while the last Cathars were being dealt with, so also were the Beguine groups who here were allied with Spiritual Franciscans, the radicals who insisted on living by the rule of St. Francis in poverty, who were also being rooted out.

The second part explains my interest in the name Beatrice, and why I have been sneaking around searching for a historical Beatrice, one long dead.

The third part explains how one of the books in the first part brought these two interest together, and speculates on what it could all mean. If indeed it means anything. But it is a fun speculation I am about to engage in here, so read on:

Part 1, Continuing Interest in Cathar Tales

After several years of not reading anything about the Cathars of the Languedoc, in what is now Southern France, I ran across three books that I had not seen before. Two because they were brand new, published in 2002 and 2001, and one because I just missed it before. It happens.

Please note that my readings have been largely confined to popular books, some written by scholars. I have not perused the several well respected scholarly tomes cited in these more widely read and more readable books.

What is interesting to me is that all three books have something to say about Catharism after the massacre at Montsegur. In fact the two newest books focus only on that post-Montsegur period. So I'll start with the one that only mentions that period, and then go into some detail on the other two.

Book One: A Historically Informed Travelogue

I found this earlier book interesting, and it was well-written: "Chasing the Heretics, A Modern Journey through the Medieval Languedoc," by Rion Klawinski (Hungry Mind Press, St. Paul, Minnesota, 1999). Rion did on a larger scale what I have tried to do, and continue to do when I get the chance, on a very tiny scale.

For me the highlight of my first two journeys through the Languedoc was my visit to the stronghold at Montsegur, climbing to the very top of its "pog," the 500 foot high, steep-sided rock it sits on. Rion didn't quite go there. He went everywhere else first and became satisfied and satiated with what he had absorbed in other places. He found his quest fulfilled at the little museum in the village of Montsegur. I never made it to that museum, was too excited to climb the pog instead, twice, and absorb its spirit. Rion did that very thing in a number of other locales. I respect that. He wrote a good historically-informed travelogue.

In her definitive historical work (but written for a lay audience) "Massacre at Montsegur, A History of the Albigensian Crusade," Zoe Oldenbourg stops her chronology at 1271 when the Languedoc passed into the control of the French Crown. This is 27 years after the massacre at Montsegur in 1244. So it was never a secret that Montsegur was not the end, but I had never taken an interest in what happened over the next ninety years to finally stamp out this religion in the region.

That additional 90 years of strife seemed like a tortuously long denouement that would be of little potential interest to me. I was more interested in Catharism at its peak, and wanted in particular to know what its appeal was to nobles and commoners alike, which was obviously considerable, since the entire countryside seemed thoroughly infected at several places and times.

Rion Klawinski's work, like Oldenbourg's, focuses on the Albigensian Crusade. Unlike the Oldenbourg book, however, Klawinski gives just a glimpse into this long denouement of the Cathar story.

In fact, Rion's overview treatment of that waning period is suitable for citing here, in part, to give a context to what I read in the other two books. Here is what Rion Klawinski reports, in essence he used just a couple of pages on this denouement, towards the end of a book more than 200 pages long which, like Oldenbourg's book, was focused on the Albigensian Crusade:

On his page 198 Klawinski explains that the techniques to be used by the Office of the Inquisition were defined at a church council in Toulouse in November 1229:

• "Every Catholic over the age of fourteen would be required to swear an oath to seek out and denounce heretics."
• "As Cathars were forbidden to swear any oaths, failure to so swear would be considered an admission of heresy."
• "Those who were accused of heresy would not he allowed to confront their accusers."
• "Also, a reward of one mark would be provided to anyone who aided in the capture of a heretic."

Since the local clergy were suspect in several towns, the inquisitors would not be under local control though they cooperated with them where they could. The inquisitors, Dominicans, always worked in pairs. "To expose a heretic, inquisitors usua1ly questioned the accused about details of the Creation, or the nature of the Eucharistic wafer." These were two areas where Cathar teachings were markedly different from Catholic teachings: Cathars believed the devil to have created this world, and the wafer was not the body of Christ once ingested, as taught to believing Catholics.

On pages 198-200 Klawinski further explains their methods:

The Inquisition was designed to work in an orderly way and inflicted its penalties in a graduated manner. First, the friars preached to those who had been secretly denounced to them as heretics. Those heretics who immediately repented and recanted were required to name every other person that they suspected was also a heretic, or those who associated with heretics. The denounced became the denouncers.

For a quick confession and the naming of names, the repentant heretic gained absolution by giving alms and performing one or two short pilgrimages to a local shrine. If simplc questions failed to elicit a confession, the Dominicans exerted psychological pressure. Heretics who offered slightly more resistance before recanting had to don distinctive dress, usually with a colored cross on their backs, for a specified period. This exposed them to the same public ridicule experienced by both Jews and Saracens, who, under the edicts of the Fourth Lateran Council, had been forced to wear distinctive dress since 1215. The Inquisition could also bring charges of heresy against the dead. It was not unusual for witnesses dragged in front of the Inquisition to scour their brains for the necessary denouncement to save themselves, and to accuse people in their graves for twenty or thirty years of some heretical activity.

Heretics who recanted only upon threat of death were imprisoned, often for life, and their property forfeited to the church. Despite the sensationalism of the Inquisition torture chambers touted in Carcassonne, torture was rarely used by the Dominican inquisitors, and then only as a last resort. Those Cathars who relapsed or refused to recant their heresy were turned over to the civil aithorities for execution.

It required only one Cathar to recant in order to bring down an entire congregation. A Cathar named Guillame de Sicre was a messenger and guide for the Perfects who continued thcir preaching duties. He led them through the darkness to their nighttime meetings with their dwindling congregations of Believers. When Guillame recanted to the inquisitor at Carcassonne, he incriminated more than forty of his fellow Cathars.

By these methods, in the decades following the Albigensian Crusade, the papal inquisitors developed long lists of denounced heretics. The lists compiled by the Dominicans were carefully guarded, cross-referenced, and catalogued. If a person s name appeared on several lists, that person became a focused target of the inquisitors.

The death sentence signaled a double failure for the inquisitor. Not only was a soul lost to God but valuable information was lost to the listmakers. In this light, the Inquisition s biggest failure was at Moissac, where, over the course of the year 1234, 210 Cathars were delivered to the secular authorities for death at the stake.

Klawinski explains there were some rebellions against the inquisition. None successful for long. The Inquisition, at this late date, . . ." had royal support from Louis IX and the monarchs who succeeded him, and the Inquisition continued its laborious task of making lists of heretics with alarming efficiency."

"By the 1240s," Klawinski explains on pages 200-201, "a little more than ten years after the end of the Albigensian Crusade, what was left of the Cathar church in the Languedoc was in desperate shape. The few Perfects who remained had been driven underground or had retreated to the few seemingly unassailable mountain strongholds that the Cathars still controlled." The result of this disarray was that:

The simple Believers no longer could rely on easy access to a Perfect for instruction or guidance or to perform the all-important rite of reconciliation with God. The only religious services the Cathars dared to undertake outside of their strongholds were clandestine meetings in the woods and hidden by the night. Even these, as Guillame de Sicre had demonstrated, were fraught with dangers. As the work of the Inquisition ground on through the thirteenth century; the vast majority of the Cathar Perfects were finally identified, the result being the painful severing of the necessary connections between Perfects and Believers and the inevitable withering and death of the Cathar church in the Languedoc. Thus, what the swords of the army of God could not accomplish was, in the end, achieved over many decades by a small, well-trained, and dedicated group of men, always in pairs, endlessly traveling, tirelessly drawing up list after terrible list.

On his page 212 Klawinski introduces us to the time that is of interest to both my quest for Beatrice and for understanding Cathar history:

The fall of Montségur ended armed resistance in the Languedoc by those southerners who had defended the Cathars for the last half century. By the 1250s a former Cathar, Rainier Succoni, working for the Inquisition, estimated that the remaining number of Perfects in the whole of the Languedoc was a mere 250. Nonetheless, the Inquisition did not relax its labors. The final effort to eliminale the Cathars centered on Toulouse between the years 1308 and 1323, when the most famous inquisitor of all, Bernard Gui, not only personally condemned 636 individuals for heresy, but also found time to write the infamous Manual of the Inquisition, a detailed how-to book that remains a staple for secret police forces to this day. The distinction of condemning the last known Cathar Perfect, however, goes to the inquisitor of Pamiers. It was he who, by trickery, lured William Bélibaste out of hiding in Catalonia and sent him to the stake in 1331.

Shortly therafter this inquistor, Jacques Fournier, became Pope Benedict XII, and built the Palace of the Popes and residence that some of you may have visited at Avignon!

So then I read a whole book on this last episode of Cathar resistance to the Inquisition. Was it the boring historical denouement I feared and eschewed for years? No, but largely because I found the second book introducing me to a person whose very name gave me a thrill: the book begins and ends and has a few things in the middle about a person named Beatrice de Planissoles. The name, and the description of her life, were of great interest to me because they allowed two lines of historical inquiry to come together, to become one.

Aside on Inquisition and Beguines

As you will find out in the next section, there is a woman raised by Beguines who is of some fame, spiritually speaking, who is named Beatrice. I have been reading and writing about Beguines for years, and have a lengthy article about them called "A Women's Movement in the High Middle Ages." Had I done my homework better I would have known there were Beguines in Southern France as well as in and near the Rhineland, which is where I where I focused. In the south of France, however, heresy seems to have been stronger within this group than in the northern countries. At least I was surprised at the examples of testimonies from obvious heretics in the accounts cited.

I did not know until reading about this phase of the Inquisition in Languedoc that among their targets were Beguines as well as Cathars. The following is instructive on this topic, and is cited from Professor David Burr's work on http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/inquisition1.html

INQUISITION: INTRODUCTION
by David Burr

By the end of the thirteenth century most areas of continental Europe had been assigned inquisitors. The overwhelming majority were Franciscans or Dominicans, since members of these two orders were seen as pious, educated and highly mobile. Inquisitors worked in cooperation with the local bishops. Sentence was often passed in the name of both. The overwhelming majority of sentences seem to have consisted of penances like wearing a cross sewn on one's clothes, going on pilgrimage, etc. The inqusitor's goal was not primarily to punish the guilty but to identify them, get them to confess their sins and repent, and restore them to the fold. Only around ten percent or less of the cases resulted in execution, a punishment normally reserved for obstinate heretics (those who refused to repent and be reconciled) and lapsed heretics (those who repented and were reconciled at one time but then fell back into error).

New inquisitors needed guidance, and the need was met by a series of manuals written in the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries by old hands. The most famous of these is the one by Bernard Gui, a Dominican who spent close to a quarter-century conducting investigations. Born around 1261, probably of lesser nobility, he joined the order in 1279. He received a good education and served as prior in a series of southern French convents before being appointed an inquisitor in 1307. He remained such, with his base of operations at Toulouse, until 1324, when he was rewarded with a bishopric. During that period he passed sentence on 930 people that we know of. The sentences passed on them add up to a total of 394 pages in a very large book.

Gui's manual, actually entitled Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis (The Conduct of Inquiry Concerning Heretical Depravity), was finished in 1323 or 1324, but he seems to have worked on it off and on throughout the latter part of his career. It is divided into five parts, the first three of which deal with procedure. The fourth presents a series of documents (papal bulls, etc.) which define the inqusitior's authority. In the fifth and most interesting part Gui takes his readers on a tour of contemporary heresy.

The part translated here deals with the Beguins. In order to understand who they were it is necessary to understand two important aspects of thirteenth-century history. On the one hand, this period witnessed the creation and enormous growth of the Franciscan Order, and a remarkable division in that order between the so-called spirituals, who insisted on observing the strict poverty practiced by Francis of Assisi himself, and what we now call the community, those willing to settle for a more moderate observance which would enable Franciscans to perform the many functions given them by the church. This quarrel was in some ways as old as the order itself, but we find two identifiable factions emerging only in the 1270s. By the late 1270s some Italian spirituals were being imprisoned by leaders of the order. In 1283 the battle claimed its first victim in southern France when Peter John Olivi, a leading spokesman for the spirituals, was censured; 1but by the end of the decade the Italian spirituals had been released from prison and Olivi had been rehabilitated.

Serious trouble occurred in the first decade of the fourteenth century, with large numbers of Italian and southern French spirituals being disciplined by the order. In 1312 Pope Clement V tried to mediate a compromise, but the battle soon heated up again, and the frustrated spirituals eventually tried to solve their problem by forcibly seizing a series of convents and holding them as their own turf. In 1317 the new pope, John XXII, decided to settle the problem by throwing his support entirely behind the community. He told the Spirituals to conform or face the consequences. When some refused, he identified them as heretics and turned the inquisition loose on them. By 1318 recalcitrant spirituals were being sent to the stake.

John's task was made more difficult by the fact that the spirituals had formed close ties with what we now call the beguins, a group of pious priests and laypersons in many southern French towns, and that brings us to the second aspect of thirteenth-century history. It was a period of tremendous religious enthusiasm among the laity, often accompanied by belief that a new age was dawning. Religious movements seemed increasingly self-propelled, moving without any obvious encouragement from (or control by) the ecclesiastical hierarchy. One of them was a group in southern France called beguins. That was rather scary for the church. As the papacy became sensitive to the threat involved in this situation, it raised the stakes by identifying disobedience with heresy and by encouraging drastic remedies against it. As a result, a number of people who had hitherto thought of themselves as loyal sons of the Holy Father found themselves forced to choose between their own deeply felt ideals and obedience to Rome.

The pope's attack on the spiritual Franciscans presented beguins with just such a dilemma, and many solved it by continuing to support the spirituals. These beguins were often members of the Third Order of Saint Francis and they held the poor, disciplined spirituals in special veneration. They worshipped Olivi as a saint, and every year on the anniversary of his death crowds of pilgrims flocked to his grave at Narbonne. When the spirituals were condemned, the beguins found it impossible to accept that decision. By 1319 they themselves were being prosecuted and burned, yet in a remarkable demonstration of what one might term either fanaticism or heroism they continued to harbor fugitive Spirituals and even organized an underground railroad which smuggled them through Majorca to Sicily. Eventually the southern French beguins were crushed, but it took the church two decades to do it.

Part of Burr's website is a collection of Inquisition records in translation. I was particularly impressed with the record of the confession of one particular Beguine, definitely a heretic, as recorded at http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/naprous.html

Her name was Na Prous Bonnet, and I was at first impressed with her account of being in the Presence of God:

She claimed that on Good Friday, four years before she made the confession written below, while she was in the church of the Franciscans in Montpellier listening to the service with some other people, she adored the crucifix, as it is customary to do. When she had made her adoration in this way and had returned to her seat, after the mass was over and most of the people had left the church, the Lord Jesus Christ transported her in spirit (that is, in her soul) to the first heaven. When she was there she saw Jesus Christ in the form of a man as well as in his divinity. He appeared to her and showed her his heart opened like the door of a lantern. Out of this heart came rays of the sun, but, brighter than rays of the sun, which illuminated her all over. Immediately she saw, clearly and openly, the divinity of God, who gave her his heart in the spirit. She said, "Lord, I have little to recommend myself," and Christ replied," I will give you more if you are faithful to me."

She drew near to him and put her head beneath Christ's body, and she saw nothing but that great light which Christ gave to her in those rays. Then she returned to the place where she first saw that light and looked on Christ himself, and thus gazing at the rays, little by little they covered the whole of Christ's body. When this had been seen and done, Christ replaced her in her seat where she had been before. Then she came to herself with great weeping and tears, in great fervor and love toward God, and she wanted her companions and other people to know what had happened.

She records several other revelations of this sort but then God gets down to business, declares the current pope the antichrist, and almost deifies a spiritual Franciscan, who is likened to Elijah, who is killed.

Na Prouse is assigned to be the Holy Ghost, or the carrier of the Holy Ghost, and those who reject her message cannot be saved. Christ and the Lord God are on her shoulders, they have put the Holy Ghost in her, and she is thus the Trinity's embodiment on earth.

I am sure she was burnt since this repeats what she said four years before. She shwed no penitience, no desire to be accepted back into the Catholic fold.

What interested me some is how her revelations showed her the Trinity was composed of different physical entities who were mystically one. This is very close to the Mormon idea of Deity. She saw the antichrist as stil capable of changing and finding redemption, and a footnote says that the common belief in Christ bringing the faithful from the Old Testament out of Limbo was referred to in her accounts of revealed insights. Her account of evil got close to the Cathar idea, but not quite. She was a heretic though not a Cathar. Her opinion of the Pope was close to the Cathar opinion, however.

Did she deserve to be burnt? Of course not.

And so ends what to me was an interesting aside, another confluence of interests I have had for decades, into the same place and time. This builds expectation!

Book Two: A Historically Informed Novel

I was so enthused about this book, all of it set after the fall of Montsegur, that I sent the following in as a book review on the Barnes & Noble website:

The Treasure of Montsegur (2002, HarperSanFrancisco) by Sophy Burnham is a real treat, a thoroughly engaging and satisfying read.

It is an account of one person, a woman, who survived the massacre at Montsegur. Over time, a deliciously long time during which we meet interesting people and ideas, we learn how she managed to escape. To tell you the truth I dreaded the book for a while because I thought it was heading to an event-image I do not deal well with, an image that haunts me so much I wrote a short story just to twist it into a happier ending that I can dwell on and deflect the negative feelings when the image recurs. But, Sophy Burnham spared me that image and slyly bypassed it, giving me a splendid ending. An ending not like the one I had created in my own short story several years ago, but also not totally different. What does that mean? That Burnham felt it more important to learn from a tragedy than to simply describe the tragedy. I like that.

Will everyone like this book? What's not to like? Yes I think so. Will someone like the book who is more like myself, having visited several of the main sites in which the story is set and having studied the life and times of the Cathars? Yes. Burnham captures very nicely, even brilliantly, the confusion that was apparently real –given historical sources– and existed in the minds of those alive at the time of Sophy's heroine. Those who were left were good people but not the sect's theologians. They had trouble knowing the difference between some subtle and some fundamental Catholic assumptions about the nature of life and Deity and the parallel or contrasting Cathar ideals.

The heroine of the story, Jeanne, carries that confusion in her own mind. And from my readings it is a genuine confusion of the times. Some of the confusion regards just where Deity leaves off and humanity begins. In exoteric Catholicism there is a great gulf fixed between the two, but it is a gulf seemingly bridged by the woman who became a consort of God and a mother of God, Mary. This no doubt clashes with the beliefs of the Cathars, but we see Jeanne endearingly mixing up the Catholic and the Cathar notions of the God-human relationship..

By the time we get to the life of our heroine, Jeanne, there is so little left of the infrastructure of Catharism that there is no one to tell her that her fondness for and respect for Mary was not a Cathar but a Catholic notion. Her guilt-reaction to sex out of wedlock is more Catholic than Cathar after the fact, but her wholehearted participation in same, in the name of love, is very much Cathar and in keeping with the Troubadour/Religion-of-Love traditions of her homeland. Burnham's equation of that tradition with the Cathar tradition is one that a few yars ago I would have said was absurd. But now I am of the opinion that the two traditions were very compatible at the spiritual level where Love and God become One in both traditions. Having a common enemy in orthodox Catholicism helped squeeze the two together no doubt, but the fact that the Cathars would disguise themselves as Troubadours and slip by the Catholic lines of defense also shows that they were two very different movements. The Troubadours tried to pay homage to the dominant religion's mores, on paper at least. But we are both turning onto an aside and getting ahead of ourselves.

To me, Burnham has taken what was a very confused and violent time and compressed it into this one person's head and heart so we can see and feel it for ourselves through her. Thus I can really believe in the possibility that her vision of how th world works could reflect a real person's vision in that time and place. The way she sees the world around her and how she interprets the people and events she meets and endures are all quite plausible.

Particularly endearing is the fact that she errs. She makes mistakes in judgement and just as we do in our lives she wishes they could be undone, but instead has to either endure or run away from the consequences. With both faults and virtues and great amounts of confusion, she becomes a very tragic, heroic, and totally believable character, given her life and times. I found myself starting the book thinking I was going to be critical of it. Instead I slowly but surely fell in love with Jeanne, a love especially solidified toward the end during her time of extreme suffering, leading to insightful revelation and inner calm and comfort. As my love for Jeanne flowered, I finished the book and turned to the back page. There I saw Sophy's picture and transferred all that love to her, realizing that Jeanne was a person residing in her, and so it was Sophy giving Jeanne all the attributes and insights that caused me to love her. But, that is a personal problem.

On the back of the book jacket is a statement by another author whose book on these same times I am about to start reading, Rene Weis. Weis wrote The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars 1290-1329. (Vintage Books, New York, 2000) He wrote that . . ."Burnham proves that a modern ‘historical' novel can successfully address spiritual matters without slipping into melodrama or sentimentality." I wondered what that could possibly mean as I started the book.

Toward the end of the book, however, I knew exactly what he (Rene Weis) meant by saying that Burnham was able to . . ."address spiritual matters without slipping into melodrama or sentimentality." Her description of the heroine's revelatory visions at one point in the story started me thinking, "I hope this doesn't get too formulaic and unreal." But when I got through that section I thought, "Wow, that was nicely done, a vision I could share and believe from my own experience as well as believe as belonging to its time and imagined recipient!"

And there again is one of those items that show confusion betwen Cathar and Catholic ideas and ideals. I can't go into citing Sophy's recounting of the heroine's visions because it would ruin your reading of the book. BUT, let me say that at the same time that Jeanne and other (real) Cathars, and believers in the Troubadours' Religion of Love, were singing the praises of the ultimate reality, Love, there were good Catholic mystics, particularly in the north from paris to the Rhineland, having similar visions and coming to similar conclusions!

There is a common spiritual root at the bottom of all of these seemingly disparate religious traditions, traditions in a state of bloody war at the time of Jeanne's growing-up and maturing. While murder was assuring orthodoxy in the south, northern Catholic mystics were coming to conclusions about the reality of God and the supremacy of Love that were similar to those at the very heart of the heresy in the south.

To be fair, the differences between the two religions went very deep and included Cathar rejection of Catholic authority, sacraments, and concept of God. But in the altered conscious state where the human being experiences God and interprets that experience, both sides saw the same vision and interpreted it similarly. And one can easily expand this to the visions of mystics in Muslim and Eastern religious traditions as well. There is something fundamental at work at this deeper level of human experience, and this review is not the place to go into it. But Sophy Burnham gives her Jeanne a calming and comforting version of the universal mystical experience that I find very appropriate and credible in terms of both its content and the extreme circumsatnces that made her able to have this experience. I found it so satisfying that I had tears well up while reading it, not just because my friend Jeanne was receiving comfort, but because I recognized the vision. Having it in common with Jeanne cemented my state of being in love with her.

I also loved the little cloaked innuendo I thought I had found about Jeanne and her namesake Jeanne d'Arc, Joan of Arc in proper English. You need to find it for yourself. If you never find it, I probably imagined it. In fact I am somewhat of a Jeanne d'Arc devotee and thus tend to see her where she may not really be. Only Sophy knows if what she wrote was intended to be a hint at the ‘other'‘Crazy Jeanne.' I think it was.

And it is the Jeanne d'Arc story that creates this dark image in my mind toward which I thought the story was moving. I especially thought it was moving there after I sensed the hint at this other Jeanne. But, Sophy turned several cunning turns, and I loved the ending that I had been, needlessly, dreading.

I recommend this book highly because I loved it, its heroine, and the mind that created her for me to love. Obviously.

PS (by the Barnes & Noble website rules I could not include this PS, no website links allowed): If you really really want to read my short story hinted at above, please see this link to : MARGREET.htm

Part 2: Interest in a Deceased Person Named Beatrice

Beatrice? Well, it is like this. A psychic friend in Texas said upon my return from Paris, in essence, ‘what was all that about lilies and who is Beatrice?' My hotel room was decorated with Monet-type lilies, and a friend and I had been discussing the technique of not painting the water around those lilies, but only painting what was reflected in the water. My Texas friend said she was under the distinct impression that I was surrounded by a large, brilliant cocoon of love during that trip, love emanating from a person not in this life at present, named Beatrice. Spooky? Not really. Intriguing? Yes.

So I went in search of deceased Beatrices, and found several, with one in particular who I would see as the type of the person my gifted friend saw, one who could surround a person with a glowing love so bright that it could be seen all the way in Texas!

Here are my four Beatrice candidates. For those of you who don't know, the name Beatrice means blesser, bringer of happiness, cheerful, imaginative, etc. Sounds wonderful, and appropriate!

Beatrice.-Latin. "blesser." Other forms are Beatrix, Trixy. Beautiful, cheerful, valorous. Lively imagination. Original ideas. (From http://www.vangelis.com.au/names/Womens_names/womenb.asp )

Beatrijs/Beatrice: "What is its meaning ? This means blesser, bringer of happyness." (From: http://www.babywatch.biz/namesuk/b/beatrice.html )

A. The Beatrice of Dante Alighieri

The Divine in his vision or perception of his Beatrice is already apparent in Dante's description of the yet mortal Beatrice, whose soul he adores from afar with the most pure conceptions of love he is capable of at this youthful time in his life. Beatrice, Dante sees, already has cosmic import, she is an instrument in the hands of God for blessing the earth:

. . . God does have something new in mind for earth. . . .
. . . She is the best that Nature can achieve . . . .
. . . her eyes, wherever she may choose to look,
send forth their spirits radiant with love
to strike the eyes of anyone they meet,
and penetrate until they find the heart.
You will see Love depicted on her face,
there where no one dares hold his gaze too long. (Ch. XIX of the Vita Nuova)

Dante's last chapter (XLII of the Vita Nuova) says simply that "there came to me
a miraculous vision in which I saw things that made me resolve to say no more
about this blessed one until I would be capable of writing about her in a nobler
way. . . . I hope to write of her that which has never been written of any other
woman. And then may it please the One who is the lord of graciousness that my
soul ascend to behold the glory of its lady, that is, of that blessed Beatrice, who in
glory contemplates the countenance of the One 'who is through all ages blessed.'"

So, is this my Beatrice? No. She gave Dante a nice "hello" once, he was twitterpated, then she died. What happened after her death is all in Dante's [inspired] imagination. But the powerful, near-Deific figure she now is, was Dante's creation.

[Reference: Dante Alighieri's "Vita Nuova," Mark Musa translator and commentor (Indiana University Press, Bloomington 1973).]

B. The Beguine Beatrice of Brabant

A Beatrice close to "home" (Brabant is a province of the Netherlands adjoining the one I was born in). This 13th century Beatrijs story is in a poem about a pious young girl who becomes a nun. After a few years, due to a concerted effort by the devil, she became hungry for life on the outside: love, marriage, children, wordly goods. She had herself abducted from the convent by a young man she was interested in, and who was interested in her, before her entry into the convent.

For seven years she enjoyed an ideal maried life, lived well and had two babies, both boys. Then her husband lost his livelihood, and after struggling a while abandoned her and the boys.

She had nowhere to turn and several mouths to feed. In desperation, she ended up prostituting herself. For seven years she was a street whore. During her sexual acts she prayed to Mary so fervently she felt she was not really there.

After seven years she was overcome with regret for her sinful actions and started begging from door to door. Near her old convent she met an old widow who took her in. She made inquiries at the convent and found out no one knew she had been gone for 14 years! During her prayers to Mary she received a revelation: go back and take your place in the convent. She did and found out Mary had done her work in her place all this time.

[Note: An image of an original of this document is given right here,

these were the days before Xerox! Every copy was hand painted. The picture is on this website – http://www.kb.nl/kb/100hoogte/hh-en/hh007-en.html , and the site also has a nice description of the manuscript in English.]

The widow came to the convent explaining she could not afford to feed the two boys a stranger had left with her, and the abbess said she would provide for them if she, Beatrijs, would raise them. Later, a priest heard Beatrijs' entire story in confession, understood her, gave her absolution, and took the boys to raise in another convent. Both boys became respected priests in turn.

So, is this Beatrice, from near where I lived as a child, my Beatrice? No, this one is imaginary and not historical. But I like her a lot anyway, she gives an interesting glimpse into the difficulties inherent in living a peasant's life at that time, and shows by the popularity of her tale that the desire for a fairytale ending is very strong then, as it is even now that life is easier for us peasants.

[Reference: Image and reference on Dutch National Library website (linked above): J. Deschamps. Middelnederlandse handschriften uit Europese en Amerikaanse bibliotheken. Leiden 1972, no. 20; De verluchte handschriften en incunabelen van de Koninklijke Bibliotheek. 's_Gravenhage 1985, no. 365; Beatrijs: geschreven in de 2e helft van de 13e eeuw door een onbekend dichter. Zellik 1986; A.M. Duinhoven. De geschiedenis van Beatrijs. 2 vols. Utrecht 1989.]

C. The Mystic, Beatrijs of Nazareth

This Beatrice, also from the thirteenth century, was a Beguine and mystic who inspired the more famous mystic Ruusbroec in his revelatory explorations. Her opus is The Seven Ways of Love, and can be found in translation on a website by Wim van den Dungen (in English) at http://www.sofiatopia.org/equiaeon/7ways.htm

It is very hard to do a summary of her teaching because to contract what she says into just a few words is to caricature it. But she is of the school that recognizes that the soul's desire is to reunite with God, who is Love, and so she walks through all the different forms of love that lead to the final form that is union with God, who is Love.

On this linked website there is a digest: http://home.infionline.net/~ddisse/beatrijs.html that cites a book that has the following quotes (interspersed like headlines amongst explanatory quotes, but just these highlights alone give some indication of her powerful insight). The reference given is: Mediaeval Netherlands religious literature / trans. & intro by E. Colledge. Leyden, Sythoff; New York, London House & Maxwell, 1965 [c1964].

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"Longing of this kind... comes from love and not from fear."
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"It offers itself to our Lord to serve Him for nothing."
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"The soul longs single-handed to do as much as all the men upon earth...."
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"...that it has itself entirely become love."
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"It cannot rule itself by reason, cannot reason through understanding,..."
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"...like a housewife who has put all her household in good order."
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"...drawn along with love alone into eternity and incomprehensibility."

I would really recommend visiting the above websites, especially Wim van den Dungen's who has very strong feelings for Beatrice and her work, and has done a fantastic amount of work to interpret it, provide a commentary with useful background information, and place it into a larger context of mystical thought and experience (alas, mostly in Dutch, which doesn't hinder me much, but may hinder you. If so, try the other website linked above).

My favorite lines from her work are these from the Seventh Way (as translated by Wim van den Dungen and Betty Van Rompaey [two spelling errors corrected, otherwise it is exactly as found on the webiste linked above]):

The seventh way of love :

The blessed soul still has a more sublime way of love that gives her not little to do inside. She is being pulled above the human measure of love, above senses and reason, higher than everything of which our heart is capable of on its own.

§ 1

Only with love of eternity itself she is pulled into the eternity of love, into the insusceptible wisdom and the silent highness, into the deep abyss of the Deity, who is everything in everything that exists, insusceptible, elevated above everything, imperishable, almighty, all-embracing, and who acts all-ruling in everything that exists.

So profound is she here sunk in love and so strong is she pulled by her desire, that her heart is moved strongly and is restless inside, so that her soul flows out and melts of love, and her mind is ardently connected to a strong desire.

All her senses set themselves to the fact that she may live in the pleasure of love. Persevering she desires this from God and with her entire heart she requests God for this.

This she must desire a lot, because love does not let her calm down or recuperate. No quiet life ! Love elevates her and depresses her, puts her suddely to the test and again torments her. She brings death and gives life, she makes healthy and hurts again. She makes insane and then again wise.

§ 2

Thus she lifts her up to a higher being. In this way she has climbed up spiritually, above temporality and to the eternity of love, which is timeless. Above the human forms of love and above her own nature she is lifted by the desire to live above.

There is her being and her will, her desire and love of the certain truth, the pure clarity, the noble highness, the luxurious beauty and the sweet company of the highest spirits who are all filled with abundant love, and who in clear aknowledgment are in the possession and the pleasure of their love.

Then she desires to stay there among the spirits and most among the blazing seraphs. In the sublime Deity and Trinity she finds her lovely resting-place and her joyful house.

She looks for Him into His majesty. She follows Him there and sees Him with her heart and her mind. She knows Him and loves Him and desires Him so much, that she can respect no saints, no human beings, no angels or creatures, unless with the same love by which she love everything through Him. Him alone she has chosen in love, above and under and in all the rest.

With everything of desire her heart could bring in, and with the whole strenght of her mind, she longs to see Him, and to possess and to enjoy.

I stopped there because I cannot relate too well with the next few paragraphs saying that once having tasted this Love, it is very hard to stay in this world, and much energy is spent longing for what is promised to come after this life, nevertheless this life must be lived to earn that reward.

My view is that it is exactly the foretaste of that Love that makes living here such a wonderful experience, allowing one to see Love in the most unexpected places and behind the most mundane circumstances. After all, as Beatrijs says, God . . . "is everything in everything that exists" . . . . BUT, perhaps this reflects my only having had a little foretaste, I have not experienced the fullness of Love that Beatrijs writes from, and that every fiber of her being wishes to reunite with.

I appreciate the close correspondence between some of the themes in the words written by Beatrijs and those written by Margaret of Porete. As a child Beatrice lost her mother and was raised and educated by Beguines (lay religious women). As a young adult she took vows into the Cistercian order. She was and is still honored as a mystical prophet.

Margaret Porete, a Parisian Beguine, was burnt for heresy. Margaret went out of her way to say that all good people cherish life because of the Love they feel emanating from God in all things and beings. But she also said that once having tasted being One with God, all things defined by words, such as angels, church, even God, fail to reflect the reality sensed in that state, and to worship the concept of God conveyable by words is to worship a false God. This is different only in degree from what Beatrijs said a hundred or so miles to the north of Paris. What Margaret said did not go over well, apparently, with the faculty of the University of Paris, a church institution at that time who assigned faculty to try heresy cases. She was declared a heretic and publicly fed to the flames. One can see their point: they used words to write learned treatises about God to make their highly respected living! She said their words didn't even come close to describing God!

So, is this Beatrice my Beatrice? She certainly knows all about love and is no doubt capable of spinning a cocoon around me or anyone else. She has devotees for whom she obviously does this, since some, like Wim van Dungen, seem to have a palpable feeling for, and live in, her Love, which is God. (I also noted with some satisfaction that this Beatrijs saw God and Love in the same way as the prophet of the Sufis, Rumi, concerning whom I have a whole other series of pages.

But, no, alas, this is not the Beatrice concerning whom something within me is bound and determined to have me recognize. I feel a strong awe in reading her words, I feel a very respectful love for her and for her message. I appreciate and feel grateful to her for sensing and writing what she did. But there is nothing within me that leaps up and says to my self: "Yes! This Beatrice is the source of your cocoon of love!"

D. The minor noblewoman who loved much and sometimes unwisely, Beatrice de Planissolles

It is the book by Rene Weis that made the two interests become one and led something within me to exclaim "Yes, this is the Beatrice that is the source of your cocoon of love!"

And this inner exclamation came before I read her story showing that she had numerous husbands and affairs and was a very loving person in a way radically different from the other Beatrices I have been admiring! She was immoral to an astonishing degree by the standards of her Catholic faith, but perhaps not by the standards of her Cathar faith.

So now having read her life, has my feeling changed? Not really. Have I gained any insight as to what relationship I could possible have had in a previous life, if there is such a thing, with this Beatrice? Maybe. But remeber that this is all fun speculation, please!

Let's get to Part 3 and do some, probably necessary, confessional stuff there.

Part 3: Book 3, Wherein Two Interests Became One

The book by Rene Weis slammed into my awareness as soon as I flipped it open and I saw that it began with the story of a noblewoman named Beatrice. I felt my two interests coalescing in my head and heart and read the book carefully and slowly to make sure I caught the whole story of this woman's life. Was she THE Beatrice?

If there was a Beatrice, she makes a very good candidate. Did she see visions and write about them? No. Did she inspire a world renowned poet? No. Was there a part of her life that was miraculously influenced by Mary? No. So what is it then that made me excited? She loved a lot, with great passion, that's all.

Let's check the possibilities of a past-life connection:

Was I Beatrice? No. Makes it hard to be surrounded by a cocoon of love generated by oneself, does it not?

Was I one of her inquisitors? No.
Was I one of her husbands? Maybe.

Was I one of her lovers? Maybe?

Was I the one that was both? We are getting warmer, even though he is a weak character and one I don't very much admire, his story has such a ring of familiarity in me that it is spooky.

His name was Bartelemy and he was then a lot like I was in my younger years. This is really interesting and rather revolting at the same time, but I am intrigued enough to want to go to the exact place where he and Beatrice lived in a state of peace for a short time as man and wife. Why go a place she only lived a year? Because it was his home-town, and if I get a big jolt of deja vu there, I'll think there is a connection between he and I even though I can't really admire him much: he is too mushy, too slimy, too cowardly, too indistinct. Too much like me? I wouldn't go that far.

Of course I also want to visit other places she lived without him. And I want to visit places he lived and worked without her.

She was a Catholic/Cathar mix, a definite Cathar sympathizer who had learned to avoid overt participation from seeing the Inquisition's drastically negative effect on her parents' family. Her father was jailed for his Cathar doings, and was released with the condition he wear the double yellow cross on his back, a sentence she shared at the end of her life. That made him a Pariah in the majority community, and a hero in the minority community. It also made his children automatically suspect to the Inquisition, hence her steadfast refusal to become overtly involved in the heretical cause. Of course, sleeping with the enemy was also frowned upon even though one may not share all beliefs with such a person. It is fraternization with the enemy, giving him support, and aiding and abetting at the very least the emotional well-being of that enemy.

So, here is a slightly annotated timeline from Rene Weis' book The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars 1290-1329, (Vintage Books, New York, 2000), adapted from his pages 377-380. What I did was to copy a date for a significant item in Beatrice's life, and add some explanatory words from the main text of the book.

A. ~1274 Beatrice born, perhaps in Caussou
B. ~1291 Beatrice marries Berenger de Roquefort and moves to Montaillou where they live in the castle and she is its chatelaine
C. ~1294 Beatrice has had two little boys and is pregnant with a third child, a girl born later in summer, when she is propositioned by the castle's steward to run away with him to the Cathr strongholds and thus save her own and her children's eternal lives; she refuses him and he attempts to force her sexually but is rebuffed; several other Cathrs attempt to draw her into their cicrlce but she refuses: they all know her father was a heretic like them
D. 1297 Beatrice is raped by a local man
E. 1298 Beatrice's first husband dies, she moves out of the castle, becomes a woman kept by a man of a local, powerful family
F. 1299 Beatrice is propositioned by the local rector in his church, and after some time consents and they start a torrid affair that is punctuated with sex on Holy Night, the man is the brother of her former keeper, and for 18 months she is kept by the rector as a mistress
G. 1300 Beatrice moves to Prades, next to the church where the rector from Montaillou at one time arranges for them to have sex in a bed made behind he altar: he is a Cathar in Catholic Priest's clothing, Cathars thought it was marriage and its procreation that were sinful, and sex too, but sex outside of marriage was at least not aimed at procreation, so it was less sinful! Beatrice visits her sister Ava at Cassou, and attends the church of Unac toward the river from Val de Caussou.
H. 1301 Beatrice breaks off affair with rector of Montaillou and marries again, moved to near Pamiers in a town called Dalou. The rector comes once for a visit and the two sneak into the cellar for sex while the main guards the door.
I. 1305 Beatrice visits a sister in Limoux, attends mass
J. 1308 Beatrice is again widowed; lives in Varilhes, Rector of Montaillou visits her, they talk, she is very sick, he tells her she will get well and warns her against talking about their relationship, they do not engage in sex. Her two sons appear to have been given to first husband's family, her three daughters appear to have lived with her, not certain, but she and daughters were close all their lives.
K. 1316 Barthelemy Amilhat and Beatrice begin affair and move to Lladros, his home town, where even as a Priest he can live with Beatrice and her daughters as a family as per local custom.
L. 1317 After just one year, Beatrice returns to Varilhes and Barthelemy takes assignements in churches in and near Carcassonne.
M. 1320 Beatrice is denounced and appears before Bishop Fournier of Pamiers. She tells of her affair with the rector of Montaillou, and turns out to be only one of a number of women making the same acusation, the rector is jailed and dies in jail a few years later. Barthelemy is also questioned since he was arrested with her as she tried to flee her second summons.
N. 1321 Beatrice and Barthelemy sentenced to jail in what is now La Tour-du-Crieu, where there was a famed and feared prison then.
O. 1322 After just over a year, the two are released, Barthelemy is to do some minor penance, but Beatrice is to wear double yellow crosses at all times. The light sentences reflected a promise made by the Bishop to those called in to testify against the rector of Montaillou, who seduced many both sexually and in terms of heretical beliefs.
P. ~13XX Death dates are not known for either Beatrice or Barthelemy.
Q. 1329 The rector of Momtaillou was exhumed and his body burnt: he was determined to have been a heretic through the due processes of the Inquisition. Many given the yellow cross to wear were pardoned, but not Beatrice: she was either dead by this time, or, more likely, in her case she was also, obviously, a person with heretical leanings not attributable to the rector's work. Hence the sentence "in perpetuity" was not one that could be reduced by the general amnesty.

So, here is what I found spooky about the life of this priest who was ‘married' to Beatrice:

An English translation of some of the confessions made to Jacques Fournier, Bishop of Pamiers, can be found on this website: http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/Fournier/jfournhm.htm –the translations were done by Nancy P. Stork.

Beatrice's confessions are there, as is the confession from Barthélemy Amilhat. It is at
http://www.sjsu.edu/depts/english/Fournier/Amilhat.htm , and I will cite this web-based text rather than retype similar material from Rene Weis' book which cites these confessions to gain insight into Beatrice's life. Here is how it begins, with a statement of the charge and foreword:

Confession of Barthélemy Amilhat, priest,
concerning his complicity in and concealment of heresy

In the year of the Lord 1320, the 11th of September. It has come to the attention of our reverend father in Christ, Monsignor Jacques, by the grace of God bishop of Pamiers, that Barthélemy Amilhat, priest of Lladros in the diocese of Urgel, has been an accomplice in heresy, in giving assistance and counsel to Beatrice, spouse of Otho Lagleize of Dalou, who was cited for heresy, and after appearing before the bishop, fled the bishopric of Pamiers and took herself to other secret places.

This Barthelemy knew that Beatrice was a heretic and erred concerning the Christian faith, and did not denounce her to the inquisitors of heresy; because of this he is strongly suspected of heresy himself, and furthermore strongly suspected of witchcraft and casting spells. He has been denounced for putting himself in concubinage with this Beatrice, and after having known her carnally, helping her to leave the bishopric of Pamiers where they had lived together, to take her into his country, for the purpose of there keeping her as his concubine or public spouse, openly and with a pledge, according to the abuse of that country; moreover he committed numerous and diverse thefts in the bishopric of Pamiers.

My said lord bishop, wishing to interrogate him concerning this subject, since he was arrested with the said Beatrice, fugitive for heresy, had him brought before him in the Chamber of the episcopal seat of Pamiers, with the assistance of Brother Gaillard of Pomiès, substitute for my lord the inquisitor of Carcassonne.

The said priest having appeared for questioning, my lord bishop received from him personally his pledge to tell the pure and entire truth concerning that which preceeds and other facts concerning the Catholic faith, as much concerning himself as charged as concerning others living and dead as witness. This same priest, on the faith of his sworn oath, vowed and set down what follows concerning the charge of concealment of the heresy of this Beatrice, of which, it is said, he had knowledge:

It was four years ago at Pentecost that I left Dalou in the diocese of Pamiers, where I had remained for three straight years. The last year, from the month of January to Pentecost, I conducted myself badly with this Beatrice and knew her carnally often in her house, which was close to the church.

The first time, I was solicited by her. One day when I was at the church teaching the schoolchildren of the town, including two daughters of Beatrice named Philippa and Ava, Beatrice told me to come see her that evening, which I did. When I arrived in her house, there was no one present but herself, and I asked her what she wished. She told me that she loved me and that she wished that we could have carnal relations together, to which I consented. And forthwith, I knew her carnally in the room of that house. I did this often afterwards, but I did not remain with her through the night. We watched intently, she and I, for the moment where her daughters and her servant were no longer at the house and then we committed this sin.

At this time and previously, Guillaume of Montaut, the rector of the church of Dalou, said often, in my presence, that this Beatrice was a public woman, and refused herself to no one who wished to have her. He said also that she was a terrible heretic. At this time, I had not heard from anyone else that she was a heretic, and the rector never told me why she was. I did not hear from Beatrice any word that resembled heresy.

Later, in the octave of Pentecost, when defaming rumours circulated against us, Beatrice told me that I should not remain for any price in the country, because she was afraid that the brothers would do evil to her, and she said that she herself did not wish to remain. She asked me then what the priests of the country of Pallars did when they had concubines or "housewives" ("focorias"). I told her that they kept them openly and publicly just as the layfolk do their spouses, that these woman have dowries, that their children succeed to the paternal and maternal inheritance. The priests promise their concubines to maintain them during their entire life and provide for what is necessary and hold a wedding feast containing everything except the sacramental vows of marriage, which are normally given in a true mariage. And these priests are entitled to have concubines and even widows; they give something each year (or nearly so) to the bishop of the diocese, so that he will permit them to live so.

We decided then that we would leave for the country of Pallars. Beatrice took her old clothes and 30 silver pennies (libras turonenses), and preceded me by 2 days. She waited for me at Vicdessos, then I followed her to Vicdessos and entered with her into the country of Pallars. She had brought along her daughter Philippa.

When we were at Lladros, we went to a notary. Beatrice gave me title to her dowry of 30 pounds and I, for surety, pledged all my goods and promised on my good faith that if there were sons or daughters from our union, that they would be heirs of myself and of her. I promised to provide for their needs and to maintain them, both in sickness and in health, and of all this was made a matter of public record by Pierre de Lubersu, the priest of that place. I did not make any other vows toward Beatrice, nor marry her, but I kept her with me in the same house, and often in the same place, in the same manner in which the priests of that place maintain their "housewives" or concubines.

I remained with her thus for one year. At the time when I was in my country with Beatrice, I quarreled several times with her and called her a terrible old woman and a heretic, reproaching her for coming from a heretical land. She replied that I was a liar. We often had these words together. One time when we were getting along well, I asked her if she had ever seen heretics. She replied that she had not seen them but she had been invited to see them when she lived at Montaillou. She said, when she lived there, Madame Stéphanie de Châteauverdun, who is dead, often sent messengers for her to come see them. But Beatrice, who knew that she was sending these messengers in order for her to come see heretics, did not go for that reason. In the end Stephanie sent her a message that she should do good to the good Christians, which the others called heretics. Beatrice, who wished to take counsel concerning this, spoke to the rector of Montaillou, who was her good friend and her comrade (compère, compater) and ask him if it was good or bad to give something to the good Christians. The rector told her that it was of great merit, because they were holy men, of whom it was said, that they endured persecutions for God just as the apostles and martyrs had; what they did, they did justly and what they said was true, and therefore it was good to give them something.

Then I said to Beatrice, "The priest who told you this was a heretic." She replied, "No, he was a good and honest man and known for such in the region. I then asked "And you believed the advice of this priest?" She said no. I told her that if she was in the bishopric of Pamiers, or in a place where there was an inquisitor, I could have her arrested and that she knew much more concerning heresy than what she said. Then she laughed and said that curés more resolute in their faith than I, were of the sect of the good Christians. . . .

-----For how long were these reported vows held between you and her?
About 4 years. Later, I remained one year at the city of Carcassonne, in the church of St. Michael; another year I stayed as priest at Sainte-Camelle near to M. Pierre Arnaud, the knight, and that year I was employed at the church of Mézerville.
Beatrice said at that time that God ought to see to it that the priests, priors, abbots, bishops, archbishops and cardinals would no longer wish to sin carnally, because in fact they were worse, sinned more in this way, and wished to have women more than other men. Thus she strove to excuse the sin of the flesh that she committed with me.

. . . That year [this is after they have returned to the Ariege and separated], the Tuesday after the Nativity of St. Jean the Baptist (1 July 1320), I went to Pamiers, and from there I sent a child to Beatrice, who was then at Varilhes. He went to Rieux de Pelleport and there found Alazaïs, the servant of Beatrice. He told her from me to go see her mistress who was at Varilhes, and to make her come to Mas-Vieux. The above mentioned Beatrice came with Alazais to Mas-Vieux after me, and we dined there in the house of a monk of that church. After the meal, we went, by the road which is on the other side of the Ariège, toward Pelleport. When we were near Bénagues, Beatrice and I went into a vineyard by the side of the road and there I knew her carnally. The servant waited for us on the road. She had known for a long time that I loved Beatrice. This sin consummated, we resumed our journey. I walked with Beatrice and she told me that Pons Bole, the notary of Varilhes, had told her that he had heard bad news about her. She had asked him "What news?" and he had told her that the bishop of Pamiers wished to cite her.

I said to her "Why would the bishop wish to cite you?" She replied that she did not know why, and that she had no fear, because she did not feel culpable, although this Pons had told her that she would be cited for heresy if she was not careful. She asked me then, if it would happen that she was cited, if she should appear or not. I told her to appear, because my lord the bishop would never do any injustice to her.

The story gets a little tedious here: he tells her not to flle but she is scared and adamant, having been warned that she will be arrested this time (this was between the first and second interviews with the Bishop). He sees her determination to flee and gives her some money. She sends a messenger to him at Mézerville and has him come up to see her at Belpech. He goes to see her and both are arrested. The account attempts to explain her references to heretical thoughts and beliefs as her recalling what she had heard heretics say, nit things she herself actually believed.

At Belpech he again tried to talk her out of running. She was determined to make it to Limoux (where a sister lived) where she could hide. She begged him to come with her:

And she asked me in tears to go with her to Limoux, saying that she had no one else but me to give her aid and counsel. I told her that I could not go to Limoux with her, because the rector of Mézerville had hired me and it was necessary that I be in the church around the time of the Feast of the Invention of St. Stephen, which was close.

I remained in the house with Beatrice the following night and I knew her carnally, because we slept together in one bed.

The next day she asked me to come with her to Limoux, no matter the cost. Since we could find no beast to rent at Belpech, on the counsel of our host, who said we could find an animal at Mas-Saintes-Puelles, I engaged a man of Belpech to whom I gave as salary one tournois of silver, to go with her to Mas-Saintes-Puelles and carry her goods. I went with them half-way along the route. On the way, she insisted so much, that I agreed to go with her to Limoux after the feast of the Invention of St. Stephen, and that meanwhile I would procure the money for our expenses. But I did not promise her with my heart, I wished only to get away, because when we were mid-route and I wished to leave her, she asked me in tears to go with her to Mas-Saintes-Puelles. Out of pity for her, I went there and when I was there I left her and returned to Mézerville.

He is asked several questions, and in response to one it comes out that he actually had no intention of re-joining her, he already had another girlfriend:

-----Did you intend, after the feast of St. Stephen to go with her to Limoux?
No.
When I lived at Dalou, as vicar, I knew carnally two times a woman of Cerdagne who lived in that town.

Barthélemy next agrees to a statement showing his guilt and accepts the punishment: jail.

So. What parts of that story seem to match my own experience in this life? In a previous version of this page I actually told the answers to that question. But it was way too personal and could find its way into the hands of some people who would certainly feel hurt by my publicly confessing what involved them as well as me. The experience of Barthelemy with Beatrice and several others has its parallels in my early adulthood.

Barthélemy said they quarreled a lot in their mountain hideaway. I can imagine the makeup sessions from my own experience, a re-melting into each other. Delicious and healing, until the rifting process happens again causing quarrels as an expression of inner frustration, even occasional anger. In the type of relationship I am describing, there is inner turmoil in one or especially in both parties, tension between practice and belief, dissonance. It takes blinding passion to keep a relationship like that cemented. If the relationship becomes routine the dissonance inside each participant will shatter it.

The land from whence Barthélemy hailed had special rules of conduct where sexual relations of the clergy were concerned, much to the chagrin of the Bishop of Pamiers. This is very interesting to me because it is probably a holdover from the days before the declaration that priests had to be celibate. Either that or it was a continuing local inspiration. Either way it was interesting to me. I also belonged to a religion that, in its past, practiced alternative forms of marriage in some mountain valleys in the west. Isolated like the location from whence Barthélemy hailed. I rather admire their honesty in doing what they did. Across the Pyrenees the priests were doing the same things with no rights for the wife or offspring. And the latter denounced the former. Go figure.

Given all of the above, here is the plan: in November of 2002 I will visit the towns listed in the chronology above, and sense whether or not I have seen them before I could see in this life. I will report back with a set of picture pages and a full confession!

EPILOGUE

Upon returning home I was given a copy of "The Good Men" to read. I have yet to do so, but did of course see how my favorite character was treated. In it the exact same situation I wrote a short story about is made into a historical novel. I have just leafed through it thus far.

A very large difference that I have been able to see, so far, is that initially, in "The Good Men," it is the chatelaine that seduces the vicar of Montaillou and starts him on his spree of sexual conquests. Could this be? Of course it could. After all, it was his accuser the chatelaine that tells us all about him, his testimony on his own behalf is not available.

It is legitimate historical fiction. But it seems unlikely that my Beatrice was that conniving and evil. She was sexually loose, and did seduce a priest later in life, but she always conducted herself with a certain, very credible, dignity. More important, she seemed to have a healthy regard for the dignity of others. She also had compassion. So no, this is not how I see Beatrice.