Montségur — the burning of 1244

OVERVIEW

Montségur is a commune in the Ariège, in the Pyrenean foothills. It is known for the fortress on the pog — the peak — built on the ruins of one of the last Cathar strongholds. The present fortress is later than the siege, but the site is the one.

HISTORY

In the Middle Ages the region was ruled by the Counts of Toulouse, the Viscounts of Carcassonne and finally the Counts of Foix. In 1243–44 the Cathars who had taken refuge at Montségur were besieged by around ten thousand troops in the closing campaign of the Albigensian Crusade. In March 1244 they surrendered. Those who would not renounce their faith — about two hundred and forty-four men and women — were burned en masse in a bonfire at the foot of the pog. The field is called the Prat dels Cremats, the field of the burned.

REPORTED ACTIVITY

No ghost tradition is claimed here and the entry does not invent one. Montségur draws a great deal of esoteric attention — grail theories, solstice alignments, Nazi expeditions in the 1930s — almost all of it nineteenth- and twentieth-century invention laid over a thirteenth-century atrocity. What is on the record is the siege, the surrender, the number, and the field.

VISITING

A steep twenty-minute climb from the road to the fortress; exposed, and dangerous in bad weather. The village museum holds the excavation finds. The Prat dels Cremats is marked by a stele.