Cathares et Templiers [Cathars and Templars] Raimonde Reznikov. Éditions Loubatières. Illustrated. 1993. 192pp. Paperback. ISBN 2-86266-158-9

This book represents the scholar’s antidote to the entire gamut of conspiracy mongers and assorted purveyors of what the author calls a ‘para-history’ linking Cathars and Templars to the Holy Grail and some choice brands of ‘esoteric’ gnosis or, if you like, pseudo-gnosis. I should know. I was fascinated by aspects of this para-history for much of my late teens – and who’s to say we ever fully ‘grow up’?!
    Romanticism demands an objective correlative in history for transformations experienced within the fire and torment of youth. And of all possible things to get wrapped up in during those terrible years before we choose (or reject) enslavement, what could be better than the courage of the Templars, the spirituality of the Cathars and the transcendent idealism of the Holy Grail? But before we sober up and dry up, rubbed down in coarse cloth by the practised coolness of scholarship or worldly cynicism, let us enjoy the debate.
    I presume you know something of the Templars – founded in the second decade of the 12th century to protect pilgrims to Zion: warrior monks devoted to the Queen of Heaven who dominated a chunk of 12th and 13th century life until being extinguished by a conspiracy of French king Philippe Le Bel and his pocketed Pope two centuries later. But what of the Cathars?
    From the Greek katharos of course: the pure – cleansed of the fleshly temptations of the world, the Cathars (a nick-name) sought their true life in a mystical rejection of the material dimension – “My kingdom is not of this world” – and in a willing embrace of austerity and Christ-like love. They were the ‘Church of Good Christians’ whose origins pre-date the existence of Popes and whose traditions can be traced more or less indirectly to a 1st century Christian Gnosis, and to Christ Himself. The Cathars, invisible to the world, stand forever in stark contrast to the churches of wood, stone – and brick. They flourished in Languedoc (and elsewhere) in the 12th and early 13th centuries – and I’m sorry they’ve gone.
    What have they in common with the Templars? Both groups were persecuted by the Capetian kings of France in league with the Papacy. It’s no good apologising for it now; it’s too late. Cathars and Templars were falsely accused, tortured and burned. If they’d been imprisoned together, they would have had much to share, but they weren’t and they didn’t. While the treatment of both organisations tells us something of the use greedy and unscrupulous state machines make of religion, why otherwise should Cathars and Templars be linked? According to Reznikov, they shouldn’t. Apparently, it’s all the fault of the Freemasons – not today’s brethren, but brethren made absent by the passage of time.
    Reznikov writes: “The Templar mythology, fabricated in the 18th century in the bosom of German lodges by the vanity of Freemasons, desirous to join themselves to a pretended tradition more valorous to their eyes than the builders of walls, was then considerably amplified during the religious quarrels of the 19th century. On the one hand, ultra-royalists presented the Templars, allied to the Cathars, as being akin to revolutionaries wanting to destabilise the papacy and the social order by spreading abominable doctrines. While on the other, according to anticlerical republicans, the Templar martyrs, descendents of Cathar martyrs, became “sages indignant at seeing the people oppressed in the sanctuary of their conscience by kings, superstitious serfs and the intrigues of the priesthood [Condorcet].””
    Today of course we have masonic Templars, whose establishment followed on from Chevalier Ramsay’s rousing ‘Oration’ of 1736 which linked Masonry to chivalric orders of the crusades. Ramsay did not specify the Templars, but the word ‘temple’ worked its own magic and sealed the identification. Nobody ever called their lodge a ‘hospital’ (though it might be filled with sick people), so the Knights Hospitallers of S.John have tended to take second place in masonic interest to the crimson bloodiness of the Templars. In fact, Reznikov’s book shows that the Hospitallers had better relations with Catharist noble families in the Languedoc, while a very useful map shows that the Templars’ presence in the region, compared to that enjoyed by the Hospitallers, was relatively slight (the book gives excellent detailed breakdowns of the places and persons linked to the Hospitallers, Catharism and to the Templars).
    Reznikov’s work makes it absolutely clear that there was no concordat or mutual interest twixt Cathars and Templars and takes it for granted that alleged proto-masonic links are child’s play. Notable with regard to the former statement is Reznikov’s fascinating tale of two corpses.
    In 1211, while fighting a war begun two years earlier by northern barons led by Simon de Montfort (the ‘Albigensian Crusade’) in an effort to exterminate Catharism, Count Raimonde VI of Toulouse gave the defence of Montferrand in the Lauragais to his brother, Baudoin. During the fight, Baudoin switched sides to de Montfort and went on to fight on Simon de Montfort’s side at the Battle of Muret (1213) against his own brother’s ally, King Peire II of Aragon. The Aragonese king – the hope of those defending the Cathars – was killed. But in February 1214, Baudoin was himself captured in his sleep at Lolmié in the Quercy, whence he was brought to Montauban to the court of Raimonde VI, and sentenced to death for treason. It would be the Knights of the Temple who would claim Baudoin’s body and inter it in the church cloister of their commandery at Villedieu.
    This event somewhat mirrors the events of the evening following the decisive Battle of Muret itself during the previous year. With Simon de Montfort’s permission, it was the Hospitallers of St John of Jerusalem (the old rival order to the Templars) who took the body of Peire II of Aragon to their cemetery in Toulouse and thence to their monastery at Sijéna, Aragon, founded by King Peire’s mother Sancha for the sisters of the Order of S.John. Peire’s surviving son, on the other hand, now a hostage to Simon de Montfort – the proud killer of thousands of Cathars – was given to the care of Guillaume de Montredon, Master of the Temple in Aragon.
    It is clear from this and other events and accounts of the period detailed in the book, whose side the Templars were on. The fact of the matter was that the Templars lived on estates given to them on the express understanding that they would support the Catholic Church – the very deeds of their foundations required that they see Cathars as heretics and enemies of Rome. It had nothing to do with the Holy Grail.
    Raimonde Reznikov is quite clear about the nature of the real Templars: “The knights of the Middle Ages did not enter a military order to acquaint themselves with metaphysical or intellectual speculations. The real initiatic knowledge of the era disclosed itself elsewhere, in the scriptoriums of the great abbeys, at Lérins, Saint Victor or Montmajour for the Midi and Provence, at Glastonbury in the British Isles, and at Bobbio in Lombardy.” (my translation) Furthermore, “The esotericism of the 12th and 13th centuries was as scientific as that of antiquity, having nothing in common with the lamentable accusations of the inquisition against the Templars: the old malicious and scandalous themes dragged out against all the adversaries of the Roman church since its birth.”
    Templar spirituality was a world apart from that of the Cathars: “The spirituality of the order of the Temple, inspired by that of St Bernard [of Clairvaux], exalted Marian devotion, glorified the Old Testament [unlike the Cathars] and could not conceive of itself without an unbreakable fidelity to the Church.”
    So what have they in common? Both groups were victims of alliances between the papacy and the Capetians, and both groups were linked by extra-Craft and fringe Masonry, and the enemies of such groups, each to their own ends. It would seem that enthusiastic Freemasons have latterly been caught in a web of their own making!
    It is a great pity if you don’t read French. No one in this island bastion of scholarship, disciplined spirituality, wholesome philosophy, metaphysical speculation, general high-mindedness, universal charity and passionate concern for the truth, has translated it. Why bother? Would a publisher believe today that there was anyone out there interested in such obscure stuff? I mean, is there a market for this sort of thing?
    Tobias Churton