The crusader army came under the command, both spiritual and military, of the papal legate Arnaud-Amaury, Abbot of Cîteaux. In the first significant engagement of the war, the town of Béziers was besieged on 22 July 1209. The Catholic inhabitants of the city were granted the freedom to leave unharmed, but many refused and opted to stay and fight alongside the Cathars.
The Béziers army attempted a sortie but was quickly defeated, then pursued by the crusaders back through the gates and into the city. Arnaud, the Cistercian abbot-commander, is supposed to have been asked how to tell Cathars from Catholics. His alleged reply, recalled by a fellow Cistercian, was "Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius." — "Kill them all, the Lord will recognise His own."[4] The doors of the church of St Mary Magdalene were broken down and the refugees dragged out and slaughtered. Reportedly, 7,000 people died there including many women and children. Elsewhere in the town many more thousands were mutilated and killed. Prisoners were blinded, dragged behind horses, and used for target practice.[citation needed] What remained of the city was razed by fire. Arnaud wrote to Pope Innocent III, "Today your Holiness, twenty thousand heretics were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex."[5] The permanent population of Béziers at that time was then probably no more than 5,000, but local refugees seeking shelter within the city walls could conceivably have increased the number to 20,000."
The brutal suppression of the Cathars occurred eight hundred years ago, and has been forgotten by a religion desperate to leave behind its own legacy of opression (as had the fact it was led by an abbot...). The Cathars died following their faith, one with little difference to the Church's own, a practice which still continues today.Last week six more men were executed in Iran, men declared "wicked people". In Iran, this could mean anything from armed robbery to homosexuality, hardly a fair system. But of course the one which would catch my eye would be apostasy.
With the fall of religion in the west events such as the Cathar massacres, or the Massacre of Saint Batholomew's day, over three hundred years later. However, almost coinciding with this fall came the rise of Islam in the East, and it's push into central Europe. Now the plains of Persia and Arabia are home to the greatest atrocities of the current age, where doing so much as to think rationally, or be born on the other side of the road is enough to have you hanged. We can only pray (a little ironic) that the world will someday right itself, and such things will be a thing of the past, because no one seems to want to stop it.
