'It was the single most haunting place I have ever been': A voyage to the last major stronghold of the Cathars

My children’s great-grandfather on their father’s side was a Cathar. Not literally, of course, but certainly in spirit — and to the point at which he believed he was a reincarnated member of the religious sect wiped out by the Albigensian papal crusade of 13th-century southern France.

Not long after I first met my husband, I remember sitting with this kind and gentle old man on a Welsh hillside as we delved into his beliefs about Dualism. Like the Cathars, he shared an acceptance of two gods — a good God (with ‘a big G,’ he said) represented by the spiritual and the divine, and a bad god (little g) represented by the physical and the material. Essentially, soul vs body; abstinence vs indulgence; God vs Satan. More worryingly, perhaps, he believed that life on earth was some kind of imprisonment for the soul and only through multiple reincarnations could absolute purity be achieved. I asked him how many times he thought he had been reincarnated, to which he could not respond, explaining that his Cathar life was the only one that had been revealed to him and this had probably happened by chance.

He had been on a trip to Montségur, the remote mountain fortress in the foothills of the Pyrenees and the last major stronghold of the Cathars. As the story goes, the siege of Montségur, led by the brutal forces of Hugues des Arcis on behalf of the King of France and the Catholic church, culminated on March 16, 1244, when 220 Cathars refused to denounce their religion and were burned alive in a mass execution. On visiting the site, great-grandfather Goodman had experienced a powerful sense of déjà vu, an overwhelming feeling he had been there before and a physical sensation of extreme terror and pain; of fleeing the fortress and being engulfed in flames. From that day on, he was convinced he had glimpsed a former life.

Inevitably, this tale gripped all our imaginations and although he didn’t live long enough — in this life — to pass it on in person to his great-grandchildren, his Cathar story has been his most abiding legacy. It led us, on a family trip to southern France, back when the children were a good deal younger than they are now, to make a detour to Montségur. It was February half term and distinctly cold, the ground laced with a patchwork of snow, the sky heavy with the threat of more. Perfect conditions for an eerie adventure and not lost on the three young faces peering with trepidation from the car windows at the lonely peak crowned by an ancient castle.

The walk to the top of the ‘pog’, the rather splendid term used locally to describe Montségur’s rocky contours, is not long. A 40-minute hike up a zigzag path delivered us to the summit from where the wintry plains of Languedoc stretched out below. Perhaps, on a summer’s day, the scene would have been more inviting; perhaps, had there been others up there, we would have felt less exposed. Yet on that particular day, as an icy wind whipped through our bones, we sensed only fear and desolation. It was the single most haunting place I have ever been to and no lingering desire to channel great-grandfather, or any of the Cathars for that matter, delayed our descent.

A lesser cynic than me might have felt the lone eagle circling overhead represented some kind of symbolic connection, but, in reincarnation lore, to morph from a human to a bird is a relegation for the soul. Better instead to think of that charming old man untethered from this physical world and happily reunited with his good God.

This article originally appeared in the September 3 issue of Country Life. For more information on how to subscribe, click here