Seeking the Holy Grail. Part 2: Château de Montségur
We started our journey about seeking the Holy Grail in Doune Castle which appears in many scenes in the famous movie “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. Today it’s Samain, the day when the boundary with the otherworld collapses (the celtic Sidh). So let’s go to south France in the Château de Montségur.
The château de Montségur is famous for being a Cathare stronghold. That being said, it should be clarified that the current fortress is a royal fortress built upon the ruin of the former Cathare castle to protect the kingdom of France against the kingdom of Spain until the Treaty of the Pyrenees which leads to its abandon because the border moves further South.
Catharism was a Christian religion seen as heretic by the Catholic Church and destroyed during the Albigensian Crusade in the XIIIth century. The french crown took advantage of the situation to take ownership of the county. The castle was besieged for a year by the crusaders and was only defended by Faidit knights, who were local lords refusing to take part in the crusade and dispossessed of their land. The Faidits were not even Cathares (Cathares were not able to defend themselves because they were not allowed to kill). The Crusaders finally took the fortress after successfully mounting a trebuchet on the cliff (it must have been epic!). The crusade ended with the death of the Cathars on a giant pyre.
The Cathare Grail
There is a story that leads to the presence of the Holy Grail in the area. In the year 70, the Roman army sacked Jerusalem and took the Holy Grail. Then few centuries later, the Visigoths sacked Rome and settled in Gallia Aquitania and Narbonensis with the relics from Jerusalem. In Parzival, Wolfram von Eschenbach lies the castle of the Fisher king who holds the Holy Grail and reigns the otherworld, in France. The nazi Otto Rahn was convinced that this castle, Monsalväsche, was Montségur and conducted excavations on the order of Himmler himself. This story inspired the Indiana Jones movies.
Was the treasure recovered by the French crown during the siege? Did the Cathares secure the relic? Did the Nazis take it away? Or is the Holy Grail in another castle?