Massacre at Béziers, the first major battle in the Albigensian Crusade called in 1209 by Pope Innocent III against the Cathars, a religious sect. The French city of Béziers, a Cathar stronghold located in what is called la France profonde, “deep France,” was burned down on July 21–22, 1209, and 20,000 residents were killed after a papal legate, the abbot of Cîteaux, demanded the delivery of 222 “heretics.” When he was refused, the abbot declared, “Slaughter them all!” He added, “God will know his own.” In other versions, this has been rendered as a cynical motto that endures to this day: “Kill them all, and let God sort them out.”
The Cathars—also known as “Albigensians” after the French town of Albi, sometimes identified as their headquarters—were “dualists,” meaning that they believed in two gods: a greater embodiment of goodness and a less powerful evil deity that created the world. Emerging in 1000–50, they established their own church in c. 1140 and by the late 12th century had eleven bishops in France and Italy with a large number of followers in the Languedoc region of southern France. Cathars denied the divinity of Christ and the authority of the pope; the Roman Catholic Church declared them heretics in 1176.
After the Massacre at Béziers, the abbot leading the crusader army wrote to the pope, “The city was put to the sword. So did God’s vengeance give vent to its wondrous rage.”
Pope Innocent III sent preachers to convert the Cathars, but called a crusade after his legate, Pierre of Castelnau, was killed in January 1208. Many were attracted to the crusade by Innocent’s declaration that they would be entitled to keep any land seized from heretics. As if to recall the Christian-against-Christian sack of Constantinople in 1204, Innocent urged, “Attack the followers of heresy even more fearlessly than the Saracens.”
The Viscount of Béziers, Raymond VI, had at first tolerated the Cathars, but then, after being implicated in Pierre of Castelnau’s killing, he joined the crusade against them. All the same, aware of the impending attack on his city, he evacuated the Jewish population and urged the Cathars to flee. They did not, apparently in the belief that Christians would not kill Christians.
In 1209 the 10,000-strong crusader army gathered in Lyon and marched south under command of another papal legate, Arnaud Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux. Arriving at Béziers, the crusaders called for the surrender of the Cathars and local Catholics. The defenders of the city made a sortie to attack the besieging army but were overwhelmed, and the crusaders poured through the open gates of the city. The abbot wrote to the pope, “The city was put to the sword. So did God’s vengeance give vent to its wondrous rage.” Women, children, the elderly: the entire city was massacred, and much of Béziers lay in ruins for 300 years until being restored.
Despite the papal victory, however, Cathar resistance remained strong elsewhere, and the crusade lasted 20 more years.
Losses: Albigensian, and citizens, 20,000; Crusader, minimal of 10,000.