The complex history of the Cathars is on display in Toulouse

The “Cathars” will be from April 5 at the heart of a major exhibition in Toulouse but the quotation marks chosen by the organizers are important, the term itself and what it covers deeply dividing historians today. With the subtitle “Toulouse in the Crusade”, this flagship exhibition of the cultural year in the pink city will offer more than 300 objects (archives, archaeological pieces, reconstructions, etc.) retracing the crusade launched in the South of France at the beginning of the 13th century by Pope Innocent III, while taking stock of the historical debates around the “Cathar heresy”. “We are keen to promote the identity of the city, that of the region and clearly the Cathars participate in this identity”, affirms the deputy mayor in charge of museums, Pierre Esplugas-Labatut, pointing mischievously at the title of “traces » of this Cathar identity the “slightly anti-Jacobin reflex” of Toulouse residents, “of rebellion in relation to the capital”. For the curator of the exhibition, Laure Barthet, the period is in any case “fascinating because it combines all the ingredients that artists and authors have used, particularly in pop culture: it is history of a crusade with military twists and turns worthy of Game of Thrones, it is also in its caricature the struggle of a persecuted community against a blind and deaf power, that of the Inquisition and the King of France. The crusade is at the heart of the first part of the route, at the Saint-Raymond Museum, a vast 16th century building a stone's throw from the Saint-Sernin basilica, one of the emblematic monuments of Toulouse.

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The visitor immerses himself in this military expedition carried out from 1208 to 1229, discovers its protagonists thanks to a digital device as well as around ten shields bearing their coats of arms, or enters into the life of medieval Toulouse, three times besieged but never taken between 1211 and 1219. You have to walk a few hundred meters in the historic center of Toulouse, not far from the Capitol, to reach the second chapter of the exhibition, at the Couvent des Jacobins, built in the second half of the 13th century and therefore almost -contemporary with the story that is told there. And there, insists Laure Barthet, “you have to keep an open mind”. Because this second part exposes the advances in historical research over the last twenty years, which have challenged certain established ideas. You should know that the term “Cathars” was in fact never used in the South in medieval times. This “portmanteau word” became “established only because certain historians chose it” in the 19th century, explains Laure Barthet, whose exhibition traces the creation of the word. As for the existence of the heresy itself, it is today called into question by a majority of historians. “The word heresy was used as a pretext,” explains Alessia Trivellone, teacher-researcher at the Center for Medieval Studies at the University of Montpellier 3, who points to the desire for “better religious control” of this territory “by the Pope and the Cistercians”, then his desire for “annexation” by the King of France. “The sources are too biased to be considered as certain proof of the existence of heretical communities in the South,” she judges. Others persist in seeing the existence of a “true medieval Christian dissidence” with “its own clergy” in the South of France, like the historian Pilar Jimenez, author of the thesis, “Catharisms, dissident models of medieval Christianity”, who regrets “a selective reading of the sources” by his colleagues. Alessia Trivellone and Pilar Jimenez both appear in the catalog of the exhibition which, organized by a “museum of France, a neutral and scientific institution” intends to “set the terms” of a debate that has become very sensitive, without deciding it, according to Laure Barthet .

At the end of the visit, a bright 3D animation allows you to discover the castles of western Occitania that everyone calls “Cathar”. As a symbol summarizing the shortcuts that the historical narrative sometimes takes: far from being Cathar, these fortresses are in fact the work of the King of France, signs of his final victory and his control over this territory once designated as "heretic ".