Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/50

34 LANGUEDOC. That a whole vicinage, when it had timely notice, should bind it- self in a league to defeat the purpose of the inquisitors, as at Cas- telnaudary, must have been a frequent experience ; that, sooner or later, despair should bring about a catastrophe like that of Avignonet was inevitable. Montsegur for years had been the Mount Tabor of the Cathari —the place of refuge in which, as its name impHes, they could feel secure Avhen safety could be hoped for nowhere else. It had been destroyed, but early in the century Raymond de Pereille had re- built it, and for forty years he held it as an asylum for heretics, whom he defended to the utmost of his ability. In 1232 the Catha- ran bishops Tento of Agen and Guillabert de Castres of Toulouse, with a number of ministers, foreseeing, in the daily increasing pressure of persecution, the necessity of some stronghold which should serve as an asylum, arranged with Raymond that he should receive and shelter all fugitives of the sect and guard the common treasure to be deposited there. His castle, situated in the territo- ries of the marshals of Mirepoix, had never opened its gates to the Frenchmen. Its almost inaccessible peak had been sedulously strengthened with all that mihtary experience could suggest or earnest devotion could execute. Ever since the persecutions of the Inquisition commenced we hear of those who fled to Montse- gur when they found the inquisitor's hand descending upon them. Dispossessed knights, /a^W^^^. of aU kinds, brought their swords to its defence ; Catharan bishops and ministers sought it when hard pressed, or made it a resting-place in their arduous and dangerous mission -work. Raymond de Pereille himself sought its shelter when, compromised by the revelations of Raymond Gros, he fled from Toulouse, in 1237, with his wife Corba ; the devotion of his race to heresy being further proved by the fate of his daughter Esclarmonde, who perished for her faith at the stake, and by the Catharan episcopate of his brother Arnaud Roger. Such a strong- hold in the hands of desperate men, fired with the fiercest fanati- cism, was a menace to the stabihty of the new order in the State ; .to the Church it was an accursed spot whence heresy might at any moment burst forth to overspread the land again. Its de- struction had long been the desire of all good Catholics, and Ray- mond's pledge to King Louis, March 14, 1241, to capture it had