Fifth Gospel Read Free

food would last and more than once mentioned it to Pierre Roger. He took it lightly and said that it would soon be over, for the French were weak and not used to discomfort. They would not countenance one of our winters, frozen to the bone under flea-ridden blankets!
    Even so, whenever I went to the ramparts to take a look at the encampment below, it seemed to me grown with more soldiers and tents and siege engines. No, I told myself, the French had not come for a season. They had come for as long as it would take to bring down this fortress, the last bastion of our faith, a faith that the Roman Church had declared heretical.
    A utumn had not passed quickly and those messages of support that came now and again from the Count of Toulouse were a welcome diversion. I kept my uncertainty to myself. I feared that these messages falsely raised the hopes of the people of the fortress and waited to see what would happen. The messages came to Raimon de Parella by way of his brother, the Templar Preceptor of Montsaunes, whose preceptory formed part of a network of secret messengers created during the early years of the war. Through these, news came and went by way of troubadours, and ours was a man called Matteu.
    I owe much to Matteu, a man I have known for a long time. If I am honest, I must say I have always envied him a little, God forgive me, because for him it was possible to live life to the full while possessing a willingness to die without a fear in the heart. This has lent a certain poignant tenor to his songs; songs of journeys to far off places, and of unimagined adventures, which greatly entertained the old people, brought a blush to the faces of the young girls, and fired up the courage of the lads, who for days afterwards repeated his tales, acting out those parts, which amused them.
    Sometimes he sang of something called the Grail – a stone struck from Lucifer’s crown, a stone of the greatest beauty and purity that had the power to bestow eternal life. At other times he sang of the bleeding Spear of Longinus, the spear that had pierced the side of Christ and was said to make any man who held it a king. I considered songs that spoke of eternal life and kingship contrary to our faith, and often told Matteu so.
    But what is our faith?
    L ooking back now I realise that we are no better than our enemies. Like them we have only known one half of the truth, though we have defended it differently: we have been willing to die for ours while they have been willing to kill for theirs.
    I n truth, in that far off future in which you live, our faith will not be understood, since only the interpretations of our enemies will have survived and so, I beg your indulgence, for I will sing to you a little of the tenets of our beliefs, and how at Pamiers, in civilised debates, we explained our doctrine to the representatives of the Roman Church.
    In those days, s itting beside Esclarmonde de Foix (that great lady perfecta) I listened as Guilhabert told the Catholics how Satan had created the world and all its creatures, including man. I smiled to myself to see their faces as he explained, with unequalled equanimity, that a Son of God could not, therefore, have entered such a world to live in the corruptible body of Jesus. I held my head high as he pointed out to them that this meant three things: that Christ, a God, could not have died on the cross; that Jesus’ body of corruption could not have been resurrected; and that his mother, being only a woman, could not be called the Mother of God.
    The Romans were aghast and incensed, for these tenets formed the very foundation of their faith!
    As far as I could then see, the entire argument revolved around the difference between two words – similar and same. We Cathars believed Jesus was only similar to Christ – while the Romans believed Jesus was the same as Christ.   
    That is one reason why the Romans feared the Cathar Church and persecuted it, but there is yet another, a ritual