Montségur and the Cathar treasure

The Cathars’ last stronghold, and the Grail legend that climbed in after them

A ruin on a pog, a rock peak 1,200 metres up in the foothills of the Pyrenees, reached by a path that climbs 170 metres from the road. From 1233 it was the seat and head of the Cathar church. In 1242, after men from Montségur killed inquisitors at Avignonet, about 10,000 royal troops laid siege to roughly 100 fighters, 211 Cathar Perfects and their refugees. It held for nine months. In March 1244 it surrendered, and about 220 Cathars who would not renounce their faith were burned together at the foot of the rock. In the days before the end several Cathars were said to have slipped through the lines, and that is where the treasure legend starts. In 1906 the esoteric writer Joséphin Péladan declared the treasure was the Holy Grail and Montségur the Grail castle of Wolfram von Eschenbach’s Parzival. The walls you climb to are not the Cathars’: theirs were torn down in 1244. Every summer solstice people gather to watch the sunrise line up through two of the windows.