Nearly a century had passed since the French region of Languedoc had been put to the sword in the Albigensian Crusade but the stain of Catharism still lay on the land. Any accusation of Catharism invited peril. But repression bred resentment and...

In 1300, the French region of Languedoc had been cowed under the authority of both Rome and France since Pope Innocent III 's Albigensian Crusade nearly a century earlier. That crusade almost wiped out the Cathars, a group of heretical Christians...