The seminar was opened by the Mayor of Caseres, the president of Terra Alta Regional Council, the local representative of the Ministry of Culture of the government of Catalonia, and Dr. Josep Serrano, a professor in the Faculty of Legal and Political Sciences, who coordinated and prepared the event.
A total of about 150 people took part during the day. The seminar dealt with the passage of the Cathars through Catalonia after the Battle of Muret. Jurists, historians and novelists from different academic and scientific institutions discussed the theme from the perspective of their own fields of knowledge.
Topics presented at the conference included “The Cathars and the beginnings of the Inquisition in Catalonia”, “Catharism and its routes in the Crown of Aragon”, “Catalan women and Catharism”, and “Law and Catalan institutions in the time of the Cathars”. Among the speakers at the event were Sergi Grau and Dr. Almudena Blasco, of the Institute for Medieval Studies at the Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona (UAB); Dr. Stefano Cingolani, the Director of Monuments d’Història de la Corona d’Aragó (Monuments of the History of the Crown of Aragon); Carles Gascón Chopo, of the Collectif International de Recherches sur le Catharisme et les Dissidences (CIRCAED); Miguel Giribets, a historian, and Jesús Ávila, a journalist and writer. The closing address was given by Víctor M. Amela, a journalist for La Vanguardia and author of the book El càtar imperfecte (The Imperfect Cathar).
This year marks the 8th centenary of the Battle of Muret (12 September 2013), during which Pere I the Catholic died defending the Occitanian nobles with whom he had sworn oaths of allegiance — nobles who, as lords, were similarly obliged to protect their Albigensian vassals, also known as Cathars. It was a battle that had decisive consequences for the histories of Catalonia, Occitania and France. The battle itself put an end to the Crown of Aragon’s expansionist pretensions towards its neighbouring kingdom, the former turning its attention instead to the conquest of Valencia and Mallorca.
The Battle of Muret was part of what is known as the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229), a particularly bloodthirsty campaign initiated by Pope Innocent III. Many Cathars found refuge in the Crown of Aragon and consequently left their mark in various towns and cities in Catalonia, from the Pyrenees to the Terres de l’Ebre.
The seminar was supported by the government of Catalonia’s Ministry of Culture, Tarragona Provincial Council, Terra Alta Regional Council, the Catalan Society of Legal Studies (affiliated to the Institute for Catalan Studies), and the Terra Alta Region Study Centre.
