ABSTRACT
The most important Catholic chronicler of the Albigensian Crusade is Peter, a Cistercian monk, from the abbey of Les Vaux-de-Cernay, situated about thirty-five kilometres to the south-west of Paris. After Sicard's death, Blanca became a Cathar perfecta at Laurac, where she set up a home for Cathar women, one of whom was another daughter, Mabilla. In a letter of March 1208, two months after the murder of Peter of Castelnau, the papal legate in Languedoc, by a vassal of the count, Innocent III held Raymond to be directly responsible. As far as Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay was concerned the entire populations of the three main cities were irredeemably tainted by heresy; indeed, he seems to have associated urban life with sin, almost by definition. Languedoc west of the River Orb, which was the part most affected by Catharism, was indeed relatively populous, but it was not one of the more urbanised regions of Latin Christendom in the Middle Ages.
