ABSTRACT
On the west side of the Place de PEglise in the village of Arques is the house of Déodat Roché, born and brought up in the village and, at various times, its maire. He had written two strongly pro-Cathar books, L'Eglise romane et les Cathares albigeois and Le Catharisme, while as early as 1899 he had founded a short-lived journal, Le Réveil des Albigeois, intended to promote a revival of interest in Cathar morality and beliefs. One person who took his views very seriously was Simone Weil, young French philosopher of the inter-war years, who died aged only thirty-four at Ashford in Kent in August 1943. For both Déodat Roché and Simone Weil Catharism had become a vehicle for their philosophical and moral attitudes. For a third contemporary - Otto Rahn - they were one side of an eternal struggle between two religious traditions, a struggle which formed the basis of his cosmology, Rahn was born in Hesse in 1904.
