Tea at Trianon: Son Ferriol and the Cathars

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 4, 2023

Son Ferriol and the Cathars

From The Majorca Daily Bulletin:

By coincidence, the crusade ended in the same year that Jaume I led his forces in the conquest of Madina Mayurqa (Palma) and Mallorca. Orthodox Christians all, Jaume was to favour the Dominicans in particular. In 1231, the Convent of Sant Domingo in Palma was created. This initial building was to expand into what became a huge complex that was to remain until the confiscations ordered by Spain’s prime minister, Juan Álvarez Mendizábal, in 1835. Nothing was left of this one-time Dominican centre; it was demolished.
At the time of the conquest, though, the Dominicans clearly formed a religious powerhouse in Mallorca. Orthodoxy prevailed and had sailed with Jaume, and yet there was something from Jaume’s past that hinted at less than orthodoxy. His father, Pere el Catòlic, had in fact given his support to the Cathars. He died at the Battle of Muret during the crusade, his Aragonese forces having clashed with the French of Simon de Montfort.
It wasn’t that Pere was a Cathar sympathiser, but he had his vassals to concern him, most notably those of Toulouse, which was conquered by De Montfort in 1212. The crusade became an exercise in warfare for expansion purposes as much as it had anything to do with religious fanaticism. Jaume was only five when his father died. He was to come under the influence of the Knights Templar, so he was brought up with the orthodoxy of the Benedictines, who had preached against Catharism. Given all this, how was it to be that there was a Cathar community in Palma? This community was specific to Son Ferriol, a district of Palma about which there is some mystery. The name would appear to have come from an Aragonese knight by the name of Francesc (or Francisco) Ferriol, yet there is vagueness as to the existence of a Son Ferriol estate (possession), while the name Ferriol is in fact absent from the inventory of what became the Mallorcan nobility after the conquest.

A key reason for knowing that there was a Son Ferriol back in those days and for also knowing that there was someone called Ferriol is directly linked to the Cathars and in particular to a Cathar priest called Pere Maurí. In 1321, he was documented as having been in Mallorca, in Son Ferriol. He encountered a Ferriol, who wasn’t necessarily a Cathar but who most certainly was in a community where Cathars had seemingly found some sort of haven. Separated from the main city, it would seem that descendants of Cathars had been allowed to live there in relative peace.

But this doesn’t explain how they came to be there in the first place, unless of course the forces of conquest hadn’t all been orthodox Christians after all. Unless, maybe, there had been Cathars who had sensed an opportunity to flee to a new territory under the son of a king who had fought on their behalf and having been driven out of their homelands in southern France. It is known that Albigensian troubadours moved to Aragon, so perhaps it wasn’t totally surprising that some Cathars made their way to Mallorca. (Read more.)