I wanted to feature a certain religiously fraught sci-fi series this month, but SOMEONE had to go on strike, so you’ll all have to wait until March next year. Instead, you are going to get a column about the Cathars. As always, I am open to suggestions, but 2025 (yes, 2025) is filling up fast!
Here is a story from my father’s childhood. Fr. Michael Malloy, O.P., was teaching catechism class at St. Thomas Aquinas elementary. One of the young students asked the priest about the difference between the Dominicans and the Jesuits. He responded simply, “The Jesuits were founded in opposition to the Protestants, while the Dominicans were founded in opposition to the Albigensians.”
“And which of the orders is better?” the student asked.
Smiling, the Dominican responded, “Well, how many Albigensians do you know?”
Indeed, the Albigensians—also known as the Cathars—have been completely extinct since the fourteenth century. Their memory still lingers, though not so much on the silver screen. Apart from documentaries, I have only found two feature films that touch on them. The first of these is The Bride of Darkness (1945), a French film that takes place in the modern day in the city of Carcassonne, now haunted by the (metaphorical) ghosts of the Cathars. It’s not a great film by any means, but it is an interesting one, and it features some stunning black and white photography.
The other is a zero-budget period piece from 2019 called Magdala Rose, and it looks like this.
Now, it is not incumbent upon me to select exclusively bad films, but is there any doubt—any doubt at all—which of these two more attracted my attention? I discovered Magdala Rose while looking for a film about the Cathars for this very column. Otherwise, I would not know it exists. At the time of writing, I constitute exactly fifty percent of all the people who have admitted to watching this film on Letterboxd. I have written the only review, and I have given the only rating—a fully earned half star and a heart. Readers, this film is dreadful, but I know enough of you are bad film masochists who can’t punish themselves enough. I come not to bury the film but to proclaim its Gospel. If you love bad films, you owe it to yourself to watch this flaming garbage heap.
But first, a history lesson!
Sects!
Once again, I picked the subject first and the movie later because I find the Cathars inherently interesting. They were a medieval heretical movement that attained its greatest influence in southern France and northern Italy during the twelfth to fourteenth centuries. Catharism is the heresy par excellence. They posed such a threat to the Catholic Church that the pope first had them crusaded and then inquisited until they were no more. The Inquisition, in fact, was founded as a direct consequence of the perceived Albigensian threat.
What was it about the Cathars that made them so threatening to ecclesiastical hierarchy? Many things, but the most alarming is probably their belief that Jesus Christ revealed a higher, hitherto unknown God of absolute goodness, and that the God of the Old Testament is the devil. This belief is part of an ancient religious current called dualism–not the absolute dualism of a religion like Zoroastrianism or Manichaeism, where two eternal principles of Good and Evil have stood in opposition since eternity–but a mitigated form where Satan, once a good angel, rebelled against his creator and took a number of other angels with him.
This is the standard Christian myth, so what’s different about the Cathar version? For one, Cathars interpret the Parable of the Unjust Steward, undoubtedly the strangest of Jesus’ parables, as an account of Satan’s currying favor with other angels as his first act of rebellion against God. Once they have been booted out of heaven–and this is where things become very different–the devil creates the world as an act of vengeance, fashioning human bodies as prisons for the fallen angels. The entire material world, and the propagation of matter (by, e.g., procreating), was viewed as inherently wicked.
The devil keeps humanity in his thrall through special agents who teach a carnal religion centered on sacrifice. These agents include, at least, Enoch, Moses, and John the Baptist. At this point God sends his son–or, rather, his other son, since Christ and Satan are brothers–to thwart the devil and establish a wholly spiritual religion to release all sentient beings from their carnal prisons.
Most of what I just wrote comes from a strange little book called The Secret Supper or The Interrogation of John. It is not, properly speaking, a Cathar book, since it was not written by them but inherited from a sister sect in the Balkans, the Bogomils. The Bogomils allegedly emerged from the Paulicians, a dualist sect active in Armenia. They share some aspects in common with the ancient Gnostic movements, namely the whole “God is evil” thing and a fascination with John and Johannine literature (Gnostics have their own alt-Gospel of John).
The Cathars are not Gnostics, however. I have previously written about Mandaeans, “The Last Gnostics,” and the differences are palpable. The Mandaeans have their own Scriptures and pointedly reject both the God of the Jews AND Jesus (while accepting John the Baptist and his baptism). The various movements are so diverse that it is not really right to refer to a “Gnostic” religion at all.
The Cathars might reject the God of the Old Testament, but they are very attached to the New. They attempted to revive the worship of early Christians based on the Gospels and Acts. They met in houses, broke bread together, and practiced a spiritual baptism through the laying on of hands, the infamous consolamentum, which I will talk about in the next section. They also translated the New Testament into the vernacular, which, in the Langedoc region, meant Occitan.
Some of this sounds like Protestantism, and Protestants rediscovered and romanticized the memory of the Cathars in the nineteenth century. Cathars may have had a scripturalist bent and rejected the sacraments and the hierarchy… but they also accepted apocryphal writings and rejected the Church Fathers, the book of Genesis, and God himself–or, at least, the way most Protestants understand God.
Modern myths about the Cathars are non-denominational and include undying conspiracy theories about the fates of the Holy Grail and Mary Magdalene. Nazi nonsense-peddler Otto Rahn, whom I mentioned in a previous column, believed that the Cathars–not just the Cathars, but Esclarmonde, one of the characters in this very film–were the guardians of the Grail.
Rahn also writes, in one dashed-off sentence, that Mary Magdalene brought the Grail from Egypt to France. He says nothing about Mary being Jesus’ lover. Apparently this long-running myth was a false accusation Catholic writers lobbed against the Cathars as a means of discrediting them. Little did they know, this would begin a trend of fictional characters who begin their lives as absolute nobodies and end up being the last living descendant of Jesus Christ.
All of this is very Da Vinci Code, even though that book/film never mentions the Cathars… which has become its own conspiracy theory. Suffice to say, a religion that had no use for the Eucharist and thought sex was gross had little room in its thought world for the Holy Grail or Mary Magdalene.
Lies!
Compared to The Bride of Darkness, Magdala Rose is more historically literate than it has any right to be. The French film only has vague notions about the Cathars, going little further than stating they were some kind of death cult and implying that they were deservedly burned. It also indulges in some of the romantic myths, namely that they were the guardians of the Grail. Mary Magdalene does not come up, although the titular Bride is seen as some kind of savior figure by the film’s villain, the last living Cathar bishop.
Magdala Rose has that stuff too, but it’s also anchored in actual Cathar history and mentions some Cathar practices and beliefs. The setting is the mountain fortress of Montségur. This was the location of a dramatic siege that ended in March 1244 with the fortress’ surrender and the subsequent burning of more than 200 Cathars. It is often seen as the culmination of the Albigensian Crusade.
Except that it wasn’t. The Albigensian Crusade began in 1209 when a papal legate was murdered after reproaching Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, for tolerating heretics in his domain. The murder, which Raymond may have had nothing to do with, inflamed pope Innocent III, who, for the first time, called for a crusade against fellow Christians.
Like all crusades, the motives were political as well as theological. In this case, the king of France, whose territory did not include all of today’s France, had his eyes on Occitan, where Catharism was most widespread. When the crusade ended in 1229 with the Peace of Paris, one of the conditions was that Raymond’s granddaughter would intermarry with the French royal family, ensuring that, with the passage of enough time, Occitan would become a territory of the crown. This happened by the end of the century.
After the crusade, the Inquisition moved in. The conflagration at Montségur was the direct result of the murder of Inquisitors by Cathar sympathizers, an incident mentioned in dialogue in the film.
The film, however, persists in calling the siege of Montségur a “crusade.” It was not even the end of Catharism in Languedoc, which lasted for another century. It is, at least, a highly dramatic moment in Cathar history, and I cannot fault the filmmakers for choosing it.
I CAN fault them for fudging some of the details, however. I wondered at first why the two knights at the center of the story, Sir Discount Adam Driver and Sir Discount Jason Momoa, were dressed like Knights Templar. The reason is pretty simple: They ARE Templars.
What are the Templars doing at Montségur? Forging, I suppose, a link between the repression of the Cathars in the 13th century and the suppression of the Templar order in 1307, yet another common theme in Grail-and-Mary conspiracy theories (including Rahn’s… and *sigh* The Da Vinci Code).
Sir Jason and Sir Adam are tasked with protecting Lady Bietta (Katie Anderson, who debuted in Thor: Ragnarok as “uncredited Asgardian woman”), who is not a Cathar at all, but who MUST NOT fall into Catholic hands, even if it means killing her. This leads to a line of dialogue that, as friend and colleague Mandy Albert has pointed out, could also be a double entendre for butt stuff.
Bietta herself is critical of the Cathars who have sworn to protect her, calling the faydits fainéants and accusing them of being so sanguine about their impending martyrdom because they believe in reincarnation and can just try again later. No double entendres here. It’s just a dumb line of dialogue.
Eventually Bertrand, leader of the Cathar refugees, tasks the knights with taking Bietta and her charge Meg the Moppet away from the castle to find the fabled hidden Cathar treasure, which is… a book. The Templars already know about the book because, while the knights were ka-niggiting in Jerusalem, they read about the book in… another book.
In the B plot, Raymond de Péreille, lord of Montségur, must contend with the fact that he and his family are all doomed. His daughter Esclarmonde is particularly distraught because she has lost her husband in the fighting and would like to receive the consolamentum from Bertrand. The consolamentum was a kind of Cathar rite of baptism. It can only be conferred by someone who has already received it, the perfecti or “perfect ones.” Receiving it assures that person’s salvation in the next life… provided they commit no further sins in this one, including acts of the flesh. It was usually received on one’s deathbed.
For some reason, heresy hunters really hated the consolamentum, which they saw as barely disguised euthanasia aimed at annihilating the entire human race. The only way to prevent Cathars from euthanizing each other was to kill them all first.
That’s the extent of the film’s engagement with Cathar beliefs. I suppose it’s not very profound, although I was tickled how often the word consolamentum is used in the script (it would make for a great drinking game). I would go so far as to say that its mixture of Cathar fact and fiction was smart. Or, it would be smart, if the rest of the film wasn’t so damn stupid.
Videotape!
Since you are on the Internet, I suppose you have heard of a little movie called Monty Python and the Holy Grail. It is a comedy that made use of its limited budget to creative ends, such as not spending a dime on horses and making this self-imposed constraint the basis of one of its signature jokes.
You might be less familiar with an episode of the NBC sitcom 30 Rock (“Kidnapped by Danger”) where vain bauble Jenna Maroney finds herself in the crosshairs of Weird Al Yankovic. The only way to prevent the master parodist from mocking her music, she reasons, is to sing nonsense in the first place. Al then reverse-engineers her song into a conventional pop hit.
That’s what Magdala Rose has done. It “Normal-Als” Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Everywhere I look in this po-faced and wholly serious film, I find some reminder of the comedy classic.
For starters, there is a subplot about how Bietta et al. can’t escape because they need horses (the last ones were eaten during the winter). There is also too much, yet not enough, of the laughable fight choreography, with equally laughable stage blood.
Then there is a subplot about Mary, the poor servant girl between the ages of sixteen and nineteen-and-a-half, who flees the castle and is promptly captured by vagrants. She is roughed up a bit and receives a flesh wound–but she’s not dead yet!
Sir Jason himself is mortally wounded late in the film (getting those horses, no less). Don’t worry, though! He gets better.
At one moment of peril, our heroes are interrogated about their name and quest.
And, of course, there’s the Holy Grail.
The Renaissance Faire aesthetic is the least of this film’s faults. It is staggeringly incompetent in wholly unique ways. Consider this scene where we are first introduced to Lord Raymond and Sir Jason.
You may not be able to tell that this is Sir Jason because YOU CAN’T SEE HIS FUCKING FACE. Interiors are either woefully underlit or woefully overlit. There is no middle ground.
Worse than this is the use of green screens. It offends on two counts. First, the compositing is atrocious. Second, the green screens are used for the most banal settings, such as on a balcony at night…
…or inside a church…
…or outdoors.
Less outrageous, but still bizarre, are shots of bosoms which are supposed to call attention to the jewelry the lady characters are wearing (this is what film scholars call the “female gaze”). Instead, these shots make it seem that Sir Adam and Sir Jason are leering at Bietta, who is a ten, and Meg, who is ten.
I could go on, but I think the point is clear. Everything about this movie reeks: the acting, the dialogue, even the props. And it’s a hoot. I cannot recommend this movie enough to lovers of bad cinema. Not only is it entertaining—it’s educational!
Gavin McDowell is a Hoosier by birth and French by adoption. He received his doctorate in “Languages, History, and Literature of the Ancient World from the Beginning until Late Antiquity” and is currently investigating Aramaic translations of the Bible. He is supremely unqualified to talk about film. For more of his unprovoked movie opinions, see his Letterboxd account.