Minerve

The ghosts of heretics
have gathered tonight
down in the gulley
outside Minerve.
Among them, the Perfect
relive the siege
and how the crusaders
destroyed their one well
then burned them alive
down in the gulley
outside Minerve.
They see once again
Simon de Montefort
that black-hearted monster
deploying one-eyed religion
to get what he thought he deserved
by killing the Perfect of Minerve.

Now visitors wander about
curious to find the site of the pyres,
then go into the caves
and build stone cairns
to remember the victims of the fires.
It is there the truly devout may pray
that the bishops and barons
are safely contained in their own hells
for what they once did
to the perfectly good
who preferred to be left
perfectly dead,
but true to their word,
down in the gulley
outside Minerve.


140 Parfaits (priests of the Albigensian or Cathar religion) were burned alive by Catholic forces after the siege of Minerve in south west France in 1210, part of an internal crusade against supposed heretics.

Peter Keeble