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In the valleys of Ussat and of Vicdessos, some caves were fortified. Three of them bear most significant names: they are called the ‘three churches’ of Ussat, of Ornolac-Bethlehem and of Bouan.
What role have they played throughout the ages?
A defensive role, a place of refuge and retreat during religion wars?
Gadal detects there vestiges of the vast complex of a Cathar initiation temple, clinging to the side of an enormous mountain massif which he called ‘the sacred Mountain’.
It was indeed the ‘Sacred Mountain’ of the Cathar priesthood:
there was on one side the inner laboratory, the place of the gestation and spiritual birth of the Perfects: the caves.
And, on the other side of the mountain, the ‘Pyrenean Tabor’ – the citadel of Montségur, advanced sentinel toward Occitania, the ‘Lighthouse of Catharism’.
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