Morten St George Theory

[Morten St. George]

I only quoted the info that came with the drawing, i dont know if this occurred or is imagined but real or not the scene is set before 1223 for him to be depicted there.

A couple of the Cathar websites, which give every appearance of being quite reputable, display that illustration on their Montségur page. I doubt they would have done that (though I wouldn't say it was impossible) if the manuscript clearly indicated that it was not Montségur. They simply could have used that image elsewhere as another instance of Cathar persecution.

Are you sure that Shutterstock, or whoever supplied that image to them, did not invent that description as a selling point? Or out of the manuscript's failure to identify the scene? Have you found someone in that illustration who unambiguously matches another depiction of Philip II?

In 1209 (the date you give) the Albigensian crusaders undertook the siege of the city of Beziers (clearly not depicted here) where thousands of Cathars were killed by the sword, not by bonfire burning. Consequently, your description is historically inaccurate: there was no bonfire burning during that year nor did Philip show up in the south of France at the time (nor, as far I can determine, at any time prior to his death). In fact, Montségur, some 35 years later, may be one of the few or perhaps the only major instance of bonfire burning of the Cathars.

I don't know about the hats. As we learned from attempts to identify the archer's hat, hat catalogs are hard to find during the Middle Ages. I suspect there can be no certainty about when a particular style was first used. JP and Koen might be able to shed more light on this.