A Baron of the Île-de-France
Simon de Montfort was born, probably in the 1160s or 1170s, to a baronial family whose lands lay at Montfort-l'Amaury, west of Paris. His father was Simon de Montfort, and his mother, Amicia, was the sister and in time the co-heiress of the English earl of Leicester, which gave the younger Simon a claim to half the Leicester inheritance and the title of earl. King John later seized those English lands. Around 1190 he married Alice of Montmorency, a woman of strong will and piety who would later raise troops for his war and take part in his councils.
Contemporaries describe him as tall, strong, eloquent, and devout. He heard mass daily and kept his marriage vows in an age when many lords did not.
Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay, a Cistercian monk who rode with Simon's army and wrote its history, presents him as a hero of the faith. The southern poet who continued the Song of the Cathar Wars presents him as a tyrant. Both portraits contain truth, and both writers had a side.
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