As with their Perfecti leaders, the Credentes underwent immense persecution at the hands of the Catholic Church and the temporal authorities of the day who invaded their regions through a crusade launched by the Pope at the time. Although largely wiped out by the mid 13th century, some isolated Cathar communities survived in the Languedoc until the 14th century, most famously at the small village of Montaillou in the Ariege region of the French Pyrenees.