Albigensian Crusade

Albigensian Crusade, 1209 - 1229

The crusades to the Holy Land having resulted in, for the most part, failure and ruin, Innocent III set out to flex his military muscle closer to the homefront. The Albigenses were a Cathar sect that first appeared in Limousin, south-central France, in the early eleventh century.

It is exceedingly difficult to form any very precise idea of the Albigensian doctrines because present knowledge of them is derived from their opponents and from the very rare and uninformative Albigensian texts which have come down to us. What is certain is that, above all, they formed an antisacerdotal party in permanent opposition to the Roman church and raised a continued protest against the corruption of the clergy of their time....
Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Albigenses

Protected by the southern French nobility, they grew and became widespread in the South of France. The Council of Toulouse, in 1119, presided over by Calixtus II, bishop of Rome, excommunicated them and any who received them, and in vain ordered the civil powers to prosecute them. Subsequent councils reiterated and intensified the condemnation—ordering them to be deprived of their goods (Council of Tours, 1163, under Alexander III), reduced to slavery (Third Lateran, 1179, under Alexander III), and extirpated by war (Fourth Lateran, 1215, under Innocent III). It was in 1206 that Innocent first commissioned the monks of Citeaux to preach the crusade, and preparations continued until the Spring of 1209, when the armies were prepared to march.

In this year there began a crusade against the Cathari akin to the one that had been going on against the Muslims for some time. This was the first time the crusade concept had been used against dissidents who called themselves Christian. "For twenty long years Languedoc and Provence in France were subjected to a blood bath which not only wiped out the most advanced culture of the time but introduced into the Church, and from there throughout the West, the rule that any ideological deviation must be crushed by force."
The Waldensian Movement From Waldo to the Reformation, II, Growth and Reaction, A Research Paper by Dennis McCallum

Its first heralds were the monks of Citeaux, sent abroad by Innocent III in 1206 to preach the crusade throughout France and the adjoining kingdoms. There followed St. Dominic and his band, who traveled on foot, two and two, with full powers from the Pope to search out heretics, dispute with them, and set a mark on those who were to be burned when opportunity should offer. In this mission of inquisition we see the first beginnings of a tribunal which came afterwards to bear the terrible name of the "Inquisition."
The History of Protestantism, Volume First - Book First, Chapter 9, by James A. Wylie

Innocent, in particular, never seemed to grasp that the deepest and wickedest of heresies is the denial of the Gospel, the practical renunciation of the Sermon on the Mount. He had no qualms about using Christ's name to do everything Christ objected to. In Innocent's view, it was more wicked for the Albigensians to call him the Antichrist than for him to prove it by burning them, men, women and children in their thousands.
Vicars of Christ, The Dark Side of the Papacy, Peter De Rosa, Copyright © 1988, first American edition, pp. 161-62

Peter of Castelnau, papal legate and inquisitor against the Albigenses, in pressing Raymond VI of Toulouse to stamp out the heresy, was assasinated.

... He was assassinated, supposedly at Raymond's instigation, and in response to this act Innocent launched the Albigensian Crusade, a holy war in which Toulouse was ravaged and its inhabitants, Cathar and non-Cathar alike, were massacred....
Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Peter of Castelnau

Another papal representative and inquisitor, across the border in Germany, was Konrad von Marburg:

... first papal inquisitor in Germany, whose excessive cruelty led to his own death. In 1214 he was commissioned by Pope Innocent III to press his crusade against the Albigenses, a heretical Christian sect flourishing in western Europe. The results of Konrad's efforts were a succession of bloody massacres....
Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Konrad von Marburg

The slaughter continued until 1229, when the Treaty of Paris offered some respite.

... This implacable war, the Albigensian Crusade, which threw the whole of the nobility of the north of France against that of the south and destroyed the brilliant Provençal civilization, ended, politically, in the Treaty of Paris (1229), which destroyed the independence of the princes of the south but did not extinguish the heresy, in spite of the wholesale massacres of heretics during the war. The Inquisition, however, operating unremittingly in the south at Toulouse, Albi, and other towns during the 13th and 14th centuries, succeeded in crushing it.
Copyright © 1994-2000 Encyclopædia Britannica, Inc., Albigenses

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