INQUISITION
Cathar Massacre in Southern France:
In 1139 the church began calling councils to condemn the Cathars and all who
supported them. By 1179 Alexander lll proclaimed a crusade against these
enemies of the church promising 2 years indulgence, freedom from punishment
for sin for all who would take up arms and eternal salvation for any who
would die. While this set a precedent for providing the church with a war
like militia to fight it's private quarrels, it failed to rally a force
against the popular Gnostic Christian Cathars.
Then in 1204 Pope Innocent lll destroyed what remained of the independent
local churches when he armed his legates with the authority to, 'destroy
throw down...........' In 1208 Innocent lll offered in addition to
indulgences and eternal salvation, the lands and property of the heretics to
any who would take up arm. The Albigensian Crusade to slaughter the Cathars
was established, because the Cathars did not recognise the authority of the
Roman church or it's sacraments.. After all Pope Innocent lll had already
declared that, 'anyone who attempts to construe a personal view of God
should be burned without pity'. The Cathars enjoyed immense support in the
South of France, because they stood up to the corruption and dictatorial
principals of the Catholic Church and it's secular bed fellows.
When on January 14th 1208 one of the Papal Legates to Languedoc Pierre de
Castelnau was murdered by anti- clerical rebels with no Cathar affiliation,
(the Church had a host of enemies, political and religious), this furnished
the church with the excuse it needed. Rome blamed the Cathars for the murder
and Innocent ordered in ernest the crusade against them.
The savagery of the thirty year long attack decimated Languedoc. At the
cathedral of St. Nazaire alone, 12,000 people were killed. Bishop Floque of
Toulouse put to death 10,000. When the crusaders fell upon the town of
Beziers and the commanding legate Arnaud asked how to distinguish between
Catholic and Cathar, he replied, " kill them all because God knows his own."
Not a child was spared. One historian wrote that even the dead were not safe
from dishonour, and the worse humiliations were heaped upon women. The total
slain at Beziers as reported by the papal Legate was 20,000. By other
chronicles the number was between 60 and 100,000.
The wider Albigensian crusade lasted around 40 years & killed an estimate of
one million people, not only Cathars but much of the population of Southern
France.This extermination occurred on so vast, so terrible a scale that it
may constitute the first case of genocide in European history. It was a
Crusade in the true sense of the word, not only ordered by the Pope, it's
participants wore a cross on their tunics like the Crusaders in the
Palistine. Southern France was devastated, it's populations nearly
annihilated, it's buildings and infilstructure left in rubble, it's economy
destroyed and it's lands subsequently annexed to the North.
While the political or secular equation of this war are more complex, at the
end of the day the Roman church had yet again responded in it's traditional
way of ridding itself of it's so called heretics....wipe the buggers out and
maintain total control of peoples thinking and spirituality.
Rather ironically in 1145 and almost half a century before the Crusade
against the Cathars, St Bernard himself had journeyed to Languedoc,
intending to preach against the heretics. When he arrived he was less
appalled by the heretics than by the corruption within his own church. Even
though St. Bernard was hardly a friend of the Cathars, this is what he had
to say about these undesirable Christians. " If you interrogate them nothing
is more Christian, as to their conversation nothing can be more
reprehensible, and what they speak they prove by deeds. As for the morals of
the heretics , he cheats no one, he strikes no one, his cheeks are pale from
fasting, he eats not the bread of idleness and his hands labour for his
livelihood.
( Lea. The inquisition of the Middle Ages, 46)
collated...PeterT
.
|
