Albigensian Crusade
Jesus gave a simple test for discerning His followers: "By this all will know that you
are My disciples, if you have love for one another." (John 13:35).
As far as is the east from the west is mass murder from "love for one another." Yet
mass murder, against the Cathari of Southern France,
also called Albigensians, is just what history has hid her weeping eyes
from seeing, instigated by the very institutions upon which the
Roman Catholic Church bases its claim to legitimacy, including the
papacy. The Cathari were gnostic dualists, hostile to the institutional
church, who were concentrated in the south of France. The stammering
medieval church found itself unable to persuade them they were in error,
and so resorted to different means: "'Let the strength of the crown and
the misery of war bring them back to the truth,' the pope declared."
(The Albigensian Crusade, Jonathan Sumption, p. 75).
As it turned out the French king was little interested, but the pope
found ways and means nevertheless:
"It was [Pope] Innocent III who initiated measures which dealt the decisive blows against the dissidents...The
outstanding lord in Southern France, Count Raymond VI of Toulouse,
evaded Papal efforts to induce him to take positive action and
Philip Augustus, the King of France, hesitated further to complicate
his own difficult problems, including his chronic troubles with
England, by risking a prolonged internal war to enforce the
Papal commands. Then, in 1208, the Papal Legate, Peter of Castelnau,
was murdered in Raymond's domains and perhaps at his court.
Innocent took advantage of the widespread horror evoked by the
crime to call forth a crusading army. Religious zeal represented
in an outstanding leader of the crusading armies, Simon de Montfort,
combined with quite secular motives, sectional jealousies, and
the desire of the nobles of Northern France to reduce the power
of the South and to profit by its wealth. Years of warfare followed, with wholesale destruction." (Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History
of Christianity, Volume I, p. 456).
The random destruction of the inhabitants of Beziers, the blood of
Catholics and Cathari mingled together, was an unparalleled crime against humanity:
"The army followed, and the legate's oath was fulfilled by
a massacre almost without parallel in European history. From infancy in
arms to tottering age, not one was spared — seven thousand, it is
said, were slaughtered in the Church of Mary Magdalen to which they
had fled for asylum — and the total number of slain is set down by
the legates at nearly twenty thousand, which is more probable than
the sixty thousand or one hundred thousand reported by less
trustworthy chroniclers. A fervent Cistercian contemporary informs
us that when Arnaud was asked whether the Catholics should be
spared, he feared the heretics would escape by feigning orthodoxy,
and fiercely replied, 'Kill them all, for God knows his own!' In
the mad carnage and pillage the town was set on fire, and the sun
of that awful July day closed on a mass of smoldering ruins and
blackened corpses — a holocaust to a deity of mercy and love whom
the Cathari might well be pardoned for regarding as the Principle
of Evil." (Henry C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle
Ages, Volume I, Kindle location 2735).
Steps the ecclesiastical council at Toulouse took, after the corpses were disposed of,
to eradicate the Albigensian heresy include:
"Among other measures, the council forbade
to the laity the possession of copies of the Bible, except the
Psalms and such passages as were in the breviary, and condemned
vernacular translations." (Kenneth Scott Latourette, A History
of Christianity, Volume I, pp. 456-457).
The casualties of this Papal Crusade numbered in the tens of thousands:
"The Church reserved to itself the right to redistribute among the
more faithful crusaders the confiscated lands of the defeated heretics.
Thus the crusade attracted the most disreputable elements in northern France,
and the result was horror. In 1209, Arnold Aimery exulted to the Pope that
the capture of Beziers had been 'miraculous'; and that the crusaders had
killed 15,000, 'showing mercy neither to order, nor age nor sex.' Prisoners
were mutilated, blinded, dragged at the hooves of horses and used for target
practice." (Paul Johnson, A History of Christianity, p. 252).
"If the blood of the martyrs were really the seed of the Church,
Manichaeism would now be the dominant religion of Europe." (Henry C.
Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, Volume I, Kindle
location1836). Gnosticism was far from an egalitarian faith; a wide
gulf yawned between two distinct ranks, the 'perfect' (Cathari), and the
lower-ranking faithful. The already perfected ones were expected to be
celibate and adopt a limited diet. While the rank and file often
apostatized when offered incentives by the Catholic hierarchy, the
higher echelon almost never did, instead going to a martyr's death: "The
impression which the consolamentum made on those who received it needs
no better testimony than the constancy of the Perfects during the
crusade. For although mere believers often returned to the catholic
fold, apostasies by Perfects were remarkably rare; and many hundreds of
them died at the stake when the hill-towns fell to the crusaders."
(Jonathan Sumption, The Albigensian Crusade, p. 51).
However, the barbarity of the Albigensian crusade was so intense that
often a willingness to conform meant nothing: "At Castres they could not
decide whether penitent heretics should be burned along with impenitent.
. .But the church, in 1209, did not yet have the police system to pursue
those whose penitence was insincere, and Simon ordered that both alike
should die." (Jonathan Sumption, The Albigensian
Crusade, p. 106). Not to mention faithful Catholics piled up on the
body heaps, or the occasional wandering Waldensian. While it can't be verified that 'Kill them all, God knows His
own" is a bona fide, verbatim contemporary quotation, it does very aptly
summarize the spirit of the Abigensian crusade.
Can blame for this murder spree be laid on Jesus' shoulders? No!:
"You have heard that it was said, 'An eye for an eye and a
tooth for a tooth.' But I tell you not to resist an evil person. But whoever slaps you on
your right cheek, turn the other to him also." (Matthew 5:38-39).
There was a time in church history when brilliant writers like
Tertullian and Hippolytus could ridicule and shame the gnostics, by pointing
out how far they had departed from Biblical norms. But the
corrupt church of the thirteenth century had no such capacity; ecclesiastical
office was held by the highest bidder. What the medieval church did know how to do, was
kill people. Things had changed.
Waldensians
The Waldensians differed from the Albigensians in that the Waldensians
were orthodox, Bible-believing Christians. They are first heard from around
1170 A.D. as followers of a certain "Valdensius." Though not
gnostics, their experience with Rome was much the same:
"A fate similar to that of Pragelato [1487] was in store for the Waldensians in the valleys of Argentieres
and Vallouise. These folk had been consistently pacifist by tradition, so that they did not resist when the invaders came. The
crusaders then proceeded to level their villages, destroying every trace of the Waldensian heritage. A few escaped massacre by
hiding in caves or in wooded areas while others submitted to a forced adjuration of their faith. Those who managed to flee the
area eventually joined with the Waldensians in the far south of Italy."
(Giorgio Tourn, The Waldensians, the first 800 years, p. 65).
Once the Protestant reformation got underway, these Christians reached
out to their reformed brethren. The end of their isolation did not guarantee
their safety but only marked them out the more for Rome's wrath:
"There were sporadic attempts at resistance by a few. The old tradition
of non-violence, however, with its innate respect for constituted authority,
its ingenuousness and simplicity of heart, led the Waldensians to give
themselves up. On June 5, 1561, the town of San Sisto, with its 6,000 inhabitants,
was burned to the ground. Guardia Piemontese, its neighbor, was likewise
destroyed. Prisoners were burned like torches, sold as slaves to the Moors
or condemned to die of starvation in the dungeons of Cosenza. The massacre
reached its height at Mantalto Uffugo on June 11th. On the steps in front
of the parish church, 88 Waldensians were slaughtered one by one, like
animals brought to market." (Giorgio Tourn, The Waldensians, the first
800 years, p. 91)
Surviving Waldensians adopted guerrilla tactics, and kept on surviving...and
being killed:
"On April 24 [1655], Pra del Torno was taken by assault, reduced to
rubble and thoroughly plundered -- that traditional place of refuge which
in the past had been the Waldensian bastion of resistance and sanctuary
of important victories. Within a few days the same fate befell Villar and
Bobbio. Soon the ghastly picture was everywhere the same -- unarmed people
tortured sadistically and massacred, the terror-stricken fleeing for their
lives while the soldiers came down from the heights laden with booty."
(Giorgio Tourn, The Waldensians, the first 800 years, p. 123).
Given that the victims of this unrelenting violence were Christians, it seems unduly harsh for atheists to nominate
its perpetrators as the true Christians.
Michael Servetus
One would like to be able to report that, with the advent of the
Protestant Reformation, all this oppression vanished. However that would
not be true. Although the Protestant Reformers made eloquent pleas for
freedom of conscience on their own behalf, they did not always extend
the same right to those with whom they disagreed. The cognitive
dissonance set up by this split between theory and practice was resolved
by later generations in favor of the theory, i.e., religious liberty.
Michael Servetus was a Unitarian heretic burned at the stake in John Calvin's Geneva.
Protests against his fate, by Sebastian Cavellio and others, ultimately
carried the day and drew Protestants back to their better natures.
Although the achievement of toleration was ultimately to come
through this route, initially their record was mixed. The main-line
Protestants were nearly as eager to burn heretics at the stake as were
Catholics, differing mostly, of course, in the identities of those they
fingered as heretics. Moreover Protestants shared the belief common in the day that
witchcraft was real. There are two competing views of this despised and
persecuted religion, the first that it was indeed a religion widely
practiced in the day. On this basis, modern-day Wiccan complain that
they are the survivors of a long trail of tears: "'Witchcraft was the
pagan religion of all of Europe for centuries prior to the rise of
Christianity, and the religion of the peasantry for hundreds of years
after Catholicism prevailed among the ruling classes of Western
society. The witchcraft purges were the political suppression of an
alternative culture, and of a social and economic structure. . . .'"
(Drawing Down the Moon, Margot Adler, p. 249).
There are indeed pagan survivals among European country-folk, like the
May-pole dances; and mass phenomena like the medieval dancing manias
might involve some revival of paganism: the cult of Dionysus centered
around mass dancing through the countryside. Of course, neurologists
have a thing or two to say about those dancing manias as well. However
there is also compelling evidence that the women burned as witches in
Europe and, briefly, in America, were, in fact, innocent. The charges
bewildered them. Why, then, were they convicted?
The witchcraft trials that convulsed Europe were
almost entirely the creation of torture. Torture is not a means of
ascertaining the facts, it is a way to create facts. Since people will
say whatever they need to say to get it to stop, as was realized long
ago, torture is the ideal way to create a set of facts, like that
witches fly on broom-sticks to the site of their Witches' Sabbath,
indeed to create a world or world-view:
"That the details of the Sabbat varied but little
throughout Europe is doubtless to be ascribed to the leading
questions habitually put by judges, and to the desire of the tortured
culprits to satisfy their examiners, yet this consentaneity at the
time was an irrefragable proof of truth. . .The assembly might be
held anywhere, but there were certain spots specially resorted to —
in Germany the Brocken, in Italy an oak-tree near Benevento, and
there was, besides, the unknown place beyond the Jordan. At all
these they gathered in thousands. Thursday night was the one
generally selected. They feasted at tables loaded with meat and
wine which rose from the earth at the command of the presiding
demon, and they paid homage to the devil, who was present, usually
in the form of a goat, dog, or ape. To him they offered themselves,
body and soul, and kissed him under the tail, holding a lighted
candle." (Henry Charles Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the
Middle Ages, Book III, Chapter VII, Kindle location 33799).
Like, this actually happened? People confessed to it. Torture can do
that. Torture is a way to make sure those who have power will see their story told,
whereas those who have none must sit in astonished silence. Eliminating torture
eliminates witchcraft trials, Saddam's weapons of mass destruction, and much else
besides that's worthless and nugatory. The Wiccans insist they are the
survivors of persecution: "This awareness was known to many ancient
celebrants, the Pagans, the 'naked dancers of moonlit groves' who were
put to death by monotheists. 'Monotheism,' wrote Zell, 'is a synonym
for genocide'. . ." (Drawing Down the Moon, Margot
Adler, p. 372). If the witches actually were guilty as
charged,— if they were pagan celebrants, then there might be something
to this. However they said they weren't. Without torture to fuel the fire,
witchcraft prosecutions sputtered out. Much as the modern pagans want
them to be guilty, it seems likely they were not, they were falsely
accused. Perhaps these inoffensive folk would not appreciate the Wiccans'
misappropriation of their heritage, if they knew of it.
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