Albigensian Heresy: Church & State Forced to Be More Severe

The Inquisition & the Church

It is here that there is a radical shift in the Church's dealing with heretics toward more serious penal measures. It is here that anti-Catholic bigots treat church history in the same piece-meal way they regard the bible. Matters are taken out of context and real threats are made light of or cast in the pallor of the Protestant/Catholic debate. Let us look at things honestly.

Dr. O'Brien succinctly tells us what happened:

In the second half of the twelfth century, however, the Albigensian or Catharan heresy spread through Europe in an alarming fashion; it menaced not only the Church's existence but also the very foundations of Christian society and orderly government. In answer to this grave menace there grew up in Germany, France and Spain a kind of prescriptive law which visited heresy with death at the stake, a form of capital punishment common at that time. Against that action of the Christian state to defend itself the Church did not protest; indeed, she felt called upon to sanction the severe penalties of the secular authority and to co-operate with the state in their enforcement, for her very existence was likewise threatened" (O'Brien, pp. 16-17).

Who were the Albigensians? How did this heresy threaten both the Church and State?

• They called themselves "Catharii," (Pure), found sexual relations repugnant and rejected marriage as abominable.
• They professed to be practicing primitive Christianity itself.*
• They held for a two-fold principle of creation, one good and the other, evil.
• Matter was evil and the spirit was good.
• All existence was in conflict between these two principles.
• Since all matter was evil, they denied the incarnation (that Christ assumed a human body).
• Regarding Christ as the highest angel, they denied both his humanity and divinity.
• They denied that he could endure injury; thus, there was no Crucifixion or Resurrection.
• The entire narration of his Passion and Death was brushed aside as illusion.
• They denied the "real presence" in the Eucharist and the sacrifice of the Mass.*
• Although sinless, the Virgin Mary had a celestial body like Christ, and only appeared to be a woman.
• Dr. O'Brien writes: "They professed hatred and contempt for the Church, branding her the Scarlet Woman of the Apocalypse, 'drunk with the blood of the saints and with the blood of the martyrs of Jesus'; the pope was Antichrist. The sacraments were childish impostures and transubstantiation was a mad blasphemy. Particularly vehement were those heretics in their denunciation of all forms of symbolism and of the veneration of relics and especially of the Cross" (O'Brien, p. 18).*
• Usurpation of Church structure and sacraments: "They had bishops as rulers and their members were divided into the 'perfected,' the 'consoled' and the 'believers.' The believers were obliged to prostrate themselves before the perfected and to venerate them in an obsequious manner. They made one sacrament out of baptism, confirmation, penance and the Eucharist, which they called the consolamentum. Those who died without receiving the consolamentum would pass either to eternal punishment or into the body of an animal; since the latter might be the dwelling-place of a human soul, they refused under all circumstances to take animal life" (O'Brien, p. 18).
• Usurpation of the rights of the state: "The putting to death of a human being, for any crime whatsoever, was considered wrong; and according to the Summa Contra Hereticos, 'all the Catharan sects taught that the public prosecution of crime was unjust and no one had the right to administer justice'" (O'Brien, p. 18).
• As an attack upon society's most basic component, the family, they contended that sex was evil at its core. Procreation was condemned as a Satanic enterprise wherein the pregnant female was possessed by a demon. If she died while pregnant or giving birth, she was eternally damned.
• Marriage was dismissed as a perpetually sinful state, worse than fornication, adultery, incest, and sodomy. The reasoning here was that married couples felt no shame or remorse. Also, there was the possibility of progeny. Abortion was reckoned as something to be highly recommended.
• The last sacrament or consolamentum could only be given those who renounced sexual relations; indeed, afterwards there were severe penalties of fasting for a man who merely touched a woman.
• The Albigensians repudiated the oath of fealty which represented the bonding foundation of feudal society and refused all taxes.
• Critically ill members were given the consolamentum and then urged to make their salvation certain by the endura, no less than suicide. Often it translated into murder. If they agreed, they were asked if they were a martyr or a confessor. Martyrs were suffocated with a pillow while confessors died of thirst and starvation. The so-called Perfect would often hang around to make sure the person was made to die, and it should be mentioned that opportunists sometimes exploited these situations for profit. Toward the middle of the thirteenth century, they cruelly subjected small children to the endura.

*PLEASE NOTE that the three points highlighted in this list are teachings shared with many, if not most anti-Catholic fundamentalists.

A. L. Maycock, in his work The Inquisition, states that the ENDURA was responsible for more deaths in Languedoc than the stake or the Inquisition! (p. 42). E. Vacandard in his work by the same title, reports, "Everyone who reads the acts of the tribunals of the Inquisition of Toulouse and Carcassone must admit that the endura, voluntary or forced, put to death more victims than the stake or the Inquisition" (p. 72). Even many non-Catholic historians admit, that orthodoxy in faith and civilization itself was at peril. The Albigensians were revolting, not only against the Church and the state, but against man' mastery over nature.