In a very real way, the Albigenses give us a model that demonstrates for us Roman Catholic tactics against groups that oppose them. They were the object of a blood-thirsty inquisition aimed at their extermination in the 13th century and since that time, Roman Catholic purveyors of "history" have discredited them. A classic example of this is found in Karl Keating's Catholicism And Fundamentalism, "the Albigensian heresy, a variety of Manichaeanism, which maintained that marriage is evil because flesh is evil. From this the heretics concluded that fornication could be no sin because what happens to the flesh is of no importance. They even encouraged ritualistic suicide among their members, because self-murder could not be immoral."

Keating continues, "(Fundamentalists) identify themselves with Catharists (also known as Albigensians), or perhaps it is better to say they identify Catharists with themselves. They think Catharists were twelfth-century fundamentalists and that the Catholic Church did to them just what it would do to fundamentalists today if it had the means. This is a fantasy. Fundamentalist writers take one point - that Catharists used a vernacular version of the Bible and conclude that these people were `Bible Christians.' The truth is that they were hardly Christians at all. Theirs was a curious heresy that perhaps (no one knows for sure) came to France from what is now Bulgaria. Catharism was a mixture of Gnosticism, which claimed as secret source of religious knowledge, and Manichaeanism, which said matter is evil."

Richard McBrien calls Albigensianism one of the most serious heresies in the history of the Church (Catholicism, page 302). Their treatment by Rome is a foretaste of Catholic tactics against all non-Catholics, and will no doubt be still very much alive when the final pope comes on the scene to usher in the satanic super-church. And even in these more civilized days in which we live, Christians who have a burden for the souls of their Catholic friends are often called "hate-mongers" and "bigots", in much the same way as Louis de Wohl described the Albigensian Christians' attitude to pope Innocent III, who "had been trying with great patience to defeat the Albigensians by peaceful means", but was "met with contempt, snarling enmity and finally murder." (Founded On A Rock, page 122).

De Wohl later (page 136), spins a yarn to prove the utter folly of Albigensianism and concludes with a unique theory. He says, "The young daughter of a devout Catholic family suddenly refuses all food except fruit. She breaks off her engagement to a young man who had been very welcome to her parents as a prospective son-in-law. Asked for the reason of such strange behavior, she declares the food her parents are eating is poison for the soul, and that she will never marry because marriage is a gross and contemptible sin. She firmly and ecstatically believes in her Albigensian teacher. Her father, the disappointed bridegroom and some of his friends pay a visit to the teacher, beat him and set his house on fire. Other Albigensians come to his aid. Street battles follow. The people themselves revolt against a heresy which, carried to its logical conclusion, would mean the end of the human race, and the hunt is on. Soon another element enters. It is sufficient to point out a man as an Albigensian teacher to have him driven out of town or killed. False denunciations enable unscrupulous citizens and rulers to loot or confiscate their houses and property."

The conclusion de Wohl comes to is that it was this state of affairs that caused Pope Gregory, in order to protect people accused of heresy, to set up tribunals which became the Papal Inquisition. The ground rules for this inquisition paved the way for the even more infamous Spanish Inquisition some centuries later.

De Wohl admits that the Papal Inquisition has a bad name, but he tries to justify it first, by its leniency and second, because "the Church tribunal itself never inflicted corporal punishment, but surrendered the heretics to the `secular arm,' the state tribunal and the law of the period including the permissibility of torture in questioning a prisoner." (Founded On A Rock, page 137).

Priest Richard McBrien, the theologian from Notre Dame, presents a different view in Catholicism (page 623). "The Inquisition was founded at this time, and in 1252 Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture to secure proof of heresy. By all reasonable standards, the Inquisition was one of the shabbiest chapters in the entire history of the Church."

Unfortunately, professed Christians (and probably some are really saved) have fallen for the Roman Catholic propaganda in much the same way as some of God's people exercise little discernment about the true nature of the papacy.

Earle Cairns starts off promisingly in Christianity Through The Ages, where he writes, "More information concerning these medieval sects has been preserved by their enemies than by their friends, and therefore accurate information about them is scarce. Both the Albigenses and Waldensians sought to return to the purer form of religion that they saw in the New Testament."

Mr. Cairns then falls into the usual Roman trap for historians as he records, "(the Albigenses) formulated heretical ideas."

B.K. Kuiper, in The Church In History (a book used in many Christian schools), is even less charitable. He specifically calls Albigenses (which simply means they come from near Albi, France) "new Manichaeans", linking them to a third century religious group, the followers of Mani (or Manes), whose history, as handed down by the Roman Catholic church, says he wandered for forty years, announcing himself as "Messenger of the True God" and to Christians as the Paraclete. After a brief time of favor in the Persian court he was crucified and his skin was stuffed and hung up at the city gate as a spectacle to his followers, who were severely persecuted. He is said to have held a number of completely heretical teachings, the basis of them being dualism, a belief in two gods, one good and one evil, with consequent rejection of the Old Testament (which had been written by the evil god) and all human aspects of Christ.

However, even the New Catholic Encyclopedia admits, "no trace can be found between the Albigenses and the Manichaeans." (Volume I, page 262). On the following page, we read, "the simple and disciplined lives of the Catharist (Albigensian) preachers stood in marked contrast to the (Catholic) clergy of Southern France."

In A Short History Of The Baptists (The Judson Press), Henry C. Vedder helps us to see what really happened. He speaks of two groups which the Roman church called "heretical". One of these denied the efficacy of the sacraments, taught justification by faith and rejected the baptism of infants. Even Karl Keating, in Catholicism And Fundamentalism, admits that they rejected infant baptism, but hastens to add, "But the Catholic Church has always held that Christ's law applies to infants as well as adults."

And Vedder concludes, "These are the distinctive teachings of Baptists today, and the men who held these truths from the twelfth century onward, under what various nicknames it pleased their persecutors to give them, were our spiritual ancestry, our brethren in the faith" (page 102).

Alongside these "heretics" which we can easily identify as being evangelical were groups about which scholars disagree as to the extent of their heresies. They called themselves Cathari (or Puritans), designating themselves as more pure than the Roman Church. Roman Catholics call them dualists (holding to the beliefs ascribed to the Manichaeans). Vedder says, "They were doubtless justified (in calling themselves Cathari), for, although they are charged with gross immoralities, their doctrinal vagaries were less gross than Rome's idolatrous worship of the saints, the Host, and images" (page 102). Karl Keating tells us they rejected infant baptism (Catholicism And Fundamentalism, page 178).

Vedder continues on the following page, "Both classes of these heretics (Manichaeans and Puritans) flourished during the 12th century in Southern France. The (Roman Catholic) church was not at all careful to distinguish between them, and they were often included under the name of Albigenses in one sweeping general condemnation. The name however does not properly denote the evangelical heretics, who never confounded themselves with these dualistic heretics, and indeed sympathized with them as little as they did with Rome."

Other historians have even refused to believe that the Manicheans were actually dualistic heretics, but maintain that this was an unjustified claim of their enemies, the Roman Catholic Church, which seems to have had the advantage of controlling history for so many hundreds of years and killing people off before they had an opportunity to fully circulate their teachings.

Toward the close of the 12th century, it became a life-and-death struggle between the Albingenses and Rome in this part of France. An Albigensian synod was actually held in Toulouse in 1167, at which time they probably embraced a majority of the population of South France. Bernard reported in his letters that Catholic churches were deserted, altars were falling into decay and priests were starving. He lamented that the whole of Southern France was given over to heresy. By the year 1200 they were also very numerous in Northern Italy.

Louis De Wohl, in Founded On A Rock, gives us this information. "St. Bernard and his Cistercians preached against them, but they grew in numbers. In 1205 a Spanish cleric, Dominic Guzman of Osma, a nobleman by birth, came to visit the Cistercians in France. He saw that secular priests were frequently quite unable to combat the heresy because they were badly trained and had no answers to the Albigensian arguments. Besides, the lives that many of them were leading has lost them the respect of the people. Dominic Guzman decided there and then that the heretical movement must be defeated on its own grounds, by Catholic priests who exceeded their ascetic ways and out-argued their arguments. He set about gathering a number of suitable priests and the result of his efforts was a new order which he called the Order of Preachers, more popularly known as the Dominicans. But before the Dominicans could gain a decisive victory, pope Innocent III intervened. On the pretext that an Albigensian soldier had killed his own personal Legate, Innocent III called for a crusade.

A.M. Renwick, in The Story Of The Church, picks up the story. "The best known (sect) were the Albigenses. They regarded the clergy of their time as corrupt, and counted their rituals as worthless because they were not men of God. In 1208 a crusade was ordered by Pope Innocent III. Their persecutions began under the Bishop of Citeaux and Simon de Montford (see note below about Simon's heresies). It was a bloody war of extermination scarcely paralleled in history.

Louis de Wohl calls de Montford "savage" and admits the campaign was "cruel in the extreme. All of the townspeople in many French towns were killed without distinction of age or sex. The bishops who had been put in charge of this often didn't seem to pursue it with the vigor demanded by the pope, so Pope Gregory IX put this engine of iniquity into the hands of the Dominican order, giving its leaders vast powers to coerce bishops and nobles whose help they wanted in their nefarious work."

The pope raised men from all over Europe to attack this "Albigensian heresy", and the same indulgences were given for this crusade against these fundamental Christians as had been given for crusades to the Holy Land. The crusaders were only too successful. Archbishop R.C. Trench says, "The machinery, so wonderful in its wickedness and its craft, did not fail in its object. By the middle of the fourteenth century there were probably few Albigenses more" (Medieval Church History, p. 219).

Another Catholic answer was the Synod of Toulouse in 1229. Since the Albigensian problem had been caused by people reading the Bible in the common tongue, this synod forbade laymen the use of vernacular translations of the Bible. The very fact that they so desired to read the Word of God for themselves gives them my vote for their having been in the fundamentalist camp. The Catholic Church, of course, says that the scriptures they used were heretical scriptures, but it is a fact that centuries later the pope openly condemned the distribution of scriptures by Bible Societies (in those days, the King James Version), because they were heretical, i.e., non-Catholic.

Renwick continues, "It is certain that, although outwardly suppressed, the spirit of these persecuted sects continued to live in the hearts of the people till the Reformation. Much historical research is still called for in order to bring out the true story and the theological position of those numerous bodies. There are complicated questions involved and in the past historians have depended too much on the statements of the enemies of the dissenting groups for their of their doctrine and morals"(p. 98).

Karl Keating took up the subject of the Albigenses in Catholicism and Fundamentalism. He says (page 298), that fundamentalists take one point of Albigensian doctrine (the use of the Bible in the vernacular) and conclude that these people were "Bible Christians". H.C. Vedder has already pointed out that the other similarities were rejection of the sacraments and baby baptism and belief in justification by faith. Keating goes on to point out the errors often ascribed to Albigenses who, he says, may not have been doctrinally pure (but we have only Rome's word for that). Keating does not claim to be a historian, but it is evident he has read much history and much of it has evidently been written by historians who do more than God can do. (God cannot change the past; historians can).

I mentioned Simon de Montford, who was instrumental in persecuting the Albigensian "heretics". I wonder if a present-day Catholic who believes that Jesus should be worshipped rather than Mary, would consider this excerpt from Simon de Montford's book, True Devotion To Mary, a heresy?

De Montford wrote, in commenting on Genesis 3:15, I will put enmity between thee and the woman and between thy seed and her seed; he (the Douay version says "she") shall bruise thy head and thou shalt bruise his heel: "God has never made and formed but one enmity; but it is an irreconcilable one. It is between Mary, His worthy Mother, and the devil. He has inspired her with so much hatred against that cursed enemy of God, with so much power to crush that proud and impious rebel that he fears her, in a sense, more than God Himself."

(Author's Note: This quotation was taken from a Roman Catholic book, Mary Vs. Lucifer, by John Ireland Gallery (Imprimatur: Rt. Rev. George Casey) and the entire quotation was not possible to obtain. However, if you can check the original, you will find that the Catholic writer, who agrees with de Montford, has not seriously altered his words.)

I wonder, in the search for heretics in Southern France, who was a worse heretic - Simon de Montford or a Bible believing Albingensian brother?

According to The New Catholic Dictionary, "this sect disappeared in the 14th century." However, many Albigensian Christians escaped to Italy, where they united with Waldensian believers. Even though it appeared that the Church of Rome was successful in stamping these French Christians, over the centuries there are still evidences that this truth was kept alive in a few hearts. We can cite 1524, in Melden, France, when John Clark posted a writing on a church door stating the pope to be Antichrist. For this he was whipped repeatedly, but continued his preaching and demonstrations against Rome, until, in Mentz, he was cruelly tortured and thrown into the flames, but even in the midst of his torment, he sang Psalm 150.

Francis Bribard had his tongue cut out in 1545, and the same year James Cobard was was burnt for saying, "The Mass is useless and absurd." The persecution had not died out 100 years later when, in Poland, Pastor Adrian Chalinski was roasted alive by a slow fire for Albigensian heresy.

The Origin Of The Albigenses

Karl Keating, in Catholicism And Fundamentalism (page 298),tries to seek out the source of the Albigensian "heresy". He states, "Theirs was a curious heresy that perhaps (no one knows for sure) came to France from what is now Bulgaria."

G.H. Orchard, in A Concise History Of Baptists (Bogard Press, Texarkana, AR-TX 1973), quotes Baronius' assessment of Christendom, "Christ was then, as it appears, in a very deep sleep, there were wanting disciples who, by their cries, might awaken him, being themselves all fast asleep." It was during this century, Orchard tells us (page 171) that the Paulicians emigrated from Bulgaria, and spread themselves through every province of Europe. He quotes Gibbon, "It was in the country of the Albigeois, in the southern provinces of France, where the Paulicians took root."

Who were the Paulicians? Where did they get their name? What did they really believe? Are they the progenitors of the Albigenses?

As we progress with this study of early Christians, we come to this group that is highly castigated by Priest Markoe. We will deal with this by quoting his statement, and then countering with an opposing statement by a historian. Having already noted the bias and hatred behind Markoe's attacks, we will leave it to the reader to judge between the two.

Their enemies, the Roman Catholic Church, would tell us one story so as to discredit not only this group, but all the believers that sprang from this good stock. Priest Markoe concedes a few "heresies" that we would call doctrinal truths - faith in Christ saves from judgment, denial of the sacraments and refusal to honor the cross.

Markoe goes on to give an incredibly detailed account of the Paulicians and their supposed heresies. There is no documentation of this except for purely Catholic histories, and the facts just don't seem to fit the story properly. Even Markoe's date is doubtful; he places them in the seventh century. He writes (page 17): "Constantine of Mananalis, calling himself Silvanus, founded what appears to have been the first Paulician community at Kibossa, near Colonia, in Armenia. He began to teach about 657."

John Christian, in A History Of The Baptists, Volume I, page 49, states, "The Paulician Churches were of apostolic origin and were planted in Armenia in the first century."

It is true that Constantine of Mananalis was one of the later great leaders among the Paulicians, and that he took the name of Silvanus, but this was because he was so thoroughly taken with the writings of the Apostle Paul. As is explained by William Williams, in Lectures On Baptist History, pp. 129-130: "The Paulicians were eminent especially for their love of Paul's epistles, which they so admired that their teachers, many of them, changed their names for those of some of Paul's helpers and converts. For centuries defamed and pursued, they held their course, testifying and witnessing. Hase, the modern Church historian, himself a Rationalist, speaks of them as continuing under various names down quite near to our own age."

Markoe identified them with the Manicheans by saying they believed in a plurality of gods.

S.H. Ford, in Brief Baptist History, pp. 35-36 writes, "They were so-called (Paulicians) because they quoted and followed especially the writings of the Apostle Paul. This fact speaks in thunder tones against the slanders of their persecutors that they were Manichees, or believers in a good god and an evil one."

Markoe continues his description of "Silvanus", "He wrote no books and taught that the New Testament, as he presented it, should be the only text used by his followers. After preaching for 27 years and having spread his sect into the Western part of Asia Minor, he was arrested by the Imperial authorities, tried for heresy and stoned to death." So far Markoe is quite gentle in handling the Paulicians. In the next paragraph he starts to play hard ball.

"The Paulicians believed in a plurality of Gods; held all matter to be bad; rejected the Old Testament; denied the Incarnation; held Christ to be an angel, and his real mother the heavenly Jerusalem; taught that faith in Christ saves from judgment; denied the sacraments and apparently believed in the transmigration of souls; condemned all exterior forms of religion and refused to honor the Cross since they maintained that Christ had not been crucified."

Markoe says the Paulicians rejected the Old Testament; John Christian writes that they made constant use of the Old and New Testaments. The vicious way in which the Paulicians are attacked by Markoe, a Jesuit, would lead some to believe that there was not only some good in this group, but that they were highly instrumental for other reform movements that would spring from them. This lends credence to the following statements.

A.M. Renwick, in The Story Of The Church, has given us some insight into their beginnings. On page 97 he says, "About the middle of the seventh century there had appeared a Christian sect, called the Paulicians, in the region of the Euphrates. They spread to Armenia, Asia Minor, and Thrace. Somewhat akin to them were the Bogomils (a term meaning `Friends of God') in Bulgaria and Bosnia, in the tenth century. Later still, under the name Cathari (the pure), various groups of ascetic-minded Christians, characterized by a marked reverence for the Scriptures, spread from the Balkans westward."

Orchard continues (page 172), "The French Paulicians were plainly of the same order in church affairs as the Bulgarians. They had no bishops; the candidates were prepared for baptism by instruction and stated fasts. They viewed baptism as adding nothing to justification, and affording no benefit to children. They received members into their churches after baptism, by prayer, with the imposition of hands and the kiss of charity."

We may never know for sure where they got their name, as scholars and would-be scholars on both sides are not in agreement. It is true, even according to Priest Markoe, that they emphasized the New Testament scriptures, so it would not be too much of a leap in the dark to feel they got their name from their adherence to the Pauline epistles. Perhaps they over-emphasized Paul; we do not know. All we know is that they did oppose the Roman Church and were persecuted fiercely for it.

Robinson, in Baptist Church History, page 211, says that the Paulicians baptized by immersion in water. There is most probably a link between the Paulicians and the Fraticelli, a "heresy"of Northern Italy which caused the Roman Church no small alarm. Markoe tells us this was condemned by Pope John XXII in 1318.

Although himself an Anglican, Archbishop Ussher has this testimony for the Paulicians, "These worthy clergymen affirmed that there was no virtue capable of sanctifying the soul in the Eucharist or in baptism" (Orchard, The Story Of The Church, page 177). Mosheim, a Church historian, even though part of his conclusion is a repetition of the Catholic line, ties it up in a knot for us. He says (Chapter II, part 2,),"no point is more strongly maintained than this, that the term Albigenses, in its more confined sense, was used to denote those heretics who inclined toward the Manichean system and who were originally and otherwise known by the denomination of Catharists, Publicans, Paulicians and Bulgarians."

Perhaps the best answer to these wild and unfounded charges is to quote Justin Smith in Modern Church History , page 227, "our ancestry goes upward along a line of descent in which were men and women who had the conspicuous honor to be maligned by those whom history proves to have been adept in the two trades of murder and slander."

We don't know exactly what they believed, but we have enough evidence to know that among these persecuted people were brothers and sisters who trusted the same Lord as we do. They were a thorn in the side of the Roman Church and paid dearly for it, but they, with the rest

of the noble army of "heretics" have gone on ahead to claim the martyr's crown. One day we shall stand with them praising the One Infinite Saviour, God's remedy for sin.

The name "Albigensian" may have ceased to exist, but the same faith shown by these noble Christians is well and alive today. At present, we do not have to endure the fierce persecutions that they endured, but you can be certain that their foe is our foe, and, when conditions permit and expediency is present, persecution will again be the norm for the Christian.

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