Henry M. Baird · 74 of 379
CHAPTER I · The Cathari and Albigenses.
Foremost among the popular opponents of the papacy were the Cathari and Albigenses. The accounts of the origin of the sect or sects bearing these names are vague and unsatisfactory, and the reports of their creed and worship are inconsistent or incredible. The ruin that overwhelmed them spared no friendly narrative of their history, and scarcely one authoritative exposition of the belief for the profession of which their adherents encountered death with heroic fortitude. Defeat not only compelled the remnants of the Albigenses to succumb to Simon de Montfort and his fellow crusaders, but reduced them to the indignity of having the record of their faith and self-devotion transmitted to posterity only in the hostile chronicles of Roman ecclesiastics. But even partisan animosity has not robbed the world of the edifying spectacle of a large number of men and women, of a quiet and peaceable disposition, persistently and fearlessly protesting, through a long series of years, against the worship of and images, resisting the innovations of a corrupt church, and adhering with constancy to a simple ritual unencumbered with superstitious observances. Careful investigation establishes the fact that the Holy Scriptures were read and accepted as the supreme authority as well in doctrine as in practice, and that the precepts there inculcated were adorned by lives so pure and exemplary as to evoke an involuntary expression of admiration from bitter opponents.
There is little doubt that strange doctrinal errors found a foothold in parts, at least, of the extensive territory in southern France occupied by the Albigenses. Oriental Dualism or Manichæism not improbably disfigured the creed of portions of the sect; while the belief of others scarcely differed from that of the less numerous Waldenses of Provence or their brethren in the valleys of Piedmont. But, whatever may be the truth on this much contested point, the remarkable spread of the Albigenses during the latter part of the twelfth century must be regarded as strongly marking the revolt of the French mind, especially in the more impetuous south, against the priestly absolutism that crushed all freedom of religious thought, and equally against a church tolerating the most flagrant abuses. Nor can the historian who desires to trace the more remote consequences of important moral movements fail to notice the singular fact that the soil watered by Albigensian blood at the beginning of the thirteenth century was precisely that in which the seed sown by the reformers, three hundred years later, sprang up most rapidly and bore the most abundant harvest. After so long a period of suspended activity, the spirit of opposition once more asserted its vital energy—soon, it is true, to meet fresh difficulties, but only such difficulties as would tend to develop and strengthen it.
