“The Albigenses certainly shouldn’t have been crusaded against. But they were not forerunners of todays fundamanalists or evangelicals.
In fact, they were gnostics and Manicheans, not Christians by any logical use of the term. They had a great many doctrines wildly at variance with the Bible and Protestantism.”
NOBODY should have been crusaded against, by any church that calls itself Christian! JesuNEVER commanded us to saughter people.
As for the Albigenses, heresy was only attributed to them in order to kill them, because their way of life was seen as a threat by the Vatican. They were not Manichean or Gnostic. They practiced a pure Christian life that was a judgement against the paganism of the dark and middle ages. It was the established church that was heretical. That’s why the Reformation.
Sorry I clipped the “s” off of the name of Jesus! Typo
Sorry, but you are wildly in error with regard to the Albigenses. Certainly lies were told about their practices and beliefs, but the facts are sufficient to show that they were not Christians. Perhaps the most obvious being their beliefs that the God of the OT was actually Satan and that the material world and everything in it is inherently evil. It seems fairly obvious that they were heavily influenced, perhaps indirectly thru Manichaenism, by eastern religions such as Buddhism.
Possibly you are confusing them with the Waldenses and other groups in the same general area at the time and later who were indeed forerunners of Protestantism. These groups were also persecuted violently by the Church.