Could you explain their great heresies. This article is very confusing. Is it just because they didn’t submit to the church govt in Rome? If so, then- YAWN
Yes, it seems like the shortcoming of this chapter is that it focuses on the EVENTS of the Albigensians, not on their beliefs. In short, they were Gnostic.
Augustinian Monk:
In a succinct matter, the Cathars/Albigensians were a reemergence of the Dualist Manichaens, who were a heretical movement that St. Augustine dealt with in the 4th century [he for a time was afffiliated with them before hearing St. Ambrose preach in Milan]. There theological belief was “Gnostic” as was noted and it saw that there were 2 Gods, the Good God who was pure spirit and the Evil God [demiurge{sic}] who created matter, and thus all things of the created order were inherently evil which lead to main point #2, if matter was evil, Christ did not become incarnate and did not die on the Cross and the Catholic Church and the Pope were thus evil for believing that as for the Cathars again, Matter was evil.
The Pope, as Belloc correctly notes sent a Papal Legate [a Priest] to and there were attempts by the Domenicans to convert the Cathars but when the Papal Legate was murdered in his Church, this was then scene as the time when both the state with the Church’s blessing launched the crusade which turned into what amounts to a civil war from control of that part of France.
While man suffered the same weaknesses in the middle ages as men before them did, and men do know, the took the heretical notion that Christ did not become incarnate of the Virgin Mary and die on the Cross “quite seriously” and for those who were trying to argue otherwise was seen as a threat to the social and political order and attack on the state itself.
One must understand to not try to look at the clear separation of Church and state in the 21st century and retroactively apply it to the 12th and 13th. This would prove to happen in the 16th century when countries went Protestant, Catholics were viewed as being disloyal to the state and it wasn’t until the Treaty of Westphalia in 1648 that wars of religion and the religous rights of minority religions were protected, i.e. a Catholic in a majority Protestant country and vice versa.
As the article points out, the mass murders by the Catholic religion took place NOT for what the Albigensians believed, but by the fact that so many were rejecting the pope of Rome and there was serious fear that the Roman religion would come to be insignificant...