Albigenses. A general sect consisting of several heresies that arose in the twelfth century, the principal goals of which were to persuade Christians to abandon the sacraments, to dispense with the church hierarchy, and to disturb ecclesiastical discipline. Their name stems from one Oliver, a disciple of Peter of Valdo, head of the Vaudois or the Poor of Lyon, who spread the first of their doctrinal errors in Albi, a city in upper Languedoc on the Tarn River that became the center of the regions they infected with their opinions.

This heresy resuscitated the Manichaeism, Arianism, and other earlier sectarian dogmas originating in Bulgaria to which it added several errors particular to different branches of the sect. The Cathars were the stem, while the Paulicians of Armenia sowed the seed in Germany, Italy, and Provence from whence they say Peter de Bruys and Henry carried it into Languedoc. Arnaud de Bresse further fomented it, causing its adherents to be called various names, such as Henriciens , Petrobusiens , Arnaudistes, Cathares, Piffres, Patarins, Tisserands, Bons-hommes, Publicains, Passagiens and taken all together, Albigenses .

These adherents were in essence Manichaeans. Two contemporary authors writing against them were Alanus, a monk of the Abbey of Citeaux and Peter, a monk of Vaux-Cernay. They accused the sect of the following errors: 1) claiming two principles or two creators, one good, the other evil; the first, the creator of things invisible and spiritual, the other, the creator of the body and author of the Old Testament, which they rejected while allowing the New Testament minus the sacraments. 2) claiming two Christs; one evil who had appeared on earth with a spiritual body like that claimed by the Marcionites and who had neither lived nor been resurrected except as an apparition, the other good, but who had never ever been seen in this world. 3) denying the resurrection of the flesh and as well as the belief that our souls are either demons or other souls lodged in our bodies as a punishment for crimes of a past life. As a consequence, then, they negated purgatory, the necessity of prayers for the dead, and regarded as a fairy tale the Catholic belief in hell. 4) condemning the sacraments of the church, rejecting the need for baptism, viewing the Eucharist with horror, eschewing confession and penance, while allowing the sacrament of marriage. To all of these one could add their hatred of the ministers of the gospel and the scorn with which they regarded images and relics. They were generally divided into two orders, the perfected and the believers . The perfected led a life of austerity and continence, holding lies and oaths as abhorrent. The believers lived like the rest of the world though often deranged, imagining themselves saved by faith or by the simple laying on of hands by the perfected .

This heresy quickly gained wide credence in the southern part of France, prompting it to be condemned by a council convened at Lombez in 1176, followed by a similar action by a general council in Latran in 1179. However, in spite of the zeal of Saint Dominic and other - 1:246 – inquisitors, these festering heresies scorned the thunderbolts of the church. The temporal power joined with that of the church to bring them down. In 1210 a crusade was launched against them with the result that after 18 years of bloody combat, the Albigenses, having been abandoned by the Counts of Toulouse and weakened by the victories of Simon de Montfort and having been harried by the church courts and delivered into secular hands, they were totally destroyed with the exception of a few who joined up with the Vaudois in the valleys of the Piedmont in France and Savoy. With the advent of the Reformation these heretics arranged to join forces with the Zwinglians and to unite finally with the Calvinists during the reign of Francois I. The execution of Cabrieres and Merindol which you can read about in our history books marked an end to the remaining elements of this sect now known in name only. For the rest, although the Albigenses are now united with the Vaudois, they have never been Manichaeans, as M. Bossuet has shown in his History of Variations, Book 11 Petrus Vall. Cern. Sanderus, Baronus, Spondan de Marca, Bossuet, hist. of Variat. Dupin, Eccles. Biblioth eccles. siecl. XII. & XIII.  ( G )