Ebook The Albigensian Heresy

Tolosa, tota dolosa, being, as he adds, seldom or never from its foundation free from heresy, fathers handing it on to their sons. The impact came at a time when the Church of Rome was putting forth all its power to extend its spiritual supremacy northward, and the Kingdom of France its territorial domains southward, and it suited their respective interests to unite their forces in a home-crusade against Southern France. Between the upper and nether millstones the body was crushed, but its soul goes marching on. Its enemies declared it to be rank paganism its adherents the purest form of Christianity (catharism). An impartial investigation will, we think, show that neither claim can be substantiated. Impartiality, how ever, is not easily preserved. Most of the documentary evidence which has come down to us is biassed. The Church considered it its sacred duty to destroy all hereti cal literature as pestiferous: the heretics, equally, the archives of the early inquisitions, whenever they fell into their hands in their few military successes, on the ground that they were dangerous to their members and distortive of their doctrines. No person, observes Francis Palgrave in his History of the anglo-saxons.