I've been writing a book about a medieval Dominican nun caught in the tumult of the Albigensian Crusade and often find myself talking about her plight to friends at church. I was taken aback the other day when someone responded, "I'm sick and tired of hearing about the crusades. Their armies were mercenaries and you can't blame the church for the things they did." I let out a deep sigh. As much as I love the church, I do blame it for the abuses of its past and for propagating a theology that supported them.
It may be easy to understand why the church was threatened by the Gnostics and their belief in reincarnation, but it's harder to explain away the abominations they have committed trying to combat heresy. Church leaders have always argued about what constitutes legitimate Christian belief, but they didn't start persecuting heretics until the 4th c.
The Albigensian Crusade was by far the bloodiest of these persecutions. It was waged in the 13th century against a group of Gnostic Christians in southern France. The church referred to them as "Albigensians" because it believed them to be centered in the town of Albi; we know them today as the Cathars. The Cathars were a dualist sect, believing in a Good God who ruled the spiritual realm and a Bad God who created the world of matter. They believed in reincarnation, suggesting that the soul is reborn many times until it claims the spiritual perfection of Jesus for itself and finds liberation. Those "perfects" who had achieved this freedom lived an ascetic life. They were vegan, abstaining not only from fornication but from any food that was the product of fornication. They were herbalists and practiced healing through the laying on of hands. They ran schools for the daughters of impoverished nobles.
The Cathars were widely admired in the Occitan region, but they ran afoul of the Catholic Church. They rejected the Church's sacraments and were outspoken in their opposition to the collection of tithes and selling of indulgences. They referred to the Catholic Church as the "Whore of Babylon." Many Cathars were weavers and artisans, and as towns and cities began to grow in southern France, they became increasingly wealthy and powerful. It's not surprising that when Innocent III became pope in 1161 he made addressing "the problem of the Albigensians" a top priority.
The Pope's initial strategy was to defeat the Cathars through persuasion. The first Dominican monastery at Prouilhe was founded to provide refuge to women "rescued" from Cathar schools and the Order of Preachers was founded to convert the Cathars. However, the Church's effort met with little success and in 1208, Pope Innocent III called for a crusade. Over the next two decades, the Church waged war against the Cathars. The property of Cathar sympathizers was confiscated. Whole cities were burned. People were tortured and mutilated. Cathar perfects were burned at the stake in mass executions. When Cathars began to resurface after the end of the crusade, Pope Gregory IX established the Inquisition to obliterate all who remained.
The Albigensian Crusade and subsequent Inquisition has been called the world's first "ideological genocide." It is estimated that as many as half a million Cathars lost their lives and all of their teachings were destroyed in a futile hope of eradicating the Gnostic heresy for once and for all.
It leads me to think about Samuel John Stone's hymn, The Church's One Foundation. When he lamented a Church "by schisms rent asunder, by heresies oppressed," he was responding to a bitter split within the Church of South Africa over a bishop whose teaching that non-Christian Africans were not damned to eternal punishment. When he wrote of "toil and tribulation, and tumult of her war," he could just as well have been writing about the Albigensian Crusade, the Reformation, or the struggles many modern church members face in attempting to reconcile their own Gnostic leanings with Christian orthodoxy.
Linda Carleton graduated from Yale Divinity School, was ordained
in the United Church of Christ, and formerly worked as a national
activist in refugee resettlement. She now lives in Portland, Maine,
where she teaches, writes, and offers workshops on mandala journaling
and spiritual growth. Linda strives to integrate her own Christian faith
with the world's diverse spiritual teachings and to help the world heal
from its history of religious abuse. Linda is the author of the soon to
be released "Elmina's Fire" and writes a biweekly blog at http://www.lindacarleton.com