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My daughter gave me "The Perfect Heresy", by Stephen O'Shea, a beautifully written book on the slaughter of these heretical Christians by the Crusaders. How a corrupt Pope, afraid of their power, forced a war against this saintly group and those that protected them, that led to the genocide of 20,000 men, women and children and the burning of the city of Bezier.

And gave us that infamous quote by the Crusader's leader, "Kill them all, God will know his own".

Absolutely fascinating medieval history.

How a corrupt Pope, afraid of their power, forced a war against this saintly group and those that protected them, that led to the genocide of 20,000 men, women and children and the burning of the city of Bezier.

The Pope's of those days were highly political leaders. In Dante's Inferno, there are several Popes in hell. I am amazed that he got away with writing it when he did.

My daughter gave me "The Perfect Heresy", by Stephen O'Shea, a beautifully written book on the slaughter of these heretical Christians by the Crusaders. How a corrupt Pope, afraid of their power, forced a war against this saintly group and those that protected them, that led to the genocide of 20,000 men, women and children and the burning of the city of Bezier.
And gave us that infamous quote by the Crusader's leader, "Kill them all, God will know his own".

Absolutely fascinating medieval history.

"The Perfect Heresy" by Stephen O'Sheais not a scholarly book. For one thing the "famous quote 'Kill them all, God will know his own'" is apocraphal to begin with. No scholerly book I know claimes it as a genuin qoute. And their is no way 20,000 people died at Bezier. That is more then twice the population of the town (Sumption, Albigensian Crusade, pp. 88-89, 92-94; Setton Crusades, II, 288-289' Mann, Popes in the Middle Ages, XIII, 244.).

Anyway the Cathars were most certainly NOT good people, nor were they even Christian in the proper sense of the word. Technically the Cathars hated God, and by that I mean they hated the Created World.

In the duelistic philosophy of the Cathari all matter is by it's very nature evil, thus either God did not create the world or God is evil, and further Jesus could not be God because God cannot be a physical man, unless he be an evil God. Among other crazy things the Cathars believed was that suicide was good, and sex is evil (assuming the purpose is to creat new flesh, otherwise it's ok). So basically, homosexuality and beastiality were ok. But, if you trap a soul inside human flesh, i.e. create a baby you are doing evil. Oh...you also couldn't eat meat for some reason. This duelistic hatred of matter was the justification for denying the sacraments like baptism, and marriage.

And lest you think I'm just repeating anti-Cathari propaganda promulgated by the Inquisition there are some primary sources of Cathari Bishops in Italy accusing each other of not being strict enough on the afore mentioned beliefs. And besides, contrary to what some pro-cathari historians like to claim the Cathars can easily be traced to the Bogomils and before that the Paulicians and all the way back to the Manichaens who were absolutly NOT Christan.

For a more balinced history of the Cathari heracy read Sumption Albigensian Crusade(London, 1978).