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To: Romulus

“Names?”

Oh, say Innocent III, in 1209, who sicked the Crusaders (they were out of work) on the inhabitants of Southern France around Languedoc and Beziers, because they were Christians who didn’t submit to the Pope. He called them Albigenses and heretics.

Thing is, they had a much higher civilization than the rest of Medieval Europe. They were clean-living, productive and loyal to their Count (Raymond VI) of Toulouse. They were his best citizens. They were what we call today “fundamentalist”or “evangelical”. They believed in justification by faith and they didn’t believe in transubstantiation. In other words, The Word of God.

The Pope told the Count to either convert these people or get rid of them. Quite understandably, Raymond couldn’t bring himself to do either, so 50,000 to 500,000, depending on your source, Crusaders descended on the towns of Provence, slaughtering men, women and children for the promise of (1) Heaven without purgatory and (2) splitting with The Church the loot they took.

The most beautiful part of thirteenth Century Europe was a smoking ruin.

Want more?


37 posted on 04/22/2009 1:31:18 PM PDT by RoadTest (" -strait is the gate, and narrow is the way, which leadeth unto life, and few there be that find it)
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To: RoadTest

The Albigenses certainly shouldn’t have been crusaded against. But they were not forerunners of todays fundamanalists or evangelicals.

In fact, they were gnostics and Manicheans, not Christians by any logical use of the term. They had a great many doctrines wildly at variance with the Bible and Protestantism.


55 posted on 04/22/2009 4:22:22 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Everyone has a right to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.)
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