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Hells33k3r In reply to iBottle [2021-05-22 09:39:34 +0000 UTC]

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dashinvaine In reply to heavens-champion [2010-02-28 23:54:41 +0000 UTC]

This is a later Raymond of Toulouse, not the First Crusade leader, but thanks.

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heavens-champion In reply to dashinvaine [2010-03-02 22:23:09 +0000 UTC]

Oh. Sorry for the misconception.

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dashinvaine In reply to DavidSimpson2112 [2008-11-15 22:24:39 +0000 UTC]

It's about right for the period. Innocent III was a propper bastard.

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Touch-Not-This-Cat In reply to Touch-Not-This-Cat [2007-06-17 04:52:22 +0000 UTC]

Well, after studying the history of the Manicheans, I have to consider the extraordinary pressures the stubborn Cather presence was having on the Church, and there was as much demand that something be done about it from the common folk, as there were those who were reluctant to fight.

I was reading an awesome volume, The New Encyclopedia of Christian Martyrs, and in its introduction to the Reformation period, it rather thoroughly chronicles how the early Catholic Church dealt with heretics, versus how they were handled in later periods, in order to get to the bottom of such aggression about Christian against Christian. Early heretics were censored, banished, peacefully imprisoned, but always peacefully, the Church never allowed violence against them, unless their doctrines inclined them to be the aggressors first. Even then, the Church tended to regard dealing with them a matter of secular security, rather then ecclesiastical.

The first great exception to this began with the increasingly violent reactions of the Manicheans, who were inclined, like their Cather Heirs, to extremes of nihilistic asceticism, to raving violence against the physical world. (I regard the Cathers as a kind of institutionalized schizophrenia, a philosophy of extremes.)
Time and again, the church would demonstrate that there is only One Good Loving yet Terrifying God, who made both matter and sprit, and made them both good, and it is only through our free will that evil came into the world. The corruption in the Church at that time, or any other, is no excuse to dismiss a very hard and difficult decision that Rome had been putting off for centuries (regarding Manicheans as a whole).
[Saint Francis showed that the Church then, as later, can always be cleaned, if you are just willing to get in the muck and clean it. (That's my whole problem with the Reformation in a nutshell: People would rather leave THE ROCK when it gets dirty, and go build a new house on clean sand. Rome always wins when the storms come.)]

The way the Church treated Heretics began to change, as a matter of policy, not in the west but in the east, in Byzantium. But that, at first, was mainly aggressive secular politics masquerading as spiritual concerns; the first enemies of the church in which its doctrines fundamentally inclined them to be the aggressors first, was, of coarse, Islam.
I think the effects of aggression and counter aggressions that the rise of Islam had on the Church as a whole really set the stage for the final reaction against the Cathers. Furthermore, the Saracens, who were looking for an opertunity to take the rest of Europe, controlled Spain at the time. Had the Cathers succeeded in taking France, the Muslims would have likely taken advantage of the chaos. And they would have treated the Albaginsians far worse, seeing as they were polytheists, and Muslims hated them much more then Christians in those days.

As for the Dominicans, just look at how they ruined St. Francis Xavier's chance to convert China due to the Rites Controversy! If China had become Catholic, the murders of HUNDREDS OF MILLIANS of little girls could have been avoided! As much as I love Saint Dominic, I really tend to feel that the Dominican Order has been obsolete since the rise of the Jesuits. Would slavery have started in the New World if the Jesuits had controlled all spiritual matters in the colonies? I can't help but wonder.

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Ennio444 In reply to Touch-Not-This-Cat [2012-04-19 19:17:39 +0000 UTC]

No one really knows what the Cathar true beliefs and ideology was. Our only sources are Catholic accounts of inquisitors, and they are very, very different. Some say Cathars were just mendicant "perfect" Christians (although wrong), and others say that they commited ritual suicide in order to escape from the devilish world. Most historians distrust this "ritual suicide", although probably some extremist cell of cathars did reach that during the Crusade.

There's a lot in your conclusions that don't match with the current historical debate. It seems you drink only from Catholic sources, but that's no way to have a solid vision.

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dashinvaine In reply to Touch-Not-This-Cat [2007-06-10 09:59:33 +0000 UTC]

Raymond was a Catholic but not Roman Catholic, perhaps. As Catholic as one might remain after seeing the things done to one's homeland in the name of that faith by the papal forces of the Albigensian Crusade; after seeing one's father falsely accused of murdering a papal legate and being denied the chance to clear his name; after having one's ancestral lands pillaged and titles usurped... I don't think Raymond ever subscribed to the Cathar ideology, but like his father he was reluctant to follow the Pope's command to hunt them down and kill them. Heretics as the Cathars were, they led holy and simple lives of apostolic poverty and provided real spiritual leadership to the people, while the high Roman clergy were corrupt, indolent and conspicuously wealthy. Meanwhile the pope Innocent III was busily trying to become monarch over all monarchs, and was as mired in politics as anyone. This is why the southern nobility resisted.

Ok so Count Raymond like the occitan noble and former rebel/patriot Oliver of Thermes was going to join the Seventh Crusade as a show of obedience to the Roman Catholic faith and Capetian dynasty, but Louis IX would hardly have let him stay behind! Anyway by then the wider struggle against papal absolutism has been taken up by Frederick II of Germany.

By then (the late 1240s) all was lost for the Count of Toulouse, Raymond's English alliance had collapsed, and Monstsegur had fallen, Raymond being in no position to relieve it. Raymond had ultimately been forced to give his daughter's hand to a scion of the Capetians, Alphonse of Poitiers, and the distinguished St-Gilles dynasty, with no male heir, was effectively over. Moreover Raymond was unable to prevent the establishment of the Inquisition in Toulouse, both these things being concessions he had to make to bring the Albigensian wars to a close.

By the way I'm not against Catholicism (far from it), but the simple fact is that in this period the pope set in motion the ghastly Albigensian Crusade and was responsible for the reign of terror and persecution that ensued. Many loyal catholics were as appalled by the Church's doings as anyone else was, and many thousands of innocent Catholics were unjustly butchered by the pope's armies and tortured by his Dominican inquisitors.

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dashinvaine In reply to Mehrunnisa [2006-05-27 19:30:13 +0000 UTC]

Thanks

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dashinvaine In reply to Destichado [2006-03-28 10:48:28 +0000 UTC]

I'll bear that in mind next time

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dashinvaine In reply to lutin-vert [2006-03-28 10:47:50 +0000 UTC]

Thanks, no, I'm from Angleterre.

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lutin-vert In reply to dashinvaine [2006-03-30 07:14:59 +0000 UTC]

ok, i said that because the icon that your knight have on his shield, it's my region's icon

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dashinvaine In reply to lutin-vert [2006-03-30 17:07:07 +0000 UTC]

That is the badge of the medieval St Gilles Counts of Toulouse, (the cross of Toulouse) which has become an emblem of the region. It still features on the civic heraldry of Toulouse.

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dashinvaine In reply to Pandoras-Harbringer [2006-03-28 18:46:08 +0000 UTC]

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