The Albigensian Heresy

by Henry James Warner

(14) The Son of Man was not really incarnate in the Virgin Mary, and did not eat—in short, Docetism.

(15) The patriarchs were the servants of the Devil.

(16) The Devil was the author of the Old Testament, except Job, Psalms, Proverbs, Wisdom, Ecclesiasticus and the Major and Minor Prophets.

(17) The world will never end.

(18) The Judgement is past.

(19) Hell is in this world.

This detailed examination of the heresy is of great importance, not only on account of the peculiar advantages which Reinéri Saccho possessed as both heretic and inquisitor, but because it shews that even at this late stage, Catharist and Waldensian had not been welded into one under the blows of a persecution directed equally against both. At one in their hatred of the Roman Church and all its works, there is a marked difference in their deism. The Waldensian, according to Saccho's classification, knows nothing of Dualism, is sound on the doctrine of the Trinity, and believes both Old and New Testaments to be the Word of God. The Catharist, on the other hand, believes in a good and an evil God, the latter being the Creator of the world of matter, which therefore is itself evil. Hence, whatever perpetuates matter, e.g. marriage, is also evil; but the world being the work of a God must also, like its maker, be endless. That part of the Old Testament which describes its beginning and its development into kingdoms and hierarchies, together with all their chief representatives, be they patriarchs, princes or priests, has the evil God for its author. Only the poets and the prophets who took a more spiritual view of things earthly, are inspired by the good God.

§ 17. INQUISITIONS

By the middle of the thirteenth century the coercive measures which Rome took for the suppression of heresy had proved successful. No longer was there any need for Councils to examine and pass judgment upon it, nor defenders of the faith to write against it. It had become une chose jugée. Henceforth the Church dealt with individuals, and by means of ecclesiastical Courts, called the Inquisition, arrested, questioned and decided whether a person, charged with heresy, was guilty or not. Unfortunately for the cause of history the earlier records, or Acta, of these Inquisitions were, in their brief spells of resurgence, destroyed by the Catharists and Waldenses, as containing dangerous evidence against them. Only the later ones have survived. Limborch, who made the Inquisition his special study, published the "Book of the Sentences" which the Inquisition of Toulouse (A.D. 1300) pronounced against the Waldenses and Albigenses, and he came to the conclusion that while they had some dogmas in common, they had different opinions and were separate sects. According to him the Waldenses and Albigenses had only three opinions in common: (1) All oaths are unlawful; (2) any good man can receive a Confession, but only God can absolve from sin; (3) no obedience is due to the Roman Church. The following opinions he ascribes to the Albigenses, and not to the Waldenses: (1) There are two Gods, good and evil; (2) the Sacraments of the Church of Rome are vain and unprofitable—the Eucharist is merely bread—a man is saved by the imposition of their hands—sins are remitted without Confession and satisfaction—Baptism avails nothing; Baptism by water is of no benefit to children, since they are so far from consenting to it that they weep—the Order of St. James, or Extreme Unction, made by material oil, signifies nothing; they prefer imposition of hands—repudiate the constitution of the whole Roman Church, and deny to all the Prelates of it the power of binding and loosing, on the ground that they are greater sinners than those whom they claim to bind and loose; but they (the Albigenses) can give the Holy Spirit—matrimony is always sinful, except spiritual matrimony; (3) Christ did not take a real human body, but only the likeness of one—the Virgin Mary is not and was not a real woman; the Virgin Mary is true penitence whereby people are born into their Church; (4) there is a kind of spiritual body or inner man whereby persons rise from the dead; (5) the Cross is the sign of the Devil, and should not be adored, since no man adores the gallows on which his father was hanged; (6) souls are spirits banished from heaven on account of their sins; (7) they deny purgatory altogether.

Opinions ascribed to the Waldenses, but not to the Albigenses: (1) all judgement is forbidden of God, and therefore it is a sin for any judge to condemn a man to any punishment (St. Matt, vii.); (2) indulgences are worthless; (3) purgatory exists only in this life, and therefore prayers cannot profit the dead; (4) the Church has only three Orders—Bishops, Priests and Deacons; (5) laymen can preach; (6) matrimony is sinful only when people marry without hope of offspring.