A group commonly called Cathari, meaning "pure ones." Since they were especially influential in and about the town of Albi in southern France some people called them Albigenses. Although most of what we know about the Albigenses comes from their enemies, it is likely that they filtered into Europe from Bulgaria. Like the gnostics in the early church, the Cathari held that the universe is the scene of an eternal conflict between two powers, the one good, the other evil. Matter, including the human body, is the work of this evil power, the god of the Old Testament. He had imprisoned the human soul in its earthly body. To escape from the power of the flesh the true Cathar was supposed to avoid marriage, sexual intercourse, eating of meat, and material possessions. Here was a radical poverty, but not one based on the example of Jesus so much as on

(See "Albigenses")

[tags]Albigenses, BlogRodent, Cathari, church-history, ChurchRodent, history[/tags]

Dominic Guzman (1170-1221). When papal missionaries sent among the Cathari were notoriously ineffective, this Spaniard realized why, because the missionaries were relying on their ecclesiastical pomp and dignity, and where getting nowhere. The Albigenses considered his show a sure sign of false religion. Dominic believed that the heretics would listen if the preachers themselves were committed to poverty. To win them, Dominic went forth among them as a poor man, barefoot and begging. His mission lasted only two years before being pushed aside by Pope Innocent III's "get tough" policy, but the zealous Spaniard was convinced that poverty and preaching belonged together. In 1220 the Dominican mission and lifestyle gained official approval.

[tags]Albigenses, BlogRodent, Cathari, church-history, ChurchRodent, history, Innocent-III, Saint-Dominic[/tags]

In dealing with heretics the church had two objectives: first, the conversion of the heretic and, second, the protection of Christian society. Heresy eventually drove the Roman Catholic church to her most serious internal conflict: How can the church employ violence to safeguard a peaceful society? The church deliberately accepted a line of action impossible to reconcile with the eternal kingdom toward which she aspired. She created the Inquisition, not only to execute heretics, but to subject them to deliberate, prolonged torture.

The earliest form of the Inquisition appeared in 1184 when Pope Lucius III required bishops to "inquire" into the beliefs of their subjects. In short, they held an "inquiry" or inquest. Heresy or harboring a heretic brought immediate excommunication. The spread of the Waldenses and Albigenses, however, called for stricter measures. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council, under Innocent III's leadership, provided for the state's punishment of