book 9, chapter 8.

"By mere chance, the sects scattered in South France received the common name of Albigenses, from one of the districts where the agents of the church who came to combat them found them mostly to abound,--the district around the town of Alba, or Alby; and by this common name they were well known from the commencement of the thirteenth century. Under this general denomination parties of different tenets were comprehended together, but the Catharists seem to have constituted a predominant element among the people thus designated."

_A. Neander, General History of the Christian Religion and Church, 5th per., division 2, section 4, part 3._

"Of the sectaries who shared the errors of Gnosticism and Manichæism and opposed the Catholic Church and her hierarchy, the Albigenses were the most thorough and radical. Their errors were, indeed, partly Gnostic and partly Manichæan, but the latter was the more prominent and fully developed. They received their name from a district of Languedoc, inhabited by the Albigeois and surrounding the town of Albi. They are called Cathari and Patarini in the acts of the Council of Tours (A. D. 1163), and in those of the third Lateran, Publiciani (i. e., Pauliciani). Like the Cathari, they also held that the evil spirit created all visible things."

_Johannes Baptist Alzog, Manual of Universal Church History, period 2, epoch 2, part 1, chapter 3, section 236. https://archive.org/details/manualofuniversa02alzo_

"The imputations of irreligion, heresy, and shameless debauchery, which have been cast with so much bitterness on the Albigenses by their persecutors, and which have been so zealously denied by their apologists, are probably not ill founded, if the word Albigenses be employed as synonymous with the words Provençaux or Languedocians; for they were apparently a race among whom the hallowed charities of domestic life, and the reverence due to divine ordinances and the homage due to divine truth, were often impaired, and not seldom extinguished, by ribald jests, by infidel scoffings, and by heart-hardening impurities. Like other voluptuaries, the Provençaux (as their remaining literature attests) were accustomed to find matter for merriment in vices which would have moved wise men to tears. But if by the word Albigenses be meant the Vaudois, or those followers (or associates) of Peter Waldo who revived the doctrines against which the Church of Rome directed her censures, then the accusation of dissoluteness of manners may be safely rejected as altogether calumnious, and the charge of heresy may be considered, if not as entirely unfounded, yet as a cruel and injurious exaggeration."

_Sir J. Stephen, Lectures on the History of France, lecture 7._

ALSO IN _L. Mariotti, Frà Dolcino and his Times._

See, also, Paulicians, and Catharists.

ALBIGENSES: A. D. 1209. The First Crusade.

"Pope Innocent III., in organizing the persecution of the Catharins [or Catharists], the Patarins, and the Pauvres de Lyons, exercised a spirit, and displayed a genius similar to those which had already elevated him to almost universal dominion; which had enabled him to dictate at once to Italy and to Germany; to control the kings of France, of Spain, and of England; to overthrow the Greek Empire, and to substitute in its stead a Latin dynasty at Constantinople. In the zeal of the Cistercian Order, and of their Abbot, Arnaud Amalric; in the fiery and unwearied preaching of the first Inquisitor, the Spanish Missionary, Dominic; in the remorseless activity of Foulquet, Bishop of Toulouse; and above all, in the strong and unpitying arm of Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, Innocent found ready instruments for his purpose. Thus aided; he excommunicated Raymond of Toulouse [A. D. 1207], as Chief of the Heretics, and he promised remission of sins, and all the privileges which had hitherto been exclusively conferred on adventurers in Palestine, to the champions who should enroll themselves as Crusaders in the far more easy enterprise of a Holy War against the Albigenses. In the first invasion of his territories [A. D. 1209], Raymond VI. gave way before the terrors excited by the 300,000 fanatics who precipitated themselves on Languedoc; and loudly declaring his personal freedom from heresy, he surrendered his chief castles, underwent a humiliating penance, and took the cross against his own subjects. The brave resistance of his nephew Raymond Roger, Viscount of Bezières, deserved but did not obtain success. When the crusaders surrounded his capital, which was occupied by a mixed population of the two Religions, a question was raised how, in the approaching sack, the Catholics should be distinguished from the Heretics. 'Kill them all,' was the ferocious reply of Amalric; 'the Lord will easily know His own.' In compliance with this advice, not one human being within the walls was permitted to survive; {33} and the tale of slaughter has been variously estimated, by those who have perhaps exaggerated the numbers, at 60,000, but even in the extenuating despatch, which the Abbot himself addressed to the Pope, at not fewer than 15,000. Raymond Roger was not included in this fearful massacre, and he repulsed two attacks upon Carcassonne, before a treacherous breach of faith placed him at the disposal of de Montfort, by whom he was poisoned after a short imprisonment. The removal of that young and gallant Prince was indeed most important to the ulterior project of his captor, who aimed at permanent establishment in the South. The family of de Montfort had ranked among the nobles of France for more than two centuries; and it is traced by some writers through an illegitimate channel even to the throne: but the possessions of Simon himself were scanty; necessity had compelled him to sell the County of Evreux to Philippe Auguste; and the English Earldom of Leicester which he inherited maternally, and the Lordship of a Castle about ten leagues distant from Paris, formed the whole of his revenues."

_E. Smedley, History of France, chapter _4.

ALSO IN _J. C. L. de Sismondi, History of the Crusades against the Albigenses, chapter 1._

_H. H. Milman, History of Latin Christianity,