The Albigensian Heresy

rts were quickly combined with the home products. Their vigorous growth and wide popularity we

OT MA

ation over Augustine, and although he afterwards combated it, yet even as Bishop, according to Julian of Eclanum-no mean critic-"he was not entirely free from its infection." The aggressiveness of Manicheism, albeit characteristically insidious and secretive, had, at the {10} appearance of Catharism, become a spent force. The contrary opinion is based on inference, not historical data. The Dualism of the Manichees was not

T PRIS

ection between Aragon and Toulouse. In their Dualism and Asceticism, in their study and canon[4] of the Scriptures the two movements had points of resemblance, but this is the utmost that can be said in favour of the theory. The Catharists neither claimed to have had t

OT DO

Gallic Bishops, or assessors with the Bishop of Rome in the trial, Caecilian v. Donatus, ordered by the Emperor in A.D. 313, and the Council held at Arles in the following year, France had no interest in the Donatist controversy. The opposite was the case, for the Gallic Bishops were directed to intervene, and the Council was held in Gaul, because Gaul was immune from it, and

RTLY P

and its King, Boris, who wished to be on friendly terms with both the Frankish Kingdom and the Byzantine Empire, was baptized, and took the name of Michael after his godfather Michael III, the Byzantine Emperor. A special feature to be remembered in this work of conversion is that these two monks translated the New Testament from the Greek into the Bulgar language, and drew up a liturgy. They relied not only upon the spoken word, but also upon the written word "in a tongue understanded of the people"-a method of evangelization common to the Paulicians, Albigenses and Waldenses. Not only so, but the version current amongst the Western heretics can be shewn to be based upon the Greek and not upon the Vulgate. The Doxology of the Lord's Prayer is found in the New Testament of the Slavs and

the Latin, upon the whole Church, and refused permission to any but the clergy to read the Scriptures. The Oriental Church was scarcely more compliant. Sergius, of Tavia in Asia Minor, one of the ablest of the apostles of Paulicianism, was won over to the sect by a per

sked, viz. one Archbishop and ten Bishops. We may be certain that these Greek prelates would do nothing to mitigate the antipathy which the Slavo-Greeks would feel towards Rome, and this antipathy deepened into a settled hatred when Rome, later, denied them the right to have the Scriptures in any language but Latin. These troublous times the Paulicians of Armenia, ever zealous propagandists, seized upon for spreading their doct

en the doctrines and practices of the Paulicians and Bogomiles and those of the Albigenses. These prevailed everywhere throughout the Byzantine Empire, and Crusaders and pilgrims could not fail to come across them. What more probable, then, than that Crusaders straggling and struggling homeward from defeat and disaster in Palestine, to which they had gone at the summons and with the blessing of Holy Church, should lend a sympathetic ear to those whose doctrines were commended by personal asceticism and communal philanthropy? The blessing had turned to a curse. They returned with the loss not only of health and wealth, but of reverence

he Consolamentum[10] which they had received from such "Bishops" might also be invalid, received the rite again from this "Bishop" of the strict Paulicians. He instituted to the Sees of Toulouse, Carcassonne and the Valley of the Aran three "Bishops" whom these Dioceses had respectively elected. Lastly, he was consulted as to the delimitation of the Dioceses of Toulouse and Carcassonne, and his arbitration was accepted by all parties. His decision was avowedly based upon Eastern and primitive precedent, viz. of the Seven Churches of Asia-not by following the existing municipal and political boundaries of the State, but by considering so

erived from καθαρ??, "pure," it points to Eastern associations. First met with in the second hal

, discovered Gnostic elements in his antiphonary. The Declaration of Belief which a century later (A.D. 991) Gerbert published on his appointment to the Archbishopric of Rheims was obviously called forth by the prevalence of Docetic and Dualistic teaching in his Province: "I believe that Christ was the Son of God, that He took a hum

ly escaped with his life. As "Armenian" became synonymous with heretic, we may assume that Arm

TLY IND

nd quality to account for the Albigensian heresies as we find them in full vigour and variety. Their germs might have been found almost {18} anywhere in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages, but the stimulus to growth came not from without, but from within. It was a spontaneous outburst of a profound discontent with a Church which by its Ultramontanism opposed all national independence, and by its unspirituality forfeited all respect for its creed. Just as the Church turned back to Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy to illuminate the mystical element-the relationship between the outward and the inward-in its own entity and in its Sacraments-a philosophy which had long lain dormant in her midst-so the Catharists turned back to Dualistic Gnosticism to illuminate the origin of good and evil, and its bearing upon ecclesiastical organization. But whereas the stud

mones in

but highly esteemed the Apocryphal "Ascension

tori cum ecclesia? ('

infra, p.

. Hist." Vol. V pp

ilus). So Gieseler, who says that the complete sentence in Slavonic for "Lord, have

cant connection

v. infr

zar, the ancient Chersonese of the Taurus. But there is nothing to show there were Dualists there. Neander, while d

nge s.v.), I would add the suggestion that it is a popular abbr