Unconditional, but unavailing submission of Ray- Albigenses in Italy Peace between France and England Council of Bourges refuses Raymond's submission, and grants his states to Louis, who raises a large army to take possession. 1231. The Albigensian sects, suppressed in their own Proceedings of Pope Gregory IX against them The Inquisition extended with great vigilance through INTRODUCTION. ORIGIN AND EARLY HISTORY OF THE ALBIGENSIAN SECTS. It was after a long period of undisturbed repose, that the Roman Catholic Church began to awake, between the years 1000 and 1050, to the discovery of a new race of heretics who had appeared within her borders. At first they were few, easily exterminated, and occasioned little or no disquietude in the great and overwhelming mass of their persecutors. But before the close of the century, their number was manifestly growing troublesome, and during the next century, alarming. As early at least as A. D. 1150, they had spread, under different names, through most of the southern countries of Europe; and the suddenness with which they sprung up, their simultaneous appearance in distant parts, gave them the imposing air of mystery and magnified their power and resources in the public estimation. It seemed as if there lay throughout the continent some prolific cause concealed among the laboring classes, giving constant birth to heresy in every quarter, and multiplying new sects with a profusion that baffled all attempts at their extermination. Suppressed in one place, they arose in another; and the very scenes of their destruction frequently witnessed their speedy reappearance. These were the sects soon afterwards known by a common appellation, that of Albigenses. Though classed together by later writers under this one name, they nevertheless differed much in their respective doctrines and manners. Little religious intercourse or sympathy existed between them, many of them were united by no bond of fellowship, and some, it is said, mutually denounced each other. But all were alike noted for their opposition to the established church and to the vices of the monks and clergy; nor were they less equally distinguished for their enthusiasm, their constancy in sufferings, and the zeal with which they laboured to propagate their sentiments among the Catholics. Their origin, though involved in some obscurity, may be traced with sufficient clearness to a cooperation of causes, of which the following were the principal: 1. The abuses of the church had reached that extreme point where reaction begins. The general licentiousness of the clergy had destroyed the respect which their sacred office naturally commanded; their insatiable cupidity and boundless arrogance had roused popular indignation. The people were thus prepared to doubt the spiritual infallibility of their leaders, and to question their instructions. Indeed, there were some, especially among the vallies onth e Italian side of the Alps, who had already gone so far as to discard the authority and many of the corruptions of Rome; and nothing but a fortunate impulse was wanting to call forth a universal spirit of religious inquiry .2. At this crisis, a sect of Gnostic christians, who had originally borne the name of Paulicians, began to immigrate in successive swarms from the East, and soon |