Albigensian Crusade
The battle lines of the Two Hundred Years’ War between faith and reason were never very clearly drawn. Even the term scholasticism is but a lazy name for the dozens of conflicting philosophical and theological theories taught in the medieval schools. And as the war raged in the books and lecture halls of the educated, some of the curiosity and skepticism trickled down to the laymen when people began translating and reading the Bible more critically. Sects, such as that of Peter Waldo arose around 1170. They began as devoted followers, memorizing large sections of the Bible by heart, but their movement gradually took on an anti-sacerdotal tinge, rejecting all priesthood and granting the power to forgive sins to every believer. The sect was condemned in 1184; many more arose. Probably to check the increase of such sects, a Council of Toulouse in 1229 decreed that no lay folk should possess scriptural books except the Psalter and the Hours (which were chiefly psalms); nor should they read these except in Latin, for no vernacular translation had yet been examined and guaranteed by the Church. It didn’t stop them. The most powerful of these heretical sects—and one of the most critical of the Church—was variously named Cathari, Bulgari, and/or Albigenses (all the same). They were a mixture of (1) the desire to return to primitive Christian beliefs, (2) the echo of Arius’ rejection of the trinity, and (3) the Oriental influence brought back by the Crusades. The Roman Church, the Cathari were sure, was the Whore of Babylon, the clergy were a Synagogue of Satan, the pope was Antichrist. They forbade parentage, counseled suicide, idolized poverty. The Church set out to destroy them, and employed so many Dominicans in this work that they were nicknamed Domini-canes—the (hunting) “dogs of the Lord.” What followed were some of the darkest blots on the record of mankind, revealing a ferocity unknown in any beast. At some point, when a papal legate was asked should Catholics be spared, he answered, “Kill them all, for God knows His own”.
Source: Durant, Will. The Story of Civilization, Vol. 4: The Age of Faith, A History of Medieval Civilization, Christian, Islamic, and Judaic, From Constantine to Dante, A.D. 325-1300. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1950.
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Full disclosure, I may occasionally borrow a sentence from Will Durant's Story of Civilization. I absolutely love that collection!