1. There is very little extant material on the Albigenses and much of the material that is available was written by the Catholic Church ( See Encyclopaedia Britannica article on The Albigenses)
2. Scholarly work to date on the subject of the Albigenses or Cathars as they were also known is divided along partisan lines. Protestant scholars see them as the forerunners of the Protestant movement and martyrs while Catholic Scholars saw them as pagan heretics. (See Walther, Daniel. "A Survey of Recent Research on the Albigensian Cathari." Church History 34, no. 2 (1965): 146-77.)
3. Some scholars take a middle road asserting that while the Albigenses had some theological errors they used the Bible in their own language, assembled for worship according to known Christian tradition and lived pure, morally upright lives. (See Schmidt, Charles. “Historie et Doctrine de la Secte des Cathares ou Albiheois (1849)
4. Given all this Lineage has chosen to use the scholarly work of the Protestant tradition in shaping our narrative of the Albigenses (See Wylie, James Aitken “The History of Protestantism (1870); D;Aubigne, J.H. Merle “The History of The Reformation (1835); Fox, John “Fox’s Book of Martyrs (1536); White, Ellen Gould “The Great Controversy” (1888)
5. These scholars and historians believed that the Albigenses were forerunners of the Protestant movement and because they had free access to the Bible in their own language from a very early date they could have raised the Reformation had they not been exterminated as they were.
6. The Reformation was raised by men who had free access to the Bible. These men were not entirely free from doctrinal error either but because they had access to the Bible and were able to study the Bible for themselves, they were able to arrive at truth progressively and incrementally.
7. This is the same principle that has been applied to the Albigenses. They would have arrived at more truth, incrementally over time had they been allowed to continue to study the Bible in their own language.
8. One more interesting piece of information is that during the time of the Albigensian crusade the Catholic church prohibited the use of the Bible by laymen and Bibles were burned and confiscated. (See Concil. Tolosanum, Pope Gregory IX, Anno. Chr. 1229. Canons 14 and 2.)
9. At this time it was only the Waldenses and the Albigenses who had access to the Bible in their own languages and the Albigenses were the only ones against whom the crusades of this period were directed. This seems to suggest that, at least in part, one of the main reasons that they were persecuted was because they had access to the Bible. |
