Word: catharis
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...under Jan Bockelson proclaimed its intention "to kill all monks and priests and all rulers that there are in the world; for our king alone is the rightful ruler." They, too, had to be forcibly suppressed. Cultists, of course, are sometimes the victims of persecution. The heretical Albigensians, or Cathari, were broken by church crusade and massacre in the 13th century...
...heretics and critical of the church. Several plays have been written about them, and literary reviews have published long articles. Hundreds of weekenders are climbing the 4,000-ft. rock atop which stands Montségur, the holy citadel of Catharism, where 300 soldiers and 200 unarmed, pacifist Cathari stood off an army of 10,000 for ten months before being burned at one huge stake for their "pure Christian" beliefs...
Thanks to recent research, an increasing amount is known about Catharism. It began to spread through southern France and northern Italy in the 11th century; as early as 1022 in Orléans, 13 Cathari (ten of them canons of the church) were condemned to the stake. The heresy was aided by the corruption of the clergy of the time-against whose wenching and venality the puritanism of the "Pure'' was an attractive contrast. The inner circle of Cathari were the "perfect," who had received the "consolation"-a rite performed by another "perfect" in the laying...
...Cathari built no churches; they worshiped in private houses without the sacraments (being material, they were evil) or the cross (because Christ had no real body and died no real death). They read the Scriptures-especially the Gospel of John-listened to a sermon, said the Lord's Prayer (in native Languedoc dialect rather than Latin) and shared a common meal. The clergy wore black robes-until Pope Innocent's crusade began...
...July 1209, an army of crusaders marched down from northern France into Languedoc and besieged the city of éeziers. When the city fathers refused to hand over 222 Cathari heretics, the crusaders broke in and massacred every man, woman and child-priests included-of Béziers' 20,000 inhabitants. Before the massacre one of the crusaders is said to have asked his leader, Abbe Arnaud Amalric, head of the Cistercian monastic order, how to distinguish between the heretics and the faithful. "Kill them all," was the abbot's alleged reply. "God will recognize his own!" From...