Let me state up front especially for the benefit of others reading this thread, that I agree with many of not most of the facts you cite here, but not your interpretation of them, which is bizarre and seems a somewhat a political issue for you...? But perhaps we are both viewing history through a different prism, I try to keep mine open but I'm not ruling out filters I'm unaware of.
Except the mass amount of the depopulation was done by the secular authorities, who wanted to re-establish their authority. The Albigensians weren't all sweetness and light either, but a rather ruthless cult that killed many people who didn't go along with their religious views.
You could argue that every branch of every major church Christian or Muslim in this period was a ruthless cult that killed many people who didn't go along with their religious views.
It is always tempting to view the heretics as heroes standing up against the power of the institution, but just remember that a lot of these guys would be the type to fly planes into buildings in this day and age.
That seems like an astounding statement. So I suppose the Church did the world a favor ridding us of several hundred thousand potential Terrorists in the South of France eh?
Perhaps you should cite some references that the Albigensians were the equivalent of 911 Terrorists. The Catholics who lived in the region seemed to get along with them just fine, in fact there would never have been a real Crusade at all let alone a fifty year war, if the local (Catholic) Lords such as Raymond of Toulouse hadn't refused to go along with the purge demanded by the Church. As it was the local Catholics put up a fierce resistance against the Crusade ultimately requiring the (initially reluctant) intervention of the King of France to bring about a costly victory two decades later, followed by another thirty years of violence and destruction. Ultimatey massacring over a million people, destroying dozens of towns and depopulating the entire region set it back hundreds of years and turned it from a burgeoning intellectually active Renaissance zone into a stagnant backwater. That is an historical fact.
Having been to Langedoc and Provence many times the people there are still understanably bitter about it eight centuries later.
There is that very famous incident at the seige of Béziers for example. The Crusaders demanded the Catholics of Béziers expell the "heretics" so they could be punished. They refused. Before the final assault, the Papal Legate was asked by the military commander of the Crusaders how to distinguish the 20,000 or so Catholics from the estimated 500 "heretics". The Legate advised him to
Caedite eos! Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius ("Kill them all son, god will know his own.") Which they proceeded to do, killing every man, woman and child in the beautiful, thriving city and burned it to the ground. Which didn't do much for the local economy.
After the revolution, the inquisition kicked in and was particularly ruthless and brutal in this area.
Albigensian Crusade - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
From the Wiki:
The Languedoc now was firmly under the control of the King of France. The Inquisition was established in Toulouse in November 1229, and the process of ridding the area of Cathar heresy and investing their remaining strongholds began. Under Pope Gregory IX the Inquisition was given great power to suppress the heresy. A campaign started in 1233, burning vehement and relapsed Cathars wherever they were found, even exhuming some bodies for burning. Many still resisted, taking refuge in fortresses at Fenouillèdes and Montségur, or inciting small uprisings. In 1235, the Inquisition was forced out of Albi, Narbonne, and Toulouse. Raymond-Roger de Trencavel led a military campaign in 1240. He was defeated at Carcassonne in October, then besieged at Montréal. He soon surrendered and was exiled in Aragon. In 1242, Raymond of Toulouse attempted to revolt in conjunction with an English invasion, but the English were quickly repulsed and his support evaporated. He was subsequently pardoned by the king.
The Cathar strongholds fell one by one. Montségur withstood a nine-month siege before being taken in March 1244. The final holdout, a small, isolated, overlooked fort at Quéribus, quickly fell in August 1255. The last known Cathar burning occurred in 1321.
Umm... no. Torture came about from both secular and religious revival of Roman and Byzantine Law,
yes, but from where was this lovely innovation redesicovered and (literally) sanctified? This was the progressive "science" of advanced rationalization in the Church, discovered by their research into Roman law, and sold by them to the secular authorities as a 'reform'. Records from this period show that torture remained rare in secular cases, unless the personal enmity of a powerful Lord or City was involved, in which case it could and would be used as a tool (and in which case it was wise to run to the Church and be tried under their authority instead). But there is no doubt where this revival of this Roman tradition came from: The Roman church.
Yeah, because the Cathars were known for their rigorous pursuit of knowledge, rather than burning books and rampant anti-intellectualism. The Cathars were definately of the "from your gut is all you need" brand of spirituality.
The Cathars practiced an effectively laissez faires way of life, preferring to "get religion" in their advanced years, due to their bizarre notion that all of flesh was incurably sinful, so there was no way to purify it, one could only become pure by complete acetism which was usually practiced around age 60. Until then you could sing, dance and make merry, which they did.
I'm not arguing that religiously they were better or worse than any other form of Christianity, Islam or Judaism, but there is no denying that the region was undergoing an economic, cultural and technological boom leading up to the Albigensian Crusade, which is undoubtedly why they had so many local allies particularly among the nobility, who liked the idea of getting rich from all these prospering towns rather than presiding over a smoking wasteland prowled by fanatical inquisitors. Until the Albigensian Crusade Southern France was the intellectual center of France in terms of poetry, music etc., one of the major centers of Europe. Afterword, like I said, a smoking ruin.
Actually, the Jews were expelled. The inquisition went against conversos or Muslim and Jewish converts to Christianity who were suspected of not being faithful. The crown appreciated this, because Isabella could seize property and money from those found guilty, and replace the people in administrative positions in the conquered territory of Granada with their own...
Cousins and brothers in law, yes I know.
You say that as if it was reasonable
Yes the Jews were "expelled", but many converted nominally and practiced their own religion in secret. Quite a few also converted legitimately but these so called 'New Christians' could still always be accused by anyone wanting a share of their possessions (which was granted as a reward by the Church in case of confiscation). All you had to do was say some guy didn't eat pork and you could have him tortured to death and get a bunch of his stuff.
You can spin this however you want, but it was a State sponsored Pogrom. The Inquisition even used hit-men from a kind of 'murder incorporated' to go after wealthy targets.
Garduna - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Spanish suffered as a result of this, since for some reason by the 16th Century Jews represented the flower of Spanish society in science, culture, and running the Spanish bureaucracy. By killing them off, taking their stuff, and replacing them with unqualified brothers in law, Spain hamstrung itself and this as much as the flood of wealth from the New World lead to their technological, cultural, and economic decline in the 17th and 18th Centuries.
One should also note that the methods of the Spanish inquisition were not unusual at the time, or indeed in a Roman court centuries earlier.
But they were unusual compared to the European Tribal traditions they replaced, even under Christian rule.
but the Franciscans get off easy because they have better PR among lefties.
I never said the Franciscans were any better. Are you accusing me of being a lefty? Lol!
As for the church courts being so cruel and vicious, if that was true you wouldn't have everybody that was able to trying to be tried by church courts whenever possible. The simple fact is that church courts were extremely lenient by secular standards when confronted by sincerly repentant offenders, and often simply forgave the offender.
That is Spin. The truth is the Church demanded obedience above all else and liked to act as a foil to secular authority, sometimes they were more lenient for certain crimes, but you are making a blanket statement that isn't backed up by the facts.
No, women had a lot more independence and roles in both the church and society before the reformation.
I never said they didn't, I pointed out that the Witch Burnings were primarily a Protestant phenomenon.
No, bathing was perfectly acceptable (if expensive) in the high middle ages and most towns had a bathhouse. I think it is quite understandable that the monks didn't like the prostitution that went on in places like this though.
It's true that (co-ed) public Baths were common throughout Europe until the high Middle Ages, your statement is very misleading though, since the Church led the way to repressing them and increasingly railed even against bathing in private. I've posted this link before:
Bathing: A history
The Church used the excuses you cited, and many others, and by the 14th Century had succeeded in largely suppressing this common custom in Europe and implanting the very alien concept of a general fear and disgust for the naked human body in the minds of Europeans. Not very good for science.
Perhaps coincidentally that is also when the Black Plague hit.
No, the church didn't have a horror of technology at all, I have absolutely no idea where you are getting that from. They hated certain killing machines like crossbows, but not technological advances in general.
You are misquoting me, I didn't say they had a horror of technology, I said they had a horror of technology
outside of their control. There is a signficant difference there mate
The crossbow is actually not a bad example. It was very disliked by the Church because increasingly powerful Crossbows potentially put common soldiers (or brigands) on an equal footing with Aristocratic knights. It was only the first of many military technologies invented in the Medieval period to do so. This kind of technology had a dangerous social effect (from the point of view of the Church) in that it was used by the increasingly powerful Cities to achieve effective independence from both Church and Aristocratic authority, leading to such events as the eviction of the Archbishop of Cologne by the City of Cologne at the battle of Worringen in 1288, and their subsequent independence.
http://www.catholic.org/encyclopedia/view.php?id=3146
No, control of information first became a particular obsession with the dawn of the Reformation, which is somewhat understandable given how many people were killed by that religious uprising. The church blamed the reformation largely on poorly thought out theology and dangerous ideas, which explains both indexes of forbidden books and the new Jesuit Order's emphasis on education.
Again, you seem to have a political or religious axe to grind here. I'm not advocating Protestants over Catholics or anything of the sort. History is history, it's not political, it just is.
The reality is the role of the Church in Medieval society was pervasive, only the first born son in a noble family could inherit the reigns of political military power and the family property, due to the (also Roman) doctrine of primogeniture. As a result most of the ambitious second, third, fourth born sons of Europe were in the Church. There were very progressive intellectually curious scientific minded people, and many people who could care less about Science either way, but the institution as a whole sought to repress innovation unless it had been determined that it could have beneficial effects which would benefit the Church (as in the case of the Cistercians with their Overwash water wheel and Windmills, which were extremely valuable for Europe as a whole.)
I guess the bottom line though is history is complex enough that you can interpret it in different ways. There is certainly enough wiggle room that you could have good sources for a wide range of different types of social contexts for your DnD game.
G.
