[1] Innocent III merely condemned to prison in a monastery the heretical abbot of Nevers; cf. letter of June 19, 1199, to a cardinal and a bishop of Paris. Ep. ii, 99.
[2] Cf. Canon 27 of the Lateran Council (1179), which we have quoted above, and which is inserted in the Decretals of Gregory x, cap. ix, _De hæreticis_, lib. v, tit. vii.
CHAPTER V THE CATHARAN OR ALBIGENSIAN HERESY--ITS ANTI-CATHOLIC AND ANTI-SOCIAL CHARACTER
WHILE Popes Alexander III, Lucius III, and Innocent III, were adopting such vigorous measures, the Catharan heresy by its rapid increase caused widespread alarm throughout Christendom. Let us endeavor to obtain some insight into its character, before we describe the Inquisition, which was destined to destroy it.
The dominant heresy of the period was the Albigensian or Catharan heresy;[1] it was related to Oriental Manicheism[2] through the Paulicians and the Bogomiles, who professed a dualistic theory on the origin of the world.
[1] The heretics called themselves "_Cathari_," or "_the Pure_." They wished thereby to denote especially their horror of all sexual relations, says the monk Egbert: _Sermones contra Catharos_, in Migne, P.L., cxcv, col. 13.
[2] On the origin of the Manichean heresy, cf. Duchesne, _Histoire ancienne de l'Eglise_, pp. 555, 556.
In the tenth century, the Empress Theodora, who detested the Paulicians, had one hundred thousand of them massacred; the Emperor Alexis Commenus (about 1118), persecuted the Bogomiles in like manner. Many, therefore, of both sects went to western Europe, where they finally settled, and began to spread.
As early as 1167, they held a council at St. Felix de Caraman, near Toulouse, under the presidency of one of their leaders, Pope or perhaps only Bishop Niketas (Niquinta) of Constantinople. Other bishops of the sect were present: Mark, who had charge of all the churches of Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Marches of Treviso; Robert de Sperone, who governed a church in the north, and Sicard Cellerier, Bishop of the Church of Albi. They appointed Bernard Raymond, Bishop of Toulouse, Guiraud Mercier, Bishop of Carcassonne, and Raymond of Casalis, Bishop of Val d'Aran, in the diocese of Comminges. Such an organization certainly indicates the extraordinary development of the heresy about the middle of the twelfth century.