Although members of other religions obviously suffered at the hands of good Christians throughout the Middle Ages, it should not be forgotten that other Christians suffered just as much. Augustine's exhortion to compel entry into the church was used with great zeal when church leaders dealt with Christians who dared to follow a different sort of religious path.
This was not always the case ? during the first millennium, death was a rare penalty.
But in the 1200s, shortly after the beginning of the crusades against the Muslims, wholly European crusades against Christian dissidents were enacted.
The first victims were the Albigenses, sometimes called the Cathari, who were centered primarily in southern France. These poor freethinkers doubted the biblical story of Creation, thought that Jesus was an angel instead of God, rejected transubstantiation, and demanded strict celibacy. History has taught that celibate religious groups generally tend to die out sooner or later, but contemporary church leaders weren't anxious to wait. The Cathari also took the dangerous step of translating the bible into the common language of the people, which only served to further enrage religious leaders.
In 1208, Pope Innocent III raised an army of over 20,000 knights and peasants eager to kill and pillage their way through France. When the city of Beziers fell to the besieging armies of Christendom, soldiers asked papal legate Arnald Amalric how to tell the faithful apart from the infidels.
He uttered his famous words: "Kill them all. God will know His own." Such depths of contempt and hatred are truly frightening, but they are only possible in the context of a religious doctrine of eternal punishment for unbelievers and eternal reward for believers.
Followers of Peter Waldo of Lyon, called Waldensians, also suffered the wrath of official Christendom. They promoted the role of lay street preachers despite official policy that only ordained ministers be allowed to preach. They rejecting things like oaths, war, relics, veneration of saints, indulgences, purgatory, and a great deal more which was promoted by religious leaders.
The church needed to control the sort of information which the people heard, lest they be corrupted by the temptation to think for themselves. They were declared heretics at the Council of Verona in 1184 and then hounded and killed over the course of the following 500 years. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII called for an armed crusade against populations of Waldensians in France. Some of them still apparently survive in the Alps and Piedmont.
Dozens of other heretical groups suffered the same fate ? condemnation, excommunication, repression and eventually death. Christians did not shy away from killing their own religious brethern when even minor theological differences arose. For them, perhaps no differences were truly minor ? all doctrines were a part of the True Path to heaven, and deviation on any point challenged the authority of the church and the community. It was a rare person who dared to stand up and make independent decisions about religious belief, made all the more rare by the fact that they were massacred as fast as possible.
« Crusades | Muslim Perspective on the Crusades »
This was not always the case ? during the first millennium, death was a rare penalty.
But in the 1200s, shortly after the beginning of the crusades against the Muslims, wholly European crusades against Christian dissidents were enacted.
The first victims were the Albigenses, sometimes called the Cathari, who were centered primarily in southern France. These poor freethinkers doubted the biblical story of Creation, thought that Jesus was an angel instead of God, rejected transubstantiation, and demanded strict celibacy. History has taught that celibate religious groups generally tend to die out sooner or later, but contemporary church leaders weren't anxious to wait. The Cathari also took the dangerous step of translating the bible into the common language of the people, which only served to further enrage religious leaders.
In 1208, Pope Innocent III raised an army of over 20,000 knights and peasants eager to kill and pillage their way through France. When the city of Beziers fell to the besieging armies of Christendom, soldiers asked papal legate Arnald Amalric how to tell the faithful apart from the infidels.
He uttered his famous words: "Kill them all. God will know His own." Such depths of contempt and hatred are truly frightening, but they are only possible in the context of a religious doctrine of eternal punishment for unbelievers and eternal reward for believers.
Followers of Peter Waldo of Lyon, called Waldensians, also suffered the wrath of official Christendom. They promoted the role of lay street preachers despite official policy that only ordained ministers be allowed to preach. They rejecting things like oaths, war, relics, veneration of saints, indulgences, purgatory, and a great deal more which was promoted by religious leaders.
The church needed to control the sort of information which the people heard, lest they be corrupted by the temptation to think for themselves. They were declared heretics at the Council of Verona in 1184 and then hounded and killed over the course of the following 500 years. In 1487, Pope Innocent VIII called for an armed crusade against populations of Waldensians in France. Some of them still apparently survive in the Alps and Piedmont.
Dozens of other heretical groups suffered the same fate ? condemnation, excommunication, repression and eventually death. Christians did not shy away from killing their own religious brethern when even minor theological differences arose. For them, perhaps no differences were truly minor ? all doctrines were a part of the True Path to heaven, and deviation on any point challenged the authority of the church and the community. It was a rare person who dared to stand up and make independent decisions about religious belief, made all the more rare by the fact that they were massacred as fast as possible.
« Crusades | Muslim Perspective on the Crusades »
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