The Cathars: The Perfect Heresy That Shook Medieval Christianity
In the summer of 1209, a papal legate named Arnaud Amaury stood before the walls of Béziers, in the south of what is now France, commanding the largest crusading army ever assembled on European soil — an army directed not against Muslims in the Holy Land but against fellow Christians in the heartland of Christendom. The city of Béziers contained both Cathars (the heretics the army had come to eliminate) and orthodox Catholics. When a commander asked Arnaud how the soldiers should distinguish one from the other, Arnaud is reported to have replied: "Kill them all. God will know his own." Whether the words are accurately reported or not, what followed is not in dispute. Béziers was sacked. Somewhere between seven thousand and twenty thousand people were killed — in the streets, in the churches where they had sought sanctuary, in the cathedral of Saint Nazaire. The city was burned. It took a single afternoon. The Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229) was one of the first crusades d...