Albigenses is a name applied loosely to the 'heretics,' belonging to various sects, who abounded in the south of France about the beginning of the 13th century. They are heard of nearly two centuries earlier, and were usually regarded at that time as successors of the Manichaeans. There were various sects, the chief being that of the Cathari (q.v.), but the name was often used loosely as including other sects adverse to the discipline of the Romish Church, such as the Waldenses. They insisted on an apostolical Christianity, and lived a simple, moral, and retired life. The simple severity of their manners earned them the popular nickname of 'the good people;' after their condemnation by Pope Calixtus II., at the council held at Toulouse in 1119, they were usually styled the 'Toulouse heretics.' The Toulouse judgment was confirmed by Innocent II. in 1139. At a council held at Lombes, near Albi, in 1176, they spoke out more openly in defence and explanation of their doctrines; but in spite of this, they were accused later of dualism, of denying the dogmas of the Trinity and the death and resurrection of Jesus, and of refusing the eucharist and marriage. It should be remembered that the only accounts of them that we possess, have come to us through the medium of embittered and unscrupulous antagonists. The name arose from the circumstance that the district of Albigeois in Languedoc—now in the department of Tarn, of which Albi is the capital—was the first point against which the crusade of Pope Innocent III. (1209) was directed. The immediate pretence of the crusade was the murder of the papal legate and inquisitor, Peter of Castelnau, who had been commissioned to extirpate heresy in the dominions of Count Raymond VI. of Toulouse; but its real object was to deprive the count of his lands, as he had become an object of hatred from his toleration of the heretics. It was in vain that he had submitted to the most humiliating penance and flagellation from the hands of the legate Milo, and had purchased the papal absolution by great sacrifices. The legates, Arnold, abbot of Cîteaux, and Milo, who directed the expedition, took by storm Beziers, the capital of Raymond's nephew, Roger, and massacred 20,000—some say 40,000—of the inhabitants, Catholics as well as heretics. 'Kill them all,' cried Arnold; 'God will know his own!' Simon, Count of Montfort (q.v.), who conducted the war under the legates, proceeded in the same relentless way with other places in the territories of Raymond and his allies. Of these, Roger of Beziers died in prison, and Peter I. of Aragon fell in battle. The conquered lands were given as a reward to Simon of Montfort, who never came into quiet possession of the gift. At the siege of Toulouse (1218), he was killed by a stone, and Counts Raymond VI. and VII. disputed the possession of their territories with his son. But the papal indulgences drew fresh crusaders from every province of France to continue the war. Raymond VII. continued to struggle bravely against the legates and Louis VIII. of France, to whom Montfort had ceded his pretensions, and was killed during the war in 1226. After thousands had perished on both sides, and the finest parts of Provence and Upper Languedoc had been devastated, a peace was concluded in 1229, at which Raymond purchased relief from the ban of the church by immense sums of money, gave up Narbonne and several lordships to Louis IX., and had to make his son-in-law, the brother of Louis, heir of his other possessions. These provinces, hitherto independent, were thus, for the first time, joined to the kingdom of France; and the pope sanctioned the acquisition, in order to bind Louis more firmly to the papal chair, and induce him more readily to admit the Inquisition. The heretics were handed over to the proselytising zeal of the order of Dominicans and the bloody tribunals of the Inquisition; and both used their utmost power to bring the recusant Albigenses to the stake, and also, by inflicting severe punishment on the penitent converts, to inspire a wholesome dread of re-incurring the displeasure of the church. From the middle of the 13th century, the name Albigenses gradually disappears. The remnants of them took refuge in the east, and settled in Bosnia, but there also they soon became extinct.
Compare Faber, Inquiry into the History and Theology of the Vallenses and Albigenses (Lond. 1838); Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter (1845); Schmidt, Histoire et Doctrine de la Secte des Cathares ou Albigeois (1849); and Peyrat, Histoire des Albigeois (2 vols. Par. 1882).