known in Baghdad and Cairo than he was in the west
and that his logic had been employed for centuries by
thinkers who were not Christian, but Muslim or Jewish.
A group of scholars, established themselves in the
Spanish frontier city of Toledo and began to translate
the works of Aristotle, Galen, Ptolemy, and other
Greeks from Arabic into Latin. They then produced
Latin editions of Arabic writers. Many of these works
were on science or medicine. The medical treatises
revolutionized the thinking of western physicians,
but works on logic and speculative philosophy were
received with greater caution.
A new world of philosophical sophistication was
revealed, and it was not a reassuring place. Al-Kindi
(d. circa 870) and Ibn-Sina (Avicenna, 980–1037)
were more or less orthodox Muslims. Abu Bakr al-
Razi (c. 865–c. 923) was an enemy of all religion,
and Maimonides (1135–1204) was a pious Jew. Ibn-
Rushd (Averroës, 1126–98) was perhaps the most in-
fluential. The greatest of the commentators on
Aristotle, he believed as firmly as Anselm or Abelard
that the logic of the Philosopher could be used to
uphold revelation, but in his case, the revelation was
that of the Koran. For the first time since antiquity,
the church was faced with an intellectual challenge
of threatening proportions.
Before a counterattack could be fully mounted, an
even more serious challenge to orthodoxy appeared.
Formal heresies attracting thousands of adherents sur-
faced, not in the newly converted regions of the north
and west, but in the earliest established centers of
Western Christendom: northern Italy and the south of
France. To some extent these movements were a reac-
tion against what was perceived as the greed and arro-
gance of a triumphant clergy. The newly exalted claims
of the papacy, the cost of church buildings, and the
more rigorous collection of the tithe led to demands for
a return to apostolic poverty. This was the primary con-
cern of the Waldensians, named after their apparent
founder Waldes of Lyon, later known as Peter Waldo
(fl. 1170–79). Their condemnation by the orthodox
eventually led them to reject papal authority. Like the
Protestants of the sixteenth century, the Waldensians
regarded Scripture as the sole source of religious truth
and translated the Bible into the vernacular. They also
rejected several of the church’s sacraments.
A far larger movement, the Cathars (sometimes
known as Albigensians after the southern French town
of Albi that served as one of their centers), went further.
They embraced a dualistic system reminiscent of
Zoroastrianism or the ancient Manichees. The physical
world and the God of the Old Testament who had cre-
ated it were evil. Spirit, as exemplified in Christ, whose
own physical body was an illusion, was good. They had
no clergy. Parfaitsor perfects of both sexes administered
the rite of consolamentumthat guaranteed passage into
Heaven. After consolation, one became a parfait.It was
then forbidden to own property, to have sex, or to eat
anything that was the product of a sexual union: meat,
fish, eggs, or cheese. The meager necessities that re-
mained were provided by begging. Some new converts
deliberately starved themselves to death, but for the or-
dinary believer, Albigensianism held few terrors. Those
who died without receiving the consolamentumwould
merely be reincarnated into a new life on Earth. The
church, its hierarchy, its sacraments, and its monetary
levies were categorically rejected. By the year 1200 the
Cathar faith had attracted tens of thousands of adher-
ents in southern France. It enjoyed the support of pow-
erful political figures and even of priests, who retained
their ecclesiastical rank while openly assisting the
heretics. Once again, the church was on the defensive.Repression and Renewal (1215–92)
The official response to these challenges was crafted
largely by Innocent III, who was not the man to shrink
from repressive measures. The church’s first reaction to
the heretics had been gentle. Preachers, including
Bernard of Clairvaux, were sent to reconvert the Albi-
gensians, but their eloquence had little effect. In 1209
Innocent, infuriated by the murder of a papal legate,
proclaimed a crusade. Under the leadership of Simon
de Montfort, an army composed largely of knights
from northern France embarked on a campaign of mas-
sacre and atrocity. The worst slaughter of the Albigen-
sian Crusade happened near the Pyrenees Mountains
in the town of Béziers. The people of Béziers refused
to surrender some two hundred Cathars living there,
so the crusaders stormed the town and killed twenty
thousand of its inhabitants indiscriminately, following
the exhortation of the abbot of Cîteau: “Kill them all;
God will know his own.” Like their compatriots who
went to the Holy Land, the crusaders were inspired by
the hope of acquiring new lands as well as salvation.
By 1212 most of Languedoc was in their hands, but
the Cathars and the southern lords who supported
them took refuge in remote castles and waged guerrilla
warfare until 1226. A decisive campaign then was
launched by Louis VIII of France. He saw the crusade170Chapter 9