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At Alban in Tarn there are retreats of like nature under the houses, refuges at one time of the persecuted Albigenses, at another of the inhabitants secreting themselves and their goods from the Routiers. At Molieres in Lot they are beneath the church, and the approximate date can be fixed when these were excavated, as Molieres was founded in 1260.
When we read of the horrible cruelties practised on the Waldenses and Albigenses, the followers of Huss in Bohemia, the true Protestants of all ages down to the time of Luther, the detestable system of the Inquisition, the treatment of the inhabitants of the Netherlands by Alva and the Spaniards, when whole hecatombs of victims were put to death at the instigation of the pope and his cardinals, the destruction of thousands and tens of thousands of Huguenots in France, the martyrdoms of the noble Protestants of Spain, the massacre of Saint Bartholomew, and the fires of Smithfield all these diabolical acts performed with the concurrence and approval of the papal power can we for a moment hesitate to believe that that power owes its origin, not to the Divine Head of the Church, but to that spirit of evil, Satan, the deadly foe of the human race?
And so every attempt at national and local thought was not only suppressed in education, but fell under the ban of discipline. In Languedoc the Albigenses ventured the assertion of their independence; Huss in Bohemia, in England Wyclif. What happened? The Albigenses were massacred, Huss was burnt, Wyclif was condemned, and his followers suffered under the new law of heresy.
Sect. 4. 3d. It was according to this rule that the Waldenses and Albigenses taught that the exorcisms, breathings, crossings, salt, spittle, unction, chrism, &c. used by the church of Rome in baptism, being neither necessary nor requisite in the administration of the same, did occasion error and superstition, rather than edification to salvation, 4th.
Before entering, however, upon the ballad, it may not, perhaps, be thought irrelevant to give a brief sketch of the family of the De Montforts. Simon de Montfort, created Earl of Leicester by Henry III., was the younger son of Simon de Montfort, the renowned but cruel commander of the croisade against the Albigenses.
A school was now growing up which rejected the whole. The Albigenses, the Lollards, the Lutherans, the Calvinists, had a positive religious system, and were strongly attached to it. The creed of the new sectaries was altogether negative. They took one of their premises from the Protestants, and one from the Catholics.
This prince undertook the leadership of the heretical Albigenses, and with them, and other rabble by which France at that time was overrun, scoured the country, robbing and plundering wherever they went. This lawless band, under the direction of this godless prince, robbed churches of their treasures, murdered priests, even tore open the tabernacles and desecrated the most holy Sacrament.
Their doctrines spread into west Europe, and by the end of the twelfth century had developed in France into the sect of the Albigenses which was suppressed by the Roman Church with terrible ferocity. It is of interest that the rayed sun and the moon are still found in the armorial bearings of South of France families. In Bosnia Bogumilism almost superseded all other faiths.
This papal act met with some opposition from the bishops, upon whose prerogatives it encroached; and it provoked rebellion among those against whom it was directed, the Albigenses of Southern France, whose doctrines were spreading into Italy.
They were descendants of the Camisards, a sect of Protestants who took refuge in the mountains of the Cevennes during the persecution which followed the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, and were descended originally from the Albigenses.
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