AL'BIGEN'SES. A name applied to the heret ical Cathari in the south of France, about the beginning of the thirteenth century. The name arose from the circumstance that the district of Albigeois, about Albi, in Languedoc, was the first point in southern France where the Cathari ap peared. The so-called Albigensian Crusade was undertaken by Pope Innocent III. in 1209. The immediate occasion of it was the murder of the papal legate and impaisito•, Pierre de Castelnau, who had been commissioned to extirpate heresy in the dominions of Count Raymond VI. of Tou louse; but its real purpose was to deprive the Count of his lands, as lie had be ome an object of dislike 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 solicit ed Papal absolution by great sacrifices. The legates Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux, and Milo, who directed the expedition, took by storm Be'ziers, the capital of Raymond's nephew, Roger, and massacred 20,000 of the inhabitants, Catholics as well as heretics. Arnold's reputed saying: "Kill them all; God will know His own," is not authentic. Simon de :Montfort, 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 Bjziers died in prison, and Peter I. of Aragon fell in battle. The conquered lands were given
as a reward to Simon de Montfort, who never came into quiet possession of the gift. At the siege of Toulouse, 121S, he was killed by a stone, and Counts Raymond VI. and VII. dis puted the possession of their territories with his son. But the papal 'indulgences drew fresh crusaders from every province of Frame 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. After many thousands had per ished on both sides, a peace was concluded, in 1229, at which Raymond secured relief from the ban of the Church, surrendered large stuns of money, gave up Narbonne and several lordships to Louis IN., and had to make his son-in-law, the brother of Louis, heir to his other posses sion-3. The Albigenses were left without a pro tector. 'Flie heretics were handed over to the proselytizing zeal of the order of Donlinieans and the severe 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 dread of incurring the Church's displeas ure. From the of the thirteenth century the name of the Albigenses gradually disappears. The remnants of them took refuge in the east, some settling in Bosnia.