Reply #65: I stand corrected. It was the SECOND Crusade. I used the phrase

[Peace Patriot]

"Goddess worshipers" to best explain to our contemporaries what the Albigensians believed and what kind of culture they created. They were descendants of the ancient Gnostic Christians who believed in a balance in the Heavens of Male and Female principles, God the Father and God the Mother. The worship of God the Mother had to go underground for five centuries, after the horrors of the Church Councils of Ephesus and Chalcedon, and the subsequent pogroms against Pagans (the Great Mother religion), and the original Christians (the Gnostics, who prayed to both God the Father and God the Mother, who had women priests, and who lived communally) and all Christian variety of thought (such as the Pelagians in Ireland--a far gentler, more nature-loving form of Christianity than the one imposed on them later by Rome). Jews were also persecuted.

All of these repressed religions had deep connections to the vast learning of the ancient Greeks and Phoenicians--in science, astronomy, mathematics, engineering, navigation/map-making, medicine, herbology, music, literature, art and all high skills--centered at Alexandria. The high culture of the Troubadours flourished among the Albigensians. These were highly skilled poets and singers who fostered love and high honor for women--"courtly love" (rather than women as being men's possessions and chattels). And behind it was the worship of the ancient Goddess--both Mother Nature and the Muses (the goddesses of the higher arts in men). Their poetry and song worshiped the feminine principle of nature, and combined this with rising above carnal desires and nurturing love for its own sake (very Buddhist, actually). The highest love was for women who are unattainable--to love her for her inherent qualities (beauty, kindliness, intelligence), not as someone to physically conquer. It was also in Southern France that worship of Mary Magdalen flourished. That's where the tradition came from that she was married to Jesus and had his child, and moved to Southern France for refuge after the crucifixion--the point being that Jesus did not spurn women.

The 5th century AD editings of the gospels--carried out by the bookburners of Ephesus and Chalcedon--confused the picture of the women around Jesus, and may have blatantly edited out Jesus' more balanced view of things. In the banned Gospel of Mary, for instance, Mary Magdalen was the acknowledged leader of the apostles, and was deferred to as the one who best understood his teachings. It is the OLDEST gospel, of which only a fragment remains. Also, I strongly suspect that "Thou art Peter and upon this rock I will build my church" was a 5th century interpolation. It is completely out of tune with everything else Jesus said. He had zero interest in "building" a church. He was clearly--relentlessly--anti-institutional, and anti-property.

To call the Albigensians "Christian heretics" is a wrong acceptance of the tyrannical terms of Rome. It is more accurate to call them the last vestige of the true Christians. Their characteristics were tolerance and communality, also egalitarianism--just like the Gnostics. They also strongly resembled the ancient Pythagoreans, in that they developed an elite class not of the rich, not of warriors, but of people devoted to high wisdom, learning, self-denial (transcendence of the material realm) and other spiritual concerns. This elite viewed all people as on a journey toward higher knowledge, and they were tolerant of indulgence of the senses (enjoyment of beauty, nature, food, sex) and of a variety of beliefs, as part of everyone's journey, THEMSELVES EXCEPTED. They were not self-indulgent--they followed strict regimens of self-discipline--but they were not repressive. They were tolerant and forgiving.

The piggish, powermongering, property-acquiring prelates in Rome were in truth far more dualistic than the Albigensians. The Roman prelates utterly separated spirituality from this life, and completely and totally misinterpreted Jesus's teaching as "hell on earth" and "heaven later," which gave them leave to be materialistic pigs who believed that they would be "forgiven" on their death beds for all their gluttony, fornication and warfare. Talk about dualism! And they hadn't a clue about "love thy neighbor." They repressed that message. Jesus said, if you would be perfect, "give all you have to the poor and come follow me." They repressed that, too--and lived the OPPOSITE of it.

The Albigensians, their forebears, the Gnostics, the Pelagians in Ireland, the Christian Druids in Wales, and similar anti-Rome groups took that original message SERIOUSLY. Give all you have to the poor and come follow me. Love thine enemy. The highest wisdom is to extinguish the individual ego, and not to be arrogant about what you know--to serve humanity on its great journey. The Roman church took the opposite course--180 degrees away from what Jesus said--and led Europe into a thousand years of darkness, in which small burning flames of the original inspiration sometimes appear--like the Albigensians--and were brutally extinguished.

I think you are altogether too accepting of the Roman version of events. The bookburners, the inquisitionists, the powermongers of Rome intended to stamp out human freedom! The Albigensians represented freedom of thought, which the Roman Church had been trying to destroy for five centuries, as they accumulated more and more property and power, using tyranny over the human soul as their chief tool. That warriors got into it--and power-interested nobles--was entirely at the instigation of the Pope. But the purpose was to reign over Europe by reigning over the human mind, and forcing people to believe that they had a soul that could only be "saved" by saying and the believing the right things, no matter how crazy or inconsistent they were, dictated by Rome. Their resemblance to today's Bushites is haunting!

The Albigensians were not "heretics." They were US--the believers in freedom and liberality and enlightened policy--trapped in the 13th century, as we are trapped in BushWorld. BushWorld, however, has a ludicrous quality, and a very small base of support, both in the US and the rest of the world, unlike the poor Albigensians, who tried to create an enlightened society in the depths of the Dark Ages, and were hopelessly outnumbered.