The villagers called them " Gazzari " ( Cathars ), and joined the soldiers in opposition.

In sharp contrast to the traditional Catholic church, the Cathars had a single sacrament, the Consolamentum, or Consolation.

Decisions of Catholic Church councils — in particular, those of the Council of Tours ( 1163 ) and of the Third Council of the Lateran ( 1179 )— had scarcely more effect upon the Cathars.

The Catholic inhabitants of the city were granted the freedom to leave unharmed, but many refused and opted to stay and fight alongside the Cathars.

The Albigensians, more commonly known as the Cathars, were a heretical gnostic sect, holding that matter was evil and only spirit was good ; this was a fundamental challenge to the notion of incarnation, central to Roman Catholic theology.

The Cathars rejected the authority and the teachings of the Catholic Church, and what they viewed in it as corrupt.

The manuals of the Roman Catholic Inquisition remained highly sceptical of the witch craze and of witch accusations, although there was sometimes an overlap between accusations of heresy and of witchcraft, particularly when, in the 13th century, the newly-formed Inquisition was commissioned to deal with the Manichaean Cathars of Southern France, whose teachings had an admixture of witchcraft and magic, and who had embarked upon campaigns of murder against their fellow citizens in France, not excluding prelates and ambassadors and whose ally, the Cathar King Pedro II of Aragon, later invaded Southern France with an army of 50, 000.

The Cathars or Albingenses rejected the authority and the teachings of the Catholic Church.

The Cathars did not recognize the authority of the French king or, evidently, the Catholic Church, and so initially a delegation of friars was sent out to assess the situation in the province of Languedoc.

In 1096, Pope Urban II blessed the foundation stones of the new cathedral, a Catholic bastion against the Cathars.

In 1208, the Pope and the French king joined forces to combat the Cathars, who had developed their own version of Christianity ( a heresy considered dangerous by the dominant Catholic Church ).

Similarly, heretical sects like Cathars, Waldensians and Lollards were brutally suppressed in western Europe, while, at the same time, Catholic Christians lived side-by-side with ' schismatic ' Orthodox Christians after the East-West Schism in the borderland of eastern Europe.

The Cathars and similar groups ( the Waldenses, Apostle brothers, Beghards and Beguines, Lollards, and Hussites ) were branded as heretics by the Roman Catholic Church and suppressed.

Cathars who were considered " first time offenders " by the Catholic Church and the Inquisition were also forced to wear yellow badges, albeit in the form of crosses, about their person.

There, Dominic and Diego encountered the Cathars, a Christian religious sect with gnostic and dualistic beliefs, which the Roman Catholic Church deemed heretical.

This passionate relationship persisted for two years, but his fellow Cathars disapproved as she was a Catholic.

Moreover, the Church decreed lesser chastisements against laymen suspected of sympathy with Cathars, at the 1235 Council of Narbonne.

However, the Cathars were the first mass heretical organization in the second millennium that posed a serious threat to the authority of the Church.

In contrast with the Cathars and in line with the Church, they believed in only one God, but they did not recognize priesthood nor the veneration ( not synonymous with worship ) of saints and martyrs, which were part of the Church's orthodoxy.

Deriving from earlier varieties of gnosticism, Cathar theology found its most surprising success in the Languedoc and the Cathars were known as Albigensians, either because of an association with the city of Albi, or because the 1176 Church Council which declared the Cathar doctrine heretical was held near Albi.

Eventually, Queen Blanche offered Raymond a treaty: recognizing him as ruler of Toulouse in exchange for his fighting Cathars, returning all Church property, turning over his castles and destroying the defenses of Toulouse.

As soon as he heard of the murder, the Pope ordered the legates to preach a crusade against the Cathars and wrote a letter to Phillip Augustus, King of France, appealing for his intervention — or an intervention led by his son, Louis.

There followed twenty years of war against the Cathars and their allies in the Languedoc: the Albigensian Crusade.

After 1330, the records of the Inquisition contain very few proceedings against Cathars.

The publication of the book Crusade against the Grail by the young German Otto Rahn in the 1930s rekindled interest in the connection between the Cathars and the Holy Grail.

These areas have ruins from the wars against the Cathars which are still visible today.

A new take on Catharism in Languedoc — argues against any kind of doctrinal unity of mid-13th-century Cathars.

A possible explanation of this shift is that, after the successful extirpation of the Cathars, the Inquisition needed new heresies to fight against and new revenues to sustain itself.

His efforts against the Cathars of Montaillou in the Ariège were carefully recorded in the Fournier Register, which he took to Rome and deposited in the Vatican Library.

The pope called for crusades against militant heretics like the Cathars as well as Muslims.

When Pope Innocent III called for a crusade against the Albigensians or Cathars, in 1208, Philip did nothing to support it, but neither did he stop his nobles from joining.

The war against the Cathars did not end until 1244, when finally their last strongholds were captured.

Accusations of witchcraft were often combined with other charges of heresy against such groups as the Cathars and Waldensians.

* The Albigensian Crusade is launched against the Cathars.

* The Papal bull Ad Aboldendam is issued against several European heretical groups: the Cathars, the Waldensians, the Patarines and the Humiliati.

As a boy, de Montfort accompanied his parents during his father's campaigns against the Cathars.

In June, Raymond of Toulouse, recognizing the disaster at hand, finally promised to act against the Cathars, and his excommunication was lifted.

After the upheaval of the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars, the bishop Bernard de Castanet, in the late 13th century, completed work on the Palais de la Berbie, a Bishops ' Palace with the look of a fortress.

Most of them were dubious, as they were the same charges that were leveled against the Cathars and many of King Philip's enemies ; he had earlier kidnapped Pope Boniface VIII and charged him with near identical offenses of heresy, spitting and urinating on the cross, and sodomy.

Odo was also an important figure in the Crusade against the Cathars.

Hence a legate is usually sent to a government, a sovereign or to a large body of believers ( such as a national church ) or to take charge of a major religious effort, such as an ecumenical council, a crusade to the Holy Land, or even against a heresy such as the Cathars.

When in his forties, he worked for a breakaway Christian sect known as the Cathars during their hopeless last stand against the forces of Pope Innocent III when he was mortally wounded.