. . .Albigensian heresies as we find them in full vigour and variety. Their germs might have been found almost {18} anywhere in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages, but the stimulus to growth came not from without, but from within. It was a spontaneous outburst of a profound discontent with a Church which by its Ultramontanism opposed all national independence, and by its unspirituality forfeited all respect for its creed. Just as the Church turned back to Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy to illuminate the mystical element—the relationship between the outward and the inward—in its own entity and in its Sacraments—a philosophy which had long lain dormant in her midst—so the Catharists turned back to Dualistic Gnosticism to illuminate the origin of good and evil, and its bearing upon ecclesiastical organization. But whereas the students of the North were attracted to dialectics, the light-hearted of the South of France were drawn to picturesq. . . Read More