Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – Waldenses – Catholic Army Promised Heaven for Killing Innocent People – Baptist Peculiarity SEVEN (continued) – Part 20 in the Series

Thomas E Kresal Admin · 1 hr March 9, 2020

Baptist History, Heritage & Distinctives – Waldenses – Catholic Army Promised Heaven for Killing Innocent People – Baptist Peculiarity SEVEN (continued) – Part 20 in the Series

And after the slaughter of those assembled, this holy (?) army proceeded to desolate the country, and this holy (?) armies employed by Pope Innocent III. destroyed above two hundred thousand of them in the short space of a few months.“ (Jones Ch. History, p. 277) It will be remembered, that the Albigenses and Waldenses were the same class of Christians. And in order to exterminate the Albigenses from the south of France, crusading armies were raised by order of the Pope to perform this bloody work. In order the better to seduce the superstitious Catholics into their army, they were granted plenary indulgence to sin, with the promise of the joys of heaven, as a reward for murdering the saints of God. So great was their enthusiasm against the Albigenses, that “the legate Milo’s army was found to consist of about three hundred thousand fighting men.” (Perrins History p. 144)

And the enormities committed by these so-called “Christian armies” beggars all description. Concerning these desolating scenes, Mr. Jones remarks: ” The scenes of slaughter and devastation which had been carried on against the Albigenses in the southern provinces of France, for more than twenty years during the former part of the thirteenth century, in which time it has been completed that a million of persons bearing that name were put to death, had occasioned many of them to cross the Pyrenees, and seek a shelter from the storm in the Spanish provinces of Arragon and Catalonia.” (Jones Ch History, p.290)

In regard to the persecutions of the Waldenses in other countries, in the latter part of the thirteenth century, Mr. Jones says: “In Sicily in particular, the imperial fury raged against them. They were ordered to be treated with the greatest severity, that they might be banished, not only from the country, but from the earth. And throughout Italy, both Gregory IX. and Honorius IV. harassed and oppressed them with the most unrelenting barbarity, by means of the Inquisition. The living were, without mercy, committed to the hands of the executioner, their houses razed to the ground, their goods confiscated, and even the slumbering remains of the dead were dragged from their graves and their bones committed to the flames.” (Jones Ch History, p.295)

These persecutions were not the result of the outburst of passion upon the part of inferior officers in the Catholic service; but it seems to have been the settled policy of the Pope, with all his inferior clergy, to eradicate from the Catholic mind and heart every principle of compassion, in order to instigate every son of the church to persecute the Waldenses with the fury of incarnate fiends.

Peculiarity Seven continues March 10

Presented by Thomas E. Kresal from: “Baptist Succession” by D.B. Ray, 1871 Edition, pg. 373-74