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Front Page arrow Titles (by Subject) arrow 116.: Innocent III to the Archbishop of Auch in Gascony, 1198. - A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age

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Collection: Primary Sources
Subject Area: History

116.: Innocent III to the Archbishop of Auch in Gascony, 1198. - Oliver J. Thatcher, A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age [1905]

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A Source Book for Mediaeval History. Selected Documents Illustrating the History of Europe in the Middle Age, ed. Oliver J. Thatcher and Edgar Holmes McNeal (New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1905).

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116.

Innocent III to the Archbishop of Auch in Gascony, 1198.

Many heresies were appearing in various parts of Europe, and Innocent III made special efforts to suppress them. The three following documents illustrate the means by which he hoped to destroy them. These letters are directed to Spain and to Gascony, where the Albigensian heresy was flourishing.

The little boat of St. Peter is beaten by many storms and tossed about upon the sea, but it grieves us most of all that, against the orthodox faith, there are now arising more unrestrainedly and with more injurious results than ever before, ministers of diabolical error who are ensnaring the souls of the simple and ruining them. With their superstitions and false inventions they are perverting the meaning of the Holy Scriptures and trying to destroy the unity of the catholic church. Since we have learned from you and others that this pestilential error is growing in Gascony and in the neighboring territories, we wish you and your fellow bishops to resist it with all your might, because it is to be feared that it will spread and that by its contagion the minds of the faithful will be corrupted. And therefore by this present apostolical writing we give you a strict command that, by whatever means you can, you destroy all these heresies and expel from your diocese all who are polluted with them. You shall exercise the rigor of the ecclesiastical power against them and all those who have made themselves suspected by associating with them. They may not appeal from your judgments, and if necessary, you may cause the princes and people to suppress them with the sword.