You have to look very hard to discover that this building replaced the structure destroyed when anti-Cathar crusaders massacred up to 20,000 people in 1209, an episode during which the crusader commander Simon de Monfort, faced with the difficulty of distinguishing heretics from Christians, infamously uttered the words “kill them all! God will know his own.”
{ 12 comments }
oldster 10.04.21 at 6:12 pm
“…Simon de Monfort… infamously uttered the words “kill them all! God will know his own.—
I seem to recall having seen that quotation attributed to a variety of people throughout history. Saladin? Oscar Wilde?
Peter Erwin 10.04.21 at 6:34 pm
It’s the abbot and papal legate Arnau Amalric, who was the commander on the scene, who is reported to have said that.
Alan White 10.04.21 at 9:20 pm
Wow Chris that altar (I take it as such) is a stunning piece of work! Thanks so much for this, especially the detail in all that grandeur.
John Quiggin 10.05.21 at 3:06 am
Albi’s impressively fortress-like cathedral part of the same history
Timothy Scriven 10.05.21 at 3:57 am
I am consistently impressed and depressed by how unequivocal Jesus is about topics like violence, charity, leaving justice to God etc, and by how little this mattered in history.
Adam Roberts 10.05.21 at 7:49 am
“Caedite eos. Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius.” The second part is Biblical: 2 Timothy 2:19, “the Lord knows which ones are his”. Amalric was basically quoting the New Testament.
J-D 10.05.21 at 11:18 pm
I’m curious to know what makes you think that. Do you have particular citations in mind?
Chris Bertram 10.06.21 at 7:22 am
@J-D I remember Harry sharing a very interesting piece by a Christian writer that pointed out how much of Christian writing on war lent heavily on St Paul in order to minimize and explain away Jesus’s commitments to non-violence. If he sees this comment he might provide the link.
MisterMr 10.06.21 at 10:17 am
The obvious citation about Jesus’ non-violence is the “turn the other cheek” one:
You have heard that it was said, “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if anyone would sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well. And if anyone forces you to go one mile, go with him two miles. Give to the one who begs from you, and do not refuse the one who would borrow from you.
— Jesus Christ, English Standard Version (Matthew 5:38–42)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turning_the_other_cheek
This citation had a lot of different interpretations by Christians, as said on the wikipedia page.
The reason IMHO is that, if you take it literally, it is impossible to put in practice because it rules out even self defence. So when a society tried to use christian values as more or less laws, it had to reinterpret the extremely utopian christian views in ways that were more practically applicable, which in turn meant that everyone read what he wanted to read in it, thus bypassing the actual words of Jesus.
J-D 10.06.21 at 9:31 pm
Yes, I am aware of that one: but does it state an unequivocal (that was the word Timothy Scriven used) position about violence? I think not. I am aware of the existence of varying interpretations, also. The fact that people interpret the same passage in different ways is evidence of ambiguity (and ‘ambiguous’ is the next thing to ‘equivocal’).
The kind of position on violence which I would describe as unequivocal would be something like Tripitaka shouting ‘Monkey, no violence!’ (It was seldom effective in restraining Monkey from violence, but it was still unequivocal about it. Also, it’s very hard to escape the suspicion that if it had been effective in restraining Monkey from violence, the demons would have dismembered Tripitaka, which suggests some of the difficulties with an unequivocal stance. Now I have to check whether there are relevant Youtube clips. *** Well, there are clips from the show, but I can’t find ones that match the particular interactions I’m thinking of. I know not everybody here will have seen it, but I’m sure those who have will remember.)
MisterMr 10.07.21 at 11:36 am
@ J-D 10
“but does it state an unequivocal (that was the word Timothy Scriven used) position about violence?”
It says: “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also.”
it’s an unequivocal position against violence, at least against evil aggressors. I suppose in a very literalist interpretation one could use violence against people who are not evil or are not aggressors, but this would obviously be a stretch of interpretation.
The problem of the “Do not resist the one who is evil. But if anyone slaps you on the right cheek, turn to him the other also” is that not only the Catholic broke this norm by sieging the Catars, but even the Catars broke it by defending themselves from the Catholics, since they didn’t give the other cheek and did actually try to resist the inquisition.
Which is what I mean when I say that the position is unequivocally and extremely anti-violence, and therefore in the real historical world nobody could have really applied this rule 100%. At some point there will always be a limit where one has to accept that violence is justified, e.g. if one is anti-slavery because slavery is a form of violence, he will be pro John Brown/civil war against the confederacy and so on.
MisterMr 10.07.21 at 11:40 am
“The kind of position on violence which I would describe as unequivocal would be something like Tripitaka shouting ‘Monkey, no violence!’”
I know of at least 4 animes coming from this story and they all have a significant amount of violence:
Monkey (by Tezuka)
Sci-Fi West Saga Starzinger (this was a bit crappy but as a kid I liked it)
Dragonball
GensÅmaden Saiyuki (this also wasn’t very good but I didn’t have the excuse of being a kid anymore).
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