The Albigensian Crusade Author:Jacques Madaule, Barbara Wall (Translator) Without attempting to rewrite the history of the Albigensian crusade, of the Inquisition or of the thorny question of Catharism in the history of ideas, the author seeks to place this tragic episode not only in the history of France but of the whole of Western civilization. From the earliest times, the Church had fought the Manichaean solution o... more »f the problem of evil, evil so prevalent in a world created by an omnipotent and benevolent God. In the Catharist view, the creator of so obviously imperfect a world must be an evil spirit, from whom came all material things; the soul, created by the good God, as imprisoned in the fleshly body and what the Cathars brought was the secret of deliverance; this they had from Christ Himself, through the Fourth Gospel; Christ was not the Second Person of the Trinity nor the Son of God, nor yet a true man; He was an angel, a celestial envoy, the teacher of the means of deliverance.« less