ABSTRACT
Of all Christian heresies, Albigensianism alone had been the object of a crusade. One of the proclaimed aims of the Albigensian Crusade was to erase all signs that the heresy had ever existed: the heretics and the houses in which they had lived were burned, and later generations were forbidden to honour the memory of their heterodox ancestors. The numerous histories of the Albigensian Crusade that were published during the French Wars of Religion were intended to serve as an example of how heretics could be defeated in battle by a decisive monarch. Catholic theologians looked for precedents in the history of the Church when orthodoxy had been challenged. The association between Albigensianism and Protestantism gave rise to new contenders for the origins of the word Huguenot. The predominantly Catholic comparison with Albigensianism went unanswered by the Protestants until the 1580s when, it could be argued, it was too late.
