The Albigensian crusade is one of the darkest blots upon the religious history of Rome. It gave rise to the infamous maxim, then first officially promulgated by Papal authority, that no contract made with heretics was binding upon a member of the Roman Catholic faith. Then the civil power was for the first time employed in the systematic and unrelenting suppression of independent thought. Then was organized and set in motion the most gigantic and effective engine of persecution that the world has ever known. Then was perfected that grand and imposing fabric of government which, begun and improved by the genius of many successive pontiffs, rose to such a towering height during the administration of Innocent III.,--a system in whose policy the religious and the secular powers, while theoretically separate, were, in fact, closely co-ordinated and combined; which, while draining of its revenues every kingdom within its grasp, extolled beyond all virtues the merit of evangelical poverty; which, while discouraging philosophical studies, endeavored to secure a monopoly of learning, thus adding to the superiority attaching to a sacred character and profession the influence derived from mental attainments and unusual erudition; which fastened upon Europe an intolerable despotism, under which it was doomed to suffer for more than three hundred years, and which brought to the prosecution of its ambitious designs every device of intrigue and every method of intimidation, enforced by the infliction of punishments whose ingenious and merciless atrocity had been hitherto unknown to the political oppression of ancient or of mediæval times. In this way was the absolute power of the Papal system consolidated by one of the greatest of the Supreme Pontiffs, through the extirpation of two grand civilizations which for more than a century had represented the intelligence, the culture, and the science of Christian Europe.