October 29, 2003

Kill them all, Let God sort them out

That was black humor when I was an Army ROTC cadet at USF during Desert Storm. Now it's an option seriously proposed by U.S. Senators. Yeah, that'll stop terrorism. Sure. Trent Lott is an absolute moron.

Posted by Chris at October 29, 2003 11:52 AM
Comments

The phrase is from Latin, usually translated as"Kill them all; God will know His own."
Said during the Papacy of Innocent III, around 1210 AD, during the Albigensian Crusade; the comment was in answer to the knights who carried out that crusade in South France, as to how they should be able to tell the good Catholics there from the Cathar heretics they had been sent to kill.
It's things like that which make me SO proud to be Catholic!
NOT!

Posted by: shelly anne ryan on May 19, 2004 07:30 PM

I should have known that, but didn't. Thanks for the info.

Of course, while I remember the Albigensian Crusade, I don't precisely remember what the Cathar heresy was. More stuff to look up before the start of summer session.

And I'm not so sure I want to be Catholic anymore...

Posted by: Chris on May 20, 2004 10:01 AM

Actually the real phrase comes from XIV Century crusaders (in Southern France) where King Ulrich uttered the infamous words "Neca eos hommes, Deus suos agnoscet" therefore setting a town in fire where their inhabitants only sin was to refuse to wear catholic cruxifices for considering an instrument of Roman torture.

Posted by: John on June 23, 2004 10:24 AM

All this talk about "Kill them all! God will know his own" is ignorant, unhistorical rubbish.

The *civil* turmoil of the Languedoc during the Albigensian period is always ignored. People nowadays get away with thinking that the world is and was full of peace and light. It is not and was not.

The brutality of the Albigensian Crusades was a characteristic of both sides. The whitewashing of the Cathars that's been going on since the Reformation is a disgrace to scholarship.

(BTW, I'm an atheist.)

Posted by: J L A Hartley on July 30, 2004 07:53 PM

The cathars didn't believe in killing anything. There was at least one case where a group of cathars was burnt at the stake after refusing to kill a chicken (!)

They got around their inability to engage in violence by using mercenaries who were sympathetic to their cause, but not (quite) full converts.

I can find no references to the cathars engaging in the kinds of genocides that the allies of Catholic church did.

Posted by: Stephen Samuel on November 21, 2004 02:32 PM