Council of Tours (1163)

With well over 500 attendants, the council reaffirmed the excommunication of Antipope Victor IV, declared the Cathars heretics, and condemned clerical usury.

[1] Left in control of the basilica, the Imperialist faction of cardinals proclaimed Octaviano Monticelli, who took the name Victor IV, as pope.

[5] During the second year of his reign, Alexander lived in Rome, but after imperial armies captured the majority of the Papal States, he fled to Sicily and sought safety.

[12] Ian Robinson, professor of history and senior fellow of Trinity College, however, contends that the Council of Tours was the first to address the issue of Albigensians in southern France.

[9] The council declared the Albigensians heretics,[9] decreed that secular princes jail them,[9] seize their lands,[13] and banned commercial trade with them.

[14] According to Robert Ian Moore, professor emeritus of history at Newcastle University, the Council's call for the annihilation of the Albigensians, as they were,"spreading like a cancer from Toulouse through Gascony and neighbouring regions", could be seen as a formal declaration of war on heresy.

[21] Alexander, however, understood the political climate between Becket and King Henry II, and remitted the decision to a provincial council in England.

[15] A meeting called at Lombers, in 1165, with the goal of ensuring that the Council's directives were being carried out, resulted in the Albigensians defying the assembled secular and ecclesiastical notables of the area, denouncing the church as corrupt, and refusing to confirm by oath their own assertions of Catholic orthodoxy.

[15] The severity of the situation eventually prompted the deployment of a papal legation in 1178, mostly funded by Louis VII and Henry II, who applied significant pressure.