Watercolor, charcoal and plaster on paper

In 1163, Pope Alexander III sent ecclesiastical judges to investigate offenses of the Catharan and Albigensian for opposing the Roman Church. In 1209, Pope Innocent preached a crusade against them, which is one of the bloodiest chapters in Christianity’s past. Half of France was exterminated, and the killing of heretics went on for twenty years.

-- Walker, Barbara G., The Women’s Encyclopedia of Myths and Secrets, HarperCollins, San Francisco, 1983. Page 194.