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ALBI—ALBIGENSES
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—produced at the Lyceum (1866). His most successful piece, Two Roses, a comedy, was produced at the Vaudeville in 1870, in which Sir Henry Irving made one of his earliest London successes as Digby Grant. He was the author of a large number of other plays and adaptations, including Jingle (a version of Pickwick), produced at the Lyceum in 1878, and Pink Dominoes, the latter being one of a series of adaptations from the French which he made for the Criterion theatre. At that house his wife, the well-known actress, Miss Mary Moore, played the leading parts. He died on the 15th of August 1889.


ALBI, a city of south-western France, capital of the department of Tarn, 48 m. N. E. of Toulouse, on a branch line of the Southern railway. Pop. (1906) 14,956. Albi occupies a commanding position on the left bank of the Tarn; it is united to its suburb of La Madeleine on the right bank by a medieval and a modern bridge. The old town forms a nucleus of narrow, winding streets surrounded by boulevards, beyond which lie modern quarters with regular thoroughfares and public gardens. The cathedral of Sainte Cecile, a fine fortress-church in the Gothic style, begun in 1277, finished in 1512, rises high above the rest of the town. The exterior, flanked at the western end by a lofty tower and pierced by high, narrow windows, is devoid of ornament. Its general plainness contrasts with the elaborate carving of the stone canopy which shelters the southern portal. In the interior, which is without transepts or aisles, the rood-screen and the choir-enclosure, which date from about 1500, are masterpieces of delicate sculpture; the vaulting and the walls are covered with paintings of the 15th and 16th centuries. The archbishop's palace to the north-east of the cathedral is a fortified building of the 14th century. St Salvi, the chief of the other churches of Albi, belongs to the 13th and 15th centuries. A statue of the sailor La Pérouse (1741–1788) stands in the square named after him.

Albi is the seat of an archbishop, a prefect and a court of assizes. It has tribunals of first instance and of commerce, a board of trade-arbitrators, a chamber of commerce, a lycee and training colleges. The industrial establishments of the town include dye-works, distilleries, tanneries, glass-works and important flour-mills. It is also a centre for hat-making, and produces cloth-fabrics, lace, umbrellas, casks, chairs, wooden shoes, candles and pastries. Trade is in wine and anise.

Albi (Albiga) was, in the Gallo-Roman period, capital of the Albigenses, and later of the viscounty of Albigeois, which was a fief of the counts of Toulouse. From the 12th century onwards, its bishops, the first of whom appears to have lived about the 3rd century, began to encroach on the authority of the viscounts; the latter, after the Albigensian war, lost their estates, which passed to Simon de Montfort and then to the crown of France. By a convention concluded in 1264 the chief temporal power in the city was granted to the bishops. The archbishopric dates from 1678.


ALBIAN (Fr. Albien, from Alba=Aube in France), in geology the term proposed in 1842 by A. d’Orbigny for that stage of the Cretaceous System which comes above the Aptian and below the Cenomanian (Pal. France. Crét. ii.). The precise limits of this stage are placed somewhat differently by English and continental geologists. In England it is usual to regard the Albian stage as equivalent to the Upper Greensand plus Gault, that is, to the "Selbornian" of Jukes-Browne. But A. de Lapparent would place most of the Upper Greensand in the Cenomanian. The English practice is to commence the upper Cretaceous with the Albian; on the other hand, this stage closes the lower Cretaceous according to continental usage. It is necessary therefore, when using the term Albian, to bear these differences in mind, and to ascertain the exact position of the strata by reference to the zonal fossils. These are, in descending order, Pecten asper and Cardiaster fossarius, Schloenbachia rostrata, Hoplites lautus and H. interruptus, Douvilleiceras mammillatum. In addition to the formations mentioned above, the following representatives of the Albian stage are worthy of notice: the gaize and phosphatic beds of Argonne and Bray in France; the Flammenmergel of North Germany; the lignites of Utrillas in Spain; the Upper Sandstones of Nubia, and the Fredericksburg beds of North America.

See Gault, Greensand, and Cretaceous.  (J. A. H.) 


ALBIGENSES, the usual designation of the heretics—and more especially the Catharist heretics—of the south of France in the 12th and 13th centuries. This name appears to have been given to them at the end of the 12th century, and was used in 1181 by the chronicler Geoffroy de Vigeois. The designation is hardly exact, for the heretical centre was at Toulouse and in the neighbouring districts rather than at Albi (the ancient Albiga). The heresy, which had penetrated into these regions probably by trade routes, came originally from eastern Europe. The name of Bulgarians (Bougres) was often applied to the Albigenses, and they always kept up intercourse with the Bogomil sectaries of Thrace. Their dualist doctrines, as described by controversialists, present numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils, and still more to those of the Paulicians, with whom they are sometimes connected. It is exceedingly difficult, however, to form any very precise idea of the Albigensian doctrines, as our knowledge of them is derived from their opponents, and the very rare texts emanating from the Albigenses which have come down to us (e.g. the Rituel cathare de Lyon and the Nouveau Testament en provençal) contain very inadequate information concerning their metaphysical principles and moral practice. What is certain is that, above all, they formed an anti-sacerdotal party in permanent opposition to the Roman church, and raised a continued protest against the corruption of the clergy of their time. The Albigensian theologians and ascetics, the Cathari or perfecti, known in the south of France as bons hommes or bons chrétiens, were few in number; the mass of believers (credentes) were perhaps not initiated into the Catharist doctrine; at all events, they were free from all moral prohibition and all religious obligation, on condition that they promised by an act called convenenza to become "hereticized" by receiving the consolamentum, the baptism of the Spirit, before their death or even in extremis.

The first Catharist heretics appeared in Limousin between 1012 and 1020. Several were discovered and put to death at Toulouse in 1022; and the synod of Charroux (dep. of Vienne) in 1028, and that of Toulouse in 1056, condemned the growing sect. The preachers Raoul Ardent in 1101 and Robert of Arbrissel in 1114 were summoned to the districts of the Agenais and the Toulousain to combat the heretical propaganda. But, protected by William IX., duke of Aquitaine, and soon by a great part of the southern nobility, the heretics gained ground in the south, and in 1119 the council of Toulouse in vain ordered the secular powers to assist the ecclesiastical authority in quelling the heresy. The people were attached to the bons hommes, whose asceticism imposed upon the masses, and the anti-sacerdotal preaching of Peter of Bruys and Henry of Lausanne in Perigord. Languedoc and Provence, only facilitated the progress of Catharism in those regions. In 1147 Pope Eugenius III. sent the legate Alberic of Ostia and St Bernard to the affected district. The few isolated successes of the abbot of Clairvaux could not obscure the real results of this mission, and the meeting at Lombers in 1165 of a synod, where Catholic priests had to submit to a discussion with Catharist doctors, well shows the power of the sect in the south of France at that period. Moreover. two years afterwards a Catharist synod, in which heretics from Languedoc, Bulgaria and Italy took part, was held at St Félix de Caraman, near Toulouse, and their deliberations were undisturbed. The missions of Cardinal Peter (of St Chrysogonus). formerly bishop of Meaux, to Toulouse and the Toulousain in 1178, and of Henry, cardinal-bishop of Albano (formerly abbot of Clairvaux), in 1180–1181, obtained merely momentary successes. Henry of Albano attempted an armed expedition against the stronghold of heretics at Lavaur and against Raymond Roger. viscount of Beziers, their acknowledged protector. The taking of Lavaur and the submission of Raymond Roger in no way arrested the progress of the heresy. The persistent decisions of the councils against the heretics at this period—in particular, those of the council of Tours (1163) and of the oecumenical