ALBANESE. – Members of a particular sect of Italian Catharism (see CATARI), in contrast to the concorrezzi (see) and the bagnolesi (see). Already in the second half of the 12th century, Italian Cathars divided into absolute dualists and mitigated or monarchian dualists; at the beginning of the 13th century, the former formed the current of the Albanenses, with their hierarchical and doctrinal center in Lombardy. The denomination likely derives from the locality of Albano (S. Alessandro, province of Bergamo), or perhaps from some leader named Albanus; they are also called de Desenzano after the town of the same name on Lake Garda, or from Desenzano al Serio. The Albanian Cathar Church was located in Verona and in many cities of Lombardy. Around the mid-13th century, its actual members numbered, according to the calculations of R. Sacconi, about 500, but they were also increasing in the Cathar ecclesiastical districts of the Marca Trevisana, Tuscany, and the Spoleto Valley. It derived its dualistic faith from the Eastern Church of Dugnuthia (or Dugnuthia, Bruguthia, Drogometia, Druguria, Diniguttia, etc.). The identification with Drogovetia = Dragovica, a locality inhabited by the Dragovicians, a Bulgaro-Slavic population of southern Thrace and Macedonia, remains subject to revision. A Cathar leader, Nicetas or Niquinta, who came to Lombardy and, in 1167, was present at the Cathar council of Saint-Félix de Caraman (Toulouse), shifted the Italian Cathars from the mitigated dualism of the Bulgarian Church to the absolute dualism of the Church of Agrigento, with Bishop Marco of the Italian Cathars as his successor. In the subsequent fragmentation of Catharism, he was succeeded by Giovanni l'Ebreo. Later we encounter Marchisio de Sorano (or Soiano), bishop of the Albanese of Desenzano, with his coadjutor Amizo, and Nicola of Vicenza. At the beginning of the 13th century, the oldest faction of the Albanese had as its leader Bishop Balasinanza (or Bellasmanza) of Verona.
To explain evil and sin, this sect teaches the eternal coexistence of two principles: the good God, creator of his angels and his world, that is, of the incorporeal or celestial nature, and the evil God, creator of his malignant spirits and the terrestrial world, animals, and bodies. These two kingdoms will have no end and will be in continual opposition. Lucifer, son of the evil God, either through cunning or by military conquest, brought evil into the celestial kingdom: the seduced souls are imprisoned in human and animal bodies, into which they transmigrate in expiation, to return all to their original state, rejoining their own bodies and spirits left in heaven. Jesus Christ, son of the good God, inferior to him, came to recall these souls; he was born of an angel, the Madonna, and had only an apparent human body and material actions. The Old Testament is the work of the devil, except for the Sapiential Books and the Prophets. Some doctors accentuated and developed this dualistic schema. The Bergamasque bishop Giovanni de Lugio, followed by Giovanni de Cucullio, led from the first quarter of the 13th century a faction of the young. In his teaching, he excludes creation ex nihilo: both the good and the evil principle, including their own world with the four coeternal elements—fire, air, water, earth—of invisible and material nature, respectively. According to a stricter interpretation, even the souls of both kingdoms are coeternal with their principles. Among the celestials themselves, there is a life similar, though of a spiritual nature, to that of the earthly world. Whatever is recounted in the Old Testament and of Jesus Christ actually happened, but in the higher world. The good God is neither free nor omnipotent nor omniscient, because he is limited by the evil God, who induced sin in the celestial creatures. Some myths speak of invasions and seductions of souls even by the celestials into the earthly world. The life and passion of Jesus in this world would correspond to a similar life followed by an identical passion by the son of the evil God in the celestial kingdom. Every soul will return respectively to its own world; however, this duel between the two kingdoms, which personify good and evil, always begins anew, inevitably. The logic of this dualistic parallelism is the balance of power, operations, and effects between the two opposing principles.
Unlike the other Cathars, the Albanese do not attribute value, because it is a material act, to the laying on of hands either in the rite of the consolamentum or in that of confession; likewise, in the fraction of bread, they do not believe that this, as a creature of the devil, can be blessed. Due to their common absolute dualism, and also by alliteration, the name of the Albanese has been erroneously substituted and interchangeably used with that of Albigensians (see), indicating the Cathars of Languedoc, who generally professed rigid dualism.