The Cathars, also known as Albigensians, were a Christian movement that emerged around 1140 and was active primarily in the south of France, Italy, Spain, and Germany until about 1320. They were not a unified order but split into many different groups. During the Albigensian Crusade (the Crusade against heretics), they were persecuted by the Inquisition as heretics and largely exterminated. The author and theologian Ignaz von Döllinger was one of the most significant church historians of his time. In 1826, he took a chair at the University of Munich. When the First Vatican Council defined the dogma of papal infallibility in 1870, the already 72-year-old Döllinger supported the protest movement of Catholics who gathered in the Old Catholic Church. Although Döllinger never joined this movement, he was still excommunicated in 1871.