What happened in Béziers had its bloody echoes throughout the entire region. In some ways the crusading part of the suppression was better than the long drawn-out cat-and-mouse games played by the Inquisition before, during and after the actual "fighting". It was in the Languedoc that the Catholic church refined its methods of informing, denouncement, torture and auto-da-fé, used to such good effect throughout the rest of Europe for the next 400 years.

I've seen estimates which posit that a prosperous population of nearly 1.2 million in 1000 was reduced to less than 100,000, living in abject poverty, by 1330. The Black Death had little effect in the region in 1347/48 because the population was already so small and dispersed.

Personally, I don't believe the Catholic church's attitudes have changed one jot. The pronouncements that come out of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the former Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition - are uncompromising once you dig past the modern persiflage. Let loose, they'd quite happily do it all over again!