cathars

Stay away from southern France -- the Cathars were nice folks but trouble is on the way for them.

The Cathars were mostly tolerated by the local authorities and nobility in the south of France though.

Between Christian states sure, but tell it to the French Cathars or the Baltic pagans.

Some Cathars believed that Eve's daughters copulated with Satan's demons and bore giants.

The Cathars were regarded as local rabble-rousers, and in this era, heresies were considered tantamount to treason against the state and her established Church.

There's cetainly less church sanctioned burning of Catholics and Cathars alike..

The Cathars also rejected the material world, sacraments, and clerical hierarchy.

The Cathars were wiped out, and Giordano Bruno, an early proponent of the Copernican model of the solar system was burnt at the stake by the inquisition.

Theorycrafting about >1000 year old stories didn't help the Cathars or the Sephardim much, and it isn't going to help anyone in any real religious conflict nowadays either.

At the end of the day, Aragon remained under Catholic authority either way, but wanted to use tolerance of the Cathars as a wedge to keep hold of territory.

First there were Gnostics and Marcionites, and then many others until Cathars in the 14th century when the Pope said that anybody who kills a Cathar can get their castle.

I had studied the Zealots and the Cathars in history class (great high school!) in relation to the history of religion and politics, but never joined up the dots like this.

Maybe some dudes up in the Vatican implicitly defined some axioms about what's "really a mystical experience", probably marginalizing the Orthodox and Gnostics and Cathars while they were at it.

Once inside, they couldn’t tell Catholics from Cathars—everyone spoke the same language and lived side by side.

There were decentralized Christian-like religions like Bogomils (Cathars in Western Europe) in south Slavic parts before modern centralized religions.

Both were started to fight heresy: the Dominicans the Cathars, the Jesuits the Protestants.