I have my beliefs and wonderings on the issue, but was keeping it pretty much on the straight and narrow here. There’s a lot that we can confidently speculate about the Cathars. But much of it remains speculation.

As an aside, Graham Hancock’s treatment in Talisman is very good; i recommend it.
Lex

Don’t tell me you haven’t read Holy Blood, Holy Grail — or at least the fictionalized version of it in The Da Vinci Code.

Kat
Newshogger.com
DailyGrail.com

The strain that accused the Catholic’s of being the “Church of Satan” were the Cathars. They were above all else non-violent, sought to emulate Christ’s behavior and even went so far as to allow women to hold high places in their humble churches. Some historians suggest that Southern France was about to experience a renaissance during the era that the Cathars were strongest. But it wasn’t to be. The Catholic Church launched the Albigensian Crusade and wiped the Cathars from the face of the earth (unless we descend to conspiracy theories that see the survivors melding with the Templars, who later had to flee France themselves and might have become the Free Masons).

We don’t know much about what Cathar doctrine, except from what was written attacking them. But a lot of what we know suggests a strong link to Gnostic tradition…how they might have gotten the information is a mystery since the Gnostics were pretty well wiped out by the end of the 4th century AD.