For their considerable pains, the Cathars were memorialized and celebrated as martyred religious rebels by a region of southern France that, eight centuries later, still promotes itself under ...

Who were the Cathars, and what was daily life like for them? In this video, we explore the beliefs and lifestyle of this medieval Christian sect that challenged the power of the Catholic Church.

After a 10-month siege in 1244, more than 200 Cathars chose to be burned on bonfires at the foot of this peak rather than recant beliefs that the Church of Rome had condemned. The Church ...

The medieval church was deadly serious about heretics like the Cathars. Author Stephen O’Shea, on the other hand, is only too kind. Of the former strain, thirteenth-century Catharism was viewed ...

Pope Innocent III was alarmed by the Cathars’ growing popularity, so in 1208 he declared a crusade to eradicate them. Waves of cross-bearing warriors from northern France and Germany obeyed the ...

Cathars believed the world had been created by a deity identified with Satan, and that the human spirit was trapped in his evil world. They lived ascetic lives, rejecting meat, alcohol and ...

The protagonist, Jeanne of Béziers, was found as a baby following a massacre led by the Catholic Church; she was adopted by the Cathars, a Christian sect whose offenses against Catholicism included ...