Was Catharism akin to a medieval meme or were they really threatening to overthrow the Catholic Church in some places?

In my last game of CK2 scotland ended up converting to catharism and got 17 generations of queens. They ended up being the last christians in europe too

>The town rapist had a good claim at being morally
>superior to the medieval church
But this isn't a question about individuals, this is a question about spiritual movements and their legitimacy or morality.
>Only if you use an extremely autistic definition of fundamentalism
Are you saying that the average medieval Catholic was running around quoting Leviticus in his native tongue?

Then why did the Church believe them worthy of throwing a fucking Crusade and 200 years of inquisition?

There were no Cathars, the idea of Catharism as a dualist gnostic sect was invented by monks to justify brutal subjugation of Occitania by French Kingdom (aka Cathars Crusade), and they based it on the descriptions of Manicheans in Augustus almost verbatim. There were some reformist church movements in Occitania, just like everywhere else at the time, but there were no unified "church" and their believes were mostly orthodox, except for their views on church and social hierarchies.

They were a threat to medieval society, not just Catholic hegemony. They were kind of nuts. Gnosticism is usually nuts.

>But this isn't a question about individuals
The point is virtually everything was morally superior to the church, catharism included

>Are you saying that the average medieval Catholic
The hell does that even mean? You realise if you study the quran you do it in arabic right, regardless of what your own language is?

>The point is virtually everything was morally superior to the church
It's a point that has to be supported a bit more strongly.
>You realise if you study the quran you do it in arabic right,
Are you actually identifying Christian fundamentalism with Islamic fundamentalism and oversimplifying the actual differences in what Muslims and Christians believe? The average medieval Catholic didn't study the Bible at all.

Money. The people who supported catharism had a lot of it and were weak as piss. Also the church didnt need an excuse to go to war with heretics

Didnt they get a dukes support though?

Simply because they were heretic, and the catholic chruch didn't tolerate heresies in christiandom.
The Crusade was started because despite missionary efforts in the region (with st dominic- st domingo for instance) the local lords refused to act against the cathars for several reasons.
The Inquisition has been created to fight the cathars heresy, but if you look at the records you realize inquisitors are rather good understanding people compared to what you can imagine. You'd be better of being judged by the church than by the secular justice. The sentences were always enforced by the secular justice btw.

Read actual books you dumb nigger

I thought it was more of a "I don't care enough to stop them, they aren't rioting and some of them even do charity, not like I've read the bible anyway, hell, what if they're right?" sort of thing.

That the armies the opposed the crusaders were not armies of Cathars, but locals, some of whom may have been Cathars, but that the nobles and commanders of that opposing force were not, and were not fighting for Catharism. That the nobles who resisted Simon de Montfort and his rule were just resisting a foreign invader, taking their lands defranchsing them, imposing an foreign rule.

>the idea of Catharism as a dualist gnostic sect was invented by monks to justify brutal subjugation of Occitania by French Kingdom

Not at all, this particularly stupid considering Occitania was already part of France and subject of King of France.
The importance of the French agression was justified by the fact that Innocent III declared some lands heretics, excommunicated them and there fore put them "in prey" which means that anyone who conquered it could become one's legitimate possession. For this reason, the French (who had better shit to do than internal conflicts) had to conquer them back in competition with neighbourings nations : the king of Aragon, Peire II, declared he would protect the cathars and enter war with French crusaders. he was killed in the Batlle of Muret by the troops of Montfort.

>you'll never live lives of perfection
youtube.com/watch?v=jx1HqpfV6FE

Not exactly "supported". They were part of their people and didn't cause any trouble, some had relations or family links with cathars. The nobility, like the Count of Toulouse, refused to obey the pope or bend the knee toward the crusade because they were on their soil and didn't have to deal with foreign powers meddling in their politics

this guy gets it

> Not at all, this particularly stupid considering Occitania was already part of France and subject of King of France.
Yes, but it was autonomous with strong local nobility, and it was oriented more towards Mediterranean/Catalonia/Liguria than Northern France.

I see now.

>Yes, but it was autonomous with strong local nobility

As much independent as every county and duchy of France.

>oriented more towards Mediterranean/Catalonia/Liguria than Northern France

This is true.

Feel free to ask other questions since, for once, some people ITT know what they are talking about.

For some reason catharism attracts all kinds of retards

Do you think the Cathars if left unopposed by violence would create a protestant like schism &violence as we saw later on in Germany

Protestantism was just the first heretical movement to successfully break away from the Church's power. It is noteworthy only because Luther was somewhat successful politically.

> Protestantism was just the first heretical movement to successfully break away from the Church's power
That would be Hussites 100 years before Luther.

Yes but what I was getting at was wether the ideology of the Cathars would create a simmilar situation

jdimsa

They were somewhat strong in the Kingdom of Bulgaria.

Funny fact: the French slang word for committing homosexual acts, "bougre", comes from "Bulgarian" and refers to the supposed debauchery of the Cathars.

>They were somewhat strong in the Kingdom of Bulgaria.

True, Cathars adopted many aspects of Bogomilism.