Word: catharis
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...heretics called Cathari (from the Greek word for pure), or Albigenses, from the town of Albi, one of their centers in Languedoc, were stamped out in 35 ruthless years of fire and sword. But as the centuries rolled on, they have had a measure of revenge against the Roman Catholic Church. The hatred generated by the crusade prepared the way for Protestantism. And in modern France, where popular apostasy from Catholicism is today wider and deeper than anything Pope Innocent could have imagined, the ancient heresy of Catharism is enjoying a remarkable revival of interest...
Long since defunct are the Cathari, the Patarini, the Albigenses, many another sect denounced as heretical by the Catholic Church in the Middle Ages. But the heretic Waldensian Church, born of social and religious restlessness in the 12th Century, still exists as the world's oldest evangelical Christian body. It was founded by Peter Waldo, a rich Lyons merchant who vowed himself to poverty, defied the Pope by preaching and interpreting the Bible in 1179. Excommunicated along with numerous other heretics in 1184, he attracted a following who believed with him that it was wrong to take oaths...