Re: Slavic Wars
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Originally Posted by Galaico
Good Christians???
Cathars beleived that materia was evil, that had been made by the devil, and that only spirituality was pure and related to God. These beliefs excused them to practise abortions and ritual suicides, aswell as the practise of frenetic sex, as long as it remained unfertile.
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Yes, they held that the flesh was created by the Devil rather than God, thus everything physical was evil. Reporduction was a continuation of the evil, physical world and thus was considered a great sin. Collective suicide (the Endura) was practised by starving one's self to death or by strangulation.
They rejected marriage, and also any form of oath or allegiance.
Obviously this would have meant the destruction of medieval society not to mention the possible destruction of the people as well.
Thus, the Cathars were not only persecuted by ecclestiastical authorities (and truthfully, only after they murdered Papal envoys who had been sent to speak with them), but mainly by the temporal, secular authorities who considered them a grave and dangerous threat to society as a whole.
Scholars have traced various non-Christian influences in their theology including Judaism and Islam (I would also think some Persian Dualism of the Zoroastrian type exists there as well).
It is likely fair to say that they were the ancient equivalent of today's David Koresh (Branch Davidians) or Jimmy Jones cults.
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- Edmund Curtis (A History of Ireland: From Earliest Times to 1922)
The Irish are one of the most ancient nations that I know of at this end of the world, and are from as mighty a race as the world ever brought forth.
For it is certain that Ireland hath had the use of letters very anciently and long before England; that they had letters anciently is nothing doubtful, for the Saxons of England are said to have their letters and learning, and learned men, from the Irish.
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The renaissance began in Ireland seven hundred years before it was known in Italy. And Armagh, the ecclesiastical capital of Ireland, was at one time the metropolis of civilisation.
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Ireland can indeed lay claim to a great past; she can not only boast of having been the birthplace and abode of high culture in the fifth and sixth centuries . . . but also of having made strenous efforts in the seventh and up to the tenth century to spread her learning among the German and Romance peoples, thus forming the actual fountain of our present continental civilisation.
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