Cathars Different fate.

Kaze

Banned
Could the Cathars gone the way of the Eastern Orthadox and split from the Roman Catholic church and set up their own religion and states? Could the anti-Cathar crusade fail? What if the Crusade did fail -what would be the consequences of a failed crusade?
 
I don't think so, unfortunately. Languedoc is just too central, too politically and economically powerful (prior to the Crusade, of course), and much too surrounded by power-hungry Catholic powers for the Church to have to let them go. I think an alternate Albigensian Crusade, where the Cathars and sympathisers strike a harder blow to the Crusaders - as a more organised military force, i.e. early on, rather than as peasant revolts - which will send Catholic moral authority reeling. Although that would probably lead to a more totalitarian and neurotic High Medieval Church, rather than less. But maybe a harsher Rome would get the Germans angry earlier.

If you want to have a Marcionite church to challenge Nicene Christianity, you might have better luck with Paulicianism or Bogomilism in the Balkans, especially a less radical form.
 
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Could the Cathars gone the way of the Eastern Orthadox and split from the Roman Catholic church and set up their own religion and states?
Well, Catharism did cut ties with Rome, almost by definition. The problem being that while Orthodox and Catholic churchs split over a very slow differentiation based on cultural and political differences and then theological; Catharism was a much more radical rupture without much in the way of big-scale support.
Medieval Langueoc was indeed a political puzzle, on which big names (such as Count of Toulouse) had an hard time being obeyed from their vassals (wheter lords or consulate) due to various crisis since the Xth century (two important ones being the War of Succession of Auvergne, and the Great Southern War). Catharism then developed on a hugely divided political landscape where notion of lineages and horizontal solidarities played a major role.

It's not that Catharism was ever majoritary even in its main region : it was mostly an urban and peripheral nobiliar belief (and even there, it's generally assumed we're talking 10% of towns populations in Upper Languedoc, with cities as Carcassonne barely harbouring anhandful of them). But in such a political situation, social solidarities played fully, while other dualistic takes on Christianity in Europe such as Tisserands found little social ground to blossom (at the exception of North Italy, where religious struggles allowed dualist groups to persist, but Rome's proximity was too huge of an obstacle)

So, before having "Cathar states", you'd first need to adress the problem of unifying a lot more southern polities. Which likely would have the result if done before to butterfly away the persistence of dualism in Languedoc. You'd then need to have a later PoD : we could imagine a more successful Raimondin participation (there's a TL about a successful Siege of Castelnaudary leading to reaffirmation of Toulouse's power over Lower Languedoc, for instance) but that definitely doesn't mean Cathars would be part of (in fact, a common grievance in the last part of the Crusade was that southern lords were on the bad recieving end of the Crusades because of Cathars who did nothing to help and were generally considered as nuisance. Note that, while not bent on repressing Catharism for the kick of it, as it was associated with refusal of feudal society basis, it wasn't that well seen by the greater nobles who went to fight with Crusader less to defend heresy, than to defend their nobility and preserve their own power.

While you could have a persistence of Catharism (which wasn't really unified theologically) on the same model than Vaudois, I really doubt they would be able to form their own states.
 
I think an alternate Albigensian Crusade, where the Cathars and sympathisers strike a harder blow to the Crusaders - as a more organised military force, i.e. early on, rather than as peasant revolts
Err...Southern forces were essentially feudal levies and urban militiae : if anything, peasant forces were rather to be found in early Crusader's armies, from Auvergne for instance.

Although that would probably lead to a more totalitarian and neurotic High Medieval Church, rather than less.
I'm not sure that totalitarian means what you think it means. Roman church had a pervasive influence into medieval society, but barely able to command its every moves or to mobilise by itself social forces. It's why she had to rely either on royal authority by proxy, or to call for nobiliar mobilisation (as for the Albigensian Crusade)
 

Marc

Donor
Add that the Cathars seem to be extremely anti-copulation and procreation - since everything in the material world was sinful - which does not go well for long time survival (ask the Shakers).
 
Add that the Cathars seem to be extremely anti-copulation and procreation - since everything in the material world was sinful - which does not go well for long time survival (ask the Shakers).
Not quite exactly : it was Cathar mainstream teaching (it somehow was nuanced after the Crusade, with a distinction between good and evil creation) but Catharism was a two-level religions with active preachers and disciples, and the followers. For instance, Catharism was big on vegetarianism but it never really prevented butchers to be considered one of the trades more touched by heresy. Or money changers (which basically live of the sinful material world). Or refusal of violence never prevented petty-nobility (who was fine with violence) to give an ear to Cathar teachings. The distinction between active disciples and followers was big enough that most of the dualist practices were nuanced in everyday life.

A bigger problem was their refusal of feudal society and its rites (oaths, property, etc.) which tended to interest non or poorly landed nobility, part of urban middle-classes and some intellectuals; but not much beyond that. Not that they were a particular threat to medieval society, but this radicalism tended to prevent them really have a firm root into populations; and people as Raimond V had a field day pointing to this to score some local political legitimacy.
 
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