The Horrifying Truth , page 1

Out of interest but worth researching yourself ... Quick insight Cathars who had the only recorded perfect society.

In some respects the Cathar and Catholic Churches were polar opposites. For example the Cathar Church taught that all non-procreative sex was better than any procreative sex. The Catholic Church taught, and still teaches, exactly the opposite. Both positions produced interesting results. Following their tenet, Catholics concluded that masturbation was a far greater sin than rape, as mediaeval penitentials confirm. Following their principles, Cathar could deduce that sexual intercourse between man and wife was more culpable than homosexual sex.

In the Languedoc, famous at the time for its high culture, tolerance and liberalism, the Cathar religion took root and gained more and more adherents during the twelfth century. By the early thirteenth century Catharism was probably the majority religion in the area, supported by the nobility as well as the common people.
This was yet another annoyance to the Roman Church which considered the feudal system to be divinely ordained as the natural order (Cathars disliked it because it depended on oath taking).

In open debates with leading Catholic theologians, Cathars seem invariably to have come out on top. This was embarrassing for the Roman Church, not least because they had fielded the best professional preachers in Europe against what they saw as a collection of uneducated weavers and other manual workers. Worse still a number of Catholic priests had become Cathar adherents (Catharism was a religion that seems to have appealed especially to the theologically literate and whole Cathedral chapters are known to have defected, as they did for example at Orleans). Worse, the Catholic Church was held up to public ridicule (some of the richest men in Christendom, bejewelled, dressed in finery, and preaching poverty, provided an irresistible target even to fellow Catholics). Worst yet, and perhaps a cornerstone issue, Cathars in the Languedoc refused to pay tithes to the Catholic Church.

The Cathar view of the Catholic Church was as bleak as the Catholic Church's view of the Cathar Church. On the Cathar side it manifested itself in ridiculing Catholic doctrine and practices, and characterising the Catholic Church as the "Church of Wolves". The Catholics accused Cathars of heresy or apostasy and said they belonged to the "Synagogue of Satan". The Catholic side created some striking propaganda. When the propaganda proved only partly successful, there was only one option left; a crusade - the Albigensian Crusade.

From 1208, a war of terror was waged against the indigenous population and their rulers: Raymond VI of Toulouse, Raymond-Roger Trencavel, Raymond Roger of Foix in the first generation and Raymond VII of Toulouse, Raymond Trencavel II, and Roger Bernard II of Foix in the second generation. During this period an estimated 500,000 Languedoc men women and children were massacred; Catholics as well as Cathars. The Counts of Toulouse and their allies were dispossessed and humiliated, and their lands annexed to France.

Educated and tolerant Languedoc rulers were replaced by relative barbarians; Dominic Guzmán (later Saint Dominic) founded the Dominican Order and soon afterwards the Inquisition, manned by his Dominicans, was established explicitly to wipe out the last vestiges of resistance. Persecutions of Languedoc Jews and other minorities were initiated; the culture of the troubadours was lost as their cultured patrons were reduced to wandering refugees known as faidits. Their characteristic concept of "paratge", a whole sophisticated world-view, was almost destroyed, leaving us a pale imitation in our idea of chivalry.

Lay learning was discouraged and the reading of the bible became a capital crime. Tithes were enforced. The Languedoc started its long economic decline to become the poorest region in France; and the language of the area, Occitan, began its descent from the foremost literary language in Europe to a regional dialect, now disparaged as a patois. Completing the extermination of the Cathars, the Roman Church now had convincing proof that a sustained campaign of genocide can work. It also had the precedent of an internal Crusade within Christendom, and the machinery of the first modern police state that could be wheeled out for the Spanish Inquisition, and again for later Inquisitions and genocides.

The crusade against the Cathars of the Languedoc has been described as one of the greatest disasters ever to befall Europe.

Catharism is often said to have been completely eradicated by the end of the fourteenth century. Yet there are more than a few vestiges even today, apart from the enduring memory of Cathar martyrdom and the ruins of the famous "Cathar castles", including the Château of Montségur (Montsegùr). There are even Cathars alive today, or at least people claiming to be modern Cathars.
There is a flourishing, Cathar tourist industry in the Languedoc, and especially in the Aude départment; and also an increasing number of historians and other academics engaged in serious Cathar studies. Interestingly, to date, the deeper they have dug, the more they have vindicated Cathar claims to represent a survival of the Earliest Christian Church.