monks did occasionally get together for heterosexual fucking.
Until the 12th century, there were basically three kinds of relationship to the Church. There were the ascetics who fled the cities to roam like beasts in the wilderness and emulated St. Simon, who made a pig-sty his home when not on the pillar. The ascetics mortified the flesh while awaiting cataclysmic destruction and eternal resurrection. There were the nobility, the clergy, and the soldiers, who delighted in carnal excesses of every sort, and the serfs who went on breeding because it was their only outlet and because the nobles encouraged increases in the number of tenants. The last group, crucial to this period, were the heretics. In the 12th century various groups, viewing the abominations of Christianity with increasing horror, began to voice openly and even loudly their skepticism. These sects played a prominent role in shaping the Church’s idea of the Devil.
The Waldenses, Manicheans, and Cathari were the principal heretical sects. It is said that “the Waldenses were burnt for the practices for which the Franciscans were later canonized. ” 4 Their crime was to expose and to mock the clergy as frauds. For their piety they suffered the fate of all heretics, which was burning. More influential and more dangerous were the Manicheans, who traced their origins to the Persian Mani who had been crucified in a. d. 276. The Manicheans worshiped one God, who incorporated both good and evil, the ancient Zoroastrian idea. The Cathari, who were equally maligned by the Christians, also worshiped the dual principle:
... the chief outstanding quality of the Cathari was their piety and charity. They were divided into two sections: the ordinary lay believers and the Perfecti, who believed in complete abstinence and even the logical end of all asceticism — the Endura —a passionate disavowal of physical humanity which led them to starvation and even apparently to mass suicide. They adopted most of the Christian teaching and dogma of the New Testament, mixed with Gnostic ritual, using asceticism as an end to visions and other-consciousness. They were so loyal to their beliefs that a John of Toulouse was able to plead before his judges in 1230... “Lords: hear me. I am no heretic; for I have a wife and lie with her, and have children; and I eat flesh and lie and swear, and am a faithful Christian. ” Many of them seem, indeed, to have lived with the barren piety of the saints. They were accordingly accused of sexual orgies and sacrilege, and burned, and scourged, and harried. Nevertheless the heresy flourished, and Cathari were able to hold conferences on equal terms with orthodox bishops. 5
The Holy Inquisition, in its infancy, exterminated the Cathari, tried to exterminate the Jews, and then went on to exterminate the Knights Templars, the Christian organization of knighthood and conquest which had become too powerful and wealthy. It had become independent of clergy and kings, and had thereby incurred the wrath of both. With these experiences under its expanding belt, the Inquisition in the 15th century turned to the persecution of those most heinous of all heretics, the witches, that is, to all of those who still clung to the old cult beliefs of pagan Europe.
The Manicheans and Cathari had, in order to account for the existence of good and evil (the thorniest of theological problems), worshiped good and evil both. The Catholics, not able to accept that solution, developed a complex theology concerning the relationship between God and the Devil, now called Satan, which rested on the weird idea that Satan was limited in some specific ways, but very marvelous, all of his machinations, curses, and damnations being “by God’s permission” and a testimony to God’s divine majesty. Here we have the Catholic version of double-double think. Through the processes of Aristotle’s famous logic, as adapted by St. Thomas Aquinas, which was the basis of Catholic
Until the 12th century, there were basically three kinds of relationship to the Church. There were the ascetics who fled the cities to roam like beasts in the wilderness and emulated St. Simon, who made a pig-sty his home when not on the pillar. The ascetics mortified the flesh while awaiting cataclysmic destruction and eternal resurrection. There were the nobility, the clergy, and the soldiers, who delighted in carnal excesses of every sort, and the serfs who went on breeding because it was their only outlet and because the nobles encouraged increases in the number of tenants. The last group, crucial to this period, were the heretics. In the 12th century various groups, viewing the abominations of Christianity with increasing horror, began to voice openly and even loudly their skepticism. These sects played a prominent role in shaping the Church’s idea of the Devil.
The Waldenses, Manicheans, and Cathari were the principal heretical sects. It is said that “the Waldenses were burnt for the practices for which the Franciscans were later canonized. ” 4 Their crime was to expose and to mock the clergy as frauds. For their piety they suffered the fate of all heretics, which was burning. More influential and more dangerous were the Manicheans, who traced their origins to the Persian Mani who had been crucified in a. d. 276. The Manicheans worshiped one God, who incorporated both good and evil, the ancient Zoroastrian idea. The Cathari, who were equally maligned by the Christians, also worshiped the dual principle:
... the chief outstanding quality of the Cathari was their piety and charity. They were divided into two sections: the ordinary lay believers and the Perfecti, who believed in complete abstinence and even the logical end of all asceticism — the Endura —a passionate disavowal of physical humanity which led them to starvation and even apparently to mass suicide. They adopted most of the Christian teaching and dogma of the New Testament, mixed with Gnostic ritual, using asceticism as an end to visions and other-consciousness. They were so loyal to their beliefs that a John of Toulouse was able to plead before his judges in 1230... “Lords: hear me. I am no heretic; for I have a wife and lie with her, and have children; and I eat flesh and lie and swear, and am a faithful Christian. ” Many of them seem, indeed, to have lived with the barren piety of the saints. They were accordingly accused of sexual orgies and sacrilege, and burned, and scourged, and harried. Nevertheless the heresy flourished, and Cathari were able to hold conferences on equal terms with orthodox bishops. 5
The Holy Inquisition, in its infancy, exterminated the Cathari, tried to exterminate the Jews, and then went on to exterminate the Knights Templars, the Christian organization of knighthood and conquest which had become too powerful and wealthy. It had become independent of clergy and kings, and had thereby incurred the wrath of both. With these experiences under its expanding belt, the Inquisition in the 15th century turned to the persecution of those most heinous of all heretics, the witches, that is, to all of those who still clung to the old cult beliefs of pagan Europe.
The Manicheans and Cathari had, in order to account for the existence of good and evil (the thorniest of theological problems), worshiped good and evil both. The Catholics, not able to accept that solution, developed a complex theology concerning the relationship between God and the Devil, now called Satan, which rested on the weird idea that Satan was limited in some specific ways, but very marvelous, all of his machinations, curses, and damnations being “by God’s permission” and a testimony to God’s divine majesty. Here we have the Catholic version of double-double think. Through the processes of Aristotle’s famous logic, as adapted by St. Thomas Aquinas, which was the basis of Catholic
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