Also in M-W, I noticed "katharevusa". I do not anticipate
having any use for it.
Katharevusa

SYLLABICATION: Ka·tha·rev·u·sa
PRONUNCIATION: käthä-rv-sä
NOUN: The puristic, archaizing form of Modern Greek, having morphological and lexical features borrowed from Koine.
ETYMOLOGY: Modern Greek kathareuousa, from Greek, feminine present participle of kathareuein, to be pure, from katharos, pure.
I do remember that there was a Christian heresy with
similar name in southern France in Middle Ages, viciously
exterminated.

The Cathar or Albigensian heresy was centred in southern France, mainly in the eastern areas of the Languedoc, between about 1000 and 1350. They believed that the world and everything in it was intrinsically evil. They believed that Christ was a ghost, nothing more. They also had some very weird, by Christian standards, views on religious observance (none) and the Church (fat and corrupt). What followed was a foregone conclusion, really.

The crusade and subsequent inquisition which put the heresy down was probably one of the worst that there has ever been, because it was essentially a civil war with one side convinced that no matter what happened they would triumph through spirituality, and the other basking in the warm approval of the Catholic Church as they butchered and burned, maimed, tortured and plundered. The real surprise is just how long it took the Church and the French between them to put it down.

The Languedoc was virtually depopulated in the process. Nearly everyone living there was either an Albigensian or a sympathiser according to the Church, which acted appropriately and obligingly killed most of them.

All jolly good fun!

Thanks for that Pfranz. Although I had read something of this in the past you inspired me to revisit it and I think I’ll delve further into it. It is a fascinating piece of religious and political history. Didn’t Lawrence Durrell use the gnostic heresies as a framework, or link, in his Avignon and Alexandria sets? (Avignon, cité des deux pâpes, with its unfinished bridge - charming! I had my first pizza there. It was awful.)

Some infobites I just found:

An illustration of the ferocity of the crusaders is that although the town of Béziers is believed to have held no more than 500 Cathars, over 10,000 citizens were killed. The instruction was to kill them all – God would recognise his own.

The name Albigensian is from the movements centre in Albi.

The Albigensians treated women as equals, an example of how deeply they had been affected by the devil!

Considering how the Cathars were treated by the church forces in their efforts to utterly expunge them from the face of the earth, it is tempting to think of a connection with the word ‘catharsis’, but there is none that I can find. Pity.

What happened in Béziers had its bloody echoes throughout the entire region. In some ways the crusading part of the suppression was better than the long drawn-out cat-and-mouse games played by the Inquisition before, during and after the actual "fighting". It was in the Languedoc that the Catholic church refined its methods of informing, denouncement, torture and auto-da-fé, used to such good effect throughout the rest of Europe for the next 400 years.

I've seen estimates which posit that a prosperous population of nearly 1.2 million in 1000 was reduced to less than 100,000, living in abject poverty, by 1330. The Black Death had little effect in the region in 1347/48 because the population was already so small and dispersed.

Personally, I don't believe the Catholic church's attitudes have changed one jot. The pronouncements that come out of the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - the former Sacred Congregation of the Universal Inquisition - are uncompromising once you dig past the modern persiflage. Let loose, they'd quite happily do it all over again!

off on a tangent.. i read 'timeline' (michael crition's book) and in the imaginary trip to the past, they visited what is present day france, whose inhabitance spoke Oc
the languge of oc.
and looking at the name of the 'people/area' i can't help but see langue d'oc (language of oc in french? or in Oc?)

i knew nothing about this period of france.. does anyone else?
a chunck of english comes from 'french'- and oc is old french.(i think)
we have enough german speakers, and word paths through high and low german have been discussed.. what about Oc and other form of french?

(PS, Capfka, i am sure you are right about RC authorities, i suspect they are as ruthless and cruel as any of the 'allahtola's' or other muslim leaders. they are held in check by democratic, or even totalitarian govermnemts who are often milder. theocracy is a cruel form of leadership.

religious fanatics, of what ever stripe are scary. Part of the reason i call myself a former catholic.)

Dear dxb: Here is a site that says catharsis means to purify:
http://www.consultsos.com/pandora/catharsi.htm

I have a vague memory that one of the differences between the two major mediaeval dialects of French was the word for yes, oc in the south, and oui in the north. Hence languedoc. I'm not sure what the connection with Occitan is. The modern name for the dialect?

There was a popular history of the Albigensian crusade back in the 1970s, called "Massacre at Montsegur" by Zoe Oldenbourg. That might tell you more, helen.

Bingley

Here's a link to a short, sharp description of Occitan:

http://www.beyond.fr/history/oc.html