Roots of modern Christianity

[muckefuck]

"I have heard tell that there is a paradise, and I believe it. I have heard tell that there is a hell, but, that, I neither believe nor deny. I believe that there is a paradise because that is a good thing, from what I hear, but I do not believe nor deny hell, because that is an evil thing." (Testimony of Grazida Lizier of Montaillou, as translated by Dr Nancy Stork and reproduced here.)

Comments

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

If you're an ingenue who lives in the sticks in 14th century France, apparently so.

[lhn.livejournal.com]

Especially in the sticks of a hotbed of Albigensianism lately reclaimed by orthodoxy. I don't remember if disbelief in hell was a Cathar thing. (I think maybe, on the grounds that the Devil/Demiurge's domain was the material world so that there was no need for another one, but it's been a while since I read about it.) But the widespread local distrust in church doctrine (and the clergy itself) that led to Montaillou going Albigensian was almost certainly a factor.