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Welcome to the History Extra Podcast.

Fascinating historical conversations from the makers of BBC History magazine.

Denounced as heretics by the Catholic Church.

The Cathars were an offshoot Christian movement

which emerged in southern Europe during the 12th century.

But what was it about their beliefs that was so outrageous to the Orthodox medieval church?

And how was their existence so quickly snuffed out.

Speaking to Emily Brifford for today's podcast, historian Claire Taylor reveals more

about the Cathar's way of life and the efforts made to suppress them.

Hi Claire, thank you so much for joining me on the History Extra podcast.

Hi Emily, thanks very much for having me.

So we are going to be delving into listener questions all about the Cathars.

Now, my first question for you to start us off is, can you give us sort of the top line chart topping hits of who were the Cathars?

Okay, well as we might expand on it's a slightly contentious question, but the big sort of established picture is that they were a group of people who were extremely dangerous to the Catholic church and they lived mainly in southern France and in

northern Italy which we call Lombardy southern France we call the

...