The Château de Puilaurens, one of the Cathar castles of the Languedoc region. Photo: Jan Hazevoet / flickr CC.
Cathars and Quakers
Kris Misselbrook considers the similarities between two dissenting religious societies
by Kris Misselbrook
23rd January 2015
Cathars and Quakers both grew from a strong desire to find a personal spiritual reality. This, in many ways, reflected that of the earliest Christians and was not found in the orthodox church. Both met with persecution. It is more a product of their different historical times that the Cathars were ruthlessly eradicated in the twelfth century while the Quakers survived persecution in the seventeenth and continue today.
