Sublime

It was the end of Catharism in the Languedoc. What Believers there were left had all been forced to confess and recant. There were to be no more consolings, or ‘holy baptisms’, as the ritual of the consolamentum phrased it, a tradition which, the Cathars believed, had come down to them ‘from the time of the apostles until this time and it has

Saint Isidore of Seville came from one of the old Hispano-Roman elite families who thrived under the Visigoths. He was a churchman, politician, theologian, cornerstone of the early medieval church and incorrigible collector of wisdom. Isidore’s achievements are so vast that, were his work not still available, it might be thought the stuff of

Roman Catholic,

The political cunning of the Jesuits makes plain that they are no innocents. Worse, they openly pray for the damnation of their enemies, such as the author of the Provincials. One wonders if those who pray that others might go to hell ever had any interest in the salvation of souls in the first place. For Pascal, the word that most properly