Hello, all -- Sorry I'm late to this discussion of Cathar(e)s, everyone. I've been preoccupied with other aspects of my life this week and have only now had time for a quick look at all the posts on the subject so far. I may have missed some of the discussion so if I repeat what's already been said, my apologies. As some of you have mentioned, this subject is not the focus of HWE but, nevertheless, it has come up on the list before. That was several years ago (2000-2002, I think). At that time, it was discussed briefly as befits a topic not relating to Huguenots/Walloons. If anyone wants to find those past messages, though, look in the HWE Searchable Archives, using Cathar as a keyword. For those of you who want to learn about Catharisme in more depth, a search engine should find the info for you. For example, there's quite a bit here: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cathares. However, it's en français. Anyway, if anyone wants to continue this discussion, you'll have to relate it in some way to Huguenots/Walloons. As others have already pointed out, there is no relationship between these two groups so perhaps that should be the approach to take, eg. the Cathars were such-and-such, but on the other hand, unlike the Cathars, the Huguenot/Walloons were.....etc. If we continue further into a lengthy discussion of only Cathars, then this becomes the Cathar list. Which it obviously is not. (I say all this at the risk of being labelled, as I see I was a few days ago, as a watch dog with a whip. On the other hand, it appears from my quick scan of incoming messages that others have recently called me cute, sweet and wonderful so I guess that balances things out <smile>. In reality, I am somewhere in the middle of those two extremes of opinion.) Giselle's question about whether there is another forum (ie, mailing list or message board) where one can discuss Cathars was a good one. As was Tony's quick action to establish such a Board on the Rootsweb site. I was able to find only a few mentions of Cathars on some French surname Message Boards using the search engine here, but no actual Board or list for the topic of Cathars. http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec/script/main/rw I also checked the mailing lists on John Fuller's more comprehensive website (Genealogy Resources on the Internet) here http://www.rootsweb.com/~jfuller/gen_mail.html but again came up with nothing. I also cannot understand Rootsweb turning down a Cathar Board. If snake handlers living in one small part of the planet can have a Board (and they do, see here: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec?htx=board&r=rw&p=topics.religious.ekysnakeh listed under the topic of Religions and Religious) then why not Cathars?. Rootsweb has all sorts of mailing lists & boards on all sorts of topics, by the way. Religions and Religious is just of them. See here for Board topics: http://boards.ancestry.com/mbexec?htx=board&r=rw&p=topics and here for lists (scroll past the International lists category) http://lists.rootsweb.com/. Lastly, if anyone needs it, info on how to access the HWE archives is here: http://www.island.net/~andreav/archives.htm. So, to sum up, carry on with Cathar(e)s **as long as you can relate it to the list topic of Huguenots/Walloons**. If you can't, then please save it for an upcoming (hopefully) Cathar Message Board. By the way, I really appreciated that, in all the recent chat, practically everyone took the time to delete previous messages in their replies. Bravo! Andrea (HWE list concierge)

Hi Andrea, I took the trouble to have a look at your snake-handlers. I wouldn't want to comment on the beliefs involved - none of my business - but it looks to me as if there is a very obvious genealogical interest for the people involved. The lady trying to trace a magazine article with a photo of her great-grandmother handling a snake - if that's not family history I don't know what is. The Cathares are another question. Starting from the point that they didn't believe in marriage or baptism and left no paperwork whatsoever, anybody who wants to deal with them as family history is on a hiding to nothing. There may have been survivors and they may have left descendants... but how do you prove it ? OK, the Cathares are fun... but are they genealogy ? Why not Knights Templar while we're at it, with a bit of Holy Grail thrown in - must be some descendants of Mary Magdelene out there somewhere :-) HTH Peter (not Leroy, the other one)