The name most people use for the medieval Good Christians of Languedoc first appears in a hostile sermon written in the Rhineland around 1163. In this opening episode, Rob traces where the word "Cathar" came from, sets it beside the names used in a surviving Occitan ritual and in inquisition testimony (good men, good Christians, the Church of God), and lays out the live scholarly debate over whether "Catharism" was an organized church or a label imposed from outside. We end with Jesus' question in Mark 8 and an honest note on why a modern project calls itself New Cathars.

Sources: Eckbert of Schönau, Sermones contra Catharos (c. 1163); Occitan Cathar Ritual (Lyon PA 36, RIALTO ed.); Bernard Gui, Inquisitor's Manual; Jacques Fournier register (SJSU trans.); Book of the Two Principles; A. Sennis (ed.), Cathars in Question (2016). Full source ledger available on request.

Welcome to New Cathars, a historical, educational, and forward-looking Christian podcast that is Christ first and Gospel focused. Host Rob sets out to recover the medieval Good Christians of southern France through surviving Cathar texts, inquisitorial records, Catholic sources, and modern scholarship, offering history when history can answer, evidence when evidence survives, and "we do not know" when it does not. Year One moves through four quarters, Recover, Investigate, Witness, and Move Forward, with new five-to-eight-minute episodes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. Start with Episode 001, "Who Were the Cathars?"