Here’s a title for you: “Inquisitor General of the Faith.” Yup. Today’s saint, a man from the 1200s named Peter, was raised in a household of heretics. His parents, so we read in Butler, were Cathari–part of a heretical sec that, for a time, flourished in areas of present-day southern France and northern Italy. Until, that is, they were subject to Inquisition and then to massacre at the hand of papal-commanded inquisitors and armies (back when popes could direct such activities).

From extant, albeit incomplete, records, Catharism was a catch-all descriptor used to describe people who (1) dared to insist that they were Christian and (2) dared to say that Rome was not the boss of them or their beliefs. Granted, they were not mainstream in any of their convictions (for example, they believed that there were two gods–the evil one of the Old Testament and the good one of the New Testament–and they believed that human beings were angels trapped by the evil god inside of human shells), but the real reason that the Cathari were so despised is not for their theologies but for their challenge to Rome’s monopoly on who could or could not call themselves Christian.

The worst sin committed by the Cathari was to give people in France and Italy the idea that they didn’t need to obey someone that they never met, never voted for, never supported, and were never supported by. They gave people the idea that it was ok to gravitate toward teachings and ideas that appealed to them rather than to those that had been thrust upon them. Maybe, even, the Cathari made religion and god-talk interesting…precisely because it wasn’t the same ol’ same ol’!

So enter Peter. And enter the Inquisition–which had already begun to specifically target the Cathari (which included his own family) and within which Peter was elevated to “Inquisitor General.” A saint, eh?