Yes. This is why the crusade is divine. However the Cathars can be divine as well.
Cheers,
Xavi
I think you misunderstand what Divine is. Its beliefs do not have to be uniform, nor does the Bible have anything to do with it. If you had a monotheist religion that encouraged human sacrifice for the greater glory of God, it'd still be Divine. The Flying Spaghetti Monster would be Divine, if anyone in Mythic Europe believes in Him. 
And even if you cannot accept to go that far, the Crusade can still be Divine. War can be Divine even is war crimes aren't.
Ahem... so what you are saying here so what really defines the Divine is if you act for the greater good, like starting a crusade to rout out the heretics, and only worship one God you belong to the Divine Realm. It could be Divine (Spaghetti Monster)? And if you are evil and act selfishly but still only worship one entity you could be belong to the Realm Infernal (Spaghetti Monster) - that in fact is hostile to the Divine (Spaghetti Monster) even though both persons are worshipping the same entity but for different reasons?
I am not sure I am entirely satisfied with this answer but I can accept the idea that Divine (Gnostic) does not work with Divine (Roman). The Crusade against the Cathars is indeed a very holy affair and when Arnaud-Armaury said "Neca ecos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet." he was in fact not influenced by demons (as suggested in ArM4) but just following the will of the Divine (Roman) God. We could actually skip the four Realms. Realms come up on the fly and interact with each other according to the beliefs of their users. Polytheistic Realms however accept all goods and powers and can be used by everyone and are not hostile to each other at least not by the numbers, but as soon as you single out one god and declare the others heathen you are turning Divine (or Infernal). Or are you, by singling out one supernatural entity over another actually creating a cosmic imbalance that bust be filled with an evil counterpart? If we worship only God on one side we get a Saklas, Satan or a Set on the other side like it or not? I am getting to like this idea, though.
We will get another problem, though. If this theory is correct it will not be too hard for Hermetic Magi to discover it just by aura checking. Why would they be Divine (Roman) at all and not just stick to agnosticism or polytheism? Perhaps Divine (Roman) with the Holy Trinity, the Mother of God and all the saints is preferably to an absolute monotheism such as Judaism or Islam?
My observation about AM5 has nothing to do with "greater good" and is all about living a personally virtuous life.
If your Abigensian Crusaders murder civilians, for example, that is not good. I realize that in the 21st postmodern society we're used to saying its all relative, but in Mythic Europe it's really not. Do you lie, cheat, steal, and murder? Then you're not good, you are evil. It doesn't matter why you do these things. You can say you are doing it for "the greater good," but in Mythic Europe and AM5, this is not relevant. What matters is your behavior. If your Crusaders do bad things, they are bad and are going to Hell. If your Cathars are peaceful, humble, and charitable, they are going to Heaven.
You may decide in your game that most Christians are mean, selfish, wicked people. And you may decide that most of the Cathars are good. Even if 90% of all "Roman" Christians are wicked, the good ones still outnumber the Cathars.
The other writers in this thread are correct when they say that nothing in the Realms or rules have to change to accommodate Divine Cathars and Divine Christians existing in the same Mythic Europe. Good Christians do not slaughter peaceful civilians. That is not the sort of behavior that gets you into the Divine. The Albigensian Crusade is an example of Christian excess, of the language of the Divine being used for very non-Divine ends.
No, I think you in fact use 21th interpretation of Christianity here. It was not until the last century that the Pope actually asked forgiveness for the Crusades and it was a crime to be of the wrong faith in Europe as long as in the 19th century (perhaps longer). If you go by Deuteronomy 13:12-18 (as I mentioned before) murdering people who are of the wrong faith is actually commanded by God - and this passage was actually used by the Catholic authorities in order to conduct the Crusade. Perhaps the Crusaders were mistaken when they actually took the Cathars for heretics but they might have acted for the love of the true Church. You might say that in Mythic Europe the Old Testament actually got it wrong but it is quite clear in the New Testament that the unfaithful (i.e civilians and non-civilians) should be "brought down to hell" on the Day of Judgement (Matthew 11:23-24)
Even if you go by the core rules in ArM, being "peaceful, humble, and charitable" with not send you to Heaven if you are aligned to another Realm, say Magic (Paganism).
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I've done my best to help, Jakob. It sounds like you know what you want to do in your story, and that's good. I hope it works out.
The current stance of the line is that all "do good stuff" monotheistic religions are partially right (and somewhat wrong as well) and defined as Divine. As such you can have 2 Divine-aligned forces fighting each other out and considering the other side to be wrong and heretics that need to burn in hell. None of the sides is wrong.
Cheers,
Xavi
Jakob, in game, during Crusades Muslim and Christian angels have been seen fighting by people on the ground (because, in real history, this was reported during the Reconquista).
The Divine isn't self-consistent, beyond a vague preference for monotheists, but it allows them to be three of one nature, or to franchise out to saints. This isn't "belief defines reality" so much as God not being fussy about detail. As to being able to do Divine things while doing horrible things, well, Biblically Joshua seems to be ordered to commit genocide, so, sure, under certain conditions miracles which kill babies for example, like Moses, are allowed.
God is Good, but God is not Nice in Mythic Europe.
Pagans are not aligned to magic: they worship faeries.
Magi know that both sides get Divine aura, because Divine aura can be felt in the Gift. How they respond differs, because that's an interesting observation, bhut what you take from it is very dependent on your underlying theology. Agnosticism (doubting the existence of God) seems odd as a response, but some magi arE doubtful about particular creeds. House Tremere for exammple.
Generally true. But I don't think that RAW states everything that mainstream Christianity defines as pagan is necessarily faerie. After all, there is a whole Infernal Order of False Gods (i.e. infernal derived paganism).
Of course, in-character Christian belief probably doesn't see much difference between magic and faerie, even if it sometimes manages to see a difference between magic and infernalism.
Sort of, but I don't think that is quite true.
Being a mainstream Christian in Mythic Europe means following an interpretation of the bible and the canons of the Church. And mainstream Christianity is supported by the Divine. So, following a biblical interpretation and the church canons gets you to heaven (although it isn't the only way, even if mainstream Christians believe that it is).
Crusade is supported by an interpretation of the bible and canon law. So, at first glance, crusaders appear headed for heaven. However, the story is a bit more complicated than that.
When you look at particular details, although the church is generally supported by the Divine, it is possible in Mythic Europe, that some particular canons and biblical interpretations are wrong (even though the church believes that they are right). Which are wrong and which are right is really up to your saga, not the RAW.
A further complication, of course, is that in-character (and in historic fact) the church's interpretation of the bible and canons change with time. The church doesn't have a static view of the details of what is right and wrong, even if it is generally consistent in the broad sweep. Thinking about the example of the Albigensian Crusade, it is important to note that the pope who declared the crusade (Innocent III) is not the pope in 1220 (Honorius III). Honorius III inherited the Albigensian Crusade, in much the same way that President Obama inherited wars in Afghanistan and Iraq from President Bush II. The church in 1220 is notably less enthusiastic about the Albigensian Crusade than the church in 1209, when it was declared.
You have to be quite careful when describing what medieval Cathars actually believed. Practically everything actually known about medieval Cathars is what the Latin church wrote about them, which was mostly written in the context of trials and confessions. Some of these Latin authors were Cathars who had converted to the Latin church, but nonetheless it is a bit like trying to decode what 20th Century American capitalism was based on a transcript of Gary Power's espionage trial in the Soviet Union.
Notably, characters with Sense Holiness & Unholiness can also sense it, and according to RoPD angels can also automatically detect the Aura alignment. So it seems to me that the Church, and other religious organizations, should know that their opponents are actually Divine, or at least register as such. Especially since the angels presumably also know the other side's angels are in Heaven and indeed some angels seemingly serve both sides.
It thus seems to me that the Divine has to be broken. My favorite way to do this is to maintain that the Divine is hidden even from the Divine Host, which is as fractured and schismatic as the earthly religions - indeed, perhaps schisms within the Host are what leads to the schisms and new Divine religions on earth, rather than the other way around, at least sometimes. So you can end up with angels fighting each other, even though both are in Heaven, and with them helping and guiding the faithful and their priests to war against fellow Divine factions.
I like the suggestion from up-thread that you can literally split up the Divine into warring auras/realms, each seeing the others as Infernal. This would really allow the Cathars to see the Pope as Infernal, and opens up interesting ways to think about Satan's "Infernal" agenda - perhaps painting him in a not-so-evil light. But this goes against the RAW and existing setting, and there is something to be said for keeping the Infernal truly evil and the Divine truly good (from a roleplaying perspective).
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Just because something identifies as Holy it doesn't follow that the character thinks it is a correct way to worship the Divine. The Latin church recognises that Greek churches are holy, but they are still wrong.
Angels will also recall that the Archangel Lucifer once served in Heaven's Host.
Even if I differ on some matters you are helping, thank you.
What survives from the interrogations sums pretty well up with basic gnostic beliefs. I think we can say that we have a good picture on Cathar beliefs - at least good enough for game purposes.
But we have a problem here as I have pointed out before. If the Cathars recognizance St. Peter's Basilica as an Infernal aura and say Montségur as holy, and the Roman Christians do vice versa - what exactly will a magus who is neither Gnostic nor christian feel?
With "agnostic" I ment a person who admits he doesn't know... a magus may of course know that there is something but not what it is. If both Islam, Christendom and Gnosticism manifest a Divine aura and they still call each other infernal heretics he should conclude that no one has the full truth.
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Well, is he a Gnostic, a Roman Christian, someone who thinks god may just be a big faerie, or someone who thinks that God is just the end of time pulling the world back to completion? What he feels is based on who he is, and if your player's pose is that his character is utterly and mechanically detached, then in that case I posit he feels absolutely nothing because he's spiritually dead. What you feel is governed by what you feel, emotivistly about the sides.
I think you are hitting a point here. But then we should actually have different Divine Auras depending on belief. Holy places and objects only work for the one actually believing in it. The bones from a saint will not work as a relic for Divine gnosticism and the Great Mosque of Córdoba will not have a Divine Roman Christian aura until it was converted into a Church (the Divine Islam Aura might linger though). I don't think I would actually rule that a Mosque will have a negative impact on a Christian, even though he may feel it and consider it unholy, I just wont work. All types of Divine Auras will have a negative effect on other Auras though. An antideistic magus will feel a Divine Aura, he might (?) feel a difference but they will all be the same. A theistic magus Hermetic spells will be affected just the same but if he for some reason has supernatural powers linked to the Divine those powers will benefit. He will like and favour the Divine aura type he believes in. I would not rule out that a devout Christian may suddenly feel that Divine Islam actually feels better and convert and vice versa.
In the Gospel of Judas 43:12-44:14 Jesus informs Judas that whose who follow the other apostles will not go to the real heaven but will be reborn again to the world. They may also end up in the false heaven of Saklas but they will never ascend to the Real Heaven where the highest God resides. Perhaps this is true in Mythic Europe - you will go to the Heaven you believe in or you may be reborn and get another chance?
Personally, I wouldn´t part the divine realm in single religions.
I think, one of the invaluable things concerning the way Ars Magica handles the Devine is the potential for reconciliation. What do you have to think, when you see, that your own faith is in the grace of god but the faith of the enemy is it, too? You become unsure and have to think again. Some of the best stories from the middle ages include a moral dilemma like this.
Think of Francis of Assisi. He starts as juvenile ne´er-do-well, some years later he wants to fight for a knight in papal service, then he has his vision and becomes the saint we all know. In the holy land he wants to convert the sultan, but fighting him is foreign to Francis state of existence now. His second goal is Martyrdom, his third is to cause peace. This is a crusade, Francis doesn´t do, what the pope is expecting from his crusaders and nevertheless Francis is clearly a person with true faith. This comes, because Francis has - at least for himself and his brethren - different ideas of life agreeable to god than the crusaders.
If you have a roman divine aura and a cathar divine aura and an islamic divine aura there is nothing opposed to endless struggle. The goal is victory. The better stories my group is telling are not about endless struggle and victory (at least not only). They are about firm beliefs going shattered. Hence I like this indissoluble dilemma in the rules about the divine. You can´t be too sure what it means to be good. If you are, you are pride - just another sin.
Chiarina.
Interesting discussion.
IMS, the divine is not able to be split - no Angels warring in heaven in 1220 at least.
I figure that opposed divine sides happen pretty often; but that in the process of war, the ability to call on the power of the divine against other divine forces is usually equal - meaning that those who number more or are more tactically sound are the ones who are the winners, rather than who is more in touch with the divine. Most epic powerful divine casters wouldn't be caught near a battle other than in a healing capacity anyway.
One thing that I try to do is have the Divine as acting as a subtle force to keep history as is. It's not too powerful, but I'm not going to change the outcome of a historical battle because one side theoretically has more Divine power. It's magic and faerie that skew that stuff.
Ideas I run with -
- A muslim warrior calls upon Allah to grant him strength in battle. A western warrior calls on Michael the Archangel to do much the same thing. So it equals itself out. I don't inherently believe one side is more religious (or supported by the divine) by the other. The day is won by who is more tactically sound or better at fighting.
The only problem is for the warrior monks, who can generate some serious divine aid totals. I assume they are countered by a relatively similar group on the other side, however.
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A Teutonic Knight calls on Divine Aid vs. a pagan. The pagan might have some help from some faeries. Overall.. unless PC's are involved, the historical battles happen as they do. I might add in more giants or pyrotechnics, but overall not much different.
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As wars happen and horrid choices made, the actual ability to summon the Divine is lessened as more and more of the players are in a state of sin; A Crusade may very well start with Divine aid, but as the crusaders do more sinful acts, it loses its divine aid. It may not ever gain Infernal, but it may well not have the bonuses it used to. (Also good showing that Crusades have an awesome start, get bloody, then die off usually.)
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My Angels are involved heavily in saving the souls of people, rather than physical bodies, so they will very, very rarely manifest themselves in an arse-kicking style unless the infernal is involved.