Within medieval Europe, a new power was rising. A heresy had infiltrated the hierarchy of the Catholic Church almost to the very top, and begun what would become a centuries-long campaign of altering the Church’s original teachings to make them conform to its own. Today best know as penitent movements , the somewhat bizarre public spectacles they continue to display on the streets of Europe were originally but smokescreens as to the movement’s true doctrine, which was based on a Babylonian cult of the dead.