According to the data provided in 2016 by the Polish Main Department of Statistics (Główny Urząd Statystyczny), the Buddhist Diamond Way Association of Karma Kagyu Lineage was one of ten most popular religions in Poland with more than 8200 adherents. Currently there are 19 officially registered Buddhist religious groups in Poland with ca. 14000 members, and what is noteworthy, this number increases in time, against the general declining trend, that can be observed in the majority of Polish religious groups. The article will show how Buddhism (which till the end of the 1960s. was practically unknown in Poland) became one of the most significant religious traditions in this country. It will present its constant development in the difficult times of anti-religious communist regime and in free Poland after 1989. It will also give an overview of various Buddhist traditions, that are active in Poland nowadays.

The article discusses the radical interpretation of Catharism which is getting more and more popular in the recent years. It’s adherents assume, that this heresy never existed for real in the regions of contemporary southern France, but was only a construct of the Catholic clergymen. In their opinion the image of well-organized and doctrinally consistent heresy was created by the Catho­lic polemists, basing on the ancient anti-heretical writings (mainly anti-man­ichaean scriptures of St. Augustine) and than it was imposed on the innocent people questioned during an inquisitorial procedure. The adherents of this interpretation (based on the interpretation of inquisitorial sources) propose a total change in the perception of Catharism, and writing it’s history anew, to fit a new paradigm—“Middle-Ages without Catharism.” The main aim of this article is to verify these revolutionary claims, basing on the analysis of the inquisitorial sources and to answer the following questions: Can we really say, that the image of Catharism in the inquisitorial sources is identical as in the Catholic polemics? Can we assume, that it was imposed on the interro­gated people by the inquisitors? And finally—is it really an image of the well‑organized counter-church?

Like the Angels in Heaven": The Attitude of Medieval Dualists (Bogomils and Cathars) towards Carnality and its Doctrinal Background The article rises a question of the attitude towards carnality in the religious doctrine and practice of medieval dualists (Bogomils and Cathars). Its main aim is to answer the questions: why did the adherents of these heresies consider sexual intercourse as the worst of all the sins? What was the doctrinal justification of such position and how did it determine their attitude towards women, marriage and procreation? The article also shows how this severe condemnation of sexuality influenced the ways of life of the cathar perfects, and what the simple believers (credentes) thought about it.

The issue of the Bosnian church – or more precisely the dualist heresy in Bosnia – has caused serious controversies among scholars since the 19th century. The main aim of this paper is to shed new light on this controversial issue, through the analysis of the doctrine of Slavonic dualism (ordo Sclavoniae) based on Western sources. The subject of the analysis will be the sources concerning the contacts of the Cathars from France and Italy with the heretics from Sclavonia and especially the sources containing information on the doctrine, such as the 13th-century Italian sources presenting the doctrines of the Cathars belonging to ordo Sclavoniae (Cathar churches of Bagnolo and March de Treviso) and later, 14th and 15th-century sources presenting the teachings of the heretics from Bosnia. The aim of the analysis will be to reconstruct the doctrines of Slavonic dualism (ordo Sclavoniae) in order to find its distinctive features (especially comparing with two main forms of Bogomil-Cathar dualism – Bulgarian and Drugunthian) and to answer the following question: which doctrinal conceptions had the most significant influence on its formation? Knowledge concerning the sources of inspiration for the dualist doctrine of the ordo Sclavoniae will enable us to draw conclusions concernin the origins of Slavonic dualism, its evolution and to assume an attitude towards scholars’ conceptions concerning the character of the Bosnian heresy.

Some scholars, following a deconstructivist interpretation of Catharism (which denies the existence of Catharism as dualistic heresy, or at least diminishes the significance of dualism as its distinctive feature) propose a hypothesis which assumes that Cathar dualism was not an idea imported from the East (from the earlier dualist traditions, especially from Bogomilism), but that it emerged independently in the West, later than it is reported by the sources, as an effect of specific scriptural exegesis developed in the dissidents' schools. The main aim of this article is to verify, through the analysis of Biblical exegesis, this hypothesis, on which the myth of the fall-crucial for the dualist doctrine-was built. Based on various sources, both polemical and created by the Cathars themselves, it reconstructs biblical foundations of this crucial myth in two main branches of Catharism: the moderate and the radical (within the latter in two of its options: the angelic doctrine, and the doctrine of the two worlds), comparing them to the analogical exegetical concepts developed earlier by the Bogomils.