Were there other Christian religions beside Catholic in the Middle Ages?
There were small groups which split from Catholicism and mainly died out, like the Cathars, who actually have a pretty interesting, but very heretical, belief system. Look them up if you ever have time. But there were no non-Catholic or Orthodox European Christian groups that modern historians seem to be aware of. Catholicism was practiced differently in different parts of Europe during these periods and the sucession of Popes was incredibly convoluted and politically, well, just bizzare. (Google 3 Popes for an absolutely wierd history of a time when there were 3 competing Popes. It was a pretty dark time for Christianity.) The thing is that Christianity was brought to Europe by Catholics, so Christian Europeans were Catholic or Catholic-off shoots(ex Cathar), until the reformation. The main European Christian denominations today remain either Catholic, Orthodox or one of the branches that left during the reformation (ex. Lutheran, Anglican). The evangelical movement is a new, North Am
That is an affirmative. However, those substantially existing religions shared many important points of doctrine, and the main point of contention was one of authority or the divinity of Christ. The groups were: The Catholic Church, with progressing divide between the Eastern and Western parts of the Church (the split in 1054 A.D. is not quite as clean as history books make it out to be, as there were intermittent periods of reconciliation between the Eastern and Western Church until about 1200 or so). There were a few points of doctrinal contention, but these were mostly fueled by political contentions (and not theological contentions) between the East and the West. Eventually the Orthodox would arise as a separately functioning entity from this progressing split. (not in Europe) The Coptic Church (in Northern Africa – split in the 600’s). (not in Europe) A Church started (according to tradition) by St. Thomas in India (which had largely lost contact with the rest of the church after
