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.