From the Greek kazaros (pure), the word Cathars was used to designate heretical groups from Antiquity; but, from the Middle Ages onward, the term was reserved for a particular form of dualist heresy which, with Eastern roots, developed in the West in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. History. The Cathar phenomenon arose in the West in the twelfth century as a result of the influence of dualist ideas coming from the Balkans (see BOGOMILS; BULGARIA III and V) upon preexisting popular evangelical and anti-hierarchical movements (see APOSTOLICS; WALDENSIANS; LOMBARD POOR; BEGUINES AND BEGHARDS; ARNOLD OF BRESCIA), which called for a poor and itinerant Church possessed by a radical contempt for the world. In particular Peter of Bruys, a former Provençal cleric who from 1105 preached “the uselessness of churches, indulgences, suffrages for the dead, Baptism and the Eucharist, as well as the obligation to hate the Cross”, may be considered “an important antecedent, a true precursor and clearer of the ground for Catharism” (L. Cencillo, op. cit. in bibl., 533). In the historical development of the Cathars we can distinguish three periods: beginning, radicalism and decline, which coincide with the successive predominance of the three Bogomil creeds: Bulgarian (moderate dualism), Dragovitsa (radical dualism) and Bosnian (intermediate and conciliatory). The initial period begins with the arrival in the West of the first Bogomil ideas (from the Bulgarian branch). Around 1143 they established themselves in Cologne, and shortly thereafter organized centers existed in Liège and Champagne, from where they spread throughout France, receiving the name Albigensians (see). Their propagators were chiefly weavers and cloth merchants, together with a good number of apostate clerics and some nobles (especially ladies of the Provençal nobility). In France they organized themselves hierarchically and sent missions to northern Italy and the Rhine valley, reaching as far as England and Spain. At the end of this initial period there were two main Cathar zones: Provence, where the heresy took hold in all social classes, and Lombardy. In 1167 the Dragovitsa bishop of Constantinople, Niketas, traveled through northern Italy and southern France, where, after convening the first Cathar council, he obtained acceptance of the Dragovitsa creed (radical dualist). From that moment the Cathars, who in the eyes of many had been regarded as just one more of the many contemporary popular reform movements, took shape as an independent religion, opposed in everything to the Christian Church. At the same time their organization increased, they became legally more complex, and they undertook economic, industrial and commercial activities of considerable scale, which gave them a specific physiognomy distinct from that of their Eastern predecessors, the Bogomils. The decline, which begins at the end of the twelfth century, rests on the increase of these tendencies toward growing embourgeoisement and is consolidated by the persecutions of the thirteenth century. In France, the flourishing Provençal community was reduced to an underground existence by the crusade approved by Innocent III (see) and carried out by Simon de Montfort (see ALBIGENSIANS), and it finally disappeared completely at the beginning of the fourteenth century. In Italy, the repressive laws of Frederick II (see) and the creation of the Inquisition by Gregory IX (see) reduced the phenomenon, first confining it to the great cities, where the Cathars could pass more easily unnoticed, until their traces disappeared around 1320.
Doctrine.
The original and fundamental concern is to find a convincing explanation for the problem of Evil. To solve it they resort to dualism (see). There are two principles: one good (God) and one evil (Satan). For the moderate dualists (Bulgarians), Satan is the Son of God, whereas for the radicals (Dragovitsa) he is an independent and all-powerful god. Although it is not sufficiently clear, it seems that they admitted a certain divinity of the Son and of the Holy Spirit. The doctrines are not homogeneous in the various sects and undergo notable evolutions over time. Nevertheless, there are some points that, in general terms, may be considered constant: “the world proceeds from the devil; rejection of the Sacraments; condemnation of Marriage; denial of the resurrection of the flesh; prohibition of eating meat, eggs and dairy products; rejection of the oath; prohibition against temporal authority punishing heretics; denial of purgatory; impossibility of salvation outside their church” (P. Brezzi, op. cit. in bibl., 1088). In man good and evil (spirit and matter) are joined; the soul is a fallen angel that transmigrates from one existence to another until, initiated into the sect, it is redeemed; the body is the prison of the soul, and the latter must free itself by means of a harsh asceticism. Christ was neither God nor man: he was an angel adopted by God who took an apparent body (see DOCETISM); his mission was to teach the existence of a good spiritual principle that dwells in heaven and within each person; death on the cross has no meaning. They reject the O. T. as the work of Satan.
Asceticism, organization and rites.
The sin par excellence is the angelic fall, the apostasy from Heaven, and all other sins are physically and necessarily chained to it. In this life the only sin consists in subjection to the world, and the basic moral principle is abstention from the world. Works have no value at all; only interior illumination saves. “As in Gnosticism and Manichaeism, so too among the Cathars salvation and perfection are confused: without a perfect life, of extreme ascetic rigor and absolute renunciation of the world, there can be no morality, since all actions affected under the yoke of the world are poisoned at their root” (L. Cencillo, op. cit., 544). Two groups of adherents are distinguished: believers and perfects. The former led a lax and immoral life, hoping to be saved in articulo mortis by the application of the consolamentum. They were not initiated into the Cathar dogmas and in worship occupied a passive role. Their chief obligation was the care, lodging and feeding of the perfects, as well as their defense and concealment. The perfects were constituted by the laying on of hands or consolamentum of a previous perfect; they led a wandering life and were obliged to celibacy and rigorous fasting or endura. The female perfects usually lived in community. The bishops, elected by the perfects, had two assistants: the filius maior (with right of succession) and the filius minor. The parishes were governed by deacons. Although they practiced no ritual sacrifice, they had other rites: a) prayer, especially the Our Father, which they repeated about 250 times a day, and in which they changed panem quotidianum to panem supersubstantialem; b) consolamentum, or rite of entry into the sect by laying on of hands, which turned a believer into a perfect; melioramentum, or invocation by the believers to the perfects asking for their intercession before God; servitium, or assembly with reading of the Gospel and sermon by a perfect; breaking of bread; and aparellamentum, or public confession of sins. Conclusion. As Cencillo states, “once the Cathar movement had disappeared, its traces remained in the transformation of the medieval physiognomy of the West, and this in three directions. In the first place, through its banking practice it contributed to the disintegration of Christian economic ethics in the dehumanized and religiously neutral sense of modern capitalism. In the second place, it was the first wedge of institutionalized religious indifferentism, because of its deist and physicalist spirituality, introduced into the Christian West. In the third place, it cast the first seed of legalist naturalism that would bear full fruit in the Enlightenment” (ibid., 552). See also: ALBIGENSIANS; BOGOMILS.
BIBL.: Sources: A. DONDAINE, Le «Liber de duobus principiis» suivi d’un fragment de Rituel Cathare, Rome 1939; E. CUNITZ, Ein Katharisches Ritual, Jena 1852; PETER THE VENERABLE, Tractatus adversus Petrobrusianos, in PL 189,719-850; E. SCHÖNAUGIENSIS, Sermones XIII contra Catharos in PL 195,11-102; BONACURSUS, Manifestatio Haeresis Catharorum, in PL 204,775-792.
Author: José María Revuelta
Source: Gran Enciclopedia Rialp
