Heresies:

CATHARISM

Medieval Dualism & Its Discontents:

A Study Of Cathar Dualism And Its Eschatological Vision Of Reform

by Jeff Brown - 5/1/03

In 1803, English-speakers adapted the word “catharsis” from the Greek word katharsis, which means “purging” or “cleansing.” The Greek root of katharsis is katharsos, (literally, “throughout the whole”—that is, “utterly clean” or “pure”). Interestingly, when we speak of a “cathartic” experience wherein we feel cleansed and (etymologically) thereby “made pure,” we are borrowing the same Greek root (katharsos) that lent itself to one of the Catholic Church’s most dangerous medieval heresies—the Cathars (literally, the “pure ones”).[1] Though the Cathars have, of late, received a tremendous amount of scholarly attention[2] because they were the primary impetus for Innocent III’s Albigensian Crusade in Languedoc, we will, in this paper, treat the Catholic response to the Cathars as an ulterior phenomenon. As we explore the dualism expressed in Cathar eschatology, however, we will posit several reasons why Catharism was so threatening to the Church and in so doing, conjecture grounds for the appeal of dualism.[3] Our fundamental premise, then, will contend that dualism is appealing as a metaphysical formulation of social discontent when expressed in eschatological language because it has the power not only to challenge but also to change the status quo.

Before beginning, we would do well to discuss a few of the terms we will somewhat anachronistically be applying to the Cathars. Strictly speaking, the medieval Cathars did not see themselves as “dualists,” since the term “dualism” was not coined until 1700.[4] Consequently, our use of the term in this paper will serve as a scholarly (as opposed to a confessional or ideological) convention for discussing the religious ideas of Catharism. According to the Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, dualism comes to English from the Latin duo, or “two” and can designate “any view that is constituted by two basic or fundamental principles such as spirit and matter or good and evil.”[5] Dualism thus came to be applied to any pair of opposites: good and evil, hot and cold, or even male and female. In our post-Enlightenment age, the word “dualism” has necessarily developed many nuances and categorical differentiations. Of the many types of philosophic dualism, then, our chief interest will involve religious dualism by which we mean any belief or system of belief that emphasizes the cosmic battle between good and evil.[6] As we proceed, we will note further definitional subtleties within the broader context of religious dualism.

In addition to the many types of dualism, our discussion will necessitate a related[7] but brief discussion of metaphysics. Traditionally, metaphysics is the branch of philosophy that attempts to understand and describe the nature of ultimate reality.[8] By the time of the Cathars in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, however, the medieval Scholastic philosophers were employing the word “metaphysics” to connote anything that transcended material reality. The Scholastics thus regarded metaphysics as a kind of “transphysical science,” believing that philosophy might thereby “make the transition from the physical world to a world beyond sense perception.”[9] True to the medieval zeitgeist, Cathar cosmology employed metaphysics as the primary means of understanding the nature of God and the universe to the exclusion of material existence. When, therefore, we speak of a metaphysical formulation of social discontent, we mean that Catharism was restlessly grappling with the Promethean constraints of an uncertain and harsh everyday existence while simultaneously pointing toward an individual eschatology[10] theologically expressed as the meeting of a “good death.”

But what, specifically, was a “good death”? We should, rather, ask why the Cathars did not emphasize the importance of a “good life.” The eversion here is admittedly aphoristic, but it is also poignant, because it illustrates the translation of Cathar hope to the afterlife.[11] The “good life” for a Cathar was, therefore, a “good death.” For many laypeople, death was a remedy for an all-too short and difficult life. In twelfth and thirteenth century medieval Europe, however, the problem of vacant benefices had grown to outrageous proportions. At the end of one’s life, when it was vital that a minister of the gospel be present to administer the sacrament of extreme unction, which would guarantee eternal salvation,[12] many Catholic priests and bishops were traveling for leisure under the guise of pilgrimages to the Holy Land, or else they were away, engaging in activities of commercial advantage.[13] To these uncertain religious conditions wherein a priest might not be around when needed, Catharism offered the security of the consolamentum, or the “baptism of the spirit” through the laying on of hands, whereby the believer was unequivocally assured—not just of eternal rest, but of the reunification of his or her soul with its heavenly spirit from which earthly life had separated it.[14] To meet one’s end in possession of the consolamentum was therefore the “good death” par excellence.[15]

The idea of separation was the terminus a quo of Cathar dualism and thus served as the catalyst for Cathar metaphysics as expressed in many ontological myths.[16] One of the main stories that promoted Cathar renunciation of bodily existence in favor of a “good death” through the consolamentum involved the belief that angelic beings had been incarcerated in earthly bodies because of a Satanic incursion of heaven.[17] According to another Cathar myth which elaborated the motif of the (perfect) spiritual imprisoned in the (imperfect) material,[18] the angelic beings were originally sexless. When, therefore, the angels discovered that their fleshy prisons were sexually differentiated, they wept.[19] With such anti-cosmic dualism[20] reinforced by their myths, it is no wonder that Catharism was so strongly anti-somatic. Despite their repudiation of earthly existence, however, the Cathars were not given either to fatalistic vapidity[21] or Bacchanalian hedonism, for, as R. I. Moore tells us, “a Cathar was defined not by conviction but by behavior.”[22] The consolamentum was therefore an active rather than a passive hope that reached far beyond the caricature of eschatology as an otherworldly theology of escapism.

Because the elaborate and solemn consolamentum restored the spirit’s heavenly status to a pre-“fall of humanity” status, it allowed Cathars to become perfect in this world despite all the cranky imperfections of earthly existence. Unless one found a mortal sin (eating the food of coition or engaging in coitus) in the sometimes lengthy succession of perfecti from which one received the consolamentum, a Cathar received the rite only once in his or her lifetime.[23] Because of the seriousness of the consolamentum after which one was bound to a pure lifestyle, most believers waited until they were on their deathbed to receive it.[24] The perfecti who had received the consolamentum and lived under its strict ascetic demands were regarded as holy men and women who incarnated an authentic apostolicity that strongly countered the materialistic culture around them.[25] The separation between the perfecti and other, unconsoled Cathar adherents was driven home in the Cathar rite called the melioramentum, which was a ritual exchange between the perfecti and the believer.[26] Perhaps it was for good reason that Catholic commentators like Bernard Gui called it “adoration,”[27] because melioramentum literally means “improvement.” Did Cathar laypeople believe they were “improved” in their spiritual standing when they genuflected to show reverence to a perfecti in their midst? Whatever the implications of the melioramentum, the perfecti, by compensating the opulent and materialistic spirit of their age, embodied what the Church hierarchy did not—the twin medieval virtues of purity and poverty.

For centuries, the Church had failed to keep pace with the religious ethos of Europe. At worst, the papacy was a venal bureaucracy rampant with clerical excess;[28] at best, it was a political force with which to be reckoned. The situation in and around Toulouse was especially bleak, as one writer noted, “The churches are without congregations, congregations are without priests, priests are without proper reverence, and, finally, Christians are without Christ.”[29] The Gregorian Reform of the eleventh century had taught that the Church could be reformed and that the expectation of clerical worthiness was not only a reasonable demand but also a necessary condition of the Church’s efficacy.[30] During the time of the Cathars in the twelfth century, then, the mere office of the priest was no longer enough to convey the presence of God. “To attack the priests, to assert that their power had deserted them because they were not fit to have it, was to issue a challenge.”[31] Few priests, however, were prepared to embody the lay ideal of holiness, because it would inevitably mean the renunciation of the comforts of their contemporary society. Though, to a certain extent, the approved monastic orders[32] met the need for the incarnate presence of God, all-too-often, the monks were either cloistered (i.e., transcendent) or caught up in the excesses of the Church.[33] In contradistinction, however, the perfecti “seem never to have been withdrawn from society” except in times of intense persecution.[34]

If the unfilled gap between ideal piety and religious reality was the appeal of heresies like Catharism,[35] what was the specific appeal of a dualist heresy? That is, given the factors we have already examined, wasn’t dualism merely incidental to the layperson struggling for a place in the newly ordered social power structure?[36] In asking such questions, we must remember that religious discontent is not always—or only—religious. Heresy, therefore, was “nourished not only by the weakness of the church and the force of the apostolic idea, but by revulsion against city life, and especially money-making and the violation which it involved of both moral values and human relations.”[37]

How, then, did dualism preserve moral values and/or human relations while simultaneously challenging the status quo? As noted earlier, dualism is one way of conducting metaphysics, and, to the medieval mind, metaphysics was the science of transcending material reality. In one sense, the dualist worldview of the perfecti incarnated the aim of metaphysics because the perfecti had seemingly achieved an Archimedean point above their earthly existence and its concomitant social impotence.[38] By depicting the spiritual world as divided between the equally powerful poles of good and evil and by claiming the moral high ground, the perfecti could justify their (good and pure) challenge against the (evil and corrupt) religious structures of their day. Dualism therefore was essential because it provided the now-and-not-yet theological foundation of Cathar protest—as in heaven, so may (and will) it be on earth.[39] Eschatological dualism[40] thus championed against the backdrop of Cathar monarchian dualism[41] could powerfully uphold traditional morality while challenging the status quo—even to the point of naming the Church evil.

Did the Cathars really equate the metaphysical evil principle with the earthly Church? If so, we may find evidence of such polemic in Cathar myth because, as we have postulated, Cathar metaphysical stories invariably formulated their social discontent. The most important text for monarchian dualists[42] was a Bogomil tract called The Book Of Secrets (Liber Secretum)[43] that the Cathar churches adopted very early in their development.[44] According to this myth, God sent the angel Mary before the advent of Christ so that she could receive God’s Son through the Holy Spirit.[45] To counteract the redemptive plan of the good God, the Old Testament God (often identified as “Satan”)[46] incarnated his angel—the prophet Elijah—in John the Baptist. John’s baptism of water had, therefore, to be rejected by Bogomils and Cathars alike, just as it had been in Manichaeism. Though we might surmise that the baptism of water was invalid because water is material, of the earth, and therefore to be rejected, the real problem with the baptism of water as opposed to the Cathar baptism of the spirit (that is, the consolamentum) was that the baptism of water was the baptism not only of the Church but also of Satan.[47] Not only did the Church embrace the Old Testament God, it also baptized by water, and this was, according to the Cathars, conclusive proof that the Church was an institution of the metaphysical evil principle.

With such subversive eschatological myths, were the Cathars attempting to hasten the arrival of God’s kingdom on earth? We must first remember that eschatological polemic did not originate with Cathar myth.[48] During the mid-thirteenth century, Frederick II and his court proclaimed Innocent IV “a type of papal Antichrist, uncovering the numerical value of Innocencius papa as 666, while the pope identified his imperial adversary with the beasts from Revelation…”.[49] If we are to believe Albert Schweitzer’s eschatological thesis put forth in the early twentieth century that Jesus expected the kingdom of God to arrive in his own lifetime,[50] then the very foundation of the Christian gospel could be said to involve a revolutionary social upheaval, the complete disruption of the status quo. The Cathars, however, did not often erupt into open war with the Church, as did the Church against the Cathars.[51] “Though their theology was radical the attitudes and precepts of the Cathars were of a piece with the religious climate of the time.”[52] Perhaps Cathar eschatological myths simultaneously encouraged polemical opposition and patient non-violence. “When apocalyptic ideas were used as a critique of the whole status quo, their primary thrust was not towards active opposition, but in the direction of passive endurance, awaiting the action of God who alone had the power to defeat the forces of evil.”[53]

In medieval Europe, however, religious discontent was, in many ways, equivalent to and synonymous with social discontent because the Church was still operating under the assumptions of the Donation of Constantine. Though thirteenth century Europe witnessed unparalleled economic growth as it gradually transformed itself from a manorial to a moneyed economy, the political instability of Languedoc and Lombardy created daily anxieties, and it was in these regions that Catharism flourished.[54] “In Languedoc the death of the inquisitors was met with rejoicing coupled with intense anticipation of the impending hostilities with France, while the Dominicans requested permission from Innocent IV to leave the Midi.”[55] Why, then, did the Cathars not also leave the region during this time of unrest and disorder? Paradoxically, while Languedoc was politically chaotic, its society was markedly more tolerant, cosmopolitan, and prosperous than the prevalent climate in Western Europe.[56] In Lombardy, on the other hand, the enemies of the Cathars (generally, the inquisitional arm of the Church) always had their own, more formidable enemies (i.e., the nobility) who would protect the Cathars, generally for reasons of personal advantage.[57] Heresy appeared “not at the same time, but in the same places where there was conflict between urban communities and their secular or ecclesiastical lords because…the two forms of rebellion fed on the same resentments and frustrations.”[58]

The sociopolitical disequilibrium in Western Europe was often exacerbated by the tumultuous transference of wealth and, more specifically, power.[59] As the last traces of feudalism quickly vanished, the traditional power of the rural nobles passed to the merchant class. In such uncertain times, many enervated nobles were unsure to what they should cling. Orthodox laypeople and heretics alike all claimed that the Church had mishandled the “keys to the kingdom” with which it had been entrusted[60] and had therefore been deemed unworthy by God.[61] Was the Church’s power of salvation, like the power of the rural nobles, becoming a relic of the past? Haunted by such insecurity and tempted by the possibility of reclaiming lost influence and power,[62] many nobles not only converted to Catharism but also protected individual Cathars.[63]

Hence the activity of a heretic could become the focus of simple and powerful emotions, loneliness, the need of protection, the desire to work for a common end, which might be widely felt and yet require external leadership or inspiration to precipitate their expression and resolution. [Thus]…heresy gave a place in the world and among their fellows to those who otherwise lacked it.[64]

With the merchant class, however, the situation was radically different. In fact, Moore notes that “There is no evidence of any notable incidence of heresy among merchants” who found their money and power constantly growing.[65]

Admittedly, the assertion that heresy reflects social as well as religious discontent is controversial,[66] but given the chaos that often accompanies change, it is likely that few people remained impervious. There can be no doubt that the world was quickly changing. In 1241, the Mongols brought guns and gunpowder westward when they conquered Poland and Hungary.[67] By 1250, Germany had already begun to fracture into small territories no longer unified under an emperor or king but governed instead by princes. Afterward, the papacy became dependent on the growing stability of France and eventually (in 1309) moved to Avignon. As Germany began to doubt the allegiance of the papacy,[68] the revolutionary tenor of the times became evident not only in Cathar mythology but also in the resurgence of interest in Joachim of Fiore’s eschatological predictions that ran counter to the authority of the church.[69] Though we may doubt the connection of eschatology with the social problems of Western Europe, theologian Norman Cohen has positively correlated the antiestablishment character of literalistic eschatology such as we find in Catharism with the rise of economic cycles.[70] The subtle spiritual tension exacerbated by the march of civilization with its concomitant economic, political, and intellectual innovations amidst “the unchanging permanence of ancient ecclesiastical institutions which were products of historical conditions that had partially disappeared or were on the verge of disappearing” proved to many that “The old order of things could suffice no longer; it could neither provide for new needs nor even withstand the dangers which were rapidly growing worse.”[71]

We have already seen how dualism is appealing as a metaphysical formulation expressed in eschatological language and have discussed many reasons for social discontent during the time of the Cathars, but we have yet to consider the power of dualism to challenge and, more specifically, change the status quo. The vacuum of power created by the losses of the rural nobles had, as we have seen, been transferred to the merchants, but where had the power of the papacy gone? Very early in its history, Christianity’s pious continuance amidst fierce persecution had revealed its power. Similarly, the perfecti had weathered the cruelties of the Inquisition despite rampant social and religious disorder.[72] Lambert is therefore right to assert, “Any attempt to explain the attractions of Catharism must take the ‘perfect’ as a central theme.”[73]

If, in the minds of anxious nobles and laypeople, the perfecti embodied the traditional spiritual influence and power that had once been the domain of the Church, we may expect the same schismatic fate that gradually befell the Church to penetrate the ranks of the Cathars, because rarely in history has power ever remained unchallenged for very long.[74] We have already noted some of the intangible benefits of induction as a perfecti (i.e., the status conveyed by the melioramentum),[75] and if there was only so much power to go around, it would seem that individual perfecti—or a group of them—might eventually begin to fight among themselves for this influence and power or even attempt to invalidate the influence and power of other perfecti. Indeed, history did repeat itself. The fissures that surfaced in Cathar unity originated from the same region that had first brought Bogomilism to the West—the Byzantine world. The story revolves around a Cathar priest (or “pope”) known variously as Papa Nicetas, and it has everything to do with the power of dualism to challenge and change the sociopolitical world.

In the early 1170’s, Papa Nicetas, bishop of the Cathar church of Dragovitsa in Constantinople came to Lombardy and denounced as invalid the consolamentum of that region which had derived through Languedoc from Bulgaria. As Papa Nicetas proceeded to re-consecrate perfecti with a new, supposedly more “valid” consolamentum, many became uncertain of the efficacy of their former consolamentum. The Cathar leaders in Lombardy, following the example of the early Church,[76] quickly called a Cathar council. Papa Nicetas presided over the council at St-Félix where it became clear that the new consolamentum from the east was different—radically different—from the consolamentum that the Cathar churches of Italy had formerly received from the east.[77] Whereas Catharism had historically persevered in the monarchian dualism of the Bogomils, the consolamentum from Nicetas carried with it the significance of a complete change of doctrine—from monarchian to absolute or radical dualism.[78] For inquisitors like Rainerius Sacchoni the heretical transgressions of the absolute dualists, with their two gods belief, were much graver than the mere “errors” of the moderate dualists. “Medieval monarchian dualism was undoubtedly closer to the tenets of orthodox Christianity than absolute dualism, which has often been defined as a separate dualist religion altogether.”[79]

After the council, some Cathar churches regarded the consolamentum of moderate dualist churches invalid.[80] Papa Nicetas had indeed won the council over to his radical dualist ideas but at the price of disunity between the Cathar churches of Italy. Counter-missions were sent into Lombardy by the moderate dualist churches in Bulgaria, and so began the initial schism among the Italian Cathars who fractured first into two then into countless groups that evolved into separate churches.[81] The situation in Languedoc, however, was much more stable. Thanks to Nicetas, the churches in southern France were unified and, overall, remained true to absolute dualism whereas the Cathars of northern France identified with the monarchian dualist churches in Lombardy.[82] Perhaps because of increasing persecution, “The schism remained entirely doctrinal and did not affect the concord between the moderate and absolute dualist churches.”[83]

The doctrinal schism had, as we have already noted, brought many Cathars into deeper conflict with the tenets of the Church, but, interestingly, Cathar apocryphal myths soon began to reflect this tension—with an aim toward challenging the establishment’s power. From their inception, the Cathars had always cherished myth and mythmakers.[84] After the Cathar schism, this preoccupation with apocryphal stories and myths provoked a reaction in the Cathar church of Desenzano, the bastion of absolute dualism in Italy, where some Cathar circles attempted to advance a more literal reading of scriptural passages and to furnish a philosophical foundation for radical dualism, the tract The Book Of The Two Principles.[85]

Bogomil texts had primarily elaborated on Jewish apocalyptic literature and scriptural stories such as Genesis 3 for reasons of theological validation. Perhaps this is why the Cathars had so readily adopted extra-canonical literature such as The Vision of Isaiah,[86] stories that had not been penned by their Bogomil progenitors. In its intellectual sophistication and daring to confront questions the Church had left unaddressed, however, The Book Of The Two Principles was different. Rather than claim ancient historicity (and thus authenticity), it was a bald and unrivaled appeal to academics[87] that “advanced a wide-ranging polemic against both Catholicism and monarchian dualism, attacking the doctrine of free will to present the paradigm of the absolute and eternal opposition between good and evil.”[88]

The polemic and eschatological reasoning in The Book Of The Two Principles was often brilliantly rendered, and its power to shape not only heretical but also orthodox thought is attested by its preservation in a monastic library until it was transferred to a Dominican convent in the eighteenth century.[89] Over-against the sacramental theology of the Church, The Book Of The Two Principles claimed “that we cannot serve God by doing anything good by free will, as a result of which He [God] would give thanks to us as if for our own individual strength and power…”[90] By maintaining that salvation is a result of divine grace rather than free will, it is not unlikely that the absolute dualism of Cathars in southern France helped pave the way for the Protestant Reformation.[91]

Though we have considered how Catharism challenged the status quo with its eschatological myths, we have not yet discovered how Cathar dualism possessed the power to actually change the status quo. When the Church first encountered the Cathars, it was uncertain what it was facing,[92] and, as we have noted, mistook them for Manicheans or other ancient heresies. The Cathars had actually come “to the attention of the ecclesiastical authorities because they could not agree among themselves”[93] during the schism caused by Papa Nicetas. As the Church began to worry about Cathar influence, it first resorted to stereotyped caricatures of heretics—maintaining that the Cathars worshipped cats, were openly licentious, and had allied themselves with the devil. Though the Church was convinced that the Cathars were actually a revival (or survival) of some ancient heresy, some Catholic writers and bishops eventually recognized the importance of educating themselves about their new enemy. At first, “the bishops were content to rely on the traditional sanction of expulsion from the diocese as a sufficient response…”[94] to the Cathar heresy, but the papacy soon began to believe that it was up against something more threatening and vile than it could imagine.

More than any other group, the Cathar heretics inspired alarm and hostility, and they stimulated the development of the inquisition; not only bishops, but also popular movements that were themselves under suspicion, the Waldensians and the Humiliati, felt the need to check their [Cathar] influence.[95]

The Inquisition did not, of course, develop overnight, nor were its many cruelties sanctioned until the Church became convinced that the Cathars posed a severe threat to the religious and political stability of the Christian world.

That the Church organized the Albigensian crusade to combat Catharism—and that some hearkened to its call for inquisitors[96]—is conclusive proof that the heresy had, indeed, precipitated a change in the status quo. Never before had the Church moved to forcefully and systematically attack and, later, murder those of its own fold.[97]

For the First nine years the Crusade [against the Cathars] was led by Simon de Montfort, whose military brilliance carried all before it. However, his ruthless cruelty created more enemies than friends and he died leaving a countryside divided and devastated but still turning to the Cathar faith. After his death the Pope created the Inquisition to root out all those still refusing to bow to Rome’s dictats [sic].[98]

The Church’s crusade against the Cathars fed on xenophobic paranoia,[99] no doubt aided by constant Catholic polemic and even the guilty conscience of the innocent.[100] If Cathars were impotent pacifists[101] and their dualism simply an error to be corrected, it is unlikely that the (supposedly conservative) Church hierarchy would have responded by marshalling an unprecedented, militant change in the status quo.

History tells us that the Inquisition was eventually successful at extinguishing the Cathars,[102] but if the Cathar metaphysical formulation of social discontent was powerful enough to upset the entire religious and social order of Europe, we may suspect the continuance of the dualism against which the Church fought so diligently. The Book Of The Two Principles claimed that “good and evil do not harmonize, nor can one come from the other, since they mutually destroy one another and battle in active and continuous opposition.”[103] Renegades and heretics of the Church (i.e., various strains of Protestantism influenced by their forbearers, as noted above) comprised a great number of those who colonized North America and therefore sowed eschatological dualism into the soil of the New World. In many ways, dualism made sense.

Insofar as these religious currents frequently produce logical and structured explanations for the origin of evil, which, for a variety of socio-religious reasons, periodically have seemed more influential and justified than their monistic counterparts, it is likely that monism will have periodically to encounter and resume its battle against the theologically dying and rising ‘other god.’[104]

In the United States, a type of Cathar religious dualism continues to the present day. In his famous “Letter From Birmingham Jail,” for instance, Martin Luther King Jr. complained that he had “watched many churches commit themselves to a completely otherworldly religion which makes a strange, un-Biblical distinction between body and soul, between the sacred and the secular.”[105] Perhaps the psychology of dualism has become so deeply rooted in American culture that political figures will perpetually demonize their enemies as members of an “axis of evil.”[106] Whatever the case, Cathar discontent embodied in eschatological dualism left its mark. As long as governments and religious groups continue to identify themselves with the good and perfect and their enemies with the evil and unrepentant, Cathar discontent with the status quo, indeed, with earthly existence, will continuously echo.

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[1] Barnhart, Robert K., ed. Barnhart Dictionary of Etymology.

[2] Recent scholarship has stressed the importance of the Cathars insofar as they were responsible for the development of the Inquisition and has concluded that the Catharism in Western Europe from the twelfth to the fourteenth century was synonymous with—and probably originated from—the Bulgarian Bogomilism that was prevalent in the Balkans during the eleventh century (Hamilton, Janet and Hamilton, Bernard, trans. and ed. Christian Dualist Heresies In The Byzantine World c. 650-c. 1450, p. 43). As we have noted, a Cathar is, literally, a “pure one,” while a Bogomil is, literally, one “worthy of God’s grace.” It is possible in these definitions to see the ideological evolution from worthiness to complete perfection, and this trend forms a subtext developed in Bogomil and Cathar myths. It will therefore be important that we later examine the Cathar adoption of certain Bogomil beliefs and texts.

[3] We must here mark an important assumption that will underlie our discussion. Namely, we will maintain that compelling religion—that is, religion that works—always compensates the spirit of its age. If the zeitgeist emphasizes (or even deifies) money-making, for instance, only a religion that renounces wealth or stresses identification with (or aid to) the poor will be able to powerfully lay claim to the hearts of pious men and women.

[4] The word “dualism” was devised “in 1700 by Thomas Hyde to describe religious systems that conceive of God and the devil as two coeternal principles. Christian Wolff introduced the term into philosophical discourse to define philosophical systems which posit that mind and matter are two distinct substances” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 2).

[5] McKim, Donald K. Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, p. 83. McKim adds that dualism can also “refer to belief in the existence of two gods”—a belief of certain later Cathars (absolute religious dualists). Merriam-Webster’s definition of dualism adds a further nuance: “A theory that considers reality to consist of two irreducible elements or modes” (Webster’s Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary, p. 386). Intrinsically, religious dualism does not necessitate moral conclusions about the posited opposites, though evaluative formulations usually surface in varying degrees. Though Christian writers have historically invoked Manichaeism as the classical doctrine of the two principles and have thus equated a Manichaeism metaphysic and dualism, such broad brush-strokes make shoddy scholarship. Cf. Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, pp. 1-5 and Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, pp. 245-246.

[6] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 4. Lest we amalgamate all religions under such a large definitional umbrella, we should note Stoyanov’s caution that religious dualism proper must be “distinguished from religious traditions that merely accentuate the contrast between good and evil as moral opposites or that between the related traditional binary pairs of light and darkness, life and death, etc.” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 3). Binary opposites are therefore to be distinguished from religious dualism in that binary implies a juxtaposition of contrasting words or ideas to give a feeling of balance whereas dualism constructs fundamental principles of reality based on such opposition.

[7] “Before the time of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant metaphysics was characterized by a tendency to construct theories on the basis of a priori knowledge, that is, knowledge derived from reason alone, in contradistinction to a posteriori knowledge, which is gained by reference to the facts of experience. From a priori knowledge were deduced general propositions that were held to be true of all things. The method of inquiry based on a priori principles is known as rationalistic. This method may be subdivided into monism, which holds that the universe is made up of a single fundamental substance; dualism, the belief in two such substances; and pluralism, which proposes the existence of many fundamental substances” (“Metaphysics,” Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation).

[8] The word metaphysics is thought to have originated in first century Rome when the Greek philosopher Andronicus of Rhodes arranged an edition of the works of Aristotle in which he placed the treatise “First Philosophy,” or “Theology,” after Aristotle’s treatise on Physics. The First Philosophy was thereafter known as meta (ta) physica, or “following (the) Physics” (Ibid).

[9] “Metaphysics,” Microsoft® Encarta® Encyclopedia 99. © 1993-1998 Microsoft Corporation “The thirteenth century Scholastic philosopher and theologian St. Thomas Aquinas declared that the cognition of God, through a causal study of finite sensible beings, was the aim of metaphysics” (Ibid).

[10] Individual eschatology is the “study of the future in terms of events relating to individual persons such as death, judgment (Matt. 25:31-46), resurrection (Phil. 3:21)” (McKim, Donald K. Westminster Dictionary of Theological Terms, p. 92).

[11] This is not to say that Cathar eschatology encouraged believers to live only for the future, because, as we will see, Catharism emphasized the importance of living a pure life in the here-and-now. The claim we are educing, however, is that the consolamentum fortified the Cathars to face inquisitorial death—a death, moreover, that was believed to be a protest against the status quo.

[12] Though it is easy for a modern reader to underestimate the importance of eternal security, the fundamentalist Protestantism that is currently on the rise sometimes speaks of the assurance of heaven over-against the fear of hell as an eternal “fire insurance” policy.

[13] “King Henry let many churches remain vacant so that he could collect their revenues. Bishops were increasingly secularized by being occupied as state administrators, such as chancellor, treasurer or even sheriff, which was a violation of canon law and was prohibited by a London council in 1175. When bishops did visit their dioceses, their extravagant entourage could impoverish parishes and monasteries that had to provide for them. The clergy at this time was satirized by Giraldus Cambrensis in his Gemma Ecclesiastica” (Beck, Sanderson. “Europe’s 12th Century Development.” http://www.san.beck.org/AB20-Europe12thCentury.html). Unfortunately, many of the clergy lacked sufficient theological education to compete with the academic temper of the times. Though here and there a determined priest or bishop properly educated and purified himself for the solemnity of his office, the knowledge of many priests and bishops was, on the whole, restricted to the creeds and canons while, on the other hand, the universities featured the best instructors and the most current philosophies. In an intellectually impoverished church climate, then, the influx of pagan philosophy and science into the great scholastic centers could scarcely be countered.

[14] Moore maintains that, “among those most ready to think that there was something wrong with the church were many whose daily experience suggested to them that there was something wrong with the world” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 268). Catharism thus appealed to those who were, like monks and nuns, inclined to renounce the world in favor of a “higher call.” The state of monasteries in the late twelfth century, however, could hardly meet this demand for asceticism, which is why the church was eventually forced to accept lay heroes like Francis of Assisi.

[15] Psychologically speaking, the consolamentum was deeply rooted in the archetypal motif of the mysterium coniuntionis.

[16] One could make a strong case that the orthodox creation story in Genesis similarly involves a dualist metaphysic in its emphasis on the Fall as a result of the eating of the Tree of the Knowledge (i.e., the consciousness) of Good and Evil (the differentiated opposites split from their original unity by the advent of consciousness). According to Carl Jung, “The biblical fall of man presents the dawn of consciousness as a curse. And as a matter of fact it is in this light that we first look upon every problem that forces us to greater consciousness and separates us even further from the paradise of unconscious [i.e., undifferentiated] childhood” (Jung, Carl G. The Structures and Dynamics of the Psyche, 2nd ed., pp. 388-389).

[17] Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 494; cf. p. 594.

[18] This theme was dominant also in medieval alchemy wherein Mercurius was believed to be “the spirit of the world become body within the earth” (Ashmole, Elias, ed. Theatrum Chemicum Britannicum, I, p. 600). Cf. the Platonic concept of the anima mundi.

[19] Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 107. “The introduction of sexual differentiation thus means also exile in flesh, as the angels of the first and second heavens are condemned to suffer bodily imprisonment in mortal, respectively male and female form” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 266; cf. pp. 269-272).

[20] “Anti-cosmic dualism equates the physical world and matter with the principle of evil and darkness which are seen as totally opposed to the spiritual world and light.” In cosmic dualism, on the other hand, “the physical world is treated essentially as a beneficent creation of the good principle” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 5). Most strands of Zoroastrianism upheld the notion of cosmic dualism and thus remained a life-affirming religion, despite the fierce opposition between the two principles. The early Christian patristic Iraeneus is another good example of cosmic dualism, for he was a strong proponent of bodily resurrection and believed that even the devil would be reconciled with God in the end.

[21] This will become an important point as we later examine the “this-worldly” hopes of the Cathars—especially as these hopes expressed a challenge to the status quo.

[22] Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 220.

[23] Ideally, the consolamentum was performed by a number of Cathar perfecti, but in times of intense persecution, the ceremony might be performed by one perfecti alone. The prospective Cathar underwent an extensive time of preparatory purification rituals (prayer, fasting, etc.) before receiving the consolamentum. It was not, therefore, a ceremony lightly administered.

[24] This was especially true of the male noble patrons. Cf. Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 193.

[25] “As a mark of their initiation and status the perfecti bore the title of the Blessed Virgin Mary, Theotokos (God-Bearer), as they were seen as a receptacle of the Holy Spirit and as giving birth to the Word” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 260). Cf. Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 380.

[26] Specifically, the melioramentum involved “Threefold genuflections and greetings to the perfect with replies culminated in the exchange—from the adherent, ‘Pray God for me, a sinner, that he may make me a good Christian and lead me to a good end,’ and from a perfect, ‘May God be prayed that he may make you a good Christian” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 109).

[27] Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 382.

[28] “It remained true that, especially by comparison with the secular nobility around it, the church had considerable wealth” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 235).

[29] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 189. If the Christendom of the Church was in any way moribund, the lay religious enthusiasm of the times quite successfully masked it. In conjunction with the invention of the flying buttress and ribbed vaults in the thirteenth century, the rise of capitalism and the accumulation of surplus wealth undoubtedly contributed, in part, to the building of more than six hundred cathedrals in France. In England, the cathedral at Salisbury was built with such fervor that it was completed in just thirty-eight years, while the spire on the church in Freiburg, Germany was intricately fashioned of stone—entirely filigree—as if a supernatural spider had spun its web. Cf. Tuchman, Barbara W. A Distant Mirror, p. 9f.

[30] In the wake of the Gregorian Reform, any secularization of the church could only be seen as a tremendous loss—especially since so many of the laity had, in the interim, accepted leadership within the church and thus assumed an active interest in its essential structure and proceedings. Cf. Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, pp. 390-391. “Between the third and fourth Lateran Councils (1179 and 1215) the contrast between the ideal of the apostolic life and the imperfections of a worldly clergy headed by the cumbersome and venal bureaucracy of the papal curia created, much as in the Gregorian period, an atmosphere in which the line between zeal and heresy often appeared arbitrary…” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 226).

[31] Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 273.

[32] It had not been long since “Catholics had doubted whether any but monks could be saved, and it was still conventional for many of them towards the end of their lives to renounce the world and retire to a monastery” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 226).

[33] The shortcomings of existing structures necessitated the Church’s slow acceptance of some of the proliferating monastic movements during the twelfth century. “The friars—inspired by Francis and Dominic—reflected the newfound mobility of the thirteenth century, effecting a presence in town and university centers. Their emergence as an alternative to the more settled monastic order reflects something of the religious pluralism of the medieval period” (David B. Burrell, in Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, p. 308). The Fourth Lateran Council, however, eventually capped this hierarchical adaptability. Significantly, as the Franciscans and Dominicans gained in popularity, the appeal of the Cathars lessened. Cf. Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 220.

[34] Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 108. Perhaps this constant presence of the perfecti among the Cathar laity is due to what Lambert rightly identifies as the earthly (though perhaps less tangible) benefits enjoyed by the perfecti. Cf. p. 17, footnote 75.

[35] A strong argument could be made for the assertion that compelling religion was necessarily heretical in the wake of the Romanization of the Church.

[36] Moore answers this question with a firm “yes”. Cf. Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 237. Although he later qualifies his argument by noting that “the incidence of disagreement over theological questions and the nature of reaction to it did change sharply during this period [the fourteenth century],” he maintains the crux of his thesis that the real power of heresy was its political leverage by contending that “what was at stake was not only doctrinal orthodoxy” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 265, emphasis mine).

[37] Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 231. The most common supporters and protectors of the Cathars were to be found among the rural nobility. Noting this fact, Moore says, “Catharism, like the orthodox enthusiasm of the friars and the vigilantes, appealed most to those who had reason to be dissatisfied with the results of change, either spiritually because they saw accepted moral values eroded by the love of money, or socially because they found their own traditional status and influence eroded by the money-makers” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 240).

[38] The perfecti were “sustained by the devotion of a believer class who saw in them a race of restored angels, the one tangible presence of the divine in Satan’s world” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 109).

[39] Cf. Matthew 6:10 and Luke 11:2.

[40] “In eschatological dualism, with its focus on the eschatological events and ultimate purification of the world at the end of historical time, the evil principle is destined to be vanquished in these last times and thus is not recognized as an eternal agency” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, pp. 4-5).

[41] “In moderate or ‘monarchian’ dualism…one of the two principles is seen as a secondary agency stemming from the other principle which is thus recognized as a sublime first cause” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 4).

[42] The majority of Cathars in Lombardy and Languedoc were monarchian dualists before the advent of Papa Nicetas.

[43] Wakefield and Evans call this text The Secret Supper or, as it was also known, Interrogatio Iohannis (The Questions of John). Cf. Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, pp. 458-465.

[44] We will later examine The Book Of The Two Principles as the most important text for absolute dualists.

[45] Many Cathars maintained a docetic Christology, thus Jesus “descended from heaven and entered the Virgin through the right ear to assume the semblance of a human body” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 268).

[46] For the Cathars, the Old Testament God of war and judgment was the evil principle, while the New Testament God of love and grace was the good principle. The Liber Secretum goes on to assert that “while the one higher Father created primordial matter, it was the Prince of this World, Satan, himself created by God, who divided it into four elements. …In Bogomil Christology the mission of Christ was to announce the name of the Father and it is in precognition of this mission that Satan gave Moses three pieces of wood for Christ’s crucifixion. …A recurrent idea that emerged both in Bogomil and Cathar thought held that the only Old Testament figures who were saved, recognized as the sixteen prophets and Jesus’ ancestors listed in the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, rose again on the death of Christ and received the consolamentum from Christ himself” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, pp. 266-272). Cf. Numbers 21:8-9.

[47] Despite this myth, some Cathar priests encouraged their believers not to disparage the baptism they had received from the Church. In defense of this claim, Cathars used scriptures such as John 3:5-6 because it seems to privilege the role of the spirit. Cf. Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, pp. 466, 592.

[48] Such thinly veiled polemical myths were also advanced by and against the Gnostics during the second century.

[49] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 212. During a time when the monarchical claims of the papacy were pressed against the imperial claims of the emperor, imperial opinion held that the title of emperor should carry with it complete control of all Italy and Rome. After Innocent IV excommunicated him, Frederick denounced the Pope and launched a series of attacks on the southern Italian lands in an effort to confiscate the Papal States, but he died in battle in 1250. Cf. Babinsky, Ellen. “Pope, Emperor, and Monarch: Tensions of Church and State, 1152-1314,” pp. 67-71.

[50] Cf. Schweitzer, Albert. The Quest of the Historical Jesus: A Critical Study of Its Progress from Reimarus to Wrede. “There can be no doubt that Jesus taught about the ‘kingdom of God.’ He was presumably employing eschatological or messianic ideas shared with his contemporaries. Schweitzer believed that these ideas were absolutely central and crucial to Jesus’ understanding of his own mission, and that without giving them equivalent importance in our interpretation, Jesus could not be understood at all. …These contentions came as no small shock to a scholarly community that had settled down to believing that Jesus was a liberal reformer who taught about the fatherhood of God and the brotherhood of man. Schweitzer formulated his challenge in a striking way: he called for consistent eschatology or consistent skepticism. Either Jesus must be understood consistently as thinking in messianic terms about the immediate coming of a new age, or we will have to acknowledge that we cannot know what he stood for—the latter alternative Schweitzer called skepticism” (Lyons, Craig M. Albert Schweitzer’s Challenge http://web2.airmail.net/bennoah1/albert_schweitzer.htm).

[51] There are only a few recorded instances of Cathars and/or Cathar-sympathizers murdering Inquisitors whereas the Inquisition committed thousands to the flames. As the Inquisition proceeded, its methods became increasingly cruel. Though more heretics were imprisoned and/or branded upon the face and exiled than were subjected to the pyre, in 1252, the Church authorized methods of torture, to be applied first in Italy and then in France. Cf. Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 218.

[52] Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 231. “Much Cathar exhortation was, of itself, wholly orthodox…” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 119).

[53] McGinn, Bernard. Visions of the End: Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages, p. 226. As McGinn goes on to point out, however, this situation changed in the fourteenth century when the Cathars began declining.

[54] According to Moore, “heresy did not flourish where secular government was strong” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 206). Following the Peace of Paris in 1229 and the annexation of Languedoc by the French crown in 1271, most Cathars migrated to Lombardy where the sociopolitical situation was less stable than the new hegemony in Languedoc. One of Moore’s main theses is, in fact, that the popularity of religious heresy has something to do with the insecurity of life caused by a weak and/or ineffective government. Cf. Rempel, Gerhard. “Reformation Background.” http://mars.acnet.wnec.edu/~grempel/courses/germany/lectures/03reformation.html.

[55] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 213. When the Inquisition first began in Languedoc, it deteriorated into an all-out war of conquest between the northern barons and the southern nobility, prompting Innocent III to call for a restoration of the “crusading ideal” back to its original focus—a Holy War against the infidel. This transition took an inordinately long time, during which the Cathars flourished amidst the political turmoil. Cf. Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, pp. 205-206.

[56] Ibid. p. 192.

[57] Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, pp. 237-239.

[58] Ibid. p. 269.

[59] Moore calls lordship the very spring of power in medieval society and defines it as “the ability to be accepted as defender, and hence to dispense judgment and secure collective action. The persistence of the chroniclers in describing those who flocked around the heretics as pauperes was not, and not meant to be, a comment on their affluence [or lack thereof]. Pauperes were not those who lacked wealth but those who lacked power… The appeal to the poor was an appeal to the powerless…” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 281). Cf. Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p.233.

[60] Cf. Matthew 16:19. Moore notes that heresy often “amounted to a comprehensive rejection of the idea that the church was the house of God, the priests its custodians and the guardians of its powers” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 274).

[61] There was, as the historian Williston Walker puts it, “a growing conviction among thoughtful and devout people that such worldly aims as the recent papacy had followed were inconsistent with the true interests of the church” (Walker, Williston. A History of the Christian Church, p. 370). One of Lambert’s main themes involves the assertion that “Reform and heresy were twins” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 390). Though the scriptural passage from which the image of the “bride of Christ” is drawn (Revelation 21:2) actually refers to the New Jerusalem, the Patristics often interpreted this passage with reference to the visible church. The visible church, however, no longer seemed much like the “bride of Christ.” Instead of cherishing the notion of the church as Christ’s bride, Catharism, like some Gnostic traditions before it (i.e., The Gospel of Mary, The Gospel of Philip, etc.), maintained as one of their secret doctrines that “Mary Magdalene was in reality the wife of Christ and she was also recognized as the Samaritan woman to whom he [Christ] said, ‘Call thy husband.’ She was the woman whom Christ freed when the Jews were trying to stone her…” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 272).

[62] “To become associated with a heretical sect…was to accept a new solidarity, often in conscious rejection of the forces which had disrupted the old, and with it the ties of loyalty, acceptance of a common rule of life, and by implication a communal interpretation of it, which could give role and purpose to those deprived by geographical or social mobility of the familiar structures of community and kin” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 272).

[63] According to Moore, “it was the nobles who were presented as the supporters of heresy par excellence…at Orvieto it was said that the words noble and heretic were synonymous” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 239). Lambert notes that the association of elite groups and heretics only increased after the time of Cathar prominence in the middle of the fourteenth century. “In Languedoc favour by the rural nobility provided the matrix for Catharism. In the first generation of the implantation period men were more often the patrons, while their womenfolk seem to have been drawn towards the position of perfect in rather large numbers” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, pp. 112, 393).

[64] Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, pp. 272-273.

[65] Ibid. p. 266.

[66] In particular, historian Jeffrey Burton Russell takes Moore to task for oversimplifying the medieval sociopolitical scene and confusing its intricacies with the psychological foundations of religious heresy.

[67] Wells, H. G. A Short History of the World. LII and XLVIII.

[68] Doubts were especially exacerbated with the reign of Philip IV and the move of the papacy to Avignon.

[69] In Fiore’s proclaimed age of the Spirit (predicted to begin in 1260), theologian David Burrell notes, “spiritual illumination would replace learning as the Spirit overcame a worldly church and a corrupt world” (Burrell, David B. Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, p. 312). Cf. Braaten, Carl E. Christian Theology: An Introduction to Its Traditions and Tasks, p. 337 and Reeves, Marjorie. The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages: A Study in Joachimism, p. 139f.

[70] Cf. Cohn, Norman. The Pursuit of the Millennium: Revolutionary Millenarians and Mystical Anarchists of the Middle Ages. Similarly, Moore notes that, “Just as Manichaeism shrank with the Roman world in the fifth century, its successor in the twelfth expanded with the economy and culture of its time” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 173).

[71] Mandonnet, Pierre O. P. St. Dominic and His Work, Chapter 1.

[72] The similarities between the persecution of the early Christians by the Roman government and the persecution of the Cathars by the Church government were not lost on the Cathars, who often claimed legitimacy and gained strength by preaching such parallels. Cf. Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 515.

[73] Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 106. “‘They [perfecti] follow the path of Peter and Paul,’ one inhabitant said. They had a social function, were witnesses to oaths and helped to integrate a poor, divided society” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 141).

[74] Looking at the other side of this power equation, Moore quips that “since no definition of truth ever goes unchallenged, the inevitable companion of orthodoxy is dissent” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 265).

[75] Lambert says that, in the world, there were immediate compensations for the renunciation involved in becoming a perfecti and notes, “In ritual and status, Catharism offered certain advantages to women not to be found in Catholicism. No position in Catholicism, not even that of abbess, offered the status which accrued to a woman who received the consolamentum. …How far did the rise in status, achieved by the individual’s own efforts at self-mortification, entitling him to the melioramentum from members of all social classes and to a veneration from all adherents, appeal to those whose occupation kept them low in the social scale?” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, pp. 108-117).

[76] Cf. Acts 15:1-41 and Galatians 2:1-21.

[77] The teleiosis of the eastern Bogomils eventually became the consolamentum of western Cathars.

[78] “According to absolute dualism, as developed, for example, by medieval Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, good and evil, light and darkness derive from two independent coeternal principles, irreducibly set against each other from eternity” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 4). “Radicals were dualists who were prepared to rewrite the traditional tenets of Bogomilism in order to iron out the logical contradiction they saw in the appearance of good in an evil world. Moderates, they believed, did not solve the problem of the origins of evil by their stories of the fall of Satan…” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 123).

[79] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p.201.

[80] In many ways, these events recall and even parallel the Donatist crisis in the Church’s early history. Interestingly, after Nicetas returned to Constantinople, a traveller named Petracius announced to the Lombards that Simon, from whom Nicetas had received his consolamentum, had been discovered in bed with a woman, thus rendering as invalid the entire succession of consolamentums that had proceeded from Nicetas.

[81] Cf. the map of the Cathar churches in the appendix.

[82] Obviously, we’re oversimplifying the situation, for, as Moore points out, it is likely “that modified dualism did not disappear from the Languedoc as an immediate consequence of Nicetas’ work” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 215).

[83] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 201. “Although links were maintained between the different Cathar churches stretched around the Mediterranean each of them was self-contained and autonomous, and the real strength of the Cathar movement lay in the individual congregations rather than in any bonds between them” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 223). Cf. Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 131.

[84] The perfecti exercised “a talent for the storytelling in which the great myths of the war in heaven, the origins of evil and the transmigration of souls could be entertainingly brought over to a peasant audience” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 141).

[85] Ibid. p. 262. “Bogomil-Cathar teachings could be disseminated both through apocryphal written works such as Liber Secretum and oral preachings, with all the potential for transformations and imaginative elaborations of the received apocryphal and doctrinal traditions, which could achieve the form of new ‘secret myths’ and fuel further theological controversies in the dualist communities” (Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 272).

[86] “The Vision of Isaiah is an apocryphal work of great antiquity, probably composed about the end of the first century under Gnostic influence. Before A.D 300 it had been joined to two other independently written items, The Martyrdom of Isaiah and The Testament of Hezekiah: the first, by a Jew or a Jewish Christian; the second, Christian in origin with traces of Gnosticism” (Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 447).

[87] Even in the preface to his de Principiis, Origen had claimed, “Regarding the devil and his angels, and the opposing influences, the teaching of the Church has laid down that these beings exist indeed; but what they are, or how they exist, it has not explained with sufficient clearness. …Every one, therefore, must make use of elements and foundations of this sort [i.e., rigorous questioning and study], according to the precept, ‘Enlighten yourselves with the light of knowledge’” (Butterworth, G. W. Origen On First Principles, preface, sections 6, 10).

[88] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, p. 284.

[89] Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 512.

[90] Ibid. p. 525.

[91] In this, the Cathars would not be alone. The birth pangs of the Reformation are clearly visible in the Waldensians, Lollards, and the Bohemian reform movement. Cf. Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition.

[92] Cf. Roberts, Forrester. “Cathar Eclipse.” http://pages.britishlibrary.net/forrester-roberts/cathar_eclipse.html.

[93] Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 168.

[94] Ibid. p. 175. Later, “the Pope adopted another tactic. He began excommunicating all those barons who dared to offer the Cathars hospitality. This proved more effective, but it aroused so much anger that, in the winter of 1208, an eminent legate, who had been excommunicating southern nobles with reckless enthusiasm, was assassinated on his way back to Rome” (Roberts, Forrester. “Cathar Eclipse.” http://pages.britishlibrary.net/forrester-roberts/cathar_eclipse.html).

[95] Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 105.

[96] After the “papal decree [that] all land owned by heretics could be confiscated at will…The rich fiefs of Languedoc could be pillaged with a clear conscience. It is little wonder that the barons of the north flocked south to do battle for the honour of the Church” (Roberts, Forrester. “Cathar Eclipse.” http://pages.britishlibrary.net/forrester-roberts/cathar_eclipse.html).

[97] It is important to note that though the Cathars considered themselves true Christians, the Church considered them little more than traitors.

[98] Roberts, Forrester. “Cathar Eclipse.” http://pages.britishlibrary.net/forrester-roberts/cathar_eclipse.html.

[99] “The first quality of the man who aroused popular passion and devotion was that he was an outsider” (Moore, R. I. The Origins of European Dissent, p. 270).

[100] Inquisitors often asked questions of unsuspected laypeople regarding knowledge of or association with Cathars. Failure to report suspicious activity might be prosecuted with anything from incarceration to fines and/or the confiscation of property.

[101] From 1290 until 1329, one group of Cathars rose up against the Inquisition in a courageous rebellion that ended in their destruction (Cf. Weis, Rene. The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars’ Rebellion Against the Inquisition, 1290-1329).

[102] “The last major series of trials were held in Bologna from 1291 to 1309. Cathar history thereafter is that of a remnant. The last [Cathar] bishop to be reported in western Europe was captured in Tuscany in 1321; survivors continued for a time to find refuge, possibly in the Lombard countryside and in the Alps” (Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the Reformation, 2nd edition, p. 144).

[103] Wakefield, Walter L. and Evans, Austin P., trans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p. 545. It is interesting to compare Taoist thought on this point, especially as it is revealed in the Tao Te Ching.

[104] Stoyanov, Yuri. The Other God: Dualist Religions from Antiquity to the Cathar Heresy, pp. 293-294.

[105] Sernett, Milton C., ed. African American Religious History: A Documentary Witness, 2nd edition, p. 531.

[106] In his 2002 State of the Union address, President George W. Bush called Iraq, Iran, and North Korea an “axis of evil.” “Concerned about dilution of President Bush’s warnings to North Korea and other nations, Secretary of State Colin Powell told aides Thursday to stick by Bush’s words when discussing the issue with reporters, a senior official said” (http://www.usatoday.com/news/washdc/2002/01/31/dilute.htm).

(courtesy of www.brownflower.com)