Tradition

Catharism

Overview

Catharism ( KATH-ər-iz-əm; from the Ancient Greek: καθαροί, romanized: katharoí, "the pure ones") was a Christian quasi-dualist and pseudo-Gnostic movement in northern Italy and southern France between the 12th and 14th centuries. The existence and extent of Catharism is highly contested in contemporary scholarship, which since the 1990s has questioned the extent to which Catharism was an organized movement or even existed beyond a moral panic against an imagined enemy of the Church similar to later witch trials. Scholarship remains divided on the issue.

Denounced as a heretical sect by the Catholic Church, its alleged followers were attacked first by the Albigensian Crusade and later by the Medieval Inquisition, which claimed to have eradicated them by 1350. Thousands of people were slaughtered, hanged, or burned at the stake.

Followers and those accused of affiliation were known as Cathars or Albigensians, after the French city Albi where the movement first took hold, but referred to themselves as Good Christians. They believed that there were not one, but two Gods—the good God of Heaven and the evil god of this age (2 Corinthians 4:4). According to tradition, Cathars believed that the good God was the God of the New Testament faith and creator of the spiritual realm. Many Cathars identified the evil god as Satan, the master of the physical world, who was the same as the God of the Old Testament.

The Cathars believed that human souls were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god. They thought these souls were destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum, a form of baptism performed when death is imminent. At that moment, they believed they would return to the good God as "Cathar Perfect". Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who set few guidelines, leading some Catharist practices and beliefs to vary by region and over time.

The first mention of Catharism by chroniclers was in 1143; four years later, the Catholic Church denounced Cathar practices, particularly the consolamentum ritual. From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and persuading the local authorities to act against the Cathars. In 1208, Pierre de Castelnau, Innocent's papal legate, was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars. Pope Innocent III then declared de Castelnau a martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade in 1209. The nearly twenty-year campaign succeeded in vastly weakening the movement. The Medieval Inquisition that followed ultimately eradicated Catharism.

There is academic controversy about whether Catharism was an organised religion or whether the medieval Church imagined or exaggerated it. The lack of any central organisation among Cathars and regional differences in beliefs and practices has prompted some scholars to question whether the Church exaggerated its threat while others wonder whether it even existed.

Overview adapted from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA 4.0; see the article history for authors).

Possible passages

Found by search and not yet checked by a person; they may only mention the idea in passing.

The Platonists do not deny their existence, but prefer to call them good demons. But we, following Scripture, according to which we are Christians, have learned that some of the angels are good, some bad, but never have we read in Scripture of good demons; but wherever this or any cognate term occurs, it is applied only to wicked spirits. And this usage has become so universal, that, even among those who are called…
of Hippo Augustine, The City of God, Volume I
States what Catharism is; the author is tied to Catharism in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
12. Cease, then, to bring forward against us the authority of Cyprian in favour of repeating baptism, but cling with us to the example of Cyprian for the preservation of unity. For this question of baptism had not been as yet completely worked out, but yet the Church observed the most wholesome custom of correcting what was wrong, not repeating what was already given, even in the case of schismatics and heretics…
of Hippo Augustine, Writings in Connection with the Donatist Controversy
States what Catharism is; the author is tied to Catharism in the knowledge graph.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader
Such angels should our clergy be. But as these angels of old fell off from God, and set themselves above God, and wished to be their own masters, so these do also, and have nothing but just the name of messengers, as those have the name alone of angels. So these also, as they have gone off from God, shall be held in chains of darkness and reserved to condemnation; as he has said above, that their sentence does not…
Martin Luther, The Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude Preached and Explained
States what Catharism is.
Read the chapter · Open in the reader

Catharism

Overview

Possible passages

Philosophers who discussed Catharism

Related ideas

Place in the tradition