Starting in the 11th century, deep transformations took place in medieval Europe: the population grew, there was an agrarian expansion, innovations appeared in the fields of technology and transport, and cities developed. This revival of urban life promotes mercantile and craft activities. As a result of this, new social groups make their appearance, corresponding to an incipient citizen bourgeoisie, with spiritual needs and a conception of the world that do not always coincide with the doctrine dictated in Rome.
This era is also that of the Gregorian reform, promoted mainly by Pope Gregory VII from the year 1075, which seeks to adapt the Church to the new times through a spiritual renewal that eradicates the image of moral relaxation of many of its representatives. . But it also seeks, on the other hand, to affirm its claim to absolute power against the Holy German Empire, which disputed its political supremacy on the continent.
That century ended with the convulsions of the first crusade and its profound impact on the mentalities of the time, influenced by the material and spiritual treasures that the expeditions to the Holy Land seemed to promise.
The Church has not faced secular religious dissidence in the West since the end of the 6th century, with the eradication of Arianism. Since then, the ecclesiastical establishment had monopolized all the prerogatives in matters of faith, forbidding the common people any initiative or religious manifestation that could be considered heterodox.
However, in the divorce between the theological (and political) conceptions of Rome and the new demands of the believers lies the origin of the heretical dissensions that arose in the Middle Ages. All of them tended to a primitive Christianity. They longed to return to the evangelical principles of purity and spiritual perfection in a framework free from the tutelage of the Church, which they considered corrupt and an obstacle to their aspirations for a Christian life.
From Rome the creation of the Cistercian order was promoted to face from the monasteries the new ideals of poverty and spiritual fervor that were sweeping the West, the councils of Reims and Toulouse were held, which harshly condemned religious deviations… But, Despite all this, the Church’s efforts to eradicate heresy proved insufficient and in many cases completely ineffective.
In the middle of the 12th century, communities of heretics appearing in northern Europe, in the Rhineland, Flanders, Alsace, Burgundy and Champagne, claiming “another Christianity”. It was nothing but an incipient Catharism, with its denial of Catholic dogma and its belief in a diabolic principle as the origin of the world.
But the epicenter of the Cathar phenomenon must be located in the south of France, more specifically in the Languedoc and the Midi-Pyrenees, with such important cities as Toulouse, Albi or Carcassonne. The Council of Saint-Félix-de-Caraman, presided over by a certain “pope” Niketas, is usually considered the founding act of the Cathar Church in Occitania, in the French South.
Catharism shared many points with the heresies that arose in the previous century. It is not born, then, by “spontaneous generation”. It claims to be authentic Christianity. Its holy books are the Bible (only the New Testament) and especially the Gospels, especially that of Saint John. His followers do not confer any value on baptism by water (it is only valid by laying on of hands), they reject marriage, the Eucharist, the clergy and papal authority. It could be said that Catharism is a Christianity without a temple or a cross.
Where does the denomination of Cathars and Albigensians come from? When, in the middle of the 12th century, Abbot Evervino of Stanfeld wrote to the Cistercian Bernardo de Claraval, he told him about the activities in his city, Cologne, of the pauperes christiani, the poor Christians. These called themselves “apostles”, “poor of Christ” or simply “Christians”.
At the end of that same century and in the same city, Canon Eckbert de Shonaü was the first to use the name “Cathars”. The denomination, insulting and pejorative, is a derivative of the Greek kataroi (pure), although it actually referred to the German katte, cat. For Eckbert de Shonaü, the Cathars are something like “cat-worshipping witches”. Actually, the Cathars never called themselves that.
At the end of the 12th century, the Third Lateran Council imposed the term in ecclesiastical language, encompassing all heretical manifestations of a dualistic nature, such as the piphles in Flanders, the publicans in Champagne and Burgundy or the Bogomils, originally from Bulgaria.
We owe the name Albigensians to the Benedictine chronicler Geoffroy de Vigeois, initially referring to the Cathars of Albi and which would later include the Cathars of all Occitania.
In any case, and outside of ecclesiastical circles, the term Cathar was not used in the French South during the Middle Ages. It was the book by theologian Charles Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des cathares ou albigeois, published in the mid-19th century, which fortunately popularized it in historiography.
For the Cathars, the crucial problem is evil, which is found in the universe. They believe in the existence of two kingdoms. One, invisible, spiritual, luminous, which excludes evil, is that of God; in the other, visible, material, perverse, Satan reigns. The Cathars affirm that an evil creation could not come from an entirely good God. There are, then, two creations, one that is the work of light and the other of darkness. Thus, the Cathar is a dualism of creation that is far removed from Catholic dogma.
The Cathars did not believe that Jesus was the son of God. He was but a messenger who apparently assumed a human body and apparently died on the cross, since a pure spirit, like that of Jesus, was immune to suffering and death.
In this line, the Cathars said that hell is on earth, and that at the end of time all souls would be able to save themselves and return to the invisible world of God. Of course, after his purification through multiple reincarnations.
Based on the model of the early Church, the Cathar is administered by a hierarchy of bishops and deacons. The former claim their direct affiliation with the Apostles. Two curates assist each bishop, the “elder son”, who succeeds him at his death, and the “younger son”, who after the latter’s consecration takes his place.
The territory of the bishopric is distributed among a series of deacons who serve as a link between the faithful and the bishop. The Cathar bishop cannot resemble a Catholic prelate, who lives in opulence. Poor and itinerant, he tirelessly carries out his role as a preacher and manages the goods of his community.
Catharism was not an exclusively urban or rural phenomenon, and we found it more in medium-sized agglomerations. It was present above all in important towns and on the outskirts of cities.
The basic cell of the Cathar Church are the so-called houses, a true learning and training network. This religion, which throughout its history was always a minority, lacks churches and monasteries, and it is in the houses, also a place of lodging and artisan work, where the rites and practices of “good Christians” are celebrated.
Women were allowed to play an important role in these communities. Through their professional activity (merchants, tailors, weavers…), the Cathars financed their Church. They even practiced loans with interest, usury, so criticized by the Church.
At the beginning of the 13th century, Pope Innocent III resolved to put an end to the Cathar “heresy” once and for all. He organized a crusade that acted with great harshness in the South, but even so, the repression would continue during the papacy of Gregory IX and Innocent IV, until the fall of the castle of Montségur in the middle of the century.
This text is part of an article published in number 468 of the Historia y Vida magazine. Do you have something to contribute? Write to us at redaccionhyv@historiayvida.com.
