John C.Shidelar
[See also: LANGUEDOC; SPANISH MARCH]
Bisson, Thomas N. The Medieval Crown of Aragon: A Short History. New York: Oxford
University Press, 1986.
Bonnassie, Pierre. La Catalogne du milieu du Xe a la fin du XIe siècle. Toulouse: Association des
Publications de l’Université de Toulouse-LeMirail, 1975–76.
CATHARS
. Cathari (Greek for “pure ones”) was the least offensive of many names for members of
a dualist heresy that spread through much of western Europe in the later 12th and 13th
centuries. They were also known as Bulgari, bougres, buggers (from the Bogomils of
Bulgaria), Albigenses (from their stronghold in Albi), and Manichaei (from their alleged
dualist ancestors in late antiquity). Despite the survival of some Cathar texts (Gnostic
“scrip-tures” from late antiquity, rituals, the Book of Two Principles), the movement is
known largely from church documents, such as chronicles, theological invective, and
inquisitorial transcripts. As a result, almost everything about the movement is a matter for
scholarly dispute. Some historians place its origins in the early 11th century, when
popular “heresies” that reject the church first begin to appear in the West; these, they
argue, are the result of missionaries of the 10th-century Bogomil heresy from Bulgaria.
But none of these cases shows explicit evidence of either dualism or eastern influence.
That first appears in the documents of the mid-12th century, when the Cathars seem to be
spreading at alarming speed. It is in many cases difficult to judge whether a movement’s
rejection of ecclesiastical media of salvation and emphasis on asceticism come from a
desire to replicate the spirituality of the Apostles or from a dualist ideology. Indeed, the
Cathars present themselves as apostolic communities.
Like the Gnostics of late antiquity, the Cathars believed that evil was an independent
force in the universe, that it was Satan who in fact had created the physical universe
(hence, the God of Genesis), which he used as a prison in which to trap souls, which
would continue to transmigrate from incarnation to reincarnation until they had escaped
the tentacles of the Evil One. Procreation merely perpetuated Satan’s work, and Cathar
adepts refused not only all sexual contact but the eating of anything that came from
coition, such as meat, cheese, and eggs (but not fish, which they believed reproduced
spontaneously). These beliefs were expressed in mythical accounts of the Creation, in
which Satan was alternately a fallen angel, a younger brother of Christ, or, in the case of
radical dualists, a direct rival of God. This literature focused far more on the evil God and
his minions, rulers of this world, than on the good God.
Unlike earlier “heretics,” the Cathars developed an independent ecclesiastical
structure. The first sign of this alternative church appeared in the Rhineland (1143) and
rapidly spread throughout western Europe. By 1165, there were public debates at
Lombers (near Albi) between Cathar leaders and Catholic bishops. A decade or so later,
first in Italy, then in Languedoc, an eastern envoy named Nicetas converted many to a
more radical brand of dualism. This doctrinal source of divisiveness was soon amplified
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