by a Donatist-like controversy over the moral purity of certain Cathari, including the man
who had administered the consolamentum to Nicetas.
Despite this apparent internal strife, the Cathar movement continued to gain adherents
throughout Europe. Persecution in the northern regions, however, tended to push them
southward to the more tolerant climes of Occitania, where they became a large minority
of the population or even in some places a majority, as in Foix. They gained adherents
from among all sectors of the population, urban and rural, peasant, artisan, merchant, and
noble; the high numbers of artisans in the early movement led the northern French to
name them texerant (“weavers”). The movement spread particularly effectively through
women, who turned their households into centers of Cathar preaching and learning. The
role of women in the movement led the Inquisition to demand oaths of loyalty to the
church from boys over twelve years old but from girls over eight.
The Cathar church was structured in several layers. At the top was a relatively clear-
cut ecclesiastical hierarchy, presided over by bishops who administered the
consolamentum to the “perfects.” The perfects adhered to a rigidly ascetic code: apostolic
poverty, regular fasts, monthly public confession, constant prayer, and avoidance of
physical contact with the opposite sex, killing, swearing of oaths, and foods associated
with coition. The perfects often traveled about, preaching to, praying for, and confessing
the faithful. Laypeople in general were not expected to live up to the standards of the
perfects and took the consolamentum only shortly before death. While not allowed to
address God as “Our Father,” hence to pray, they were to attend sermons and confess
regularly (melioramentum). A group known as the “believers” took a more active role in
the support of the perfects and may even have been able to say the Lord’s Prayer.
Beyond these groups was a large number of sympathizers who, out of conservatism or
fear, may have remained Catholic but who nevertheless admired the perfects for their
spiritual discipline and found the mythical theodicy attractive. It was thus impossible for
contemporaries, and so much the more for modern historians, to have a sense of how
numerous and influential the Cathars were. It seems clear, however, that the moral and
ascetic contrast between the way of life of the Cathar and the Catholic clergy worked
decisively to the advantage of the former in drawing the loyalty of the laity.
The new sect’s popularity and absolute rejection of the Catholic church posed a grave
threat. Early efforts to resist their advances in the area of their greatest strength,
Languedoc, failed: Cistercians, licensed as papal legates, rode horses and dressed in rich
ecclesiastical vestments, thus failing to win much popular support for their brand of
Christianity against the simply dressed, pedestrian Cathars. Although the “apostolic”
Waldensians were ready and willing to go into battle against the Cathars, clerics were too
suspicious to let them. Even Dominic, whose career began with bringing a Cathar back to
the church and who adopted poverty so as to debate more effectively with Cathars
(1206), failed to bring about lasting results. The papacy, prompted to take extreme action,
launched the Inquisition with the papal bull Abolendam in 1184 and called in 1208 upon
the king of France to fight the Cathars in Languedoc.
The Catholics eventually won the long and brutal Albigensian Crusade, which resulted
in the royal annexation of Languedoc (1229) and the formation of the papal Inquisition to
root out “heresy” in the region (1233–34). The battle went on throughout the 13th
century: in 1244, some 200 Cathars were captured at Montségur and burned; 178 were
burned in Verona in 1278; and the last Cathar bishop was captured in Tuscany in 1321.
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