investiture, these same ascetics, their criticism intensified by a sense of betrayal, found
themselves outside the bounds of propriety. In some cases, apostolic preaching led to the
formation of new religious orders; in others, the matter of heresy lay closer to hand (e.g.,
Robert d’Arbrissel); and in some, the criticism of lax clergy moved toward a rejection of
the church as an institution (Henry of Lausanne, Peter de Bruys). Generally, the more
“orthodox” movements tended to withdraw from society and live in cloistered apostolic
communities; the more “heretical” tended to proclaim their criticisms of the church to
large, agitated crowds.
The most dangerous and widespread of “heresies” in medieval France was that of the
Cathars. Unlike earlier cases, the Cathars developed an independent ecclesiastical
structure with bishops, cult, sacraments, and ranks of faithful—the latter divided into
auditors, believers, and elect or cathari (“pure ones”). The first sign of this alternative
church appeared in the Rhineland (1143) and rapidly spread throughout western Europe.
Celibate, the elect refused any products of copulation, such as meat and milk. Influenced
by Bogomil missionaries from Bulgaria, Cathar doctrine was at once apostolic and
dualist, viewing the material world (and hence the God of the Old Testament, who
created it) as part of the realm of evil. Jesus had a brother, the fallen angel Satan, with
whom he was locked in a deadly battle.
The new sect’s absolute rejection of the Catholic church, and its facility at gaining not
only actual converts but also a broad base of sympathizers among the population, posed a
particularly grave threat. In response to persecution in northern France and Germany,
Cathars migrated to the more tolerant south of France (site of open debates between
Catholic and Cathar preachers), where they had great success among commoners and lay
nobility alike. By the end of the 12th century, they constituted a majority in some regions,
and the efforts of the papacy and Cistercian abbots to win back the faithful through
preaching failed. Even St. Dominic, whose career began with bringing a Cathar back to
the church, and who adopted poverty specifically to debate more effectively with Cathars,
failed to bring about lasting results. The papacy was prompted to take extreme actions,
including the launching of the Inquisition with the papal bull Ad abolendam in 1184 and
the calling of a crusade in 1208. It was in the aftermath of this war that the papal
Inquisition sought to root out the remaining Cathars systematically. In 1244, some 200
were captured at Montségur and burned; but as late as the 15th century, they were still to
be found in the Pyrénées (Montaillou) and the western Mediterranean.
Despite the clear-cut doctrinal aberrations of Catharism (some analysts consider it
another religion entirely), the basis of most “popular” heresy, where illiterate commoners
play a significant but not exclusive role, in medieval France was the split between the
egalitarian tendencies of apostolic Christianity and the hierarchical structure of a wealthy
and powerful church tied politically and socially to the dominant aristocracy. This
traditional configuration, when undermined by the economic changes of the high Middle
Ages—rapid urbanization, monetization, commercialization, rise of an urban proletariat,
spread of vernacular literacy—made an anticlerical, communitarian Christianity highly
appealing to lay folk from the lower classes. The “textual communities” based on
evangelical passages provided structure in a changing world and put forth a critique of
the powerful, whether nobles, merchants, or prelates.
In the case of “popular heresies,” then, the real issue was not doctrinal but social: a
generic Donatism (i.e., lay hostility to clergy deemed insufficiently “pure”) could, when
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