INTRODUCTION
WILLIS BARNSTONEhe Cathars represent the last major flourishing of gnosis in western
Europe in the early eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries. They are also
called Albigensians, a geographical reference, because among their main con-
verts were the people in the Languedoc city of Albi. When the pope declared
the crusade against the Cathars in 1209, he called it the Albigensian Crusade.
The epithet Cathar was probably derived from the Greek katharoi (clean,
pure) and designated the class of the perfect or elect. The name was already
applied to the dualist community at Monteforte in Italy as early as 1030.
The Cathars first appeared in northern Italy, and then in western Germany,
England, and Flanders, but soon their major concentration was in Provencal-
speaking southwestern France. By the end of the tenth century we hear of Ger-
bert of Aurillac, archbishop elect of Reims, who issued a declaration of faith
that included Manichaean dualistic doctrines and a rejection of the Old Tes-
tament.^1 There is evidence of a continuity of Manichaean groups in France
from the time (c. 370s CE) when Augustine, in his earlier Manichaean period,
was exiled in Champagne and was actively proselytizing. Whatever the size
and significance of these interesting relics of classical Manichaeism, however,
the reappearance of a radical dualism in the region can be attributed to the
Bogomils, a neomanichaean group from Macedonia and Bulgaria who, like
the original adherents of Mani, quickly spread the fire of their doctrine from
Europe and North Africa to China. This time the Bogomils carried their mes-
sage through the Balkans and western Europe. Such was their impact that by
the twelfth century the Cathars had their own network of bishoprics reaching
T
- The declaration was made in 991. Gerbert of Aurillac, Epistolae, no. 180, ed. Havet, 161-62.