Catharism
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Catharism was a name given to a religious sect with gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France in the 11th Century and flourished in the 12th and 13th Centuries.
Its Manichaean theology held that the physical world was evil and created by Satan, who was taken to be identical with the God of the Old Testament; and that men underwent a series of reincarnations before reaching the pure realm of spirit, the presence of the God of Love described in the New Testament and his messenger Jesus.
The Roman Catholic Church regarded the sect as heretical; faced with the rapid spread of the movement across the Languedoc and the failure of peaceful attempts at conversion, the Church launched the Albigensian Crusade to crush the movement.
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Massacre
From May 1243 to March 1244, the Cathar fortress of Montségur was besieged by the troops of the seneschal of Carcassonne and the archbishop of Narbonne. On March 16, 1244 a large and symbolically important massacre took place, where over 200 Cathar perfects were burned in an enormous fire at the prat des cramats near the foot of the castle. Moreover, the Church decreed chastisements against laymen suspected of sympathy with Cathars (Council of Narbonne, 1235; see the Bulla of Innocent IV Ad exstirpanda, 1252). Women were equals Women were treated as equals, because their physical form was irrelevant; their soul could have been a man's soul before, and it might once again become one.
Vegans
Cathar Perfects were also vegans. They were required to avoid eating anything considered to be a by-product of sexual reproduction, including cheese, eggs, milk and butter. Having said this, they were allowed to eat fish, as little was then known about the mating habits of marine creatures which were generally believed to simply appear spontaneously in the sea.
Free love
The idea free love has appeared various times in history such as among the Cathars of Medieval France.
The last Cathars and Cathar influence
The last Cathar Perfect, Guillaume Bélibaste, was executed in 1321. Other movements, such as the Waldensians and the pantheistic Brethren of the Free Spirit survived into the 14th and 15th century, until they were gradually replaced by, or absorbed into, early Protestant sects, such as the Hussites.
Ketter
In 1163 bedacht Eckbert van Schönau de term kathaar. Het woord ketter is verwant met Kathaar. Men geloofde indertijd dat de duivel op aarde zou verschijnen in de vorm van een kat. Duivelaanbidders zouden deze kat dan vereren door hem te kussen, vooral op zijn anus (Walter Map - diaken in Oxford in 1180).
Later history
After the suppression of Catharism, the descendants of Cathars were, in some southern French towns, required to live apart from the main town and its defenses. They thus retained a certain Cathar identity, although they were Catholic in religion. This practice of separation, though increasingly uncommon, finally ended during the French Revolution.
Any use of the term "Cathar" to refer to people after the suppression of Catharism in the fourteenth century is a cultural or ancestral reference, and has no religious implication. Nevertheless, interest in the Cathars, their history, legacy and beliefs continues. Also, the Cathars have been depicted in popular books such as Holy Blood, Holy Grail as a group of elite nobility somehow connected to "secrets" about the true nature of the Christian faith, although there is no critical proof of such secrets being kept.
The novel Flicker by Theodore Roszak, where Cathars are at the heart of a mystery involving the use of secretive film techniques used to influence modern culture.
See also
