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Cathars

Albigenses ( also known as Cathars ), were followers of a heresy within the Christian Church during the Middle Ages. They were named after the town of Albi, in southern France, a major centre of the movement. The main stronghold for the Cathars was in the Languedoc region of modern day France, which at the time was a wealthy and independent state.

The Cathars were believers in the Manichaean dualistic system that flourished in the Mediterranean area for centuries. The dualists believed in the separate and independent existence of a god of good and a god of evil. Within western Europe, the adherents of dualism, called Cathari (from the Greek katharos, meaning “pure”), first appeared in northern France and the Low Countries towards the late 11th or early 12th century. Persecuted and expelled from the north, the Catharist preachers travelled south and found far greater success in the semi-independent province of Languedoc and the surrounding areas.

The Cathars believed that the whole of existence was a struggle between two gods: the god of light, goodness, and spirit, usually associated with Jesus Christ and the God of the New Testament; and the god of evil, darkness, and matter, identified both with Satan and the God of the Old Testament. Whether the two deities wielded equal power or whether the forces of evil were subordinate to the forces of good was a question subject to considerable debate; but, by definition, anything material, including wealth, food, and the human body itself, was evil and abhorrent. The soul had been imprisoned by Satan in the human body, and the only hope of human salvation was to live a good and spiritual life. By living a good life, a person could win freedom after death from material existence. Failure to achieve righteousness during one's lifetime would result in the soul's being born again as another human being or even as an animal. The Cathars believed that Christ was God, but that during his time on Earth he was a kind of angel with a phantom body taking the appearance of a man. They held that the traditional Christian Church, with its corrupt clergy and its immense material wealth, was the agent of Satan and was to be avoided. They believed that the Virgin Birth was nothing more than a symbolic invention as well as denying the Crucifixion and Resurrection of Christ. The transubstantiation of the bread and wine received at the Eucharist was also denied along with existence of Purgatory. They denied the existence of the Holy Trinity and believed John the Baptist to an instrument of the Devil and that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Christ.

Adherents of the Cathar doctrine were divided into the simple believers and the perfects. The perfects vowed themselves to lives of extreme asceticism. Renouncing all possessions, they survived entirely from donations given by the other members. They were forbidden to take oaths, to have sexual relations, or to eat meat, eggs, or chese. Only the perfects could communicate with God through prayer. The simple believers might hope to become perfects through a long initiation period followed by the rite called consolamentum, or baptism of the Holy Spirit through the laying on of hands. Some would receive this rite only when they were near death. They would then attempt to ensure their salvation by abstaining from all food and drink, in effect committing a form of suicide. The ordinary believers, credentes, did not have to live by these rules. Just before death a credente received the consolamentum and from this moment they entered the state of endure, whereby nothing could touch their lips except water. For those who died without the benefit of consolamentum, their soul would have to be reincarnated again and again, into an animal or human form, until it found the body of a good man as was able to reach perfection.

Most of the Languedocian nobility were either Cathars or supports of the faith. As pacifists, they posed no overt threat and simply aimed to lead a simple, pure and peaceful life.

The Christian Church initially attempted to reconvert the Cathars through peaceful means, including sending missionaries ( St Bernard of Clairvaux being one ). When every attempt failed, Pope Innocent III launched the armed Albigensian Crusade (c. 1209-1255) that brutally repressed the Cathars and desolated much of southern France.

In 1209 the Crusaders ordered the Catholic townspeople of Béziers to hand over the Cathars living amongst them but they refused. They were then told to leave the town, which they also refused to do. After a final threat of excommunication failed the Crusaders attacked the town with the Papal legate telling them to "show no mercy neither to order, nor age, nor sex. Cathar or Catholic, kill them all. God will know his own." The result was the slaughter of almost 15,000 men, women and children, of whom only 222 were Cathars. 

The night before the Carthars were due to give up their last besieged position at Montségur in 1244, four escaped taking with them the "Cathar treasure" known as pecuniam infinitam ( treasure infinite and invisible ). What this "treasure" was has never been determined. The following day the remaining 205 Cathars left Montségur marching down the mountain and were burned at the stake. In August 1255, the siege of Quéribus, a small fortress, marked the end of the Albigensian Crusade in which an estimated 100,000 Cathars and Languedocians were killed..

Small groups of Albigenses survived in isolated areas and were pursued by the Inquisition as late as the 14th century. By 1320, most of the Cathar leaders had been burned as heretics.