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The Cathars: Cathar Beliefs: Roman Catholic Propaganda

Setting the Scene

Almost all modern historians are sympathetic to the Cathars. Even the most scholarly and objective works, laying out the bare facts as fairly as possible come across as sympathetic. Here is a quote from what is generally regarded as the best English language academic work of the twentieth century, referring to the Cathars:

None were humbler; none were more assiduous in prayer, more constant under persecution; none made more insistent claims to be "good men", and it was on those terms that they were received by many of the common people.

Walter Wakefield & Austin Evans, Heresies of The High Middle Ages (Columbia, 1991), p28.

and again

... the Gospels were their guide for conduct; their celibacy and their austerities were those of the monastic ideal; their criticism of the orthodox clergy was hardly more severe than that characteristic of other puritans and reformers; their disdain for the material world was rivalled by that of anchorites whose sanctity was revered by the Church.

Walter Wakefield & Austin Evans, Heresies of The High Middle Ages (Columbia, 1991), p50.

Even the better quality contemporary medieval opponents recognised their merits. Here is James Capelli, a friar who was lector at a Franciscan convent at Milan writing around 1240. As Wakefield and Evans say, he "displays scruples rarely encountered in other authors of polemical tracts"

... they are, however, most chaste of of body. For men and women observing the vow and way of life of this sect are in no way soiled by the corruption of debauchery. Whence, if any of them, man or woman, happens to be fouled by fornication, if convicted by two or three witnesses, he forthwith either is ejected from their group or, if he repents, is re-consoled by the imposition of their hands, and a heavy penitential burden is placed upon him as amends for sin. Actually, the rumour of the fornication which is said to prevail among them is most false. For it is true that once a month, either by day or by night, in order to avoid gossip by the people, men and women meet together, not, as some lyingly say, for purposes of fornication, but so that they may hear preaching and make confession to their preaching official, as though from his prayers pardon for their sins would ensue. They are wrongfully wounded in popular rumour by many malicious charges of blasphemy from those who say that they commit many shameful and horrid acts of which they are innocent.

A number of manuscripts of James Capelli's work survive. This extract is based on version is based on Dino Bazzocchi, La Eresia catara: Saggio storico filiosofico con in appendice Disputationes nonnullae adversus haereticos, codice inedito de secolo VIII della biblioteca Malatestiana di Cesena, but with errors corrected by reference to other surviving manuscripts. For further detail see Walter Wakefield & Austin Evans, Heresies of The High Middle Ages (Columbia, 1991), p305.

An alternative view

This is not how the Roman Catholic Church sees the Cathars and their "heresy". The Church's modern views, expressed by writers like Hilaire Belloc, and are not very different from those of the Medieval Roman Catholic Church (see Hilaire Belloc, The Albigensian Attack, Chapter Five of The Great Heresies Next: )

To most objective authorities the more serious accusations against the Cathars appear to be based on no more than propaganda. No organisation has ever used propaganda to such good effect as the Roman Church. The very word propaganda is derived from the name of the part of the Roman Church set up to propagate the faith. For many centuries the Catholic Church provided a set-menu of accusations against any group of which it did not approve: pagans, Eastern Churches, apostates, schismatics, heretics, Jews, Moslems, witches, Templars, numerous peoples of the New World, and so on. They were all accused of black magic, worshipping Satan, consorting with demons, aping Catholic rituals, murder, cannibalism, incest, bestiality, sodomy and a range of sexual excesses. Cathars were no exception. All of the preceding accusations were made against them, however scant or contrary the evidence.

An example of the contrast between propaganda and truth is provided by the disparity between alleged and real attitudes to sex. According to Catholic propaganda, Cathars including Parfaits and Parfaites habitually engaged in sexual excesses, including regular orgies. At the same as propagating these calumnies the Catholic Church authorities were detecting heretics not by their sexual excesses but by their sexual purity. We have a striking example from the twelfth century in the Archdiocese of Rheims where a group of heretics ("Poblicani") were discovered through the refusal of a young girl to submit to the attentions of a monk. The refusal of a girl to submit to a monk's sexual demands appears to have been so unusual that she was questioned and admitted that she believed she had an obligation to keep her virginity. As a result, she and her friends were investigated more closely and soon a nest of heretical believers was exposed. The heretics were described by the Archbishop, Samson, who asserted that heresy was being spread by itinerant weavers who encouraged sexual promiscuity.

Epistla Ecclesiae Leodensis in E Martène et V Durand, Veterum Scriptorum Amplissima Collectio (Paris, 1724-33) vol I, p 777. See Steven Runciman, The Medieval Manichee (Cambridge University Press, 1999) p 121.

The event is also described in a chronicle by Ralph the abbot of the Cistercian monastery of Coggershall (1207-1218). An English translation can be found in Wakefield and Evans, §42A (pp251-2). Click on the following link to read an English translation of Ralph's account.

Runciman places the event around 1157 while Wakefield and Evans place it between 1176 and 1180.

The Roman Church accused Cathars of various crimes and sins. These claims ranged from the true to the preposterous. Here we untangle them. Each of the following charges is dealt with separately:

Claims that Cathars rejected marriage
Claims that Cathars practised incest
Claims that Cathars practised sodomy
Claims that Cathars practised bestiality
Claims that Cathars practised other sex crimes
Claims that Cathars practised suicide
Claims that Cathars practised contraception
Claims that Cathars practised vegetarianism
Claims that Cathars advocated sexual equality
Claims that Cathars perverted the natural order

A Sexual Retainship Between Jesus and Mary Magdelene?

An intriguing accusation made against the Cathars was that they taught that Jesus and Mary Magdelene had engaged in a sexual relationship. It is difficult to know if this was just propaganda. On the one hand it hardly matches the Cathar view that Jesus was a divine phantom. On the other hand there does seem to have been a school of Gnostic Dualist thought that there were two Jesus Christs - one divine and good, the other earthly and bad. Cathars could well have believed that the bad earthly Jesus had married.

Also this was an accusation made often in the very earliest years of Christianity and it consistent with other hints. Early Gnostic gospels have Mary ranking above the "other apostles" and one refers to Jesus kissing Mary on the .... (tragically, there is a gap in the manuscript here, but most scholars slot in the word "mouth" as a best guess). In any case the accusation concerning a sexual relationship is not an invention of modern fiction writers as is sometimes claimed. The accusation appears in works by thirteenth century Inquisitors and Church chroniclers. Here is one example from a Cistercian Monk:

Further, in their secret meetings they said that Christ who was born in the earthly and visible Bethlehem and crucified at Jerusalem was evil, and that Mary Magdelene was his concubine - and that she was the woman taken in adultery who is referred to in the scriptures [John 8:3]

Peter des Vaux-de-Cernay, Historia Albigensis (In WA & MD Sibly's translation into English (Boydell, 2002) at {11} p 11). The accusation is repeated at {91} p51. Incidentally the Roman Catholic Church later adopted the Cathars' identification of Mary Magdelene with the woman taken in adultery (hence for example terms such as "the Magdene Sisters")

According to some authorities the Cathars believed that Mary Magdelene was not merely Jesus['s concubine, but had been married to him. As Durand de Huesca tells us, writing between 1208 and 1213:

Also they teach in their secret meetings that Mary Magdelene was the wife of Christ. She was the Samaritan woman to whom he said "Call thy husband" [John 4:16]. She was the woman taken in adultary, whom Christ set free lest the Jews stone her, and she was with Him in three places, in the temple, at the well, and in the garden [cf John 8:3-11].

This English translation (with my square brackets) is from Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, p 231, and based on the text printed by Antoine Dondaine "Durand de Huesca et la polemique anti-cathare" Archivum fratrum praedicatorum, XXIX (1959) 268-71.