Qatari heresy. Cathars and the teachings of the Cathars

As is commonly believed in modern European historiography, the word "Cathars" in relation to the representatives of this movement was first used in 1163 by the Rhineland cleric Ekbert from Schönau.

When I was a canon in Bonn, I often argued with them with my brotherly soul (unanimis) and my friend Bertolph and paid attention to their mistakes and methods of defense. I learned a lot of things from those who were with them at first, and then left ... These are people who in Germany are called “Cathars”, in Flanders “Fifla”, in France “weavers”, because many of them prefer this craft ...

Eckbert combined the previously common Latin name cattari(fr. catiers, that is, "cat worshipers" - because of the rituals that were allegedly used by heretics with the participation of cats) with the Greek καθαρος , thereby associating them with the Novatian movement that existed in the era of early Christianity, who called themselves "kafars" (from the Greek. καθαροί - "clean, undefiled").

The term was later often used in documents of the Inquisition, from where it passed into the first historical studies dedicated to the "Albigensian heresy". Despite the fact that the word "Cathars", in fact, was a dismissive nickname, it has long been entrenched as the main name, along with "Albigensians". In addition to these two, the names “Manicheans”, “Origenists”, “Fifla”, “Publicane”, “Weavers”, “Bulgarians” (Fr. bougres), "Patarens".

History

Origin and origins

The first researchers, relying mainly on the anti-heretical works of Catholic theologians, followed their authors looking for the roots of the Qatari doctrine in Eastern influences, especially in Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, drawing a direct line of origin of the Cathars from Mani through the Pavlikians and the Bogomils. Accordingly, catharism was considered an initially non-Christian phenomenon that took root on the basis of European Christianity.

Currently, after the discovery of a large number of new sources, these views are being revised. Most modern researchers (J. Duvernoy, A. Brenon, A. Casenave, I. Hagmann and others) consider catharism to be one of the many, but unique Christian movements that emerged simultaneously in Western and Eastern Europe during the Millennium. This movement was represented by various communities, not necessarily related to each other and sometimes differing in doctrine and way of life, but represented a kind of unity in the field of structure and ritual, both in time frames - between the 10th and 15th centuries, and geographically - between Asia Minor and Western Europe. In Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, such communities include the Bogomils. The Bogomils of Byzantium and the Balkans, as well as the Cathars of Italy, France and Languedoc, were one and the same church.

The Qatari texts are characterized by the absence of references to the texts of non-Christian religions. Even in their most radical positions (for example, about dualism or about reincarnations), they appeal only to Christian primary sources and apocrypha. Cathar theology operates with the same concepts as Catholic theology, "now approaching, now moving away in their interpretation from the general line of Christianity."

The first medieval mentions

Expectations of the end of the world, which were first predicted in 1000, then in 1033, as well as the obvious crisis of European Christianity, gave rise to hopes among the people for a renewal of religious life. This period includes both the reforms sanctioned by the papacy (see Cluny Reform) and unofficial (heretical) attempts to realize the ideal of the apostolic life. Already in the first monastic chronicles of the Millennium era, along with descriptions of various disasters, there are reports of "heretics, sorcerers and Manicheans."

Eastern Europe

The earliest evidence of the Bogomils in the Byzantine Empire dates back to the X-XI centuries, and the Bogomils in them look like the brothers of Western heretics, who from the XII century have been called Cathars. The Cathars themselves, according to the testimony of the Western European monk Evervin from Steinfeld, claimed that their tradition was preserved from ancient times by their brothers in Greece, from which they themselves have perceived and continues to this day.

Western Europe

In the midst of the movement for spiritual reform in the 11th century, simultaneously in many regions of Western Europe, spiritual movements appeared, organized into monastic communities based on the Gospel, denying the legitimacy of the hierarchy of the Roman Church, a number of its dogmas (for example, about the human nature of Christ) and sacraments ( marriage, the Eucharist). Since these movements also practiced baptism by the laying on of hands, characteristic of the Cathars, historians consider them to be proto-Cathars.

The various spiritual trends of the 11th century had many features in common. They refused to baptize small children, denied the sacrament of confession and the sacrament of marriage, which was just then introduced by the papacy. They also rejected the efficacy of church ordinances if the priest performing them was in a state of sin, and also criticized the cult of the Crucifixion as a means of execution.

Other sources from the time speak of the burning of the publicans in Champagne and Burgundy, the Fifla in Flanders, the Patarens in Italy, and the "horribly vile sects of weavers or Arians" in the South of France, sometimes called the Albigensians. There is reason to believe that all these names refer to the same type of organized Christian communities, which the ruling Church called "heretical."

Churches of European Cathars

Occitania and France

The Occitan bishoprics of the Cathars of the 12th century arose on the territory of two large feudal formations: the Count of Toulouse (vassal of the King of France) and the union of Viscountries located between Barcelona and Toulouse and united by the Trancavel family (Carcassonne, Beziers, Albi and Limoux). The count and the viscounts of these lands did not show much zeal in the pursuit of heresy. In 1177, Count Raimund V, sincerely hostile to heretics, wrote to the Sito chapter that he was not able to overcome heresy, because all his vassals supported it. His son Raimund VI (-) was friendly towards heretics. For a long time, the Trancaveli dynasty provided heresies with even greater assistance. Finally, the Counts de Foix went even further, directly engaging in the Qatari Church.

For several generations, the balance of power in the Occitan lords was in favor of the Qatari churches, and this ruled out any persecution. Before the crusade against the Albigensians, catharism swept in the west the territories from Quercy to Gourdon and Agenois ("Church of Agen"); in the center - the territories of Toulouse, Laurague and County Foix ("Toulouse Church"), in the north - Albijua ("Church of Albi"), in the east - Cabarda, Minervois and Carcassonne ("Church of Carcassonne"), extending even to Corbières and to the sea ... In 1226, a fifth bishopric was established, in Razes (Limou region), which was formerly part of the “Church of Carcass”.

Northern Italy

The documentary evidence at the disposal of historians about the Italian Cathar milieu reveals four characteristic features of this milieu:

Organization of Church Life in Qatari Communities

Clergy

From the very beginning, catharism was characterized by sharp anti-clericalism (criticism of the so-called "prejudices of the Roman Church" - the cult of saints, relics, images, etc.). However, criticizing the “apostasy of the Roman Church,” they never argued that the Church and its hierarchy were not needed at all.

Like the Catholics, the Cathar Church was divided into clergy and laity. Lay people (lat. credentes, or "believers") did not have to renounce their previous Catholic habits or affections, but they recognized the spiritual authority of the Qatari teachers (lat. perfecti, or "perfect").

The Qatari clergy combined the mixed functions of priests and monks. It included both men and women. Like the Catholic priests, the Qatari perfect preached, provided the ritual of salvation for souls and the remission of sins. Like monks, they lived in communities, observed fasting and abstinence and ritual hours of prayer.

Just like the Catholic bishop in his diocese, the Qatari bishop was the source of the priesthood, from his hands came the consecration of community members. Believers baptized (sanctified) by the bishop led a life dedicated to God and believed that they had the power to forgive sins. This power was believed to be transferred from "some 'kind people' to others." In the texts of the Cathars, it constitutes the essence of the "order of the Holy Church." The Cathars believed that their bishops passed on this tradition to each other in a straight line from the apostles.

At the head of each Qatari Church was a bishop and two of his assistants (coadjutors) - the "elder Son" and "younger Son", also ordained by the bishop for this rank. After the death of the bishop, the "Elder Son" became his immediate successor. The territory of the bishopric was divided between a certain number of deacons: they played an intermediary role between the episcopal hierarchy and the communities located in the villages and towns that they regularly visited. Bishops themselves rarely lived in large cities, preferring communities of small towns. According to historians, such an ecclesiastical organization resembles the structure of the early Christian Church.

Communities

Like Catholic monasteries, Cathar monastic houses were places where neophytes were trained to lead a religious life. There they studied the catechism and their religious duties for two or three years, after which they made the necessary vows, and the bishop ordained them by the laying on of hands. The baptism (dedication) ceremony was public, and believers were sure to attend.

Preachers and preachers regularly left their communities to fulfill their religious duties, and also visited relatives and friends in or around the city.

The female and male communities of the Cathars lived by their own labor. Some of these community homes were like modern hospices, where believers received spiritual guidance and comfort, and provided themselves with what they called a “happy ending” that brought soul salvation.

Male monastic communities were ruled by "elders", and female - by "priorities" or "rulers". Cathar monastic houses were not closed and often had factories with them. They were very numerous in the cities, actively participating in local economic and social life.

Many people in Languedoc considered the Cathars "good Christians who have great power to save souls" (from testimony before the Inquisition).

Qatari monks followed the "Rules of Justice and Truth" and the gospel precepts. They avoided killing (including killing animals), lying, judging, and so on. All this was considered a grave sin, devaluing the Spirit that descended on them. The sinner had to repent and go through again Consolament- a sacrament, the name of which comes directly from the common Christian term "Comforter" (Paraclete).

The flowering of catharism

Montsegur

They themselves, with their lives and morals, in practice demonstrated the purity and rigorism of the apostolic way of life, which even their opponents admitted. The Cathars were supporters of absolute non-violence, they refused to lie and swear. Many people of that time, as can be seen from the protocols of the Inquisition, perceived them as poor itinerant preachers carrying the Word of God. Studies of the 70s - 80s of the XX century show catharism as a literal adherence to the commandments of Christ, and especially the prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount. As modern scholars believe, this evangelism was one of the central points of Catharism.

However, the dualistic Christianity of the Cathars was an alternative religious construct. They did not call for a reform of the clergy and a "return to the Scriptures." They declared their desire to return to the purity of the Church of the Apostles, which was not the "usurping Roman Church" but their own, the "Church of the Good Christians."

However, for all their harsh criticism of the institution of the Catholic Church (in their terminology - "synagogues of Satan"), the Cathars were not inclined to manifest hostility towards the Catholics themselves. There is a lot of evidence of peaceful communication between believers of both religions in precisely those areas where Catharism had a significant influence. Local coexistence between heretical monks and Catholic clergy generally proceeded without clashes. It follows from the documents of the Inquisition that believers, in their mass, considered themselves to belong to both churches at once, believing that both of them were more likely to save the soul than one.

On the contrary, where the Catholic Church dominated, the Cathars often became the target of persecution. The attitude of the Roman hierarchs towards them was sharply intolerant. Local rulers, loyal to the pope, sought to capture them and "whoever could not be taken away from madness, they burned with fire."

In the first decades, the persecution was rather sporadic. While the condemnation of heretics was a matter for the episcopal courts, the Church hesitated in its choice of methods of repression. Initially, executions took place according to the verdicts of the secular authorities. But gradually councils and pontifical bulls paved the way for the Church's lawmaking in the field of heresy.

At the end of the 12th century, the confrontation between Catharism and Catholicism intensified. The papacy, alarmed by the spread of heresy, increased pressure, which provoked a retaliatory exacerbation of criticism from the Cathars. The Pope sent Cistercian missions to Toulouse and Albi in 1178 and 1181, but the missionaries did not benefit from the assistance of the local rulers and obtained practically nothing from them in the pursuit of heresy.

The crusade against the Albigensians was characterized by cruel reprisals against the civilian population (Beziers in 1209, Marmande in 1219), as well as huge mass fires where heretics were burned - in Minerva (140 burned in 1210), Lavora (400 burned in 1211 ). However, the local population, for whom the war was of both a religious and a national liberation nature, actively resisted the crusaders, supporting their legitimate counts.

In 1220, it finally became clear that the attempt to plant a Catholic dynasty of Montfort in Toulouse and Carcassonne had failed. The Cathar communities, which had been severely damaged by the Crusaders at first, began to gradually rebuild.

In 1226, Louis VIII of France, son of Philippe-Augustus, decided to restore himself to the Mediterranean counties given to him by Montfort, and he himself led the French army, moving it against Raymund Trancavel, Raymund VII of Toulouse and their vassals. Despite fierce resistance in some regions (especially Lima and Cabarete), the royal army conquered the Languedoc. In 1229, the Count of Toulouse, having submitted, signed a peace treaty, ratified in Paris.

Final defeat of the Qatari movement

The inhabitants of Carcassonne are expelled from the city during the siege by the troops of Simon de Montfort

In the treatises and rituals of the Cathars, there is no mention of the successive transmigration of souls from one bodily prison to another. Only the anti-Qatari controversy and testimony before the Inquisition contains information on this topic. However, the theoretical texts of the Good Christians assert that contrary to what the Catholic clergy teach, God does not create infinitely new souls in order to stop time one day and judge everyone, in the state and age in which He finds them. On the contrary, a certain number of divine souls fell into the slavery of bodies, and now they must "awaken" from this world, before hearing the call to leave it and return to their heavenly homeland.

As already mentioned, they believed in the universal salvation of all divine souls who fell into the slavery of bodies during the creation of the evil world. They believed that moving from body to body after their fall, these souls will gain experience and the opportunity to cognize Good, realize their belonging to another world, will be called by God to reunite with Him.

The means of Salvation, according to catharism, was evangelical, but at the same time radically different from the atoning sacrifice of the Catholic Christ.

The Cathars believed that, in fact, the Son of God came into this world not to atone for original sin by His sacrifice and death on the cross, but simply to remind people that their Kingdom is not of this world, and to teach them a saving sacrament that will forever deliver them from evil and from time. This is the sacrament of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, transmitted by Christ to His apostles.

Ritual and cult

The “good news” of the Gospel, from the point of view of the Cathars, consists in the enlightenment of the Word of Christ, in the awakening of souls who receive salvation through baptism by the laying on of hands, about which John the Baptist said: “He who follows me is stronger than me ... He will baptize you with the Holy Spirit and fire ". Christ breathed this Spirit into the apostles, who passed it on to their disciples.

Thus, in the Qatari interpretation of the Gospel, the main meaning belonged to Pentecost, and not the Passion. Most likely, this interpretation is more archaic. Both in the interpretation of the sacred texts by the Cathars, and in their liturgy, researchers find very close similarities with early Christianity.

The sacrament of consolament, practiced by the Cathars, served simultaneously as baptism, and initiation, and communion, since baptism with water alone was absolutely not enough. Consolidation was also given for the forgiveness of sins, entry into the path of repentance, the sign of the power to bind and untie, which marked the Church of Christ. Bestowed on the dying, this sacrament was also unction. And, finally, uniting the soul with the spirit, it was like a spiritual, mystical marriage. The only thing that was not in him was the Transubstantiation.

Baptism by consolament was a collective, public ceremony open to all. Accompanied by the Elder or Priorissa, the neophyte would come to the bishop's house “to surrender to God and the Gospel”, to adopt the tradition of the Our Father prayer - the most important prayer, which should be repeated regularly at a certain time and a certain number of times, and then accept the Book of Scripture itself. Then, after a long ceremony, the bishop and all the Good People present laid their right hands on the head of the neophyte and recited the first verses of the Gospel of John. The consolament for the dying was a similar ritual: it was given by two Good People in the presence of the dying person's family and friends.

Documents show that Good Christians were often present at the table of believers. At the beginning of each meal - exclusively vegetarian - the elders of the Good Men or Good Women blessed the bread, broke it and distributed it to everyone present. This ritual, observed since the Millennium, replaced the Eucharist with it. They did this in memory of the Last Supper, but did not think that they were eating the Body of Christ when they broke bread; for them, these words from the Gospel symbolized the Word of God that spreads throughout the world.

If any believer met a Good Man or a Good Woman, he greeted them with a threefold request for blessing, or, on the Occitan, melhorier, and prostrated before them three times in obeisance.

At the end of every ritual ceremony, Christians and believers exchanged the kiss of the world, men among themselves, and women among themselves. Rigoristic vows of chastity actually forbade Qatari monks from any physical contact with persons of the opposite sex.

Assessment of the historical significance of catharism

For a long time in the historical literature, both in a significant part of domestic and foreign, the assessment of the historical role of the Qatari movement was unequivocally negative, although in the Soviet tradition, for example, in the TSB, there was a tendency towards a positive assessment of catharism as a movement of resistance to the dictates of the medieval papacy, which is extremely negatively assessed in the USSR. The main source on which the researchers relied were treatises refuting this medieval heresy - the anti-heretical Sums, compiled by theologians of the 13th century. Catharism was viewed as an anti-church, largely barbaric heretical teaching that threatened to undermine the position of Christianity in Europe. Since the 80s of the twentieth century. after the works of the Oxford historian Robert Moore, there has been a revision of the attitude towards catharism. Today, most Western scholars of catharism are leaning towards a more positive point of view. According to their version, the Cathars, with their teachings about love and rejection of violence, were an attempt by European society to return to the origins of Christianity (thereby anticipating the Luther Reformation) and thereby create an alternative to Catholicism, which was in a deep crisis.

From the same position, the significance of other major religious movements of the Middle Ages that preceded the Reformation - the Waldensians, Beguins, etc., is assessed. However, it is catharism that is considered the most prolonged and successful of such attempts. The violent suppression of this attempt, which took on the character of a devastating war and the ensuing brutal repression, is regarded as one of the first precedents in the history of Europe for the triumph of totalitarian ideology.

Contemporary historiographical discussion of catharism

Until 1950, the study of this issue was under the exclusive influence of theologians. This circumstance led to disagreements in assessing the origin of catharism. Some researchers (including L.P. Karsavin and the author of one of the first major monographs on the history of the Inquisition, Henry Lee) consider catharism to be a “neo-manichaeism” that came to the West from the non-Christian East: “The essence of the Cathar dogma is completely alien to Christianity”. This position is shared by some modern researchers. However, the development of the archives of the Inquisition led to a revision of the prevailing opinion among historians.

Catharism is one of the religions that shaped human consciousness, strengthened hearts and inspired a huge number of people, from Asia Minor to the Atlantic Ocean, to make a decision to devote themselves to God, at least from the 10th to the 15th century ... one of the forms of Christianity and relies - even if we consider it a distortion - on the Word and rite, which we ourselves have absorbed with mother's milk.

These researchers emphasize numerous common features inherent in both catharism and the whole European culture in the 11th-12th centuries. The most serious contribution to the refutation of the "traditional" vision of this heresy as a branch of Eastern Manichaeism was made by Jean Duvernois. In his book "The Religion of the Cathars", for the first time, thanks to the study of the complete collection of various types of documents, an exhaustive analysis of the historical data of the medieval religious phenomenon called catharism was carried out. The author came to the conclusion about the exclusively Christian context of Catharism, and since then this conclusion has dominated among modern historians.

Cathar terminology

Adoremus See Prayers

Adoratio A term from the Inquisitorial Dictionary, a contemptuous designation for a ritual of asking for blessings, called melhorament or melhorier by the Cathars. Focusing on the kneeling gesture that accompanied this rite, the Inquisition tried to ridicule this practice, calling it a rite of "veneration" by believers of heretics.

Albanenses This was the name given by the Italian Dominicans to members of the Decenzano (near Lake Garda) Qatari Church, supposedly founded by a bishop named Albanus, who argued with another Qatari bishop named Garatus at the end of the century. In the 13th century, the followers of Albanus professed the so-called absolute dualism of the Bishop of Bellesmanza and his Elder Son Giovanni de Luggio, the author of the Book of Two Beginnings, who also became bishop around 1250.

Apareilement or Aparelhament An Occitan word for "preparation" and is a ceremony of collective repentance, like a monastic confession. This confession was conducted monthly by deacons in the male and female monastic communities of the Cathars. This ceremony, also called servici, is detailed in the Lyons Ritual of the Cathars. For those who want to know more, we recommend Jean Duvernoy's La religion des cathares, in two volumes.

Caretas or Kiss of the world The practice known from the Qatari rituals, meaning "reconciliation, forgiveness", is a common Christian practice in the Middle Ages. The kiss of the world concluded the liturgical ceremonies of the Cathars. Testimonies before the Inquisition describe this ritual in detail, speaking of a "kiss on the face" or even "on the lips": "With this kiss, the Perfect give us peace, kissing twice on the lips, then we kiss them twice in the same way." Quoted from Le dossier de Montsegur: interrogatoires d'inquisition 1242-1247. Testimony by Jordan de Pereil. Between the Good Men and the Good Women, who were forbidden by the Rules to touch each other, the kiss took place through the medium of the Gospel Book.

Consolamentum or Consolament The only sacrament practiced by the Cathars and called by them "the holy baptism of Jesus Christ." It was about spiritual baptism (as opposed to John's "water baptism"). It was carried out by the laying on of hands, according to a ceremony similar to the early Christian one (without material components such as water and oil). It was also called the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, complementing the baptism with water and descending on the Apostles at the time of Pentecost. For the Cathars, this baptism performed by the true Christian Church also had the meaning of repentance, since it washed away sins and saved the soul. It was performed over the neophytes and meant their entry into the Christian life (order), and for believers - the salvation of the soul and a happy ending (unction). The liturgical words and gestures of this rite are described in the most detailed way in the three Cathar Rituals that have come down to us, as in the protocols of the Inquisition. “... Now, desiring to become perfect, I receive God and the Gospel, and I promise never again to eat meat, eggs, cheese, or fatty foods with the exception of vegetable oil and fish, until the end of my life I will no longer swear or lie, and not renounce the faith under pain of fire, water, or other means of dying. After I promised all this, I read Pater Noster ... When I said the prayer, the perfected laid the Book on my head and read the Gospel of John. At the end of the reading, they gave me a Kiss Book, then we exchanged a “kiss of the world”. Then they prayed to God, doing many knees. " Quote from "The Papers of Montsegur: Testimonies of the Inquisition 1242-1247"

Convenenza An Occitan word meaning "agreement, contract." In times of war and persecution, starting with the siege of Montsegur, the Convenenza became a treaty between the Good Man and the believer, allowing the Consolamentum to be accepted even if the person was speechless. Jordan du Ma was wounded and was comforted "by the barbican, which was near the car. The Good People, Raymund de Saint-Martin and Pierre Sirvain, came there and gave the wounded man consolation, although he had already lost the ability to speak ..." Inquisition 1242-1247 ”Recorded from the words of Azalais, widow of Alzue de Massabrac.

Endura An Occitan word meaning "fasting." The inquisitors of the XIV century used it, trying to accuse the last Good People of encouraging suicide among believers who received consolation on the bed of death, but survived. However, researchers believe that this was a misinterpretation of the ritual fasts on bread and water, which the newly baptized were supposed to observe, according to the Rules. There are only a few examples of hunger strikes undertaken by the Good People caught by the Inquisition, who refused food and water so as not to speak during interrogations, because the inquisitors preferred to burn them alive.

Melhorament or melioramentum An Occitan word meaning "striving for the best." The Kind Man's greeting to the believers, presented by the inquisitors as worship. Meeting a Kind Man or Kind Woman, the believer knelt down and prostrated before them three times, saying: "Good Christian (Good Christian), I ask the blessings of God and yours." The third time he added: "And pray for me to God that He will make me a Good Christian and lead to a happy ending." A monk or nun replied to this: "Accept the blessing of God," and then: "We will pray for you to God that He will make you a Good Christian and lead to a happy ending."

Our Father or the Holy Word, the fundamental prayer of Christians among the Cathars. They spoke it daily during the Hours, during the Consolament, before meals, etc. Their version did not differ from the Catholic one except for one word: instead of “our daily bread,” they said “our bread that we bear” - a variant that goes back to the translation of St. Jerome and emphasizes the symbolic meaning of bread, meaning the Word of God. In addition, they used the Greek doxology "For Thine is the kingdom, and the power, and the glory, forever and ever," upon which they based their faith in universal salvation.

Poor Catholics The Cathars were not the only ones who rebelled against the clergy, who accumulated wealth contrary to the words of the evangelists. Duran Huesca was the first creator of the Poor Catholics Order. After the Council of Pamiers in 1207, having met personally with Saint Dominic, Durand Huesca thus helped to establish the Order of Poor Catholics. They built in 1212 two monasteries for brothers and sisters in Elne (Roussillon). The main task of the order was to constantly preach, like the Perfect ones, live in poverty, pray and sleep on bare boards ... Durand Huesca is known today for battles with heretics, and especially for his work "Liber contra Manicheos".

Believers According to Everwin de Steinfeld, in the middle of the 12th century, in the Rhinelands, believers represented the middle stage between the common faithful (or listeners) and the heretical clergy of Christians or the elect. By the laying on of hands, the believer became a neophyte. In the Languedoc of the 13th century, the Inquisition already distinguishes only between simple "believers in heretics", that is, people listening to the science of heretics. In fact, the believers were a mass of the faithful who “believe in what the heretics say and believe that heretics can save their souls,” says the Inquisition registers. At the beginning of the 14th century, Pierre Autier defined a believer as a person who ritually greets Good People and asks for their blessing.

Grail In medieval novels, the Grail is associated with the cup in which the blood of Jesus was collected and which Joseph of Arimathea brought to Western Europe. She became the object of the mystical searches of the Knights of the Round Table in such works as: "The Legend of the Grail" by Chrétien de Trois, "Percival" by Wolfram von Eschenbach and others. This myth about the Grail, based on Celtic mythology, was used by Cistercian preachers. At first glance, there is no visible and indirect connection between the legends of the Grail and catharism. The book Crusaders Against the Grail by the German scholar Otto Rahn (published in 1933) was the first to raise this issue. In the book by Gerard de Seda, "The Mystery of the Cathars", there is still evidence of such a connection.

Sins As in all monotheistic religions, sin is a violation of divine law by man. For the Christians of the Cathars, this divine law was clear prescriptions and commandments of the Gospel: their sins were murder, adultery, violence, lies, theft, backbiting, oathing, condemnation ... Any of these sins meant for a Christian, that is, for a Cathar monk, the immediate loss of Christianity. states. “Freed from evil” through the baptism of repentance, the Consolament, and having received grace, the Cathar Christian should not have sinned, because evil could no longer work through him. A kind Person who lied, killed, swore, or knowingly touched a woman had to go through re-baptism and re-obedience.

Two Churches Pierre Autier and his comrades preached the gospel even more clearly and reasonably than their predecessors. Severely persecuted, they associated themselves with Christ and His apostles, whom the world persecuted before them, and called the persecuting Roman Church evil and deceitfully Christian. Echoing with the Rhine heretics of 1143, Pierre Autier preached: "There are two Churches, one is persecuted, but forgives, and the other owns and skinns." Everyone at that time understood what the Church of Christ is, and what is of this world.

Giovanni de luggio Mentioned since 1230 as the Elder Son of the Qatari Bishop of the Decenzano Church. Perhaps originally from Bergamo. He is one of the most learned clerics of his day. He wrote a theological Qatari treatise known as the Book of Two Principles, from which only an abridged version has come down to us. This book was primarily written against the theses of the Qatari hierarch Didier of the Concorezzo Church and is the pinnacle of Qatari theological reflection on the problem of evil. Giovanni de Luggio's treatise was written according to all the rules of medieval scholasticism of the middle of the 13th century. He became bishop of the Church of Decenzano around 1250, but disappears from the records several decades later, possibly falling victim to the repression of the 1270s in Italy.

Deacons In the Qatari Church, the deacon was the first step in the hierarchy. Cathar deacons were required to visit religious houses for administration and disciplinary meetings in specific territories within each Church. Deacons also performed ceremonies of collective confession and repentance in men's and women's houses of worship. Religious houses, where the deacons themselves lived, played the role of hospice houses. All Cathars' deacons were men, there are no sources that indicate the existence of deaconesses.

House (monastic) Monks and nuns among the Cathars lived in small communities for women and men in religious houses, reminiscent of Catholic monasteries, but with free entry and exit. There they were engaged in physical labor and jointly practiced rituals and sacraments. Some of these houses also served as hotels, hospitals or hospices; some had the specific functions of schools or seminaries. There were many such monastic houses open to the public in the small towns of Languedoc. Most of them consisted of only a few people, sometimes members of the same family. Widows, married women who have given birth to many children, girls without dowry - in a word, all those who decided to devote themselves to God and achieve salvation as Good Women - lived in communities that were not at all isolated from the world, together with their sisters, mothers, aunts, sometimes in the same house where other relatives lived, and sometimes in a neighboring house.

Bishops of the Cathars The Cathar communities were governed by consecrated bishops in the manner of the early Church. Like Catholic bishops, they had the right to consecrate those who entered the Christian community in their Church or episcopacy. As bishops in the Orthodox Church, they were also monks. The first heretical bishops are mentioned in the Rhinelands between 1135 and 1145. At the end of the 12th century, the bishop of the Church of France, Lombardy and the four bishoprics of Languedoc are already known. Over the bishops there was no centralized authority like the papal, all the Churches were local.

Baptism The sacrament, which in all Christian Churches signifies the entry into the Christian life. In the early Christian Church, baptism also meant repentance and remission of sins. The act of baptism was then twofold: by water (by immersion) and by the Spirit (by the laying on of hands). Later, the Roman Church divided these two rites, keeping the name of baptism behind water baptism, and retaining the laying on of hands for the consecration of bishops. At the same time, the meaning of baptism with water was narrowed down to washing away original sin, and more and more often it began to be performed on young children. In the Qatari rituals, the Consolament, the laying on of hands, is always called baptism: "Holy baptism of Jesus Christ", or "spiritual baptism of Jesus Christ." The Cathars apparently retained the features of baptism characteristic of the early Church: they laid hands only on adults who were aware of what was happening and asked for forgiveness for their sins. For them, this was the only true baptism, because water baptism or “the baptism of John” performed in the Roman Church was, from their point of view, insufficient for salvation. In addition, they believed that only their baptism was "based on the Scriptures."

Cemeteries The Cathars did not attach any importance to the sacralization of the body and did not believe in resurrection in bodies. Therefore, they did not have any special burial rites. If circumstances allowed, then the dead in heresy were buried, like everyone else, in ordinary parish cemeteries. If the local priest forbade doing this, then the Qatari community had its own cemetery, such as in Lordat or Puiloran. In the days of the underground, the dead were buried wherever they could: in the garden, on the banks of the river, etc. The Inquisition often exhumed these corpses and burned them.

Younger Son and Elder Son These hierarchical church degrees are first mentioned in Languedoc in 1178. The Elder Son and the Younger Son are the coadjutors of the Qatari bishops. They immediately received episcopal ordination and their functions could be equated with episcopal ones. Therefore, after the death of the bishop, the Elder Son became a bishop, and the Younger Son became the Elder Son. Then a new Younger Son was chosen and ordained. Further, the hierarchy of the Cathars consisted of deacons, and the lowest level was the Elders and Priorisses (leaders and leaders of men's and women's religious houses).

Prayers Like all Christian monks, the Good People all their lives said prayers at certain times. First of all, it is Benedicite (Benedicite, parcite nobis, Bless and have mercy on us), Adoremus (Adoremus Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, Amen - Let us worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen). Further, this is the fundamental prayer of the Cathars, Our Father, which Christ taught the Apostles. Ordinary believers, not yet freed from evil, did not turn to God directly with this prayer, but their request for blessing during the Melhorament ritual was a prayer. But As follows from the "Register of the Inquisition of Jacques Fournier" (volume 2, pp. 461-462, in the XIV century, believers recited the following prayer: "Holy Father, Right God of the good in spirit, You who never lied, did not deceive, did not doubt And out of fear of death that awaits us all, we ask You, do not let us die in a world alien to God, for we are not of the world, and the world is not for us, but let us know what You know and love what you love ... "

Clothed with the Holy Spirit The terms hereticus indutus, heretica induta ("clothed heretic") are very often used in the archives of the Inquisition to refer to the Qatari monks in order to distinguish them from ordinary believers. Perhaps this stems from the fact that before the persecution, the Good People wore special black or dark monastic robes. But believers often called Good People "clothed with the Holy Spirit."

Vows The three monastic vows pronounced by the Cathars are: chastity, poverty and obedience. These are vows common to all Christianity, based on the precepts of the Gospel. Also added to this were the vows of communal life and abstinence, the vow to observe the monastery hours ("liturgical hours"). For the Cathars, practically entering the Christian life meant complete dedication, self-giving.

Pentagram A geometric figure in the form of a pentagon, in which a five-pointed star is inscribed. Esotericists of the twentieth century are groundlessly looking for Qatari symbolism in it.

Bee The Cathars wore an engraving of a bee on buckles and buttons, for the Perfect ones it symbolized the secret of fertilization without physical contact.

A fish Like all Christian monks who lived in fasting and abstinence, the Cathars abstained from meat, but not on certain days, but in general, with the exception of fish.

Family (marriage) Like many heretics of the 11th-12th centuries, the Cathars rejected the sacrament of marriage, which was very late introduced by the Roman Church (11th century), not wanting to confuse the divine sacrament and a purely material and social act. Conception and birth in itself, without the sacrament, according to Christian terminology, is a "bodily sin." The Cathars said that "to know bodily your wife, as well as another woman, is one and the same sin." They also believed that embryos in the womb are simply bodies, that is, bodily shells formed by the devil that do not yet have a soul. On the other hand, the birth of children, according to the Catharism system, was necessary for the "awakening of the world", so that souls could enter other bodies after death and acquire a new chance for salvation, until all the fallen angels can finally return to the Kingdom. Some Dominican inquisitors spread rumors that the Cathars could lead humanity to extinction by forbidding the birth of children. However, only Qatari monks and nuns took vows of absolute chastity, and their believers got married (including marriages in the Catholic Church) and started families. They had numerous children, as did their Catholic neighbors. There are cases when marriages were concluded between Qatari believers through the mediation of a Good Man, but without any sacrament, only as a mutual agreement. The Cathars did not consider virginity to be of great value. Most of them became monks and nuns in adulthood, after they had already started a family and got their children back on their feet. By entering into religious life, often at the same time, they freed each other from marriage vows. The true marriage, which is mentioned in the Gospel, (“what the Lord united, let man not part”), for the Cathars was the spiritual marriage of the soul and the Spirit that occurs during the Consolament, reuniting the heavenly creation, torn apart after the fall.

Death From the point of view of the Cathars, the physical death of the body was a sign of the devilish nature of this world. On the whole, this fit into their idea of the transitory nature of everything visible and served as proof that the evil creator is incapable of creating anything "stable and lasting." Death was evil and came from evil, God in no case can punish it or send it to death. That is why the Cathars rejected the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Christ. The Good People condemned both murder and the death penalty. On the contrary, they made vows to face the martyrdom courageously after the example of Christ and

For the pentagonal castle of Montsegur, folk legends have fixed the name - "The cursed place on the holy mountain." The castle itself is located on a hill in the southwest of France. It was built on the site of a sanctuary that existed in pre-Christian times. The hill itself was small, but had steep slopes, so the castle was considered impregnable (in the ancient dialect, the name Monsegur sounds like Monsur - Reliable Mountain).

Legends and tales of the knight Parsifal, the Holy Grail and, of course, the magical castle of Montsegur are associated with this land. The surroundings of Montsegur are striking in their mystery and mysticism. Tragic historical events are also associated with Montsegur.

In 1944, in the course of stubborn and bloody battles, the Allies occupied positions recaptured from the Germans. Especially many French and British soldiers were killed at the strategically important height of Monte Cassino, trying to take possession of the castle of Mosegur, where the remnants of the 10th German army settled. The siege of the castle lasted 4 months. Finally, after massive bombing and landing, the Allies launched a decisive assault.

The castle was destroyed almost to the ground. However, the Germans continued to resist, although their fate had already been decided. When the Allied soldiers came close to the walls of Montsegur, something inexplicable happened. A large flag with an ancient pagan symbol - the Celtic cross - hoisted on one of the towers.

This ancient Germanic ritual was usually resorted to only when the help of higher powers was needed. But everything was in vain, and nothing could help the invaders.

This incident was far from the only one in the castle's long history full of mystical mysteries. It began in the 6th century, when a monastery was founded by Saint Benedict in 1529 on Mount Cassino, considered a sacred place since pre-Christian times. Cassino was not very high and rather resembled a hill, but its slopes were distinguished by their steepness - it was on such mountains that impregnable castles were laid in the old days. It is not for nothing that in the classical French dialect, Montsegur sounds like Mont-sur - Reliable Mountain.

850 years ago, one of the most dramatic episodes of European history took place in the castle of Montsegur. The Inquisition of the Holy See and the army of the French king Louis IX were besieging the castle for almost a year. But they never managed to cope with the two hundred heretic Cathars who settled in it. The defenders of the castle could repent and leave in peace, but instead chose to voluntarily go to the fire, thus they kept their mysterious faith pure.

And to this day there is no unequivocal answer to the question: where did the Qatari heresy get into southern France? The first traces of it appeared in these parts in the 11th century. In those days, the southern part of the country, part of the Languedoc county, stretching from Aquitaine to Provence and from the Pyrenees to Crécy, was practically independent.

This vast territory was ruled by Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse. Nominally, he was considered a vassal of the French and Aragonese kings, as well as the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, but in nobility, wealth and power he was not inferior to any of his overlords.

While Catholicism prevailed in the north of France, the dangerous Qatari heresy was spreading more and more in the domain of the Counts of Toulouse. According to some historians, she got there from Italy, which, in turn, borrowed this religious teaching from the Bulgarian Bogomils, and those from the Manichaeans of Asia Minor and Syria. The number of those who were later called Cathars (in Greek - "clean"), multiplied like mushrooms after the rain.

“There is not one god, there are two who dispute the dominion over the world. This is the god of good and the god of evil. The immortal spirit of mankind strives to the god of good, but its mortal shell is drawn to the dark god ”- this is how the Cathars taught. At the same time, they considered our earthly world to be the kingdom of Evil, and the heavenly world, where the souls of people dwell, as a space in which Good triumphs. Therefore, the Cathars easily parted with life, rejoicing in the transition of their souls into the domain of Good and Light.

On the dusty roads of France, strange people roamed in the pointed caps of Chaldean astrologers, in robes belted with a rope - the Cathars preached their teachings everywhere. The so-called "perfect" - ascetics of the faith who took a vow of asceticism took upon themselves such an honorable mission. They completely broke with their former life, refused property, adhered to food and ritual prohibitions. But all the secrets of the doctrine were revealed to them.

Another group of Cathars included the so-called "profane", that is, ordinary followers. They lived ordinary life, cheerful and noisy, sinned like all people, but at the same time they reverently observed the few commandments that the "perfect" had taught them.

Knights and nobles were especially eager to accept the new faith. Most of the noble families in Toulouse, Languedoc, Gascony, Roussillon became its adherents. They did not recognize the Catholic Church, considering it a product of the devil. Such a confrontation could only end in bloodshed ...

The first clash between Catholics and heretics took place on January 14, 1208, on the banks of the Rhone, when, during the crossing, one of the squires of Raymund VI mortally wounded the papal nuncio with a spear blow. Dying, the priest whispered to his murderer: "May the Lord forgive you as I forgive." But the Catholic Church has not forgiven anything. In addition, French monarchs have long had views of the rich Toulouse county: both Philip II and Louis VIII dreamed of annexing the richest lands to their possessions.

The Count of Toulouse was declared a heretic and follower of Satan. The Catholic bishops shouted: “Cathars are vile heretics! We need to burn them out with fire, so that there is no seed left ... "For this, the Holy Inquisition was created, which the Pope subordinated to the Dominican order - these" dogs of the Lord "(Dominicanus - domini canus - Lord's dogs).

So a crusade was declared, which for the first time was directed not so much against the Gentiles as against the Christian lands. Interestingly, to the soldier's question about how to distinguish Cathars from good Catholics, the papal legate Arnold da Sato replied: "Kill everyone: God will recognize his own!"

The crusaders laid waste to the flourishing southern region. In the city of Beziers alone, having driven the inhabitants to the Church of Saint Nazarius, they killed 20 thousand people. The Cathars were massacred by entire cities. The lands of Raymund VI of Toulouse were taken from him.

In 1243, the only stronghold of the Cathars was only the old Montsegur - their sanctuary, turned into a military citadel. Practically all the surviving “perfect” ones gathered here. They did not have the right to carry weapons, since, in accordance with their teachings, it was considered a direct symbol of evil.

Nevertheless, this small (two hundred people) unarmed garrison repulsed the attacks of the 10-thousandth Crusader army for almost 11 months! What happened on a tiny patch on the top of the mountain became known thanks to the preserved records of interrogations of the surviving defenders of the castle. They are fraught with an amazing story of courage and resilience of the Cathars, which still boggles the imagination of historians. Yes, and there is enough mysticism in it.

Bishop Bertrand Marty, who organized the defense of the castle, was well aware that his surrender was inevitable. Therefore, even before Christmas 1243, he sent two faithful servants from the fortress, who carried on themselves a certain treasure of the Cathars. It is said to be still hidden in one of the many grottoes in Phua County.

On March 2, 1244, when the situation of the besieged became unbearable, the bishop began to negotiate with the crusaders. He was not going to surrender the fortress, but he really needed a reprieve. And he got it. For two weeks of respite, the besieged manage to drag a heavy catapult onto a tiny rocky platform. And the day before the surrender of the castle, an almost incredible event takes place.

At night, four "perfect" descend on a rope from a mountain 1200 meters high and take with them a bundle. The crusaders hastily set up a pursuit, but the fugitives seemed to vanish into thin air. Soon two of them showed up in Cremona. They proudly talked about the successful outcome of their mission, but what they managed to save is still unknown.
Only the doomed to death Cathars - fanatics and mystics - would risk their lives for gold and silver. And what burden could the four desperate "perfect" ones carry? This means that the "treasure" of the Cathars was of a different nature.

Montsegur has always been a holy place for the "perfect". It was they who erected a pentagonal castle on the top of the mountain, asking the former owner, their co-religionist Ramon de Pirella, for permission to rebuild the fortress according to their own plans. Here, in deep secrecy, the Cathars performed their rituals, kept sacred relics.

The walls and embrasures of Montsegur were strictly oriented to the cardinal points like Stonehenge, so the "perfect" could calculate the solstice days. The architecture of the castle makes a strange impression. Inside the fortress, you get the feeling that you are on a ship: a low square tower at one end, long walls blocking out a narrow space in the middle, and a blunt nose, reminiscent of the stem of a caravel.

The remains of some now incomprehensible structures are piled up at one end of the narrow courtyard. Now only the foundations are left of them. They are similar either to the basis of stone cisterns for collecting water, or to the entrances to buried dungeons.

How many books have been written about the strange architecture of the castle, as soon as they did not try to interpret its resemblance to a ship! It was seen as a temple of sun worshipers, and a forerunner of Masonic lodges. However, so far the castle has not revealed any of its secrets.

Directly opposite the main entrance in the second wall is made the same narrow and low passage. It leads to the opposite end of the platform that crowns the mountain. There is barely enough space for a narrow path that runs along the wall and ends in an abyss.

800 years ago, it was to this path and to the steep slopes of the mountain near the summit that stone and wooden buildings were molded, in which the defenders of Montsegur, the chosen Cathars, members of their families and peasants from the village lying at the foot of the mountain lived. How did they survive here, on this tiny patch, under a piercing wind, showered with a hail of huge stones, with melting supplies of food and water? Mystery. Now there are no traces of these flimsy buildings.

In August 1964, cavers on one of the walls found some kind of badges, notches and a drawing. It turned out to be a plan of an underground passage leading from the foot of the wall to the gorge. Then the passage itself was opened, in which skeletons with halberds were found. A new mystery: who were these people who died in the dungeon? Under the foundation of the wall, the researchers discovered several interesting objects with Qatari symbols inscribed on them.

A bee was depicted on the buckles and buttons. For the "perfect" it symbolized the secret of fertilization without physical contact. A strange 40 centimeter long lead plate was also found, folded into a pentagon, which was considered the hallmark of the "perfect" apostles. The Cathars did not recognize the Latin cross and deified the pentagon - a symbol of dispersion, dispersion of matter, the human body (this, apparently, where the strange architecture of Monsegur comes from).

Analyzing it, a prominent expert on Cathars Fernand Niel emphasized that it was in the castle itself that "the key to the rituals was laid - a secret that the" perfect "took with them to the grave."

There are still many enthusiasts who are looking for buried treasures, gold and jewelry of the Cathars in the vicinity and on Mount Cassino itself. But most of all the researchers are interested in that shrine, which was saved from desecration by four daredevils. Some suggest that the "perfect" possessed the famous Grail. After all, it is not for nothing that even now in the Pyrenees one can hear the following legend:

“When the walls of Montsegur were still standing, the Cathars guarded the Holy Grail. But Montsegur was in danger. Rati Lucifer settled under its walls. They needed the Grail to re-enclose it in the crown of their master, from which it fell when the fallen angel was cast down from heaven to earth. At the moment of the greatest danger for Montsegur, a dove appeared from the sky and split Mount Tabor with its beak. The Guardian of the Grail threw a valuable relic into the bowels of the mountain. The mountain closed and the Grail was saved. "

For some, the Grail is a vessel into which Joseph of Arimathea collected the blood of Christ, for others - the dish of the Last Supper, for others - something like a cornucopia. And in the legend of Monsegur, he appears in the form of a golden image of Noah's ark. According to legend, the Grail possessed magical properties: it could heal people from serious ailments, reveal secret knowledge to them. The Holy Grail could be seen only by the pure in soul and heart, and he brought down great troubles on the wicked.

Today, almost nothing remains of the once impregnable citadel: only fragments of dilapidated walls, whitewashed by the rain of piles of stones, somehow cleared courtyards with the remains of stairs and towers. But this gives it a special flavor, as well as the difficult ascent to it along a narrow mountain path. However, there is a museum in the castle, where you can watch a video reconstruction of the Cathar dwelling and everyday life.

So who are the QATARS?

A number of legends are associated with the movement of the Cathars, reflected in the works of European art and folklore. Since the Age of Enlightenment, to this day, catharism is regarded by most researchers as the most serious opponent of the Roman Catholic Church before the beginning of the Reformation, which largely influenced the religious processes of the 14-16 centuries. Traditional history claims that a new Christian doctrine, whose adherents were called Cathars, arose in Western Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries. The Cathar positions were especially strong in the Albi region in the south of France. Therefore, they have another name - the Albigensians. Historians believe that the Cathar religion was closely associated with the ideas of the Bulgarian sect - the Bogomils.

According to the encyclopedias, the Bulgarian Bogomilism of the eleventh century and the Catharism known in the west from the twelfth to the fourteenth century are one and the same religion. It is believed that, coming from the east, the Qatari heresy developed in Bulgaria, and the name Bulgar was retained as the name used to describe its original origin. Religious historians and priests believe that both Bogomilism and the Cathar doctrines contained serious contradictions with the tenets of Christianity. For example, they were accused of allegedly rejecting the recognition of the sacraments and the main dogma of Christianity - the triune God.

On this basis, the Catholic Church declared the doctrines of the Cathars heresy. For a long time, opposition to catharism was the main policy of the popes. Despite the many years of struggle of the Catholic Church against the Cathars, there were a large number of Catholics among their many supporters. They were attracted by both the everyday and religious lifestyle of the Cathars. Moreover, many Catholic believers belonged to both churches. Both Catholic and Qatari. And in areas where catharism had a great influence, there have never been religious clashes. Historians claim that the confrontation between Cathars and Catholics reached a climax, allegedly at the beginning of the thirteenth century.

Especially for the fight against heretics, Pope Innocent the Third, established the Church Inquisition, and then sanctioned a crusade against the Qatari regions. The leadership of the campaign was carried out by the papal legate Arno Amori. However, the local population of the Qatari regions supported their legitimate rulers and actively resisted the crusaders. This confrontation resulted in a twenty-year war that completely devastated the south of France. Subsequently, historians wrote that these battles were too numerous to be listed. The Cathars defended themselves especially fiercely in Toulouse and Carcassonne. The intensity of these battles can be judged from one source that has come down to us from time immemorial.

Crusader warriors turned to Arno Amori with the question of how to distinguish a heretic from an orthodox Catholic? To which the abbot replied "kill everyone in a row, God will recognize his own". In this war, the Cathars and their supporters from among the Catholic feudal lords were defeated. And the systematic repressions that followed ended in the complete defeat of the Catharist movement. In the end, the Cathars left the historical scene of the Middle Ages, and from the majestic castles-fortresses were destroyed by the victors.

The mysterious destruction of Qatari castles

So, the traditional historical version claims that the confrontation between secular and ecclesiastical authorities with the Cathars is an event of the thirteenth century. In the same era, the castles of the conquered were also destroyed. However, there is a lot of evidence that even in the seventeenth century, Qatari castles existed. And not as monuments of forgotten antiquity, but as active military fortresses. Historians have their own explanation for this. Like, after the barbaric destruction, the French authorities restored the castles and made them their military fortresses. In this capacity, the castles stood until the beginning of the seventeenth century. And then they were destroyed again for the second time. Purely theoretically, this is probably possible: destroyed, restored, destroyed again, restored again. But in practice, the restoration and even destruction of such gigantic structures is very costly. But in this strange version, proposed by historians, it is not only not the usual fate of these fortresses that surprises, but the fact that all these metamorphoses took place only with the Qatari castles. Here, for example, what historians say about the fate of the Qatari castle Rockfixat.

It turns out in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, after the defeat of the Cathars, it was an active royal fortress. And, of course, the royal garrison served in well-equipped fortifications, and not on the gray ruins. But, the further story resembles a bad anecdote. Allegedly in 1632, King Louis 13, heading from Paris to Toulouse, passed by this castle. He stopped, and for a while stood in thought. And then he suddenly ordered to destroy the castle to the ground, since there was no longer any use in it and it became too expensive to maintain it. Although if the royal treasury really was not able to keep the castle in a combat-ready state, then it would be natural to simply recall the garrison, nail up the barracks and leave the castle destroyed under the influence of time and bad weather. So, for example, quietly and naturally, according to traditional history, the castle of Perpituso collapsed. Most likely, this semi-fantastic story was invented by Scaligerian historians, after 1632, in order to somehow explain the true reasons for the destruction of the castle during the wars of the first half of the seventeenth century. They could not admit that in fact the crusades against the Cathars were fought in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. After all, historians have already sent these events to the thirteenth century. Therefore, they had to compose a ridiculous fable about the strange order of the king.

But if historians came up with even such an absurd explanation for the ruins of Rockfixade, then they did not come up with anything about the castle of Montsegur. It is known that it was an active royal fortress until the sixteenth century, and then it was allegedly simply abandoned. But if the king did not give the order to destroy it, why, the castle was in such a deplorable state. After all, today they are just ruins.

Only the outer belt of the walls survived from the castle. The fact that such a structure could collapse by itself is out of the question. Even today you can see how strong it was. The huge stone blocks fit neatly together and are firmly bonded with cement. Massive walls and towers form a single stone monolith. These walls don't fall apart by themselves. To destroy them, you need gunpowder and cannons. But why was it necessary to spend so much manpower and resources on the destruction of these powerful fortifications, even if they lost their strategic purpose? Historians cannot answer this question.

Cathars. New chronology version

As we have already said, secular and Christian historians believe that the teachings of the Cathars are closely related to the ideas of the religious Bulgarian sect of the Bogomils. As well as catharism, the teachings of the Bogomils are considered heresy by the Christian Church. It is known that the religious teaching of the Bogomils came to Bulgaria from the east. But who were these people and where exactly did they come from. In the history of Paul the Deacon and in the annals of the dukes and princes of Beniven, there is such information. These peoples were Bulgars, who came out of that part of Sarmatia, which is irrigated by the Volga. This means that the Bogomils came from the Volga, which is why they were called Bulgars, that is, Volgars or Bulgarians. And the territory of their settlement began to be called Bulgaria. The great Mongol conquest began in the thirteenth century.

The maps compiled by modern historians show the distribution of the Bogomil Cathars. Spain, France, England, Germany, Greece, Turkey, Balkans. The Cathars came to western Europe in the wake of the great conquest of the fourteenth century and remained there until the seventeenth century. Until the victory of the reformation rebellion. After the victory of the reformation rebellion, the West European rebels began a fierce struggle with the Rus-horde and with the remnants of immigrants from Russia. With the remnants of the Russian-Horde troops, including the Tatars. And some of the crusades that allegedly took place in the thirteenth century and were directed against the Cathars in western Europe are actually campaigns of the seventeenth century, as a result of which the Cathars were defeated and destroyed. This version provides an answer to the question of who built more than a hundred castles, called Qatari castles.

It is quite obvious that not a large nation state, was not able to build such a powerful network of military fortifications. Moreover, such fortresses could not build, and most importantly support, petty princes and barons. Only a very strong and rich state could afford it. The Qatari castles were the strongholds of the Russian-Horde empire in the territories of Western Europe conquered and colonized by it. It was an immense network of fortifications that controlled all movement in western Europe. During the rebellion of the Reformation, all these castles were captured and destroyed by the rebels. In the surviving documents, it was found that these castles, Cathar castles, until the sixteenth, early seventeenth century, stood completely unharmed.

They were defeated only from the second half of the seventeenth century. Although historians today claim that these castles were destroyed a long time ago, in the thirteenth, fourteenth centuries. Of course, the texts written by the inhabitants of the castles themselves could completely restore the picture of those events. But after their defeat, there were practically no written documents left. Historians say that the Qatari writings were probably quite numerous. However, brutal persecution led to the disappearance of most of the texts, as the Catholic Church subjected Catharism, the most horrific repression. Indeed, for the rebels-reformers, not only the living carriers of the idea of the great Cathar empire were dangerous, but also any material evidence about the life of these people, their true destiny and faith.

Cathars are heretics or saints?

In the modern world, attitudes towards Cathars are mixed. On the one hand, in southern France, the loud and tragic story of the unconquered Cathars is widely advertised. Qatari cities and castles, the story of the fires of the Inquisition, attract the attention of tourists. On the other hand, they constantly emphasize that catharism is a very harmful heresy and it has existed for so long that not a trace has remained of it. Meanwhile, the image of Qatari and Christian symbols is still preserved in some of the Gothic cathedrals of France.

This is what the Qatari cross looks like, inscribed in a circle. The same crosses can be seen in the famous Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris. Moreover, the Qatari crosses are present here even in two forms. And how flat and raised in relief. They are depicted on stone sculptures, on mosaics, on stained glass windows, on the main columns inside the temple. Even above the main entrance to the cathedral on the central portal, with the image of the Last Judgment, there is a sculptural image of Christ. A stone Qatari cross stands on the wall behind his head. Let us compare this image with Orthodox icons, in which a nimbus is usually depicted behind the head of Christ, and a cross against the background of a nimbus. As you can see, these images are almost identical. So there is nothing heretical in the Qatari cross. Why, then, has the Christian Church been claiming for centuries that the Qatari faith is heresy?

Are the Qatari symbols heretical? And why these symbols proudly flaunt not in some provincial church, but on the colonnade of one of the most important churches not only in Paris, but throughout France. Today it is believed that the construction of the cathedral began in the thirteenth century. Moreover, historians emphasize that it was built in the era of the struggle against the Cathars. But why, fighting with them, the church allowed to cover the walls of the temples with the crosses of its enemies - the heretics of the Cathars? Is it because Catharism was not at all heresy, but completely Orthodox Christianity of that time? But after the victory of the reformation of the Reformation, as is often the case, the victors declared the defeated heretics. Today, even on the pages of textbooks, the Cathars are represented as heretics who needed to be destroyed. It was all done simply on paper. This is pure paper political and ideological activity of the seventeenth century. In fact, in life, all this was not at all like that. It was Orthodox Christianity, and its symbolism was Orthodox. The appearance of the Qatari crosses also corresponds to the Orthodox crosses from Russian churches of the fifteenth century.

So who were the Cathars?

The Cathars are conquerors who came to Western Europe from the Rus-Horde of the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries. They were not heretics and professed Orthodox Christianity, the single religion of the entire empire of that time. In the seventeenth century, during the rebellion of the Reformation, the Cathars remained faithful to the end to their faith, their ideas, the idea of a great empire. They fought to the last against the rebels in western Europe. Unfortunately, the Cathars were not the only and not the last victim.

Qatar (Greek καθαρός, "pure, clear") - a religious movement in Western Europe in the XI-XIV centuries. According to modern researchers, this word was coined in 1163 in the Rhine lands by a cleric Ekbert of Schonau. Catharism was especially widespread in the south of France (see the Albigensians), in northern Italy, in northeastern Spain, and in some parts of Germany.

History

Origin and origins

Catharism was not a fundamentally new worldview that emerged in the Middle Ages. Theological views, later characteristic of Catharism, can also be found among the first teachers of Christianity who were influenced by Gnosticism and Neoplatonism (Origen of Alexandria). Most researchers (Jean Duvernoy, Anne Brenon, Annie Cazenave, Ilva Hagmann, etc.) consider him one of the many, but unique Christian movements that emerged simultaneously in Western and Eastern Europe during the Millennium. This movement was represented by various communities, not necessarily related to each other, and sometimes differing in doctrine and way of life, but nevertheless represented a kind of unity in the field of structure and ritual, both in time frames - between the 10th and 15th centuries, and in geographic - between Asia Minor and Western Europe. In Eastern Europe and Asia Minor, such communities include the Bogomils. The Bogomils of Byzantium and the Balkans, as well as the Cathars of Italy, France and Languedoc, were one and the same Church.

For a long time, the main source on which the researchers relied were treatises refuting this medieval heresy - the anti-heretical Sums, compiled by theologians of the 13th century. Therefore, the first researchers preferred to look for the roots of Qatari dualism in Eastern influences, especially Zoroastrianism and Manichaeism, drawing a direct line of origin of the Cathars from Mani through the Pavlikians and the Bogomils. Until 1950, the study of this issue was under the exclusive influence of theologians. This circumstance led to disagreements in assessing the origin of catharism. Some researchers (including L.P. Karsavin and the author of one of the first major monographs on the history of the Inquisition, Henry Lee) consider catharism to be a "neo-manicheism" that came to the West from the non-Christian East: "The essence of the Cathar dogma is completely alien to Christianity." This position is shared by some modern researchers. However, the development of the archives of the Inquisition led to a change in the prevailing opinion among historians. Since the 50s of the twentieth century, medievalists more and more often raised the question of the Qatari heresy, using the terminology of social rather than religious issues. In addition, since 1939, in the archives of many European libraries, mainly thanks to the research of the Dominican Fr. Antoine Dondein, numerous fragments of handwritten books of authentic Qatari origin have been found. Based on the analysis of these sources, most scholars began to believe that catharism is an unorthodox Christian worldview, possibly influenced by Eastern ideas, but on the whole is an organic part of Western spiritual culture.

These researchers emphasize numerous common features inherent in both catharism and the whole European culture in the 11th-11th centuries. The most significant contribution to refuting the "traditional" vision of this heresy as a branch of Eastern Manichaeism was made by Jean Duvernois. In his book "The Religion of the Cathars", for the first time, thanks to the study of a complete collection of various types of documents, an exhaustive analysis of the historical data of the medieval religious phenomenon called catharism was carried out. The author came to the conclusion about the exclusively Christian context of Catharism, and since then this conclusion has dominated among modern historians. In the 90s, several historians, in particular Monique Zernier, put forward the hypothesis that Cathars did not exist at all, and Catharism is an "invention of the Inquisition", but it did not find sufficient support.

First mentions

At the end of the 10th century, in the first monastic chronicles of the Millennium, along with descriptions of various disasters, there are reports of "heretics, sorcerers and Manicheans." Expectations of the Apocalypse, the end of the world, which were first predicted in 1000, then in 1033, gave rise to hopes among the people for the renewal of the Gospel Good News. This period includes both official (reforms initiated by the papacy) and unofficial (heretical movements) attempts to realize the ideal of apostolic life (poverty, chastity ...). Historians believe that some of these reformers are the very heretics mentioned in the texts. In 1022 (according to other sources, in 1017), twelve canons of Orleans Cathedral were convicted of heresy and burned by order of the captain of King Robert the Pious. It was the first bonfire of medieval Christianity. Other executions followed in Toulouse, Aquitaine and Piedmont. In Flanders in 1025 the Qatari teacher Gundulf was discovered with several students; he was said to be of Italian origin. The heretics of the 11th century had many similarities: they refused to baptize small children, they denied the sacrament of confession (introduced under the Carolingians) and the sacrament of marriage, which was just then introduced by the papacy. They also rejected the validity of the sacraments given by priests in a state of sin in the legitimacy of the hierarchy of the Roman Church, and rejected the cult of the Crucifixion as an instrument of execution. This teaching was popular not only among the commoners, but also among the nobility. Thus, historical documents show us that in the midst of the movement for spiritual reform in the XI century, at the same time in many regions of Western Europe, "heretics" appear, organized into monastic communities based on the Gospel, denying the Eucharist and the human nature of Christ. Since they also practiced baptism by the laying on of hands, which is characteristic of the Cathars, historians consider them to be proto-Cathars. Evidence of the Bogomils in the Byzantine Empire appears from the 10th-11th centuries, and there they look like the brothers of Western heretics, who from the 12th century begin to be called Cathars. In the 12th century, hotbeds of heresy spread throughout Europe: documentary evidence of repression against heresy, especially in the Rhinelands, gives us information about the organization and religious foundations of these underground communities. In 1143, Everwin de Steinfeld, a Rhine monk, sent a real appeal for help to the highly reputed Cistercian Abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, the future Saint Bernard. He writes that the heretics who were caught and condemned in Cologne endured the torments of fire with the steadfastness of the first Christian martyrs, and this caused great anxiety and murmur among the people and the clergy present at the execution. They also claimed that their tradition was preserved by their brothers from ancient times in Greece, and that it was transmitted and transmitted by them themselves to this day. The texts speak of the burning of the "publicans" in Champagne and Burgundy, the "fiefs" in Flanders, the "patarens" in Italy, and they speak of "horribly vile sects of weavers or Arians" in the South of France, who were also often called "Albigensians". There is evidence that all these names refer to the same type of heresy. The heretics themselves called themselves "apostles" or "Christians."

Churches of European Cathars

The flowering of catharism

Already in 1145, during his Mediterranean mission, the famous Cistercian preacher Bernard of Clairvaux mourned the "terrible insults" that the aristocracy of the Occitan Burghada inflicted on the pope's messengers. According to him, the churches were empty, and in the Wharf (castle in Albijua) there was not even anyone who would want to listen to his sermon. The above-mentioned meeting in San Feliz, held in May 1167 on the border of the County of Toulouse and the Viscountry of Trencavel (Albi), was held openly and without any obstacles from the secular authorities. The end of the century can be considered the times of the "Qatari world" in Occitania. The Qatari bishoprics of the 12th century arise on the lands of two large territorial formations: the Count of Toulouse - vassal of the King of France, and the alliance of Viscountries united by the Trencavel family - Carcassonne, Beziers, Albi and Limoux - located between Barcelona and Toulouse. The Count and the Viscounts showed little zeal in pursuing heresy. In 1177, Count Raymond V of Toulouse, sincerely hostile to heretics, writes to the Citeaux chapter that he is unable to overcome heresy, because it is supported by all his vassals. His son Raymond VI (1198-1221) was friendly towards heretics. For a long time, the Trenkaveli dynasty rendered even greater assistance to heresies. And finally, the Counts de Foix went even further, directly involved in the Qatari Church: at the turn of the 12th - 13th centuries, the countesses and daughters of the de Foix family themselves became Good Women. For several generations, the balance of power in the Occitan lords was in favor of the Qatari Churches, and this ruled out any persecution. Before the crusade against the Albigensians, catharism swept in the west the territories from Quercy to Gourdon and Agenois (Church of Agen); in the center - the territories of Toulouse, Laurague and the County of Foix (Toulouse Church), in the north - Albijua (Church of Albi), in the east - Cabarda, Minervois and Carcassonne (Church of Carcassonne), extending even to Corbières and to the sea. In 1226, a fifth bishopric was established, in Raza (Limu region), which was formerly part of the Church of Carcassé. Like the Roman Church, the Cathar Church was divided into clergy and laity. Lay people or believers did not have to renounce their previous Catholic habits or attachments, but they did accept the spiritual authority of the Good Christians, or Good Men and Good Women. The Qatari clergy combined the mixed functions of priests and monks, and consisted of men and women. Like Catholic priests, Christians and Christians preached, provided rituals of salvation for souls and forgiveness of sins. As monks, they lived in communities, observed fasting and abstinence and ritual hours of prayer. According to the testimony collected during the processes of the Inquisition, at the beginning of the XIII century. in the Languedoc there were 40,000 believers and over 1,000 Good Christians. Historians conclude that most of the Languedoc population was at least sympathetic to the Cathars. Numerous sources of a literary and later legal nature testify that the "example of the apostolic life" attracted many believers to the Good People. Thus, while Cathars were persecuted in Champagne, Flanders, the Rhinelands and Burgundy, the secular authorities in the Languedoc and the Ghibelline cities of Italy were tolerant of this belief and even protected dissidents from church authorities. The Pope sent Cistercian missions to Toulouse and Albi in 1178 and 1181, but they could not establish cooperation with the local authorities, and practically did not get anything from them in the pursuit of heresy. In the early years of the 13th century, the envoys of Pope Innocent III - Raoul de Fontfroid and the legate Pierre de Castelnau - held a public debate with the Good Men on theological topics. Most historians believe that they have not achieved much success. On the contrary, the Castilian canon Dominique de Guzman began fighting the Cathars in the Languedoc in 1206, preaching and observing the vows of poverty and begging. He managed to achieve several dozen conversions to Catholicism. However, the crusade announced by Innocent III in 1209, according to many historians, such as Anne Brenon and Michel Roquebert, signaled that these attempts also ended in failure.

Confrontation with the Roman Catholic Church

Studies in the 70s and 80s of the twentieth century show catharism as evangelism: literal adherence to the commandments of Christ, and especially the prescriptions of the Sermon on the Mount. According to most historians, this evangelism was one of the central points of Catharism. They were supporters of absolute non-violence, refused to lie and swear, and many people of that time, as can be seen from the protocols of the Inquisition, perceived them as poor itinerant preachers carrying the Word of God. Based on this, the Cathars from the very beginning criticized the Roman Church for its excessively secular character. The numerous vices of the Catholic clergy, the papacy's striving for wealth and political power, the deviation of religious practice from the evangelical ideals of "apostolic poverty" were for them evidence of the commitment of Catholicism to the "prince of this world." They themselves, with their lives and morals, in practice demonstrated the purity and rigorism of the apostolic way of life, which even their opponents admitted. However, the dualistic Christianity of the Cathars was an alternative religious construct. They did not call for a reform of the clergy and a "return to the Scriptures." They declared their desire to return to the purity of the Church of the Apostles, which was not the "usurping Roman Church," but their own, the "Church of Good Christians." , the Cathars were not inclined to show hostility towards the Catholics themselves. There is a lot of evidence of the peaceful coexistence of believers of both religions in precisely those areas where catharism had a significant impact. Local coexistence between heretical monks and Catholic clergy generally proceeded without clashes. It follows from the documents of the Inquisition that the majority of believers considered themselves to belong to both Churches at once, believing that both of them were more likely to save the soul than one.

In the early decades, however, the persecution was rather sporadic. While the condemnation of heretics was a matter for the episcopal courts, the Church hesitated in its choice of methods of repression. Initially, executions took place according to the verdicts of the secular authorities. But gradually, councils and pontifical bulls paved the way for the Church's lawmaking in the field of heresy. The confrontation between Catharism and Catholicism has become much sharper. The papacy, alarmed by the spread of heresy, increased pressure, which provoked a retaliatory exacerbation of criticism from the Cathars. In 1179, the Third Lateran Council of the Catholic Church condemned the Qatari heresy (along with the Waldensian heresy). The Verona decrees, agreed upon between the pope and the emperor in 1184, were the first measures of an all-European scale against heretics, and equated the latter with criminals offending "divine majesty." The Church Council in Narbonne instructed the bishops established in each parish to carry out an obligatory commission to seek out heretics and report them to their superiors. The thirteenth century was the century of the effective and systematic destruction of heretical dissent.

Albigensian Wars

In 1209, Pope Innocent III called for a crusade against the Cathars, called the Albigensian (from the name of the city of Albi). In response to this call, the barons of France and Europe in 1209 attacked the lands of the county of Toulouse and Trencaveli under the leadership of the papal legate Arnot Amory, abbot Sieve. In 1220, it finally became clear that the attempt to plant a Catholic dynasty of Montfort in Toulouse and Carcassonne had failed, since the local population supported their legitimate counts. The churches of the Cathars, which were initially dealt a serious blow by the bonfires of the Crusades, began to gradually rebuild. The crusade against the Albigensians was characterized by cruel reprisals against the civilian population (Beziers in 1209, Marmande in 1219), as well as huge mass fires where heretics were burned - in Minerva (140 burned in 1210), Lavora (400 burned in 1211) ). In 1226, Louis VIII of France, son of Philip-Augustus, decided to restore himself to the Mediterranean counties that Montfort had given him, and he himself led the French army, moving it against Raymond Trencavel, Raymond VII of Toulouse and their vassals. Despite fierce resistance in some regions (especially Lima and Cabarete), the royal army conquered the Languedoc. In 1229, the Count of Toulouse, having submitted, signed a peace treaty, ratified in Paris.

Final defeat of the Qatari movement

In 1229, the king finally won the war declared by the pope, and the latter took advantage of the king's victory: from that time on, the Church was given complete freedom of action. The secular rulers - the defenders of the heretics - were deprived of their lands and property in accordance with the decisions of the Lateran Council of 1215 and the Council of Toulouse in 1229. The Cathar communities took refuge underground. However, they remained very numerous. To protect themselves from reprisals, they organized a secret resistance network based on social and family solidarity. The Inquisition, created by the papacy in 1233 as an institution of compulsory confessions, had the power to impose punishments and penances, reuniting the Languedoc population with the Catholic faith. The Inquisition was transferred to the Dominican and Franciscan orders, which, in addition, preached the official doctrine of the Church. The Inquisition was a permanent religious tribunal, independent of the local bishops. She based her investigations on systematic denunciations and used confessions as evidence. This effective system has been able, over several generations, to destroy the bonds of solidarity that protected heretics underground. The Inquisition introduced a differentiated system of punishments - from wearing yellow crosses sewn on clothes, to confiscation of property and life imprisonment. The death sentence - by transferring the convicted person into the hands of the secular authorities - was reserved for the underground clergy, that is, for the Good Men and Good Women who refused to renounce, as well as for the believers who again fell into their delusions, that is, into heresy. Those who died in "heretical abomination" were sentenced to exhumation and burning of their remains, and their houses - to destruction. After the conclusion of the Paris Agreement, according to which the Count of Toulouse submitted to the King of France, the hierarchy of the Qatari Churches of Toulouse, Agenois and Razes appealed to the owner of a small fortified village on Mount Montsegur, Raymond de Pereil, with a request to allow him to establish "the throne and the center of the Church" there. He agreed, and from 1232 to 1243 missions were regularly sent from the monastic houses of Montsegur to preach underground and administer the sacraments. Trying to avoid the consequences of the Paris Treaty, Count Raymond VII of Toulouse entered into an alliance against the French king with the King of England and the Comte de la Marche. In May 1242, he persuaded the knights from Montsegur to carry out a punitive operation against the wandering tribunal of the Inquisition, who was then in Avignonet (Laurague). He believed that this would serve as a signal for a general uprising. The inquisitors were killed, their registers destroyed, and the population took up arms. But the defeat of the count's allies made him ask for peace. Montsegur was left without protection and in 1243 was besieged by the troops of the King of France. Almost a year after the start of the siege, Montsegur was surrendered and on March 16, 1244, the communities of Good Men and Good Women of Montsegur - about two hundred monks and nuns - as well as about twenty secular people who voluntarily joined them, were burned along with their bishops. Many historians believe that Montsegur's bonfire marked not only the end of the organized Qatari Churches in Occitania, but also the end of the Count of Toulouse's political calculations for independence. After the fire at Monsegur on March 16, 1244, the last Qatari underground, having lost its organized structure, was defeated. The remnants of the hierarchy managed to more or less survive in exile in Lombardy, but from that time on, the Cathar Church in Occitania could only fight for survival. By the end of the thirteenth century, catharism practically no longer existed in Occitania. However, Peyret Autier, a former notary from Ax le Terme, close to Count Roger-Bernard de Foix, since 1299, led a small group of Good Men, "determined in their determination to renew Cathar evangelism in their former territories." Among them was Peyre's brother Guillaume Autier and Peyre's son Jaum. Using their family and friendship ties, as well as the remnants of the former heretical underground, they were able, for many years, to "fan the flame of catharism from Quercy to the Pyrenees" among the believers, of whom there were still quite a few. An attempt at what historians call the "reconquista of the Autier brothers" lasted from 1300 to 1310. A study of Inquisition documents shows that the success of this Qatari reconquista depended on the ability to dramatically increase the number of underground shepherds. However, the Inquisition caught and burned, one by one, all the underground Good People. Jauma and Guillaume Autier were burned in Carcassonne in 1309. Amiel de Pearl and Peyret Autier in Toulouse in 1310. The only one who managed to escape to Catalonia was Guillaume Belibast. Deceived by a double agent, he was captured and burned at Villerouge-Termenez in 1321 by order of the Archbishop of Narbonne. This event is considered the end of the Occitan Qatari Churches.

Religious views of the Cathars

Source of information

Catharism is known from three categories of historical sources. First of all, these are the writings of the Cathars themselves. They should have been very numerous, but during the years of persecution, almost all of the materials were destroyed by the Inquisition. Nevertheless, two theological treatises and three "rituals" have survived to this day.

One of these treatises is the "Book of Two Beginnings" preserved in Florence. This Latin manuscript, dated c. 1260, is a summary of a fundamental work written by the Qatari doctor Giovanni de Luggio of Bergamo c. 1230 Another treatise, discovered in Prague in 1939, is a Latin copy of an anonymous manuscript, originally written in the oc language at the beginning of the 13th century, by the apparently "perfect" Bartomieu of Carcassonne. Both of these documents serve as the main source of modern knowledge of Qatari theology. Material for the study of the Cathar liturgy is provided by the Latin Ritual from Florence, the Provencal Ritual preserved in Lyon and containing a complete translation of the New Testament into Occitan, and another Ritual into Occitan, located in Dublin. Each of these documents date back to around 1250.

Several apocryphal writings should also be mentioned. First of all, these are "The Vision of Isaiah" (an old text used by the Bogomils) and "Questions of John" (a text transmitted by the Bogomils to the Italian Cathars around 1190).

The source of information about catharism is also the polemical works of Catholic theologians who analyze and try to refute catharism. More than 30 such works are known, written at the end of the XII-XIII centuries, however, not all of them are of the same value and importance. Many of them did not try to distort the religion they described; on the contrary, they contain numerous warnings that the reader should not believe in the “idle fictions about catharism” that were already spread at that time. The authors were interested in serious doctrinal issues, which they examined in detail with great intellectual honesty, despite their extremely hostile attitude towards catharism. This is especially true of "Liber contra Manicheos" by Durand de Huesca (the former Waldensian converted to Catholicism), "Summa quadrapartita" by Alan of Lille, "Summa adversus catharos" Coins of Cremona, as well as the work of Rainerius Sacconi (former "Perfect" Cathars, converted to Catholicism and became a Dominican and an inquisitor).

Finally, the last group of documents - sources of a legal nature: testimony and interrogations collected by the Inquisition since 1234. Most of these sources have not yet been published (with the exception of the registers of inquisitors Jacques Fournier and Joffre d'Abley). It is there that there is a huge amount of information about the social life of that time and about what the society formed by the Cathars was like. As for doctrines, beliefs and rituals, the data of the inquisitors only supplements the previous sources. In one of the testimonies, for example, even the prayer of the Cathar believers in Languedoc is cited: "Paire sant, Dieu dreyturier de bons speritz ..." (Holy Father, Right God of good spirits).

Holy Bible

The Holy Scriptures in Catharism recognized the New Testament, which formed the basis of the Cathar doctrine, especially the Gospel of John. Great importance was also attached to the Epistles of St. Paul. The attitude of the Cathars to the Old Testament was generally critical. They rejected a significant part of the Old Testament writings. The Old Testament God in their mind is none other than the god of wrath, "the god of this world or the prince of this world," an evil inclination. To more accurately mislead people and turn them away from the path of salvation, he forced them to worship him. The argument in favor of the fact that Old Testament inspired by the "prince of this world", the Cathars considered him an abundance of cruelty and excessive attention to the carnal side of life. On the contrary, some books of the prophets enjoyed great veneration among the Cathars - namely, those that clearly speak not of the vengeful and jealous God of Israel, but of a good and spiritual God, whom Christ was supposed to reveal to people. The Cathars translated the Holy Scriptures into the popular language, although Latin predominated in prayer practice. The reading of the Gospel of John was foreseen, in particular, during the Consolamentum ceremony. In this case, reading aloud began with the words “In principio” and ended with the words “gratia et veritas per Jesum Christum facta est”. The oppositions Light - Darkness, Truth - Falsehood, "God" - "Peace", characteristic of this Gospel, served as confirmation of their dualism for the Cathars. The parable, which is quoted in the Gospel of Matthew about bad and good trees, which are known by their fruits, was for them a symbol of the example of Christ, by the inheritance of which true Christians can be recognized. All the books written by the Cathars and known to us since the 13th century are based on the expression "My kingdom is not of this world."

Theological doctrine

Catharism is a religion of salvation based on Revelation. The Cathars used Christian myths about the fall of the angels and Lucifer, as well as about the battle between the archangel and the evil dragon, to confirm the evangelical dualism, which opposed the God of mercy and love to the realities of this world. In the Holy Scriptures they saw a preference for the postulate of God's mercy, the postulate of His omnipotence. They saw in human souls fallen angels, imprisoned in corporal prisons in a world that lies in evil and which is not from God. Their dualism was based on juxtaposing the invisible world of the light of God and this world doomed to destruction and death by an evil creator, whom they called Lucifer or some other name of the devil. The souls of people, the angels who fell from the divine creation, were carried away by the dragon, plunged with him into this world, and now await deliverance from their earthly exile: the salvation promised by Christ. Therefore, the doctrine and cult practice of the Cathars is based on the Gospel, the interpretation of which they paid much attention to. Heretical preachers based their theses on a whole body of Scripture references. This is how they interpreted the message of Christ, the Son of the only true God, sent by the Father into this world, “whose prince is Satan,” in order to finally bring the lost sheep, fallen angels, the possibility of salvation and return to their heavenly homeland.

Dualism

In Catholic sources of that time, there are many references to the fact that Cathars believe "in two gods - one good and the other evil ..." However, according to most academic authors, in particular Jean Duvernoy, this representation of their dualism is simplistic and tendentious. It comes from judicial sources, mainly from the notarial form. However, from more direct documents or documents of better quality, dualism takes on a less simplified form. The foundation of Cathar metaphysics is indeed the belief in two principles. But the dualism of the Cathars is not a starting point, but a consequence of reflection and reflection, a conclusion from the analysis of the Bible. The metaphysical reflection of the Cathars can be defined as a dualistic reading of the Gospels. The entire system of Catharism is based on the New Testament. However, their New Testament Text differed in one place from the text of the Orthodox Bible. The synodal translation reads: [Io. 1, 3]: "Everything through Him began to be, and without Him nothing began to be that began to be." [And about. 1, 4]: "In Him was life, and the life was light ...". The Cathars translated this passage as follows: [Io. 1, 3]: “Everything through Him began to be, but without Him nothing began to be.” [Io. 1, 4]: “All that was in Him was life, and life was light ...” Such, as they believed, should be the translation of the Latin words of the Vulgate: sine ipso factum est nihil. Thus, the meaning of the quoted passage from the Prologue of the Gospel of John looks like this: everything became through Him - that is, what really "is" became through Him. On the contrary, “without Him, nothing came to be” - that is, that which truly “is not”, that which is “without love,” according to the expression of St. Paul, which the Cathars eagerly quoted: “... if I do not have love, - then I am nothing ”(1 Cor. 13: 2). This means that the Cathars distinguished between two creations: the true one, the deeds of which actually "are", that is, the creation of God ("Everything through Him began to be"); and the illusory, whose deeds do not have true being, this visible world, associated by them with “non-being” (“and without Him, nothing began to be” or, “all things without Him began to be,” as Pierre Autier said). The visible world, “this world,” is not God's creation. It arose from another beginning. The dualism of the Cathars assumed the absolute independence of the roots of good and evil in relation to each other. They based their dialectics on the Logic of Aristotle: "Opposite principles are opposites", therefore, good and evil, which are opposites, come from opposite principles. The goal of the dualism of the Cathars was to free the God of love, which is spoken of in the Gospel, from responsibility for the origin of evil and the world. For them, God the Father was in his invisible Kingdom, and the world doomed to destruction was the work of the hands of an evil creator: the devil or a rebellious angel.

Man and the world. Heaven and Hell. The doctrine of reincarnation

“Peyre Autier [the last great preacher of Catharism] said that after the end of the world the entire visible world would [...] be destroyed, and he called this hell. But all human souls will then be in paradise, and in heaven there will be as much happiness for one soul as for another; all will be saved, and each soul will love the other, as they love their father, mother or their children ... "Registry of the Inquisition of Jacques Fournier. Good Christians, refusing to ascribe to God responsibility for the affairs of this world and power in this world, preached the Kingdom of God not from “this world, which lies in evil,” according to the definition of the Apostle John. In this world, they saw the only possible hell, but a transitory hell, which at the end of time will come to its end, having nothing to do with either eternity, or with God, or with His good creation. And that this end of time will come when all the souls of people are saved and return to their Creator. This version represents the original form of medieval Christianity devoid of medieval symbolism. Nothing visible could, from the point of view of Good Christians, testify to God or be a sacred symbol, not a cross, not a dove. They did not build any temples or chapels, and practiced worship and preaching in the homes of loved ones, under the shade of a cave, in a tavern, in a forest glade, claiming that the only Church of God is the human heart. The good Christians were quite rationalistic, thus ridiculing "Catholic prejudices": "It is not God that gives such a beautiful harvest, but the manure of the earth" or: "Why are you prostrating in front of this statue? Have you forgotten that this man took a piece of wood and carved it out with iron tools? " The Cathars did not create the concept of a political and social order of divine origin, divine right, righteous violence, or holy war. From their point of view, all human souls, men and women, rich and poor, heretics and prelates, the souls of infidels and Jews, were good and equal to each other, and had a divine origin. And to all of them, without exception, the promise of salvation by the mercy of God was revealed. The Cathars did not believe in original sin or free will: “It becomes absolutely incomprehensible how the angels, created by the good, could hate the good that was like them and that existed forever, and also why these good angels leaned towards evil that did not yet exist , and loved him ... ”[The book of two beginnings]. They believed that the true nature of every soul created by God is good. They also, according to the researchers, freed women from the guilt feelings of "Eve's sin" based on biblical misogyny. In the treatises and rituals of the Cathars, there is no mention of the successive transmigration of souls from one bodily prison to another. Only the anti-Qatari controversy and testimony before the Inquisition contains information on this topic. However, the theoretical texts of the Good Christians assert that contrary to what the Catholic clergy teach, God does not create infinitely new souls in order to stop time one day and judge everyone, in the state and age in which He finds them. On the contrary, a certain number of divine souls fell into the slavery of bodies, and now they must "awaken" from this world, before hearing the call to leave it and return to their heavenly homeland. As already mentioned, they believed in the universal salvation of all divine souls who fell into the slavery of bodies during the creation of the evil world. They believed that moving from body to body after their fall, these souls will gain experience and the opportunity to cognize Good, realize their belonging to another world, will be called by God to reunite with Him. The term "End of the World" occupies a significant place in the eschatology of the Cathars: but it is by no means a sudden end. To the extent that divine souls realize their heavenly origin, abandon the evil world, leave it, the evil world will be emptied of being - because only God can be the creator of Life or being - until the day when the last embodied soul is liberated by the earthly death from a state of oblivion. Then "the visible world will return to its nonexistence," and the divine creation, infected with the temporary loss of being, will be reunited with eternity.

Christ. Holy Spirit

Despite the arguments that can be found in the records of the Inquisition, it is impossible to deny the Christian essence of Catharism. Christ stands at the center of their religious enlightenment and is the core of their faith. However, his understanding differs significantly from the ideas of Catholics.

The Cathars, in particular, denied that Christ atoned for human sins with his sacrifice (See Leo Tolstoy denies Jesus as the Redeemer). He only expounded the doctrine of salvation contained in the Gospels. Most of them disagreed with the idea of the human nature of Christ. They believed that he accepted the likeness of a man, and his arrival, life among people and death were only an appearance. They also claimed that it was Christ who founded their version of Christianity. The Cathar religion is predominantly docetic: the Son of God, an emanation of God or the Angel of God, according to various schools of the Cathars, was a man only in appearance, and not sent into this world in bodily reality; and only apparently He died on the cross. Although not all preachers or believers of the Cathars were Docetists to the same degree, and there were those who admitted that He could suffer and even die, the Virgin Mary of the Cathars was also sometimes revered as an angel, and not an earthly woman. The third in this row was John the Evangelist.

The means of Salvation, according to catharism, was evangelical, but at the same time radically different from the atoning sacrifice of the Catholic Christ. The Cathars believed that in fact the Son of God came into this world not to atone for original sin by His sacrifice and death on the cross, but simply to remind people that their Kingdom is not of this world and to teach them the saving sacrament that will save them forever from evil and from time. This is the sacrament of the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, transmitted by Christ to His apostles.

Clergy

From the very beginning, catharism was characterized by sharp anti-clericalism - criticism of the so-called "prejudices of the Roman Church" - the cult of saints, relics, images, etc. However, criticizing the "apostasy of the Roman Church," they never argued that the Church and its hierarchy were not needed at all. Just like the Catholic bishop in his diocese, the Qatari bishop was the source of the priesthood, from his hands came the consecration of community members. Christians and Christians baptized / sanctified by the Bishop led a life dedicated to God, and believed that they had the power to forgive sins passed down from "one Good People to another." In the texts of the Cathars, it constitutes the essence of the "order of the Holy Church." The Cathars believed that their bishops passed on this tradition to each other in a straight line from the Apostles. At the head of each Qatari Church was a bishop and two of his assistants, or coadjutors - the elder Son and the younger Son, also ordained by the bishop for this rank. After the death of the bishop, the eldest Son became his immediate successor. The territory of the bishopric was also divided between a certain number of deacons: they played an intermediary role between the episcopal hierarchy and the Christian communities located in the villages and towns that they regularly visited. The bishops themselves rarely lived in large cities, but preferred to live in communities of small towns. According to historians, such a church organization resembles the structure of the early Christian Church. Like Catholic monasteries, Cathar monastic houses were places where neophytes were trained to lead a religious life. There they studied the catechism and their religious duties for two or three years, after which they made the necessary vows, and the bishop ordained them by the laying on of hands. The baptism / dedication ceremony was public and the faithful were always present. Preachers and preachers regularly left their communities to fulfill their religious duties, and also visited relatives and friends in or around the city. The female and male communities of the Cathars lived by their own labor. Some of these community homes were true hospices where believers received spiritual guidance and comfort and provided for themselves what they called a “happy ending” that brought soul salvation. The male monastic communities were ruled by the Elders, the female ones - by the Priorisses or Rulers. The monastic houses of the Cathars were free from secrecy and often had factories with them. They were very numerous in the cities and actively participated in local economic and social life. Many inhabitants of Languedoc considered the Cathars "good Christians who have great power to save souls" (from testimony before the Inquisition)

Ritual and cult

Qatari monks followed the "Rules of Justice and Truth" and the Gospel precepts. They avoided killing - including animals - lying, judging, and so on. All this was a sin for them, devaluing the Spirit that descended on them. The one who had sinned had to repent and undergo consolament anew. The word Consolament comes directly from the common Christian term "Comforter" (Holy Spirit or Paraclete). The Cathars claimed to be the only and authentic Christian Church, while the Roman Church was a deviation. They practiced the only sacrament of consolament, which for them was both baptism as an introduction to the Christian life, and initiation, but also the sacrament, since baptism with water alone was absolutely not enough. It was also the forgiveness of sins, the entrance to the road of fundamental repentance, the sign of the power to bind and untie, which marks the Church of Christ. Bestowed on the dying, this sacrament was also unction. And, finally, uniting the soul with the spirit, it was like a spiritual, mystical marriage. The only thing that was not in him was the Transubstantiation. Baptism by consolament was a collective, public ceremony open to all. Accompanied by the Elder or Priorissa, the neophyte would come to the bishop's house “to surrender to God and the Gospel”, to adopt the tradition of the Our Father prayer - the most important prayer, which should be repeated regularly at a certain time and a certain number of times, and then accept the Book of Scripture itself. Then, after a long ceremony, the bishop and all the Good People present laid their right hands on the head of the neophyte and recited the first verses of the Gospel of John. The consolament for the dying was a similar ritual: it was given by two Good People in the presence of the dying person's family and friends. Documents show that Good Christians were often present at the table of believers. At the beginning of each meal - exclusively vegetarian - the elders of the Good Men or Good Women blessed the bread, broke it and distributed it to everyone present. This ritual, observed since the Millennium, replaced the Eucharist with it. They did this in memory of the Last Supper, but did not think that they were eating the Body of Christ when they broke bread; for them, these words from the Gospel symbolized the Word of God, which is spread throughout the world. If any believer met a Good Man or a Good Woman, he greeted them with a threefold request for blessing, or, on the Occitan, melhorier, and prostrated before them three times in obeisance. At the end of every ritual ceremony, Christians and believers exchanged the kiss of the world, men among themselves, and women among themselves. Rigoristic vows of chastity actually forbade Qatari monks from any physical contact with persons of the opposite sex. Both in the interpretation of the sacred texts by the Cathars, and in their liturgy, researchers find very close similarities with early Christianity. However, they completely got used to medieval society.

Assessment of the historical significance of catharism

For a long time in the historical literature, both domestic and foreign, the assessment of the historical role of the Qatari movement was unequivocally negative. Catharism was considered an anti-church heretical teaching that threatened to undermine the position of Christianity in Europe. Since the 80s of the twentieth century. after the works of the Oxford historian Robert Moore, there has been a revision of the attitude towards catharism. Today, most Western scholars of catharism are leaning towards a more positive point of view. The Cathars, with their teachings of love and rejection of violence, became an attempt by European society to return to the origins of Christianity and thereby create an alternative to Catholicism, which was in deep crisis.

Cathar terminology

Adoremus See Prayers

Adoratio A term from the inquisitorial vocabulary, a contemptuous designation for a ritual of asking for blessings, called melhorament or melhorier by the Cathars. Focusing on the kneeling gesture that accompanied this rite, the Inquisition tried to ridicule this practice, calling it a rite of "veneration" by believers of heretics.

Albanenses This was the name given by the Italian Dominicans to members of the Decenzano Qatari Church (near Lake Garda), supposedly founded by a bishop named Albanus, who at the end of the century had an argument with another Qatari bishop named Garatus. In the 13th century, the followers of Albanus professed the so-called absolute dualism of the Bishop of Bellesmanza and his Elder Son Giovanni de Luggio, the author of The Book of Two Beginnings, who also became bishop around 1250.

Apareilement or Aparelhament An Occitan word for "preparation" and is a ceremony of collective repentance, similar to a monastic confession. This confession was conducted monthly by deacons in the male and female monastic communities of the Cathars. This ceremony, also called servici, is detailed in the Lyons Ritual of the Cathars. For those who want to know more, we recommend Jean Duvernoy's La religion des cathares, in two volumes.

Caretas or Kiss of the World Known from the Qatari rituals, the practice meaning "reconciliation, forgiveness" is a common Christian practice in the Middle Ages. The kiss of the world concluded the liturgical ceremonies of the Cathars. Testimonies before the Inquisition describe this ritual in detail, speaking of a "kiss on the face" or even "on the lips": "With this kiss, the Perfect give us peace, kissing twice on the lips, then we kiss them twice in the same way." Quoted from Le dossier de Montsegur: interrogatoires d'inquisition 1242-1247. Testimony by Jordan de Pereil. Between the Good Men and the Good Women, who were forbidden by the Rules to touch each other, the kiss took place through the medium of the Gospel Book.

Consolamentum or Consolament The only sacrament practiced by the Cathars and called by them "the holy baptism of Jesus Christ." It was about spiritual baptism (as opposed to John's "water baptism"). It was carried out by the laying on of hands, according to a ceremony similar to the early Christian one (without material components such as water and oil). It was also called the baptism of the Holy Spirit, the Comforter, complementing the baptism with water and descending upon the Apostles at the time of Pentecost. For the Cathars, this baptism performed by the true Christian Church also had the meaning of repentance, since it washed away sins and saved the soul. It was performed over the neophytes and meant their entry into the Christian life (order), and for believers - the salvation of the soul and a happy ending (unction). The liturgical words and gestures of this rite are described in the most detailed way in the three Cathar Rituals that have come down to us, as in the protocols of the Inquisition. “... Now, desiring to become perfect, I receive God and the Gospel, and I promise never again to eat meat, eggs, cheese, or fatty foods with the exception of vegetable oil and fish, until the end of my life I will no longer swear or lie, and not renounce the faith under pain of fire, water, or other means of dying. After I promised all this, I read Pater Noster ... When I said the prayer, the perfected laid the Book on my head and read the Gospel of John. At the end of the reading, they gave me a Kiss Book, then we exchanged a “kiss of the world”. Then they prayed to God, doing many knees. " Quote from "The Papers of Montsegur: Testimonies of the Inquisition 1242-1247"

Convenenza An Occitan word meaning agreement, agreement. In times of war and persecution, starting with the siege of Montsegur, the Convenenza became a treaty between the Good Man and the believer, allowing the Consolamentum to be accepted even if the person was speechless. Jordan du Ma was wounded and was comforted “by the barbican, which was near the car. There came the Good People Raymond de Saint-Martin and Pierre Sirvain, who gave the wounded man consolation, although he had already lost the ability to speak ... "A quote from the" Papers of Montsegur: Evidence of the Inquisition 1242-1247 "

Endura An Occitan word meaning fasting. The inquisitors of the XIV century used it, trying to accuse the last Good People of encouraging suicide among believers who received consolation on the bed of death, but survived. However, researchers believe that this was a misinterpretation of the ritual fasts on bread and water, which the newly baptized were supposed to observe, according to the Rules. There are only a few examples of hunger strikes undertaken by the Good People caught by the Inquisition, who refused food and water so as not to speak during interrogations, because the inquisitors preferred to burn them alive.

Melhorament or melioramentum Occitan word meaning "striving for the best." The Kind Man's greeting to the believers, presented by the inquisitors as worship. Meeting a Kind Man or Kind Woman, the believer knelt down and prostrated before them three times, saying: "Good Christian (Good Christian), I ask the blessings of God and yours." The third time he added: "And pray for me to God that He will make me a Good Christian and lead to a happy ending." A monk or nun replied to this: "Accept the blessing of God", and then: "We will pray for you to God that He will make you a Good Christian and lead to a happy ending."

Pater Our Father or the Holy Word, the fundamental prayer of Christians among the Cathars. They spoke it daily during the Hours, during the Consolament, before meals, etc. Their version did not differ from the Catholic one except for one word: instead of "our daily bread" they said "our bread that we bear" - a variant going back to the translation of St. Jerome and emphasizing the symbolic meaning of bread, meaning the Word of God. In addition, they used the Greek doxology "For Thine is the kingdom and power and glory forever and ever", upon which they based their faith in universal salvation.

The poor Catholics of the Cathars were not the only ones who rebelled against the clergy, who accumulated wealth in spite of the evangelicals' words. Duran Huesca was the first creator of the Poor Catholics Order. After the Council of Pamiers in 1207, having met personally with Saint Dominic, Durand Huesca thus helped to establish the Order of Poor Catholics. They built in 1212 two monasteries for brothers and sisters in Elne (Roussillon). The main task of the order was to constantly preach, like the Perfect ones, live in poverty, pray and sleep on bare boards ... Durand Huesca is known today for battles with heretics, and especially for his work "Liber contra Manicheos".

Believers According to Everwin de Steinfeld, in the mid-12th century, in the Rhinelands, believers represented the middle stage between the common faithful (or hearers) and the heretical clergy of Christians or the elect. By the laying on of hands, the believer became a neophyte. In the Languedoc of the 13th century, the Inquisition already distinguishes only between simple "believers in heretics", that is, people listening to the science of heretics. In fact, believers were a mass of the faithful who “believe in what the heretics say and believe that heretics can save their souls,” the Inquisition registers say. At the beginning of the 14th century, Pierre Autier defined a believer as a person who ritually greets Good People and asks for their blessing.

The Grail In medieval novels, the Grail is associated with the cup in which the blood of Jesus was collected and brought to Western Europe by Joseph of Arimathea. She became the object of the mystical searches of the Knights of the Round Table in such works as: "The Legend of the Grail" by Chrétien de Trois, "Percival" by Wolfram von Eschenbach and others. This myth about the Grail, based on Celtic mythology, was used by Cistercian preachers. Although there is no connection between the Grail legends and catharism, Nazi Otto Rahn's book Crusaders Against the Grail (published in 1933) has today become the source of the myth of Montsegur, the Grail Castle, for some esoteric movements.

Sins As in all monotheistic religions, sin is a violation of divine law by man. For the Christians of the Cathars, this divine law was clear prescriptions and commandments of the Gospel: for them sins were murder, adultery, violence, lies, theft, backbiting, oath, condemnation ... Any of these sins meant for a Christian, that is, for a Cathar monk, the immediate loss of Christian states. "Freed from evil" through the baptism of repentance, the Consolament, and having received grace, the Cathar Christian should not have sinned, because evil could no longer work through him. A kind Man who lied, killed, swore or deliberately touched a woman should have go through re-baptism and re-obedience.

The two Churches Pierre Autier and his comrades preached the gospel even more clearly and reasonably than their predecessors. Severely persecuted, they associated themselves with Christ and His apostles, whom the world persecuted before them, and called the persecuting Roman Church evil and deceitfully Christian. Echoing with the Rhine heretics of 1143, Pierre Autier preached: "There are two Churches, one is persecuted, but forgives, and the other owns and skinns." Everyone at that time understood what the Church of Christ is, and what is of this world.

Giovanni de Luggio Mentioned since 1230 as the Eldest Son of the Qatari Bishop of the Decenzano Church. Perhaps originally from Bergamo. He is one of the most learned clerics of his day. He wrote a theological Qatari treatise known as The Book of Two Principles, from which only an abridged version has come down to us. This book was primarily written against the theses of the Qatari hierarch Didier of the Concorezzo Church and is the pinnacle of Qatari theological reflection on the problem of evil. Giovanni de Luggio's treatise was written according to all the rules of medieval scholasticism of the middle of the 13th century. He became bishop of the Church of Decenzano around 1250, but disappears from the records several decades later, possibly falling victim to the repression of the 1270s in Italy.

Deacons In the Qatari Church, the deacon was the first step in the hierarchy. Cathar deacons were required to visit religious houses for administration and disciplinary meetings in specific territories within each Church. Deacons also performed ceremonies of collective confession and repentance in men's and women's houses of worship. Religious houses, where the deacons themselves lived, played the role of hospice houses. All Cathars' deacons were men, there are no sources that indicate the existence of deaconesses.

House (Monastic) Monks and nuns among the Cathars lived in small women's and men's communities in religious houses, reminiscent of Catholic monasteries, but with free entry and exit. There they were engaged in physical labor and jointly practiced rituals and sacraments. Some of these houses also served as hotels, hospitals or hospices; some had the specific functions of schools or seminaries. There were many such monastic houses open to the public in the small towns of Languedoc. Most of them consisted of only a few people, sometimes members of the same family. Widows, married women who have given birth to many children, girls without dowry - in a word, all those who decided to devote themselves to God and achieve salvation as Good Women - lived in communities that were not at all isolated from the world, together with their sisters, mothers, aunts, sometimes in the same house where other relatives lived, and sometimes in a neighboring house.

Cathar Bishops Cathar communities were governed by consecrated bishops in the manner of the early Church. Like Catholic bishops, they had the right to consecrate those who entered the Christian community in their Church or episcopacy. As bishops in Orthodox Church they were also monks. The first heretical bishops are mentioned in the Rhinelands between 1135 and 1145. At the end of the 12th century, the bishop of the Church of France, Lombardy and the four bishoprics of Languedoc are already known. Over the bishops there was no centralized authority like the papal, all the Churches were local.

Baptism The sacrament, which in all Christian Churches signifies the entry into the Christian life. In the early Christian Church, baptism also meant repentance and remission of sins. The act of baptism was then twofold: by water (by immersion) and by the Spirit (by the laying on of hands). Later, the Roman Church divided these two rites, keeping the name of baptism behind water baptism, and retaining the laying on of hands for the consecration of bishops. At the same time, the meaning of baptism with water was narrowed down to washing away original sin, and more and more often it began to be performed on young children. In the Qatari rituals Consolament, the laying on of hands is always called baptism: "Holy baptism of Jesus Christ", or "spiritual baptism of Jesus Christ." The Cathars apparently retained the features of baptism characteristic of the early Church: they laid hands only on adults who were aware of what was happening and asked for forgiveness for their sins. For them, this was the only true baptism, because water baptism or "baptism of John" performed in the Roman Church was, from their point of view, insufficient for salvation. In addition, they believed that only their baptism was "based on the Scriptures."

The cemeteries of Katara did not attach any importance to the sacralization of the body and did not believe in resurrection in bodies. Therefore, they did not have any special burial rites. If circumstances allowed, then those who died in heresy were buried like everyone else in ordinary parish cemeteries. If the local priest forbade doing this, then the Qatari community had its own cemetery, such as in Lordat or Puiloran. In the days of the underground, the dead were buried wherever they could: in the garden, on the banks of the river, etc. The Inquisition often exhumed these corpses and burned them.

The Younger Son and the Elder Son These hierarchical church degrees are first mentioned in Languedoc in 1178. The Elder Son and Younger Son are the coadjutors of the Qatari bishops. They immediately received episcopal ordination and their functions could be equated with episcopal ones. Therefore, after the death of a bishop, the Elder Son became a bishop, and the Youngest Son became the Elder Son. Then a new Younger Son was chosen and ordained. Further, the hierarchy of the Cathars consisted of deacons, and the lowest level was the Elders and Priorisses (leaders and leaders of men's and women's religious houses).

Prayers Like all Christian monks, the Good People used to say prayers at certain times throughout their lives. First of all, it is Benedicite (Benedicite, parcite nobis, Bless and have mercy on us), Adoremus (Adoremus Patrem et Filium et Spiritum Sanctum, Amen - Let us worship the Father and the Son and the Holy Spirit, Amen). Further, this is the fundamental prayer of the Cathars, "Our Father", which Christ taught the Apostles. Ordinary believers, not yet freed from evil, did not turn to God directly with this prayer, but their request for a blessing during the Melhorament ritual was a prayer. But As follows from the "Register of the Inquisition of Jacques Fournier", (volume 2, pp. 461-462, in the 14th century, believers recited the following prayer: "Holy Father, Right God of the good in spirit, You who never lied, did not deceive, did not doubt And out of fear of death that awaits us all, we ask You, do not let us die in a world alien to God, for we are not of the world, and the world is not for us, but let us know what You know and love what you love ... "

Clothed with the Holy Spirit The terms hereticus indutus, heretica induta ("clothed heretic") are very often used in the archives of the Inquisition to refer to the Qatari monks in order to distinguish them from ordinary believers. Perhaps this stems from the fact that before the persecution, the Good People wore special black or dark monastic robes. But believers often called Good People "clothed with the Holy Spirit."

Vows The three monastic vows that the Cathars pronounced are: chastity, poverty and obedience. These are vows common to all Christianity, based on the precepts of the Gospel. Also added to this were the vows of communal life and abstinence, the vow to observe the monastery hours ("liturgical hours"). For the Cathars, practically entering the Christian life meant complete dedication, self-giving.

Pentagram A geometric figure in the form of a pentagon, into which a five-pointed star is inscribed. Esotericists of the twentieth century are groundlessly looking for Qatari symbolism in it.

Fish Like all Christian monks who lived in fasting and abstinence, the Cathars abstained from meat, but not on certain days, but in general, with the exception of fish.

Family (marriage) Like many heretics of the 11th-12th centuries, the Cathars rejected the sacrament of marriage, very late introduced by the Roman Church (11th century), not wanting to confuse the divine sacrament and a purely material and social act. Conception and birth in itself, without the sacrament, according to Christian terminology, is a "bodily sin". The Cathars said that "to know bodily your wife as well as another woman is one and the same sin." They also believed that embryos in the womb are simply bodies, that is, bodily shells formed by the devil that do not yet have a soul. On the other hand, the birth of children, according to the catharism system, was necessary for the "awakening of the world" so that souls could enter other bodies after death and acquire a new chance for salvation until all the fallen angels can finally return to the Kingdom. Some Dominican inquisitors spread rumors that the Cathars could lead humanity to extinction by forbidding the birth of children. However, only Qatari monks and nuns took vows of absolute chastity, and their believers got married (including marriages in the Catholic Church) and started families. They had numerous children, as did their Catholic neighbors. There are cases when marriages were concluded between Qatari believers through the mediation of a Good Man, but without any sacrament, only as a mutual agreement. The Cathars did not consider virginity to be of great value. Most of them became monks and nuns in adulthood, after they had already started a family and got their children back on their feet. By entering into religious life, often at the same time, they freed each other from marriage vows. The true marriage, which is mentioned in the Gospel, ("what the Lord united, let man not part"), for the Cathars was the spiritual marriage of the soul and the Spirit that occurs during the Consolament, reuniting the heavenly creation, torn apart after the fall.

Death From the point of view of the Cathars, the physical death of the body was a sign of the devilish nature of this world. On the whole, this fit into their idea of the transitory nature of everything visible and served as proof that the evil creator is incapable of creating anything "stable and permanent." Death was evil and came from evil, God in no case can punish it or send it to death. That is why the Cathars rejected the doctrine of the atoning sacrifice of Christ. The Good People condemned both murder and the death penalty. On the contrary, they took vows to courageously face martyrdom, following the example of Christ and the Apostles.

Perfect Catholic polemicists called perfect those who received the Consolamentum - Good Men and Good Women, who make up the Qatari clergy, in order to evoke an association with the Manicheans. Then the inquisitors began to use this term, in the context of "a finished heretic" (perfectus = complete, finished), that is, one who can be handed over to the secular authorities for burning. They never called themselves that. Perfect or perfect pledged not to commit any more sins that the Gospel considers contrary to the Law of Life of Christ. If misfortune (or evil ...) can cause one of them to make the slightest mistake, this means that evil can still act through this person, therefore, his or her baptism is canceled. This title of Good People by the inquisitors has gained popularity since the 19th century, mainly in a spiritualistic and esoteric context.

Steles For a long time, the Cathars were credited with numerous disc-shaped steles that adorn roads near villages throughout Europe, especially in Languedoc, mainly near churches. Now scientists have come to the conclusion that these are ordinary Christian folk Christian symbols on graves or boundary pillars. Many of them have an image of a person, a Toulouse cross or Fleur de Lys. However, there are stelae in Bosnia, which are possibly tombstones on the graves of the Qatari hierarchs (stecci).

Weavers A contemptuous term used in the context of the "vile heresy of the weavers and the Arians" to refer to heretics of the first half of the 12th century in northern France. This word was used during Bernard's mission from Clairvaux to the South in 1145. In 1157, the Cathedral of Reims took action against "heretic weavers who move from place to place."

Trinity The concept of the unity of God in three persons - Father, Son and Holy Spirit, characteristic of Christianity, developed by the Church Fathers. Christians among the Cathars used Trinitarian terminology, but without reference to Catholic and generally Orthodox doctrine.

After that, the Elder told the believer about the tenets of the Qatari religion, about what obligations he would be bound for the rest of his life, and read Pater Noster, explaining every line of this prayer, which the one preparing for the entry had to repeat after him. Then the believer solemnly renounced the Catholic faith, in which he had been since childhood, promised that from now on he would not touch either meat, or eggs, or any other food of animal origin, he would refrain from carnal pleasures, he would never lie, never will not take an oath and will never renounce the Qatari faith. Then he had to say the following words: “I receive this holy prayer from God, from you and from the Church,” and then loudly and clearly announce that he wants to be baptized. After that, he did melioramentum(three times knelt down and asked for blessing) before the Elder and asked God to forgive him everything in which he sinned in thought, deed or omission. Then the good people present (perfect) in chorus pronounced the formula for forgiveness of sins: "In the name of the Lord, ours and the name of the Church, may your sins be forgiven." And, finally, there came the solemn moment of the ceremony, which was supposed to make the believer perfect: the Elder took the Gospel and placed it on the head of a new member of the Church, and from above he and his assistants laid each their right hand and prayed to God that on this person the Holy Spirit descended, while all the congregation read aloud Pater noster and other appropriate Qatari prayers. The Elder then read the first seventeen verses of John's Gospel, reciting again, this time alone, Pater noster, and the new perfect received from him, and then from other perfect ones, the kiss of the world, which he then passed on to the one of the audience who was closest to him, and he passed the kiss to his neighbor, and so, from one to another, this kiss bypassed all those gathered ...

The “consoled”, now made perfect, put on a black robe that signified his new condition, donated all his property to the Qatari community and began to lead a wandering life as a merciful preacher following the example of Jesus and his apostles. The city deacon or the Qatari bishop of the province had to choose for him, among other perfect companions, who was called socius(or socia, if it was about a woman), with whom he, surrounded by the veneration and worship of peasants, townspeople and nobility, would henceforth share his life, his labors and adversities.

* * *

The crusade against the Cathars, the so-called "Albigensian Crusade", was actually a pretext invented by Philip Augustus in order to seize the lands of Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, that is, the Toulouse County proper and the possessions related to it, such as the Viscountries of Béziers and Albi , with the sole purpose: to expand the territory of the French kingdom. It doesn't hurt to say a few words about this man here. He was born in 1156 and died in 1222 in Toulouse, was married five times, his wife - Ermessinda de Pele (died in 1176), Beatrice, the sister of the Viscount Beziers (he married her until 1193), Burginda de Auzignan (the wedding took place in 1193) "Jeanne, sister of Richard the Lionheart (she brought him Agena as a dowry) and, finally, in 1211, he married Eleanor, the sister of the Aragonese king.

Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse and Saint-Gilles, Duke of Narbonne and Marquis of Provence, succeeded his father, Raymond V, in 1194. The lucrative treaty concluded by him put an end to the war, which the latter waged with the English Plantagenets (with Henry II, then with his son, Richard the Lionheart), from whom he took Kersey. In 1198 he allied with his brother-in-law, Richard the Lionheart, and several major vassals against Philip Augustus; in subsequent years, he now and then entered into armed conflicts with various lords of the south. When Raymond VI was not armed and did not fight, he kept a brilliant court, where troubadours flocked, and showed concern for the Cathars, who, using his patronage, settled on his lands. In 1205 or 1206, the count, frightened by the actions of Pope Innocent III, who persuaded Philip Augustus to start a crusade against these heretics (that is, on his, Raymond, lands), promised the papal legate Pierre de Castelnau, about whom we will talk later, that he would not tolerate more Cathars in their domains; however, he never kept his promise, and in the future we will see how the mission of Pierre de Castelnau, the papal legate, will end with the terrible Albigensian crusade.

This brief information allows us to outline the following two circumstances, which, in turn, will help us understand the meaning of this unworthy religious war: 1) the power of Raymond VI, Count of Toulouse, whose possessions were almost as vast and rich as those of his overlord, the king of France, and the fact that, among other things, he was brought in by his brother-in-law to Richard the Lionheart (with him, as we have already said, he united against Philip Augustus, who was the count of distant relatives), made him a natural opponent of the king; 2) the freedom of his morals and disposition towards the Cathars, as everyone knew, made Count Raymond VI an enemy of God (and therefore, Pope Innocent III), which in 1207 led to his excommunication from the Church by the decision of Pierre de Castelnau, confirmed dad next May.

Consequently, Count Raymond VI was a man to be dealt with for both the Pope and the French king. The crusade against the Cathars provided a pretext and justification for this crime, since there were plenty of heretics both in the county of Toulouse and throughout Occitania. Pierre de Vaux-de-Sernet, who fiercely pursued the Cathars with the only weapon - a strong quill in his hand, explains this to us with undisguised bias, but vividly and vividly, and along the way gives some precious information to which we will draw the reader's attention along the way. Affairs:

“Let us first note that he [ Count Raymond VI], one might say, from the cradle he loved heretics and favored them, while those who lived on his lands, he honored as best he could. Until now [ before 1209; the murder of the papal legate, which became the reason for the crusade, occurred in 1208], as they say, wherever he goes, he brings with him heretics, dressed in ordinary clothes, so that if he had to die, he could die in their arms: in fact, he imagined that he could to be saved without any repentance if on his deathbed he can receive the laying on of hands from them. He always carried the New Testament with him in order, if necessary, to receive from heretics the laying on of hands with this book. [...] The Count of Toulouse, as we know for certain, once told heretics that he would like to raise his son [the future Raymond VII] in Toulouse, among heretics, so that he would be brought up in their faith. The Count of Toulouse once told heretics that he would gladly give one hundred silver coins to convert one of his knights to the heretics, whom he often persuaded to convert to this faith, forcing him to listen to sermons. In addition, when the heretics sent him gifts or food supplies, he accepted all this with the most lively gratitude and preserved it with the greatest care: he did not allow anyone to touch them except himself and several of his associates. And very often, as we learned with great certainty, he even worshiped heretics, kneeling, and asked their blessings, and gave them the kiss of peace. [...] Once the count was in the church where mass was served: he was accompanied by a mime, who, according to the custom of jesters of this kind, made fun of people, grimacing and making feigned movements. When the priest turned to the crowd with the words “ Dominus vobiscum", The vile count ordered his histrion to mimic the priest and taunt him. On another occasion, this same count also said that he would rather be like some dangerous heretic from Castres, in the diocese of Albi, who had neither arms nor legs, and lived in poverty, than to be a king or emperor. "
((AI, 16))

These last words of the Count of Toulouse may be correct, but they do not in the least indicate the "abomination" of Raymond VI - they rather serve as proof that this ruler, no matter how libertine he was, was able to admire, or even envy an almost mystical the purity of the faith of the perfect, doomed to ascend to the fires that he, perhaps, someday will have to light for them. Indeed, it did not take the Cathars even two centuries to finally create in Occitania, and mainly in the County of Toulouse, a Church firmly rooted in all its districts and in all its cities, and this Church was not a secret. , nor underground and found adherents both among the village common people and among the townspeople, and among its members, as well as those who sympathized with her, there were powerful barons and noble nobles of Languedoc.

However, the Qatari doctrine was not the only heresy of the Languedoc. Indeed, Pierre de Vaux-de-Sernet informs us of the existence of a Christian sect, which originated in the south of France around 1170 and began with the sermons of a certain Pierre Waldo, a wealthy Lyon merchant who abandoned everything he had acquired in order to call for a return to the original ethics of the gospel; his followers were called Waldensians, forming this name on behalf of the founder of the sect.

“These people were undoubtedly bad,” he writes, “but if you compare them with the Cathar heretics, they were much less corrupt. Indeed, on many issues they agreed with us, and on others they disagreed. Their error pertained mainly to four points: they had to, like the apostles, wear sandals, said that in no case should one take oaths or kill, and argued that any of them could, if necessary and on condition, that wears sandals, to celebrate the sacrament of the Eucharist, even if this person was not a priest and was not ordained by a bishop. "
((AI, ibid.))

The Waldensians were persecuted by Rome, in 1487 a crusade was launched against them, but they managed to survive and find refuge in the Alpine villages of Piedmont, Savoy and Luberon. When persecuted again in the 17th century (under Louis XIV), they joined the Calvinist Reformed Church. Let's clarify that the Waldensians had nothing to do with the Cathars: in particular, they never supported any Manichean theories.

Notes:

In Russian texts it is also mentioned under the title "History of the Albigensians". (Translator's note.)

Histoire albigeoise, Paris, J. Vrin, 1951.

Chanson de la croisade albigeoise, adaptation de Henri Gougaud, Paris, LGF, 1989.

This is a territory corresponding to what the Romans called "Gaul of Narbonne": its northern border ran along an approximate arc from Lausanne to Toulouse, and its southern border (Mediterranean, then Pyrenean) - from Nice to Narbonne; two-thirds of this territory was the County of Toulouse, from east to west surrounded by the County of Armagnac, the Viscountry of Béziers, the County of Foix and the County of Gevaudan.

This is very brief information indeed; in order to get an idea: the modern translation of the chronicle of Pierre de Vaudet-Sernet has 235 pages, of which only seven are devoted to the description of heresy and the behavior of heretics, and the remaining 228 - to the actual crusade.

Various ecclesiastical councils, which had to talk about the Qatari heresy, did not tire of denouncing "secret meetings attended by heretics"; the fact that the meetings were secret seemed "devilish" to them.

The Qatari Missal was translated by the French linguist and dialectologist Leon Kleda; we cite it from an abridged version of this translation proposed by Zoya Oldenburg in The Bonfire of Montsegur (Le Bûcher de Montségur, Paris, Gallimard, 1959). See also Appendix I of the present. op.

"Our Father". (Translator's note.)

The main Qatari rite, in French it was called "baptême spirituel" - "spiritual baptism". See Appendix I.

Bertrand de Sessac was the guardian of Viscount Raymond-Roger de Béziers; in 1194, in the presence of Bishop Béziers, he pledged to expel the Cathars from the Viscountry.

Hereinafter - all the poetic fragments of the "Song of the Crusade against the Albigens" are translated from the Old Occitan by Elena Morozova and Igor Belavin. Cit. Quoted from: "New Youth", 2000, No. 5 (44), pp. 160-191 and J. Brunel-Labricchon and C. Duhamel-Amado "Everyday life during the troubadours of the 12th-13th centuries." M, "Young Guard", "Palimpsest", 2003, p. 377-386. (Translator's note.)

Bless and have mercy on us (lat.). (Translator's note.)

The ritual greeting that should have been addressed to the perfect: it consisted in bowing three times before the perfect one, to whom the believer addressed, kneel three times and say to him: “Pray for me to God that he would make me a good Christian and grant a righteous end ". Then the perfect one blessed the believer with the words: "May the Lord make you a good Christian and grant you a righteous end."

“When the day of Pentecost came, they were all in one accord together.

And suddenly there was a noise from heaven, as if from a rushing strong wind, and filled the whole house where they were;

And divided tongues appeared to them, as it were, of fire, and rested, one on each of them.

And they were all filled with the Holy Spirit and began to speak in other tongues, as the Spirit gave them utterance. " (Acts of the Apostles, 2, 1-4.)

If a woman entered the number of perfect ones, the ceremony of kissing the world was replaced with a symbolic gesture: the elder or his assistant touched the shoulder of the new perfect one with the Gospel and touched her elbow with his elbow.

The Cartular of Magelon, a small village in the commune of Villeneuve-le-Magelon in Herault, near Frontignan, dating from 1209, contains a (non-exhaustive) list of twenty-six names of places in the vicinity of Toulouse, where "heretics" (Cathars) were seen: Avignon, Arif, Baziege, Shipyards, Grolet, Cadalen, Caraman, Castelnaudary, Castelsarrazen, Cayusac, Lanta, Marseille, Montmor, Montagu, Montauban, Montaubrin, Montesquieu, Montferrand, Auryac, Rabastan, Senegast, Saint-Martin-Lagepie, Saint-Martin- Land, Saint-Paul-Cap-de-Joux, Saint-Felix, Sesterol.

Most of all, the Cathars were afraid to die suddenly, in a state of sin, without having time to receive consolamentum, - this rite can be performed only by a perfect one (see above).

This side observation suggests that Toulouse most likely had many Qatari houses.

A remark of this kind, coming from such a serious chronicler as Pierre de Vaux-de-Sernet, is not defamatory: it reminds us that there was no "witch hunt" in the Toulouse county, and most likely in the whole of Occitania. ...

This last remark is doubtful: we hardly imagine such a nobleman as the Count of Toulouse, constantly surrounded by his retinue, accompanied by a chaplain, or even a bishop, kneeling before the perfect!

Lord be with you (lat.).

Pierre de Vaux-de-Sernet roughly interprets the remark of the Count of Toulouse; in fact, the behavior of kind people who wandered the roads of the Toulouse county and abandoned everything - family, wealth, comfort and even security - in order to live in their faith inspired respect, and even their opponents - for example, the Pope or Saint Dominic - praised their dedication. We know even more reliably that during the ten years that the crusade lasted, hundreds, and perhaps thousands of Cathars were killed or burned, but only three or four examples of abdication are given; we understand what admiration these people could arouse even among those who did not recognize their worldview - it is in this sense that the admiring remark of Raymond VI of Toulouse should be interpreted.

In Roman Catholicism, the justification of the soul was based on its formal affiliation with the institutional church. However, this church was considered Christian, which means that it proclaimed the absolute priority of the spirit over the flesh. For most people, this priority cannot be achieved on their own.
This fact caused a neurotic reaction: Catholics found themselves hostage to cruel ascetic demands, which are unrealistic to follow.
Hence - the cases of mass religious exaltation or formal adherence to rituals known in medieval Catholicism.

This laid the foundation for a totalitarian consciousness. The Roman Church created in society the psychological stereotype of an "eternal failure" - thereby strengthening its paternalistic positions. A loser, of course, needs an authoritative shepherd to take on the challenge of saving him.

It was quite different with the Cathars. Their asceticism was not self-sufficient and did not lead to any perverse forms, because the theme of salvation was not primary for catharism. The primary theme was love.
Yes, the Cathar faith stated the unfortunate position of the human soul, fettered by the flesh, by the "prison of the spirit."
But, being true followers of Christ, the Cathars believed in the power of His love. They had a positive vector of spiritual aspiration, which Catholics were deprived of. And this left a special imprint on both religious and social life.

If Catholicism of that time can be called a religion of "great prohibition", then catharism was a religion of "great permission."
The religious idea of Rome was based on the fact that man is the bearer of original sin, from which he cannot be freed until God frees him, and this will only be at the Last Judgment (after which most sinners will still go to hell).

The Cathars, in contrast to this frightening doctrine, professed a belief in the "original perfection" of man.
Sin is severe, but not fatal damage inflicted on him by the devil. It is not only necessary to free oneself from it, but it is also possible, and not “after the Last Judgment,” but it would be better now. And the Cathars offered effective methods and means of such liberation.
The most important thing for us is this difference. The Catholic point of view made one fear a person (as a carrier and source of filth), place him somewhere near the devil, and ultimately condemn him. This is exactly how, according to Rome, God relates to man.
The Cathars adhered to the exact opposite: a person should be loved and justified no matter what. Remember his secret divine dignity and in every possible way contribute to the manifestation of the latter. This is how the God of love acts, in the understanding of the Cathars.

The traditional opinion about the Cathars is based on "twisting", over-emphasizing some of their ideas to the detriment of others. Therefore, before talking about the spiritual prerequisites for the enormous influence of the Qatari religion, let us pay attention to the facts.

Contrary to the slander of the Inquisition, catharism was, in the full sense of the word, a family religion. Entire clans and settlements converted to the "heretical faith".
This applies to both the lower class and the aristocracy. Faith quickly became a hereditary, "family tradition", in the words of A. Brenon. Researchers have noted very few cases of isolated, isolated believers.
“Only in a few cases do we see families divided along religious lines. But such cases are the exception rather than the rule. It often happens that the same beliefs are shared by several or, more often, the majority of family members, so that one can even speak of Qatari families. "
An amazing phenomenon when you consider that the Cathars denied the sanctity of Catholic marriage. However, it is quite understandable, if you remember that the Cathars put love above any rituals.

Kind People (dedicated Cathars who followed a perfect way of life) carried the teaching of love to the people and spread its charm around them.
It was this that became the main motive of all their undertakings. The Cathars, of course, were very fond of talking about the fact that the creator and ruler of this imperfect world is the devil.
But they always asserted: there is another world, a world of love. It infinitely surpasses the "sheepfold" of this world, into which the "Rex Mundi" casts more and more souls. He is worthy to strive for him - and he can be attainable even in this lifetime. The fact is that the world of love is larger, the unconditional power of love is stronger than the cruel laws of this age.

The ascetic practice of the Cathars was aimed precisely at the all-round kindling of divine love in the soul.
The Qatari Perfect did not resemble a sad Catholic ascetic. The fruit of his self-denial was not the expectation of "eternal salvation" in an incomprehensible perspective, but the kindness and gentleness of his disposition, which created an attractive halo around him.

It was this circumstance, this apparent fruitfulness of spiritual life, that was the main motive that forced people to join the Cathar communities.
It is no coincidence that modern researchers speak of catharism as an "accessible religion." This does not mean the accessibility of creed for the dark uneducated peasants, but the accessibility of divine spiritualization, which the Roman Church did not know.

Source - http://tajna-tamplja.narod.ru/p65.htm
Posted by Melphys K.