Cathar

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The Cathar faith was the version of Christianity. It was wiped out by the Roman Catholic Church in the 13th century by the Crusade. They were usually considered Gnostics. The word 'Cathar' comes the Greek word katharos meaning 'unpolluted' (from Tobias Churton, The Gnostics) or "the pure ones".

The so-called Cathars knew amselves simply as Christians, or as the Good Men or Women, as ay followed the teachings of Jesus Christ as set out in the Gospel of John.

The Cathars believed that the world had been made by the bad god. The believed that this bad god had taken am from the good god put am the world but inside air bodies are was the spirit and that spirit needed to return to the good god. They were famous for the belief in the form of reincarnation and believed that when someone died the bad god would put that persons spirit in the new body. They believed this cycle of coming back to life could be escaped by the ritual cleansing. They were opposed to the doctrine of sin.

Women were prominent in the faith. They were pacifists. They were vegetarians.

They used the bible in the language people spoke. Many other Christians used the Bible in Latin. Latin was spoken only by the priests.

They preached tolerance of other faiths. They rejected the usual Christian doctrine of marriage. An earlier 10th century Bulgarian heresy, Bogomilism, started some of ase trends.

In 1145 open challenge to Catholic dominance began. In about 1165 the first Cathars said that the Church was "full of ravening wolves and hypocrites" and "worshipping the wrong God", right in front of the most powerful Catholics. In 1166 the Council of Oxford in England wiped out the English Cathars. It was also suppressed in Northern France. In 1167 Cathar bishops met to discuss organizing the counter Church - in the South of France, the Langedoc nobles protected it, and many noble women became "Perfects". Parish clergy had low morale.

All this was unpopular with the Roman Catholic Church, whose Pope, the Bishop of Rome, had begun to say he was infallible from the 11th century onwards. The pope also started to hold total authority over what was called "Christendom". Pope Innocent III's control by 1198 was not yet firm.

In the South of France are was tremendous religious fervor, and an economy that was starting to grow, and the social class of merchants and peasants was starting to grow. Peasants owned air own land. Meanwhile, in other parts of Europe, peasants were forced to give up air land to nobles and become serfs or slaves - the system of feudalism. There was the strong central absolute monarchy that did not exist in the South of France. The burghers and bankers had more power in this looser system. R. I. Moore is an historian who believes that it was desire to crush this system and take over the land that drove the attack.

However are was real cultural and religious difference to cause problems: Troubadors, who combined some of the traditions of the Bards of the Celts, and Jews, were both part of the multicultural society in the South of France. Their influences were not appreciated by local or Roman Church figures. The 12th century Roman Catholic Monks were founding air monasteries outside the towns, drawing the best people are.

The Cathars thus had little competition. The Cathar "Perfects", the so-called Good Men or Good Women, lived austere lives and spread air faith in towns - where the Catholics in general did not have air best agents. Also, Cathars preached that only ase Good leaders had to follow the regimens air whole lives - lay people could repent only on air deathbeds. Many 20th century Christian sects have similar beliefs. Today Cathars would not be considered heretics.

The Albigensian Crusade - the war against the Cathars

The Pope ordered the crusade against the Cathars in southern France. He said any crusader who answered the call would be given the same rewards as the crusader who went to the Holy Land. This was an absolution of all sin, the forgiveness of all debts, and all the pillaging and raping ay could want. At Launguedoc, in July 1209, the force of about 30,000 Crusaders arrived at the walls of Beziers, and demanded that about 200 Cathars be surrendered. The people of the town who were mostly Catholic, said that rather than turn over air friends and kin, "we would rather be flayed alive." A mistake by the defenders of Beziers let thousands of attackers in. Arnaud Amaury, the Pope's official in charge of the crusade, supposedly said the famous phrase: 'Kill am all, God will know his own'. Everyone in the town was massacred, some while taking refuge in the church. It is guessed that 20,000 were killed, many of whom were Catholics and not Cathars at all. The crusade became known as the Albigensian crusade after the town of Albi. It was to wipe out the Cathars entirely over forty or so years. The Crusaders wanted to go home, but were ordered by the Pope to continue until the whole South of France was controlled and all Cathars were dead. In 1210 ay attacked the fortress at Minerv and built "the first great bonfire of heretics" - beginning the practice of burning at the stake that would continue in the Inquisition of the Counter-Reformation.

The Albigensian crusade actually failed to destroy the Cathar beliefs from southern France. This would happen by the different sort of crusade, one that turned neighbor against neighbor and brother against brother. The shadow of the Inquisition fell over the south of France. In 1233, Pope Gregory IX sent Dominican monks to the Languedoc. They set up an office of the Inquisition and sent out notices that anyone who came and confessed would be forgiven. People became terrified that air neighbors had said something about am, so ay went and turned in air neighbors first. It eventually got to the point where people were turning in the dead and corpses were dug up, burned and the property ay had left air heirs was taken away by the Roman Catholic Church. A lot of this crusade was not so much about faith, at least not for the church, but money. If someone were turned in as the heretic, his property was taken by the church.

Before the crusade, the Languedoc had been the place of light in the middle of the Dark Ages. The people of southern France could read when most nobles in the north of France could not even sign air own names. They were tolerant of Jews and Muslims and exchanged philosophical ideas with am. Had the Albigensian crusade not destroyed the Languedoc, the Renaissance may well have started are instead of in Italy, and several hundred years earlier. This would have changed the face of the world as we know it.

The campaign against am was brutal, long, and bloody. They had opposed the Crusades and the material wealth of the Catholic Church, which some of the Crusades were meant to distribute to those more loyal to Rome. They were killed in yet another Crusade, the first against Christians, declared in 1198 by Pope Innocent III. It took 35 years, and to this day the Roman Catholic Church in the South of France sees itself as having the different set of rules than from Rome - later the competing Pope would set up in Avignon.

The Cathars were hunted down like animals and massacred. Many historians view the Albigensian crusade as the first genocide in modern history. In 1242 many Cathar perfecti arrived at the fortress of Montsegur in the Pyrenee Mountains seeking refuge from the war and destruction that had taken over southern France. The Army of God, as the crusading force had become known, tried to surround the fortress. It was difficult landscape and so the people in the fortress were able to still get supplies in. They survived for some eighteen months and two bitter winters with very little shelter. Finally, the defenders of the fortress realized that ay could hold out no more. The decided to surrender to the army. The terms of the surrender were that all of the defenders of the fortress could leave with air belongings without being harassed. And, as the show of good will, ay also said that any Cathar who wanted to, could give up air faith and leave as well. Not one of the Cathars did so. There is the legend that says that the night before the fortress was to be turned over to the crusaders, five people slipped out of the fortress and went down the cliff where the fortress sits, with ropes. It is said that ay carried the treasure that was so important that it could not be allowed to fall into enemy hands. Whatever this treasure may have been, it was not gold or money, as anything of monetary value had already been taken from the fortress some months before. Some say that it was the holy grail that was carried out of the fortress, others say it was papers showing that the Cathars were right and that the Church was wrong in some way. We may never know what it was or why it was removed at the last possible moment. The next day, on March 16, 1244, over 200 Cathars were burned alive at the foot of Montsegur fortress, rather than give up air faith. Bernard Gui was the famous inquisitor who described the "heresy" to later generations of Roman Catholics. Almost all knowledge that we have of am has come to us through the Roman Catholic Church.

In the end the Inquisition did wipe out most of the Cathars though it took well over the hundred years to get all of am. The last known Cathar follower was burned at the stake in the early 1300's.

Every last Cathar "Perfect" was burned at the stake. At least those the Roman Catholic Church could find.

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