CATHARI. - The name "Cathars," of Greek derivation (καθαρός, pure), served from Christian antiquity onward to designate certain heretical sects, but in current usage the term now designates a particular form of medieval heresy, and it is only in that sense that it is considered here.
Landulf the Elder, around 1100, calls the opponents of ecclesiastical marriage "cathari" and identifies the rejection of marriage as a point of convergence between the heretics of Monforte and the followers of the Pataria; in the second half of the 12th century the name "Cathars" was employed to designate certain heretics (Eckbert of Schönau, Sermones contra catharos), and from that moment the usage rapidly became established; it is superfluous to note that there is no coincidence between Cathars and Patarines, even though affinities of attitude can easily be found and points of contact and doctrines established. These are two movements that were not contemporary and originated from different needs, but were brought together by the practical necessities of combat. Nor can parallels be established or filiations found between Cathars and Waldensians, even though in this case both are religious phenomena that broke away from the Catholic stock under similar circumstances; the original divergence remains, even if mutual influences were not lacking.
The principal centers of diffusion of the Cathar heresy were three: Champagne, southern France, and Lombardy; but the origin of this phenomenon will always remain obscure; nor are the explanations given satisfactory concerning the long journeys traveled by dualistic Manichaean or Gnostic thought before developing in the centers just indicated. These are rather local efflorescences that only at a later stage established connections among themselves and sought in ancient historical precedents some justification for their position. It is clear, however, that from the second half of the 12th century the Churches of the Cathars of the West were in a relationship of doctrinal and hierarchical dependence on the leaders of the various and opposing dualist communities of the Balkan or Eastern countries.
Various theories have been advanced on the genesis and characteristics of the medieval heresy; and, leaving aside particulars, it can be said that there are two principal positions: there are those who give prevalence to the theological-doctrinal aspect, and there are those who instead emphasize the ascetic-practical aspect. The former consequently see a very close relationship between the medieval Cathars and the ancient Manichaeans and dualistic derivations; the latter consider this apparatus a later superstructure and recognize as the primum movens the desire for ascetic life, for simplicity in worship, etc.; by the latter the opposition to the official and hierarchical Church is brought fully to light, to the point of affirming that the heresy represented a new lay system of perfection and salvation in the Christian life. In the embryonic phase of the heretical phenomenon it is by now almost impossible to follow the formation of that movement which is religious and social at the same time. Nevertheless, on the basis of easy considerations of common sense, one must note that among those Christians of the 11th and 12th centuries philosophical doctrines could not have been widespread, nor could overly abstruse arguments have taken hold, although they are perceived to be present among the educated element, whereas the themes of evangelical poverty, apostolic action and the like could be understood and inspire passion. This does not exclude that some among the heretics felt the need to give support to their position and turned first of all to the sacred texts, finding already in them many declarations on the opposition between the kingdom of God and the world, on the wickedness of the carnal life, on the duty to be humble, submissive, disinterested; subsequently they also took up dualistic doctrines of older date, which allowed Catholic polemicists to turn against them the authoritative confutations already directed in their time by a St. Augustine or by other Fathers. Thus the traditional cliché was formed that interpreted medieval heresies sub specie philosophiae; nor did the new historiographical criterion proper to the economic-juridical school represent progress, since it limited its interest to the social side, to the political consequences of the heresies, distorting them in their specifically religious essence.
Although it is dangerous to be too categorical in fixing the principal points of Cathar thought, all the different varieties of Cathar sects agreed on this, according to Rainerius Sacconi, one of the most authoritative sources: the world proceeds from the devil; rejection of the Sacraments; condemnation of marriage; denial of the resurrection of the flesh; prohibition of the use of meats, eggs and dairy products; abhorrence of oaths; prohibition for temporal authorities to punish heretics; denial of Purgatory; impossibility of salvation outside their Church. The most important is the first point because it is closely connected with soteriology and Christology.
In the judgment of the Cathars, there exist two primordial wills, one good and one evil, and matter, which for them is corruptible and wickedness, derives from this second will; thus all visible things, having been made by the devil, are subject to his power. Since in man matter and spirit, that is good and evil, are united, the Cathars resorted to various more or less fantastic explanations to justify this coexistence, but in the end they always came to recognize that the soul was imprisoned in the body and had to atone in order to purify itself. The god of the Old Testament was, in their view, Satan himself who had presented himself under a good form in order to be worshiped more easily; some groups admitted certain books of the Old Testament, or those citations of the Old Testament that are introduced by Christ or the Apostles in the New Testament. Christ was not God, in their judgment, but even less man, given that matter is impure; but an angel adopted by God who had taken on the appearance of a man (docetism). His task was not that of saving humanity or atoning for sinners, but only of teaching that there exists a good spiritual principle that is in heaven and is also in each of us.
It is not infrequent to find notable attenuations of this rigid dualism and to encounter the admission of an original divine monarchy; only with God's permission would that fallen angel who is the devil have formed the world from the elements of chaos; but his power always remained inferior to the divine.
All agreed in recognizing the wickedness of human life and consequently in aspiring to escape from it. The endura, that is, the practice of letting oneself die of hunger or of ending one's life in some other violent way, was their ideal; but even this in time was lost. What remained instead were contempt for marriage (or rather, an antipathy for the sexual act performed by spouses; the life of spouses as brother and sister was highly esteemed) and the renunciation of animal foods, the practice of three annual fasts, that is, so many forms of annulment of the sources of life. There is sufficient information about the organization and the cult practices of the Cathars; there existed a distinction between "believers" and "perfects," and this second degree was reached through an initiation that then continued with a life of a monastic type. Although the veneration of images was not admitted nor the cult of the saints tolerated, there were liturgical forms and a kind of sacred meal; the prayer par excellence was the Pater in which the variant was adopted: panem supersubstantialem instead of panem quotidianum, as a Cathar ritual that has come down to us makes known to us. Furthermore, the consolamentum was practiced, a kind of baptismal sacrament that replaced that of the Catholic Church, and it consisted in the imposition of hands, in the profession of faith joined to the commitment to remain bound to Catharism until death, to live in chastity and not to eat meat. For these reasons the consolamentum was often postponed to the end of life; in fact, whoever failed the ideal he had embraced lost every possibility of salvation. Of the simple "believers" only a rite of adoration was asked, called melioramentum, toward the perfects, to whom hospitality and food had to be provided; from them they received the blessing and the blessed bread; to them they made a kind of generic confession, called apparelamentum. Without denying the existence among the perfects of figures worthy of respect, followers of a rigid morality and animated by a true religious sentiment, one cannot fail to underline the terrible consequences deriving from the tenor of life hoped for and promoted by the Cathars. The mass of simple credentes could abandon themselves with impunity to every dissoluteness and violence, through the hope of the saving consolamentum in extremis; the destruction of the family and the disintegration of society were the ineluctable fruits of those premises, and there is no doubt that a wide diffusion of that heresy would have endangered the whole of European Christian civilization. This can serve to explain in part the violence of the Catholic reaction, when the full gravity of the threat was perceived.
It is not possible to follow here in detail the vicissitudes of all the groups of Cathars scattered throughout Europe; the examination of their doctrines should document for us the genesis of their varied dualistic teaching. Suffice it to say, with regard to extra-Italian Catharism, that the Eastern one is rather confounded with Bogomilism and to it one refers; scanty traces are encountered in England and in Spain, greater ones on the banks of the Rhine where the fierce Conrad of Magdeburg went so far as severe repressions. Instead it was very widespread both in northern and in southern France; for the latter see the history of the Albigensians (v.), well known for many reasons. In the north the major center was the castle of Montwimer (Montaimé, diocese of Châlons-sur-Marne), from which the heresy radiated into Flanders, Picardy and Burgundy; but the execution of about 200 inhabitants of that center, which took place in 1239, marked the end of the movement in the whole region.
The first sign of the presence of Cathars in Italy occurs around 1030 with the capture of the heretics of the castle of Monforte near Alba, examined by the archbishop of Milan, Ariberto; from the accounts of the chronicles it results that they had a good organization, wide development and a complex doctrinal system based on the usual principles. Subsequently the vicissitudes of the Gregorian reform and of the investiture struggle and the ensuing conflicts between Swabian emperors and pontiffs cast into the shade, in the sources, the news about the heretics; in 1184 Pope Lucius III, at the meeting at Verona with Frederick Barbarossa, issued the constitution Ad abolendam, directed to an organic work of repression too long postponed because of political difficulties; in this document the various heretical currents are also enumerated separately, but the first place is given to Catharism, an undoubted sign of the vastness and scope of that phenomenon. Leaving aside all those episodes that may interest rather general history for their social and political reflections, it will be recalled only that if Milan always remained the center, the Cathars flourished also at Verona, Ferrara, Modena, Parma, Piacenza, Cremona, Rimini, Orvieto, Viterbo; nor is there a lack of evidence of their existence also in Calabria, in Apulia and in the islands. A podestà of Orvieto, Pietro Parenzo, was killed by the heretics on 21 May 1199; preachers and inquisitors were also assassinated.
Within Italian Catharism three sects or "orders" are identified, divided among themselves by doctrinal conflicts (another matter are the Cathar churches understood as hierarchical organizations, with a bishop at their head, assisted by a filius maior and a filius minor: R. Sacconi enumerated no fewer than these in the whole Cathar world): the Albanenses (v.) and extremist dualists; the Concorezzesi (v.), also called garati from the name of their leader Garato, and the Bagnolesi (v.) or caloiani from their bishop Caloiano, who were, the one and the other, mitigated dualists but diverged because the one admitted the material reality of the body of Christ, the others were purely docetists; moreover the one were traducianists, the others held that souls had been created by God all at once before the formation of the world and had already sinned in heaven.
BIBL. Sources: the sources relating to Catharism can be distinguished into narrative and documentary on the one hand, which are for the most part contemporary or slightly later, and into doctrinal expositions and con-
futazioni di errori: escluso qualche dettaglio, meritano fede, perché riportano spesso deposizioni di eretici e verbali di processi e concordano nella descrizione dei caratteri del movimento. Gli scritti del c. dovettero esser numerosi e di vario tipo (trattati, schedulae o opuscoli di propaganda, rituali, ecc.; oltre alle traduzioni della Bibbia fatte a loro uso e consumo), ma sono andati quasi tutti perduti; ci restano un rituale in lingua romanza, pubblicato prima da E. Cunitz, Ein Katharisches Rituale (Beiträge zu den theologischen Wissenschaften, 4), Jena 1852, e in seguito da L. Clédat, Le Nouveau Testament traduit au XIIIe siècle en langue provençale, suivi d'un Rituel cathare, Parigi 1887; un trattato neo-manicheo Liber de duobus principis, con un Compendium ad instructionem radium, composto intorno al 1230 e proveniente dall'ambiente della giovane frazione della setta catara degli albanesi capeggiata da Giovanni da Lucio, seguito da un rituale cataro in lingua latina, entrambi scoperti e pubblicati recentemente da A. Dondaine, Un traité néo-manichéen du XIIIe siècle. Le Liber de duobus principis suivi d'un fragment de Rituel cathare, Roma 1939; G. Lacombe, La vie et les œuvres de Prévostin, Kain 1927 (par la Summa contra haereticus a lui attribuita, cf. id., Prévostin de Cremona, in DThC, XIII, coll. 166-67); A. Dondaine, Nouvelles sources de l'histoire doctrinale du néo-manichéisme du moyen âge, in Revue des sciences philox. et théol., 28 (1939), pp. 465-68; M. Esposito, Sur quelques écrits concernant les hérécies et les hérétiques au XIIe et XIIIe siècles, in Revue d'histoire ecclée, 36 (1940), pp. 143-62; Ilarino da Milano, Le Manifestatio heresii catarorum quam fecit Bonacursus i secondo il cod. Ottob. lat. 136 della bibl. Vat., in Aevum, 12 (1938), pp. 281-333; id., Fr. Gregorio, O. P., vescovo di Fano, e la Disputatio inter catholicum et paterinum hereticum, ibid., 14 (1940), pp. 85-140 (in realtà l'autore è un laico, di nome Giorgio, cf. A. Dondaine, Le manuel ecc., pp. 174-80); id., La Summa contra haereticus e di Giacomo Capelli, O. F. M., e un suo « Quarestinale » inedito, in Collectanea Franc., 10 (1940), pp. 66-82; id., Il « Liber supra Stella » del piacentino Salvo diveri contro i c. e altre correnti ereticali, in Aevum, 16 (1942), pp. 272-319; 17 (1943), pp. 90-146; 19 (1945), pp. 282-341; A. Dondaine, Les actes du concile albigesis de St-Félix de Caramon, in Miscell. G. Mercati, V. Città del Vaticano 1946, pp. 324-55; id., Le manuel de l'inquisiteur (1230-1236), in Archivum Fratr. praedicatorum, 17 (1947), pp. 85-194; T. Kappeli, Une Somme contre les hérétiques de s. Pierre Martyr (S), in Archivum Fratr. praedicatorum, 17 (1947), pp. 295-333; la Summa di R. Sacconi, che con quella Adversus Catharos et Valdenses (ed. T. A. Ricchini, Roma 1745) di Moneta da Cremona tiene uno dei primi posti in questo genere di letteratura, è stata nuovamente pubblicata da A. Dondaine, Un traité néo-manichéen, ecc., pp. 64-78.
Tra i lavori più significativi cf. Ch. U. Hahn, Geschichte der Ketzer im Mittelalter, besonders im 11., 12., und 13. Jahrhundert nach den Quellen, I, Stoccarda 1845, passim; Ch. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares ou Albigesis, 3 voll., Parigi 1849; F. Tocco, L'eresia nel medioevo, Firenze 1884, pp. 73-134; Ch. Molinier, Rapport sur une mission exécutée en Italie. Etude sur quelques manuscrits de bibliothèques concernant l'inquisition et les croyances hérétiques du XIIIe et du XIIIe siècle, in Archives des Missions scientifiques et littéraires, 3e série, 14 (1888), pp. 133-336; J. Döllinger, Beiträge zur Sehtengeschichte des Mittelalters, Monaco 1890; P. Alphandéry, Les idées morales chez les hétérodoxes latins au début du XIIIe siècle, Parigi 1903, passim; Ch. Molinier, L'église et la société cathares, in Revue historique, 94 (1907), pp. 225-48; 95 (1907), pp. 1-22, 263-91; id., Un secte de Muratori concernant les actes cathares, in Annales du Midi, 22 (1910), pp. 180-220; id., L'endura, coutume religieuse des derniers sectaires albigesis, Tolosa 1881; E. Broeck, Le catharisme. Etude sur les doctrines, la vie religieuse et morale, l'activité littéraire et les vicissitudes de la secte cathare avant la croisade, Hoogstraten 1916; G. Volpe, Movimenti religiosi e sette ereticali nella società medioevala italiana, Firenze 1922, passim; E. Homes, The Albigesian or Catharist Heresy. A Story and a Study, Londra 1925; J. Guiraud, Histoire de l'Inquisition au moyen âge, I, Parigi 1935; H. Grundmann, Religiöse Bewegungen im Mittelalter, Berlino 1935, passim; M. Morghen, Osservazioni critiche su alcune questioni fondamentali riguardanti le origini e i caratteri delle eresie medioevali, in Archivio deputato, romano storia patria, 67 (1944), pp. 97-151; Ilarino da Milano, L'eresia di Ugo Speroni nella confutazione del mastro Vacario (Studi e Testi, 115), Città del Vaticano 1945, pp. 432-36; e dello stesso autore i vari studi già citati; inoltre Le eresie popolari del secolo XI nell'Europa occidentale, in Studi gregoriani, raccolti da S. B. Borino, II, Roma 1947, pp. 43-89.