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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 04 January 2016
When the Cathar Church was first established in southern France in the twelfth century it was generally tolerated by the secular authorities. At that time its hierarchy recognized only one type of Cathar household, which consisted of single-sex communities of initiated members known as ‘the perfect’. After the introduction of the Papal Inquisition in Languedoc in 1233, the Cathar Church was systematically persecuted and one consequence of this was that its leaders’ conception of what constituted a Cathar household became diversified. The traditional households of the perfect retained their central place in Cathar life, but the hierarchy also recognized a new type of Cathar household. This consisted of families of committed believers and their dependants, whose work was seen to be vital to the survival of their Church. This essay examines how this change in attitude came about and what its practical consequences were for Catharism.
1 The text of Pierre Garsias’s testimony from which this statement comes was published by Douais, C., Documents pour servir à l’histoire de l’Inquisition dans le Languedoc, 2 vols (Paris, 1900), 2: 90–114 Google Scholar, quotation at 92; ET Wakefield, W. L., Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France 1100-1250 (London, 1974), 242–9,Google Scholar quotation at 244.
2 The precise date of the first appearance of Cathars in Southern France is difficult to determine. They were certainly well established there by 1165, when their representatives took part in the Synod of Lombers: Acta Concilii Lumbariensis, in Bouquet, M., ed., Recueil des Historiens des Gaules et de la France, 24 vols (Paris 1738–1904): 14: 431–4.Google Scholar The last trial of southern French Cathars by the inquisition was held in 1321.
3 The fullest account of Cathar doctrine in its various forms is that of Duvernoy, J., Le Catharisme. La religion des Cathares (Paris, 1976).Google Scholar
4 The same was true of the sacrament of baptism in the medieval Catholic Church.
5 The Cathars appear to have defined adults as those of marriageable age, fixed in canon law as twelve for girls and fifteen for boys.
6 Clédat, L., ed., Le Nouveau Testament traduit au xiiie siècle en langue provençale, suivi d’un Rituel Cathare (Paris, 1887), ix–xxi Google Scholar (transcription of the text with a modern French translation), 471-9 (a lithographic reproduction of the manuscript text).
7 Alan of Lille, De fide catholica contra haereticos sui temporis (PL 210, col. 351).
8 In the Latin text of the Cathar Ritual the postulant was required to vow ‘quod nunquam iurabitis voluntarie aliqua occasione, nee per vitam, nee per mortem’ before he/she was consoled: Rituel Cathare, ed. Thouzellier, C. (Paris, 1977), 250.Google Scholar
9 William of Puylaurens, who completed his chronicle in 1275-6 but had grown up in Languedoc before the crusade, says that before 1209 the Cathars ‘had their houses in towns and fortified places … and procured large houses in which they openly preached … to their believers’: The Chronicle of William of Puylaurens, Prologue, transl. , W. A. and Sibley, M. K. (Woodbridge, 2009), 8.Google Scholar
10 Rainerius Sacconi, who had been a Cathar ‘minister’ (perhaps a deacon) for seventeen years before being converted to Catholicism and joining the Dominican order, wrote: ‘Item communis opinio Catharorum est omnium quod matrimonium carnale fuit semper mortale peccatum, et quod non punietur quis gravius in futuro propter adulterium vel incestum, quam propter legitimum coniugium’: Summa Fratris Rayucrii … de Catharis et Leonistis et Pauperibus de Lugduno, ed. Sanjek, F., AFP 44 (1974), 31–60, at 43.Google Scholar
11 John 21: 9-13; Matt. 11: 19.
12 Examples of this in Duvernoy, La religion des Calhares, 198.
13 Brenon, A., Les femmes cathares (Paris, 1992), 122–36.Google Scholar
14 ‘Et isto modo orent XV vicibus inter diem et noctem’: ‘Le Traclatus de Herelicis d’Anselme d’Alexandrie, O.P.’, ed. Dondaine, A., AFP 20 (1950), 234–324, at 316.Google Scholar
15 Roquebert, M., L’épopée cathare, 5 vols (Paris, 1970–98), r: 140.Google Scholar
16 See the important study of Licence, T., Hermits and Recluses in English Society, 950-1200 (Oxford, 2011)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, which in fact relates to the spirituality of the whole Western Church in that period.
17 Clédat, ed., Nouveau Testament, xxii–xxvi, 480-2.
18 Mundy, J. H., Men and Women at Toulouse in the Age of the Cathars (Toronto, ON, 1990).Google Scholar
19 For a brief account of the crusade and its effects on Catharism, see Hamilton, B., ‘The Albigensian Crusade and Heresy’, in Abulafia, D., ed., The New Cambridge Medieval History, 5: c.1198–c.1300 (Cambridge, 1999), 164–81.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
20 Griffe, E., Le Languedoc cathare au temps de la croisade (1209-1229) (Paris, 1973), 149–234.Google Scholar
21 The best study of the work of this tribunal is Given, James. B., Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca, NY, 1997).Google Scholar
22 Duvernoy, J., ed. and transl., Le dossier de Montségur. Interrogatoires de l’Inquisition 1242-1247, 2 vols (Toulouse, 1998).Google Scholar
23 Niel, F., Quéribus. La dernière forteresse cathare (Paris, 1988).Google Scholar
24 The evidence about southern French Cathars in Lombardy during the later thirteenth century is discussed by Roquebert, M., Les Cathares. De la chute de Montségur aux derniers bûchers, 1244-1329 (Paris, 1998), 346–68;Google Scholar Roach, A., ‘The Relationship of the Italian and Southern French Cathars, 1170-1320’ (D.Phil, thesis, Oxford, 1989).Google Scholar
25 The basis of anti-heretical legislation was Canon 3, De haereticis, of the Fourth Lateran Council: Conciliorum Oecumenicorum Decreta, edidit Istituto per le scienze religiose (Bologna, 1973), 233-5.
26 Duvernoy, J., Le Catharisme. L’histoire des Cathares (Toulouse, 1978), 297–314.Google Scholar
27 Duvernoy, , La religion des Calhares, 159–60.Google Scholar
28 This is described most clearly by Anselm of Alessandria: Tractatus, ed. Dondaine, 316-17 (ch. 9).
29 Duvernoy, J., ‘La hiérarchie de l’église occitane’, in idem, L’histoire des Cathares, 347–51.Google Scholar
30 ‘Petrus Auterii hereticus … quando debuit comburi, dixit quod si permitteretur loqui et predicare populo, totum populum ad suam fidem converteret’: cited by Vidal, J. M., ‘Les derniers ministres d’Albigéisme en Languedoc: leurs doctrines’, Revue des questions historiques 85 (1906), 57–107, at 75 n. 2.Google Scholar