the cathars

During the 10th and 11th century, religious beliefs started to change. It became more profound. Nevertheless, there was a big difference between the peoples' desire for a simple, clear church and the clergies' way of thinking and acting. Wealth and extravagance of the clergyman were in striking contrast to the poverty of the people. The doctrinal behaviour of the church could not solve the problems with which numerous belivers were confronted. Many Christians tried to find their own answers to the questions of the century.

In 1163 it was the mocking prebendary of Cologne who was the first to name these people Cathars, derived from the Greek katharos, meaning perfect. The name Albigensian is derived from the mission of Saint Bernard in the year 1145. In 1165 in Lombers, a small city South of Albi, an important meeting took place between Cathars and Catholics. Shortly after this colloquium the Cathars, who had been accused being heretic, were called Albigense.

The Cathar religion is a Christian one. They believed in Christ, read the Testaments and their believe is based on it. They belive that Good and the Evil share this world. Starting with this principle, one question arises: why and how could an endlessly good God, being the embodiment of the goodness, create evil? There is only one God, the God of goodness, who created the everlasting kingdom of spirit, from which all live sparkles - souls - come. The evil is an inferior principle and tries to destroy the kingdom of goodness. Therefore, it locks a small piece of life (the soul) into a material cover (the body) and discovers the time (duration), which is the essential principle of depravity and subversion. And these two principles meet in the human being: the soul belongs to the kingdom of goodness, the body to this perverted life. Subsequently, salvation for the cathars means to leave the world of evil and to enter the kingdom of goodness.


The Cathars do not believe that the death will set their souls automatically free. The soul may only enter the kingdom of goodness, while discovering its original purity, e.g. having realised its divine origin.

Jesus Christ having been sent to the people by Godfather himself, manifested the saving perception. The latter may only be achieved by imposition of hand and by spirit: The consolamentum. This spiritual baptism confers the insight of goodness to the Cathars. And this baptism plays a third role: revelation, ordination of their priests, extreme unction. The imposition of hand is a symbol for entering the religious live and accepting the holy ghost, meaning the soul being captured in a sensual frame.

It is possible that the catholic church might have accepted this way of thought, but the Cathars' revolutionary religions basic principles, such as the abolition of capital punishment and slavery, exemplary strong ascetism, love of truth and civilian courage were a bit too much. And when the nobility of the Languedoc professed to Catharism, pope Innocent III. declared this threating, Cathars heretic, and proclaimed a crusade against the demons of the South: the bloody crusade against the Albigensian sect started. The Languedoc however maintained its religion for another 200 years and in 1321 Bélibaste, last of the Cathars died at the stake in Villerouge-Termenès.