Part One

In Languedoc the landscape is peaceful and calm, with its oak groves, its vineyards and its villages made of rough stone. Scarcely populated, arid but fertile, this region was the centre of a Christian religious movement bearing close ties with the Manichean and Bogomile gnosticism that flourished in Asia Minor, in the Middle East and in Greece. The sources of what we know today about the Cathars are the interrogations carried out by the Inquisition, the Gospels (canonical the apocryphal), the Essene scrolls of Qumran and the early Christian writings of Nag Hammadi. The origins of this faith seem to trace back to the dualistic gnosticism of the Therapeutae, the Essenes, the Nazarenes and the Zoroastrans. It was a form of Christianity for the initiated, which today can be found to survive among the Nazaires (the Nazarene) of Jebel Asariya, in northern Lebanon.
After giving rise to a prosperous, peaceful and tolerant society in the south of France, Catharism was hit by the fiercest reaction against fellow Christians ever to be enacted by the Catholic Church.
This genocide is known as the Albigensian Crusade, from the town of Albi, where the movement had its centre, although widespread in an area comprising Toulouse, Agen, Béziers, Carcassone and other parts of France. The word Cathar comes from the Greek katharos, meaning pure. In comparison with the Church of Rome, considered corrupt and called Church of Wolves, the Cathars believed they embodied the true teachings of Jesus. In their view, Yeshua ben Joseph, the Nazarene master (Nazar-Essene, coming from Nazar), did not come to redeem mankind from his sins, but to reveal the way to salvation through knowledge (gnosis).
This concept is contrary to the idea of the deification of Jesus, asserted by Saul/Paul of Tarsus and by the succeeding bishops of the Roman Church. For the Cathars, Jesus came to announce the Gospel (eu angellum, the good news), and he overcame duality through a supernatural presence in human form. The concept of polarity and the principle of cause and effect are fundamental for this creed, which found its inspiration in the gnosticism of Zarathustra and Hermes Trismegistus.
According to the Cathars, the soul, which takes on a human shape while on earth, reincarnates in an attempt to overcome the duality that separates it from the “kingdom of heaven” and from reuniting with all that is divine. Reincarnation was a theological concept accepted by the Church of Rome as well, at least until it was repudiated in 543 by the emperor Justinian, or, more exactly, by his wife. The signature of Pope Vigilius gave full ratification to the imperial decree declaring that souls would henceforth no longer reincarnate.
The Cathars denied the notions of a Last Judgement and of eternal hell, and assigned all responsibility for living a life of joy or of sorrow to the believers themselves. Human beings determine their own destiny, through their own thoughts and acts. Sexuality, victimization and power are considered as belonging to the inferior part of the dualistic system. Sexual activity is therefore seen as a necessary evil, providing a mortal coil for souls to reincarnate into. The Eucharist and the symbol of the cross are rejected as representing a supposed torment, while power, meaning a supreme central authority, is absent. The Cathar Church is composed of believers, the listeners, and priests and bishops, called bonshommes or Good Christians. Appointed by their peers, the bishops, male and female, have two assistants, the elder and the minor son or daughter. Life is devoted to perfectioning the ideals of their Essenic precursors.
They live and work communally and admit only the sacrament of baptism, the consolamentum, and the rites administered to the dying, a ritual designed to give the believer a bon fin and to facilitate his reincarnation. Confession, or aparelhament, is public and involves the entire community. Meals, which are consumed together by bishops, priests and believers, begin by the blessing of the bread and wine and end with the exchange of the Kiss of Peace, expressing spiritual communion and the equality of all members of the assembly.
Another feature of the Cathars, often overlooked, was their belief that Yeshua ben Joseph, descendant of the royal family of David, and the Asmonean princess Miriam Magdala of Bethany (Migdal-eder = watchtower of the flock) had had children from whom descended the dynasties of Sangue Royale, or sangreal in langue d’oc. Barbara Thiering, who has studied the Dead Sea scrolls, concluded that the union between Jesus, “king of the Jews”, and the Asmonean princess would had emphasized the will to have an heir. In that context it is interesting to note that Louis XI, king of France, repeatedly asserted that the French royal dynasty descended from Maria Madgalene.
According to the Cathars, Mary Magdalene, subject to persecution after the death of James the Just, had fled to Egypt and from there had reached the coasts of Kal, the Celtic Gaul, accompanied by her daughter Sarah and a few Jewish Essene disciples and dignitaries. In medieval art, the fox is a recurring symbol, especially as a fox that spoils wine. In the Cathar tradition, the fox symbolizes the cheating of the people by the clergy. Botticelli’s famous painting, “Saint Mary Magdalene Under the Cross”, depicts an angel holding a fox by its tail on Mary’s right-hand side. According to several Catholic scholars, among which Margaret Starbird, author of “The Woman with the Alabaster Jar”, that scene symbolizes the Church that, with the fox’s fur, spoils the bride’s wine denying the continuity of her bloodline to Jesus.
The evangelical message zealously preached by Saul-Paul is considered pure blasphemy by the Church of Jerusalem. For the Cathars, the implication that an aristocratic priestess endowed with the rank of a Sophia (wise, initiated) should be a vulgar prostitute is a gross offence. Mary Magdalene, for them, represents the female principle of the divine.
Accordingly, women, marginalized by the Catholic Church, had equal dignity among the Cathars. In fact, the conflict between Roman Hellenistic Christians and Jewish Christians was already under way in the first decades after Christ, when the Roman bishops and the disciples of the first bishop of Jerusalem, James the Just, the brother of Jesus, were in dispute over the interpretation of the evangelical message.
Unfortunately James fell victim to assassination, a fate shared by many opposers of the Pauline doctrine. At the Council of Nicaea, in 325, the Catholic Church proclaimed itself the “sole representative of God on earth” and “in the name of the truth revealed by God” it ordered that everything contradicting the “infallible” papal doctrine should be considered heretical, punishable by forced exile, confiscation of property and death. During the 12th century the Cathar Church made its way into the social structure of the Occitan south of France, finding support among the largely anticlerical nobles and among a bourgeoisie that appreciated the value of work.
The Cathars excelled as carpenters, bricklayers, textores (weavers) and administrators -another feature they had in common with the Essenes. After convincing the elite of society, they gained, more importantly, the consent of the people, who appreciated the exemplary simplicity of lifestyle of the Cathar priests and bishops. The Catholic Church, feeling challenged by the Cathars, reacted with a brutal repression. In the middle of the 12th century, stakes become a common sight, and in 1209 Pope Innocent III orders the Albigensian Crusade, asking King Philip Augustus of France to provide military assistance.
Seeing the scarce cooperation received from the king and from the local aristocracy, chiefly of sangreal descent, Innocent III instructed the abbot of Cîteux, Arnaud-Amaury, to call up an army. In exchange for the promise of taking part in the crusade for a period of at least forty days, the Pope guaranteed absolution for all sins committed in the past and for those which would be committed during the crusade. In order to further facilitate recruitment, the crusaders were authorised to take possession of the Cathars’ property, whether they be princes or peasants. This licence to kill and to rob in the name of Christ, free from sinning, brought thousands of mercenaries to gather under the papal standards.
A crusaders’ song, written by William of Tutela, is revealing of their intentions: “... let all towns that resist be turned to a shambles ... let not a single new-born babe remain alive. Thus will a healthy terror be sown, and none shall dare challenge anew the holy Cross. ” In Béziers the crusaders take these words to the letter, killing more than 20,000 townspeople, Cathar and Catholic alike, almost the whole population. When some hesitated at the sacrilege of murdering those who had sought shelter inside a church, the Pope’s delegate declared: “Kill them all. God will recognize his own.” Soon after, more than 7,000 men, women, children and old people were lying in their blood, dead or mutilated. In 1233 the “Holy” Inquisition was created, and placed chiefly under the guidance of Dominican monks.
To facilitate its activities, Pope Innocent IV, who had succeeded Innocent III, advised the use of torture. And so began the manhunt after those who had managed to escape the holocaust. The terror spread to Italy as well: hundreds of Lombard Cathars were burned at the stake in the Arena of Verona on February 13 1278. After eliminating the last known Cathar bishop, William Delibaste, who died at the stake at Villerouge-Termenes in the year 1321, a shroud of “infallible” pontifical doctrine spread over Europe, suffocating all spiritual dissent and hindering for centuries the progress of knowledge.
The surviving Cathars repaired to Catalonia and to Tuscany, where they blended with the tolerant local communities. Some fled to the lands of the Barons of St. Clair in Roslin, Scotland, while others vanished without leaving trace. Even before the fall of the main fortress, Montsegur, celebrated by sending more than 200 people to the stake, many Cathars had joined the Templars, an order of warrior-monks who had not taken part in the mass slaughter. But this safety was short-lived, and the Templars themselves were soon to be added to the victims of the Inquisition.
Few traces remain today of this religious creed; no churches, statues, frescoes or liturgical implements. In the lands where the Cathars once lived, there remain few rare symbols, difficult to interpret, some broken down castles and the crosses raised by the victors in the Prats dels Cramat, the Fields of the Burned. (to be continued)

(trad.Interpres- Giussano)