The Cathars--The "Perfect Ones"

The wealth of the Church was a

lightening rod for grouips such as

Cathars

Well, it was way back in September—September 20^th to be exact—that we left off our series on Church Reform.  We had been talking about dissent in the medieval Church with the sagas of Peter Waldo and the Umiliati—two different expressions of frustration and anger with the wealth and power of the Church.  The sagas ended up quite differently if you remember, Waldo and his followers were forced into schism by a medieval papacy unable to grasp that genuine Reform might come from lay leadership and the Umiliati ended up becoming a religious order due to a papacy that knew how to harness lay charisms for the good of the larger Church.  We will talk more about the very charismatic pope, Innocent III, who cut through the morass of canon law to empower laity to take an active voice in preaching the Gospel, but first we need to look at another group around at the same time, the Cathars.
       The Cathers (Catheri in Latin) were also known, popularly, as the Albigensians because there were so many in and around the city of Albi in France, but its influence spread far beyond the Languedoc.   Cathars were prominent not only in the South of France but the Rhineland and Italy and not unknown elsewhere.  It is a mystery to historians how the sect originated but, although there is no historical connection,  it does bear certain similarities to the Manichean sect to which Saint Augustine had belonged before his conversion in the fourth century.  Like the Manicheans, the Cathars proposed the idea that there are two Gods—a spiritual god who created our spirits and an evil god who created the material universe into which human spirits have been tricked and entrapped.  The soul must escape this created universe and return to its pure spiritual nature.  It does this by renouncing material realities, especially any of those things that have to do with sexual intercourse and generation as it supposedly is by a sexual curiosity that souls are entrapped into generation into the physical/material world.  Another ancient heresy that taught this same doctrine as the Manicheans is Priscillianism but there is no historical evidence for a survival of either Priscillianism or Manicheanism that would explain the Cathars.  By the way—both Manicheanism and Priscillianism were Gnostic sects and Catharism, while a medieval and not an ancient theology, should also be seen to be in the Gnostic tradition.  
       Another ancient heresy with which Catharism shares some similarity of doctrine is Donatism.  Donatism taught that the validity of the sacraments as channels of grace depended on the worthiness of the minister.  A bishop or priest who was himself sinful therefore could not effectively minister to others.  Donatism was widespread, especially in North Africa, in the fourth and fifth century but this particular doctrine about the worthiness of the ministers resurfaced among the Cathars as it would surface again during the Protestant Reformations of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. 
        Catharism spread like wildfire in the eleventh century in great part due to dissatisfaction of the common people with the wealth of the institutional Church and lax morality of the clergy.  The use of Latin in liturgical celebrations had reduced the rites of the Church to vague and unintelligible rituals that appeared as superstitious and even magical.  That these rites—baptisms, marriages, funerals, blessings of fields and crops and other rites of everyday life—required offerings of either money or in kind to an often undisciplined clergy from ordinary and even impoverished faithful while the wealth of the Church was vigorously displayed in its buildings, art, vestments and vessels eroded the faith of intelligent if uneducated people.    Lay ascetics who practiced the highly disciplined life of the Cathar holy men—sexually abstinent, economically poor, vegan in diet (food coming from sexual congress—both meat and dairy—being forbidden) impressed many far more than did the too often indolent clergy.  The simple rites—a “baptism” by laying on of hands and a holy communion of bread blest only by the recitation of the Lord’s Pryer—spoke effectively to simple people.  While most converts were unwilling to accept the full discipline of the sect—vegetarianism and celibacy being two of the notable stumbling blocks—large numbers of initiates flocked to the movement remaining at a catechumenal stage until their last moments of life when they would seek the  “consolementum” or laying on of hands.  Of course, it should not be presumed that all Cathar holy men lived up to the demands of their ascetic vocation any more than all priests live up to theirs, but there is a consensus that the rumors of debauchery and charlatanism were more polemics by the institutional Church to destroy the credibility of the movement than serious and credible charges.  While there certainly would have been some charlatans among them, their widespread success in making converts indicates greater credibility than some Catholic historians allow. 

The Humble and the Proud--Popular and Institutional Views of the Church

The Basilica of Sant' Ambrogio in

Milan, the center of the Umiliati

movement

Peter Waldo wasn’t the only evangelical voice in the twelfth century Church protesting the clerical monopoly on preaching the Gospel and complaining about the Church’s alliance with the rich and powerful in their exploitation of the Christian poor.  The Umiliati were a movement among the working classes centered in northern Italy in the twelfth century.   They don’t seem to have had a founder but to have risen somewhat spontaneously among the dislocated workers who turned to one another for support and help.  The rich merchants and manufacturers had their guilds in which they offered each other collaboration and support but the workers were left each one for himself (or in some cases, herself).     
     The twelfth century was a time that the cities of Europe were expanding with unparalleled rapidity.  After the year 1100, much like the urban centers of the Northeast and Midwest United States would see after World War II, the cities of Italy and France—and to a lesser extent, Germany and England—saw in influx of people moving to the cities and towns from the rural areas looking for work.   Farmers left their farms and villages in search of city work that would give them a better life and a brighter future.  But in the villages and on the farms they had traditional networks of family and neighbors who were there for them in times of need.  Should a breadwinner be injured or become sick or die, the social network of families connected by blood and marriage would close in around the victim and offer him and his family the support they would need to carry on.  In the cities, however, there were no such networks.  The families and friends were back in the village or scattered among various towns and cities.  Sickness and death in the city meant poverty and starvation.  And it was in this environment that communities began to spring up “in a Christian spirit” among the new urban working class, communities of people who without the obligations of blood or marriage or ancient friendships voluntarily were there for one another in mutual support.  Inspired by stories of how the early Christians were of one heart and one mind and that there was no one in need among them for they shared all things in common (Acts 4), they banded together in mutual prayer, fraternity, and support.  They met together for prayer and meals, priests among explained the scriptures to them in their own language, and using the scriptures as a reference point, they discussed matters of life that were important to them.   Unmarried members of the movement often lived together in communities that resembled small monasteries or convents.  They tried to shape their lives to their faith.  They resolved not to swear oaths but let their yes be a yes and their no, a no.  (Matthew 5:37)  They turned their poverty from a distress into a sign of unity.  They opted to live as simply as they could, getting the name umiliati or the “humble ones” from their plain undyed clothes.  They often left their employment and started what we might call workers cooperatives and, so many of them being workers in the cloth industry, gained fame for producing an inexpensive (and lower quality) wool affordable by the poor.   
     This was very spiritually enriching for them, but it was threatening to the manufacturers who employed them.  This movement  empowered the working classes, uniting workers in mutual support and making them less easy for their employers to exploit.  The Archbishop of Milan—a Umiliati stronghold—and other bishops as well as the political and social leaders of the city panicked at the growing strength of the Umiliati.   Milan had had a history of the working classes opposing the Archbishop and the upper classes in the Patarene movement and the Umiliati were suspected of undermining the political dominance of the rich merchants.  
     The group was brought to the attention of Pope Alexander III in 1179 and he commended their piety but forbad them to continue their meetings and what he perceived to be lay preaching.  They did not conform to his restrictions and Lucius III excommunicated them along with the Cathars, the Arnoldists, the Waldensians and other groups at a Council at Verona in 1184.  A reconciliation was effected with Pope Innocent III but that is a story to come in a few days.