Support for and involvement with the Cathars, combined with a rejection of the Church, were not confined solely to the upper levels of the aristocracy. In the Lauragais, the populous area between Toulouse and Carcassonne, the minor nobility are reported to have been almost solidly Cathar. The same was also the case for their counterparts in the Corbières between Carcassonne and Narbonne.20 Tellingly it has been calculated that 30 per cent of all Cathar perfecti were of noble birth.21 Moreover even the remaining Catholic nobility of Occitania often proved to be at least sympathetic to the Cathars – and at times were openly supportive of them. An indication of their dilemma is to be seen in the reply given by the Catholic knight, Pons d’Adhémar of Rodelle when he was asked by Foulkes, the bishop of Toulouse, why he and his co-religionists had not expelled the heretics from their lands: We cannot. We have grown up amongst them. We have relatives amongst them, and we see them living good, decent lives of perfection.22
Weaving the threads of the Great Heresy
Thus sheltered by the aristocracy of the region on both sides of the religious divide, the Cathars also found strong support at all other levels of Occitanian society. Large numbers of them were skilled craftsmen and artisans. A list of Cathars present in the city of Béziers in 1209 includes: … one noble (baronus), four doctors, five hosiers, two blacksmiths, two pelterers, two shoe-makers, a sheep-shearer, a carpenter, a weaver, a saddler, a corn-dealer, a cutler, a tailor, a tavern-keeper, a baker, a woolworker, a mercer, and a money-changer.23
Martin Barber, professor of history at the University of Reading, observes that the Béziers list includes no less than 10 individuals employed in the textile industry, and that a great many other primary documents from the period likewise link weavers (textores) to the heresy.24
This is true both within and outside the borders of Occitania. In France the general name by which Cathars were known was simply Texerant, the ‘weavers’.25 In 1145 the renowned French ecclesiastic Bernard of Clairvaux undertook a preaching tour to warn against a ‘heresy of weavers’.26 It had supposedly sprung up fully formed ‘from the suggestions and artifices of seducing spirits’27 and was so successful at winning conversions that: Women have quitted their husbands, men have deserted their wives … Clerks and priests … often abandon their flocks and their churches, and are found in the throng, among weavers male and female.28
Likewise in 1157 Archbishop Samson of Rheims was almost certainly complaining of Cathar missionary activity when he spoke of a ‘Manichean plague’ that had recently infected the greater part of Flanders29 (we noted earlier that 12th century churchmen commonly referred to the Cathars as Manicheans – after the dualist sect of that name that had supposedly been stamped out hundreds of years previously). This new outbreak of the heresy, Samson said, was being spread by itinerant weavers and cloth-merchants.30
The explanation is simple. Employment as weavers and in other sectors of the medieval cloth trade – with its extensive international connections – was chosen as ‘cover’ by Cathar perfecti. They needed cover to avoid early detection by Church authorities because they were mounting what can only be described as a large-scale and well-thought-out missionary campaign. The rather gentle, patient and systematic methods that they used to win local trust, and eventually conversions to the heresy, have been nicely described by the Canadian historian Stephen O’Shea: On the paths and rivers of the Languedoc of 1150 there were not only traders and troubadours but also pairs of itinerant holy men, recognisable by the thin leather thong tied around the waist of their black robes. They entered villages and towns, set up shop, often as weavers, and became known for their honest hard work. When the time came, they would talk – first in the moonlight, beyond the walls, then out in the open, before the fireplaces of noble and burgher, in the houses of tradespeople, near the stalls of the marketplace. They asked for nothing, no alms, no obeisance; just a hearing. Within a generation these Cathar missionaries had converted thousands. Languedoc had become host to what would be called the Great Heresy.31
The Perfecti and the Credentes
The missionaries were all Cathar perfecti, and, as Stephen O’Shea rightly observes, it was their custom – like modern Mormons or Jehovah's Witnesses – to travel and evangelise in pairs.32 Their black robes would have given them something of the look of Christian monks or priests. Other than their appearance, however, there was really no similarity at all between the lifestyles of these perfecti and the lifestyles of the typical Catholic clergy of the period. As even their most bitter opponents were willing to admit, the distinguishing characteristic of the perfectus was that they lived exemplary lives of chastity, humility, great poverty and simplicity throughout the whole period of Catharism's rise and fall.33 Meanwhile the Church of the 11th and 12th centuries had already become decadent and disreputable. It was widely despised because of the rampant sexual licence of so many of its ministers. In some areas it was openly hated because of its vast wealth, corruption, greed, and unnecessary ostentation. Doubling as large-scale feudal landlords most bishops enjoyed lives of profligate, scandalous luxury. No wonder, then, that they were unpopular in their own dioceses where they were reviled for their indifference to the privations of the poor.34
To understand the extreme asceticism for which the perfecti were renowned, one need only recall the teaching that lay at the core of Cathar dualism. The material world was the wholly evil creation of a wholly Evil God. All contact with matter was therefore also evil and could only inhibit Catharism's primary project. This was the gradual purification and eventual release of immortal human souls from their cycle of rebirths in mortal human bodies. ‘O Lord, judge and condemn the imperfections of the flesh,’ went one of their prayers: Have no pity on the flesh, born of corruption, but show mercy to the spirit, which is imprisoned.35
The perfecti were active participants in what they saw as a cosmic struggle between utterly incompatible powers – spirit and matter, good and evil.36 Success in the struggle required them to lead lives in strict accordance with their beliefs and teachings. Since flesh was ‘born of corruption’ it followed that any foodstuff thought to have originated from processes of coition and reproduction was absolutely forbidden to them. This meant, in practice that they could eat neither flesh nor fowl, nor any of the derivatives from these creatures such as eggs, milk, cheese, cream or lard.37 Their diet consisted of bread, vegetables, pulses, fruits and nuts. Inconsistently (to the modern mind) fish were also allowed. This was because of a medieval misconception that fish did not issue from sexual reproduction but were somehow spontaneously generated in water or mud.38
The same anti-reproductive, anti-coital logic meant, of course, that the perfecti must themselves be totally celibate – even an ‘unchaste’ kiss was believed sufficient to destroy their ritual purity. All other bodily needs and desires brought the same peril and were likewise to be shunned.39 To harden their resistance to the desire for nourishment they not only rigorously followed the already sparse diet outlined above but also subjected themselves to lengthy fasts amounting to more than 70 days a year on bread and water alone.40 The purpose of all these privations was to loosen the bonds that imprisoned the soul within the body.41
In pursuit of the same objective, and in order further to minimise their contacts with the snares and lures of the material world, the perfecti renounced all property and personal possessions except the clothes they stood up in.42 Many other austerities were also required of them. Despite these, however, there was no shortage of candidates for the perfectus grade and the Cathar religion in fact made it very difficult for anyone to achieve it. Aspiring perfecti underwent a period of training and direct exposure to the full rigours of the life that they would lead after initiation. Known evocatively as the abstinentia, this typically involved three years of full-time attachment to a senior perfectus. Only at the end of the abstinentia, if they had conducted themselves satisfactorily, would they become eligible for the ritual known as the consolamentum (‘consoling’) that compl
eted their own elevation to perfectus status.43
Though often referred to as the ‘priests’ of the Cathar religion, several researchers have noted that the perfecti were in reality much closer in terms of their austerities, their personal comportment and their function within the faith to the: … ascetic teachers of the East, the bonzes and fakirs of China or India, the adepts of the Orphic mysteries, or the teachers of Gnosticism.44
This impression is enhanced by contemporary reports which seem to describe perfecti in trancelike or meditative states. One eyewitness speaks of the ‘extraordinary sight’ of a Cathar perfectus seated on a chair ‘motionless as a tree trunk, insensible to his surroundings.’45
But the Cathar authorities knew very well that a life of meditation, total chastity, austerity and withdrawal from the material world was beyond the reach of the average mortal. Moreover their society did not – and could not – consist solely of perfecti and candidate perfecti whose celibacy would provide them with no successors. What was needed was a much wider pool to draw on. This was supplied by a second grade or rank, far more numerous than the perfecti, known as the credentes (‘believers’). It was they, in their tens of thousands, who constituted the vast majority of all Cathars. It was they who contributed the social and economic energy – to say nothing of the military muscle – that made this religion such a threat to the Church of Rome.
What the credentes believed in were the fundamental tenets of the dualist faith concerning the existence of two gods, the evil nature of matter and the imprisonment of the soul in flesh. They might even aspire, ultimately, to becoming wandering gurus of perfectus rank themselves. But the reality was that most credentes never took up the challenge. Instead, wherever Catharism was established, we know that its credente class lived ordinary lives of no great self-denial. They married, produced children, owned property, ate well and generally enjoyed the world. They certainly attended the simple services and gatherings led by perfecti that were part of the Cathar calendar. Along with all other credentes they likewise accepted and took with extreme seriousness a general duty to accommodate the impoverished perfecti on their travels and to provide them with a strong network and support system. They were also required to offer a ritual salute to any perfectus they might encounter. Called the melioramentum this involved triple genuflections and greetings to the perfectus and culminated in the following exchange: Credente: ‘Pray God for me, a sinner, that he make me a good Christian and lead me to a good end.’
Perfectus: ‘May God be prayed that he may make you a good Christian.’
The exchange, explains medieval historian Malcolm Lambert, was standardised and had a special meaning: To be a Good Christian, or a Christian at all, in Cathar belief was to become a Perfect. To come to a good end was to die in possession of the consolamentum, not having forfeited it by lapse. In the exchange and genuflection, Perfect and adherent reminded each other of their own status, the one waiting, not yet freed from Satan, the other outside his power, in a unique position.46
Credentes were taught that it was particularly important for them to find a perfectus and to perform the melioramentum if they had in any way been exposed to the contamination of Catholic influences. This was so at least partly because obeisance – amounting almost to worship (and referred to in some contexts as ‘adoration’) of the perfectus represented a direct and public denial of the Catholic Church.47 When the prominent credente, the Lady Fidas of St. Michel, travelled to Rome with Countess Eleanor of Toulouse, she cheekily took a Cathar perfectus with her: ‘to worship him in the very chapel of the Pope.’48
Whether they were nobles or peasants, however, the majority of credentes would postpone until their deathbeds the moment when they felt ready to summon a perfectus to confer upon them the dualist baptism of the consolamentum. It was an act of momentous importance that filled the recipient with a charge of the Holy Spirit, and, for some, could open the door to the Kingdom of Heaven. Though it amounted, on the surface, to nothing more than a short ritual accompanied by prayers and a laying on of hands, the consolamentum was considered to be so powerful that it was sufficient, by itself – even without years of itinerant austerity – to initiate the dying credente into the ranks of the perfecti. He or she would thereafter consume only bread and water, avoiding any further contamination from the evil world of matter. The hope for those thus consoled, and in a state of ritual purity, might not have been that death would this time bring a final release from the cycle of rebirth in human form, but that it would, at the very least, bring ‘progress on the chain of being towards it.’49 On occasions when patients unexpectedly recovered after being consoled they could always return to the normal life of a credente and to full involvement with the world. In that case they would have to receive the consolamentum and enter a fast once again when death approached or whatever progress their souls might have made in this incarnation would be lost.
It was by no means certain that the next incarnation would bring the soul to a body that would again receive the Cathar teaching (or even, necessarily to a human body at all – rather than, say, the body of a donkey – let alone to the body of a Cathar). Credentes were therefore provided with a strong incentive to receive the consolamentum in this life (where they knew it was definitely available) but to so juggle things that they did not have to go through with it until their deathbed. During the late 12th century when there were large numbers of perfecti on the roads and living in every village, town and city of Occitania this was not usually difficult to accomplish. But during the 13th century, as we shall see in Chapters Six and Seven, Catharism became a persecuted faith throughout Europe – with the greatest attention paid to Occitania. There, amidst demonic scenes from the lowest circles of hell, the populations of entire cities were put to the sword by soldiers of the Church of Rome. The papal inquisitors followed and as they went about their work the numbers of per fecti fell into an ever more catastrophic decline with each new mass burning. By the early 14th century there are only known to have been three perfecti still at work in the whole of the Languedoc, once the very epicentre of the faith. Surviving credentes faced great uncertainty as to whether they would be able to obtain the consolamentum at all. The desperate solution of many Cathars nearing the end of their natural lives in these last days was the endura – an Occitan word meaning ‘fasting’ or ‘hungering’ applied to the bread and water fast that normally followed deathbed consolings.50 Now, however, those who had received the ritual preferred not to risk breaking their fast even if they later began to show signs of recovery. The consequence was that the endura: … came to have the precise and technical meaning of fasting to death after receiving the consolamentum.51
Abolishing superstition and the Fear of Hell
When extensive persecution of Catharism began in the 13th century the fundamental difference in lifestyle between the consoled and the unconsoled – between per fecti and credentes – was sometimes seized on by the latter to try to persuade their accusers that they weren't heretics at all. In the bourg of Toulouse in 1223 for example Jean Teisseire, a credente in the prime of life who had no interest in an early consolamentum, was arrested and accused of heresy. ‘I have a wife and I sleep with her,’ he protested, ‘I have sons, I eat meat and I lie and swear’52 (along with marriage, sex, reproduction and meat-eating, lying and the swearing of oaths were forbidden to perfecti).53 Convicted on the evidence of witnesses, Tessiere's arguments were ignored by the court. He was sentenced to burn at the stake and placed in the bishop's prison to await execution. The procedure now allowed him to recant and go free but he stubbornly continued to profess his innocence and remained on death row. There he fell into conversation with several Cathar per fecti and a few days later accepted the consolamentum at their hands. Still refusing to recant beliefs that he now acknowledged he held he was ‘burnt with the rest.’54
There are many reports of courage and extreme self-sacrifice from the era of persecution. They tell us that Catharism was capable of inspiring
its adherents with profound and strongly-held beliefs concerning the progress and afterlife destiny of the soul. Indeed these beliefs were so strong that again and again perfecti and credentes like Teisseire were prepared to suffer death in the utmost agony rather than recant and jeopardise their imminent release from the evil world of matter.
There are several well-attested accounts of the condemned rushing en masse towards the pyres that had been prepared for them and flinging themselves joyfully into the roaring flames. Whether we think of them as credulous fools, therefore, or as exalted martyrs, it seems that Catharism had liberated these people from the paralysing fear of hell that the Catholic Church had used for centuries to terrify and close the minds of medieval Europeans. Indeed such a liberation would have followed more or less automatically from conversion to Cathar dualism – which proposed no lower hell than the earth itself, ‘the lowest plane of consciousness to which we sink’55 – a place of trial and torment in which our souls were already undergoing fierce penances and had remained trapped for countless prior incarnations. Hell, in other words, was not an unknown destination, to which we would be sent for sins defined by the Catholic Church, but a known one in which we were already present but which it was our destiny one day to escape.
The Master Game: Unmasking the Secret Rulers of the World Page 7