History of the Cathars

by Sean Martin

Catharism was the most successful heresy of the Middle Ages. The Cathars taught that the world is evil and must be transcended through a simple life of prayer, work, fasting, and non-violence. They completely rejected the Catholic Church and all its trappings; Cathar services and ceremonies, by contrast, were held in fields, barns, and in people's homes. Finding support from the nobility in the fractious political situation in southern France, the Cathars also found widespread popularity among peasants and artisans. And again unlike the Church, the Cathars respected women, and women played a major role in the movement. Alarmed at the success of Catharism, the Church founded the Inquisition and launched the Albigensian Crusade to exterminate the heresy. While previous Crusades had been directed against Muslims in the Middle East, the Albigensian Crusade was the first Crusade to be directed against fellow Christians, and was also the first European genocide. With the fall of the Cathar fortress of Montsegur in 1244, Catharism was largely obliterated, although the faith survived into the early 14th century. Today, the mystique surrounding the Cathars is as strong as ever, and Sean Martin recounts their story and the myths associated with them in this lively and gripping book.

Genres: History, Religion

256 pages, Paperback

First published April 1, 2019

About the author

Author of bestsellers The Knights Templar: The History & Myths of the Legendary Military Order, The Gnostics: The First Christian Heretics and The Cathars: The Rise & Fall of the Great Heresy. My new book, A Short History of Disease, will be published in June 2015.

Reviews

[Fredrick Danysh · Rating 3 out of 5]

The Cathars were considered heretics by the Catholic Church before the Protestant Revolution and were the target of the Church's only European Crusade. This book explores the belief's of the Cathars and the dispute between them and the Church.

[Lloyd Downey · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book does what the title suggests It is a quick history of the Cathars ...especially those in France but also including those in Italy and some coverage of the Bogomils in Serbia. There is a rather brief review of the origins of dualist ideas in the Middle East and in the early Christian church. What is especially interesting to me is the way that a well established, and, seemingly, highly regarded religion could be exterminated ...more or less entirely. Pretty clearly one of the earlier examples of genocide ..and in this case largely at the behest of the catholic church. I have earlier read Montaillou: by Emmanuel Le Roy Laurie and this was pretty much a horror book about the atrocities incurred upon the poor, illiterate, inhabitants of a remote village in the Pyrenees but the Inquisition. It made quite an impression on me ...especially as i had travelled through this section of the Pyrenees a little bit earlier and could see what a hard life these people had.
The book deletes a little into the origin of dualist ideas ...which probably pre-date Christianity ...and were certainly held by some of the earliest Christians. Interesting, in fact that they should have proven so tenacious but I guess they helped to explain how it was possible for there to be evil in the world.....which has been a constant challenge for Christian theologists to deal with....including Augustine of Hippo. After all, a good god who is omnipotent could scarcely be responsible for introducing evil into the world?
Pope Innocent initiated the crusade against the Cathars.....ironic that he should have adopted the name of "innocent" because it's hard to credit him with clean hands after the massacres and burnings of children and whole families of good people.
As a recipe for wiping out a religion the methodology was incredibly efficient:
1. Declare a holy crusade against the Cathars
2. The crusaders only have to "work" for 40 days anyway
3. They get to keep all the loot from the inhabitants they slaughter and their lands
5. Introduce an inquisition run by the likes of Bernard Gui.....who ensnare and entrap the illiterate and uneducated as well as the educated Cathars who are unable to lie. If a forebear is found to be heretical his bones are exhumed and the whole family is tainted.
It was a political war as well as a religious war and the French king was basically able to depose all the dukes and princes of Southern France and take over their lands.
I wonder what the economic cost of all this was? Obviously huge. The result was that France was more or less united and the petty wars between the counts of the south ...presumably reduced or eliminated. The religion was also unified and another potential source of conflict removed. The cost? Thousands killed, many barbarically by burning or other horrific measures involving torture. Cities destroyed. Crops destroyed...with starvation presumably following. Wholesale robbery and rape inflicted upon the south.
The Cathar beliefs frankly seem pretty harmless to me. And their way of life was regarded by all who came up against them (well nearly all) as "holier" than that of the catholics ...especially the priesthood. A good god who created the perfect world and an evil god (Satan) who created the world we inhabit. So everything of the world is necessarily evil....or to be abhorred...including marriage and procreation.
It's not a really detailed history of the Cathars but does what it purports to do. I give it 4 stars.

[DW Rowlands · Rating 2 out of 5]

Honestly, I was pretty disappointed by this book. I bought it online as a remainder, and was hoping for a semi-academic history of the Cathars: what I got was a very "list of events"-focused narrative told by someone who isn't a professional historian or scholar of religion, and who seems more interested in listing events than explaining them, whose section on the background of heresy is questionable, and who sometimes seems "too close" to the story, even if it's not entirely clear which side he is on.

[Nik Maack · Rating 2 out of 5]

Some history books are just a list of events, one after the other. That's this book. Too bad. It started promising. (Did not finish.)

[Tracey · Rating 3 out of 5]

Provides a chronological overview from a variety of sources. It is a starting point and will encourage going down other paths to understand the historical context, not the mythology.

[Roger · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book is a great introduction to one of the most fascinating periods in Church history, one that is shrouded in mystery and myth: who were the Cathars? What did they believe? Why did the Church see them as such a threat? Short History of the Cathars tries and mostly succeeds in answering these questions in a series of short informative chapters.

The origin of the Cathars is murky: it seems that the heresy known as Catharism in Southern France and Northern Italy was imported from the Balkans. Catharism was one of many dualist heresies in the early Church, believing that the Earth was the domain of Satan, and that God ruled only in heaven. The Cathars had their own structure of "Believers" and "Perfect". "Believers" being those that followed the beliefs of Catharism, while the "Perfect" were like the priesthood, and abstained from most human indulgences.

In fact, to Cathars everything of the world was corrupted with evil, including the Church, which they particularly regarded as the work of Satan. The reason Catharism became a problem for the Church, especially in the Languedoc region of France, was that the Church there was notoriously corrupt and venal, and had lost the respect of not only the lower classes, but of the nobility as well. The Cathars, with their life of physical denial and holiness, seemed more holy than the official members of the Church, and soon gathered much support.

Initially the Church tried to use persuasion rather than force to convert the heretics, but when that didn't work they moved to harsher measures, including military action and executions. That it took over 100 years to finally suppress Catharism, with much bloodshed, shows how much hold it had over the population in Languedoc. It could be argued that much of the lingering anti-clericalism in France can be traced back to this time.

I was drawn to this book remembering Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie's Montaillou, which I read whilst at University, and found completely fascinating. Short History of the Cathars is no less fascinating, although far less detailed. A great introduction into this era of Church history.

Check out my other reviews at http://aviewoverthebell.blogspot.com.au/