Cathari

“ As regards the Cathari, the Inquisition had done its work too well. Unceasing and unsparing repression gradually annihilated the sect which, during the first half of the thirteenth century, seemed almost able to dispute with Rome the possession of Italy on equal terms. Yet when we see that the Waldenses, exposed to the same merciless rigor, were not extinguished, we recognize that some other factor besides mere persecution was at work to obliterate a belief which once enjoyed so potent an influence on the human mind that thousands for its sake went joyfully to a dreadful death. ”

“ But the reasons for opposition to the Church were not the same among the Waldenses and the Cathari; and the latter soon parted company with the seekers after primitive Christianity by developing an organisation of their own. Thus as the Cathari grew in numbers and carried on a vigorous missionary work, their devotees tended to form themselves into a Church. ”

“ This, according to the Cathari, was the great lesson for the Christian Church to teach, and this, they asserted, was its teaching in early times; but the Church grew secular by mixing with the world, and fell under the sway of the evil spirit. Christ's designs for man's redemption could only be fulfilled by a pure body of believers, who rejected all that savoured of the corruption which belonged to all visible objects. The sacraments were condemned because they used material substance for Divine purposes. More absurd still in the eyes of the Cathari was the custom of infant baptism ”

“ The supreme holiness of poverty, however, had been so assiduously preached for a hundred years that a large portion of the population sympathized with the persecuted Spirituals; many laymen, married and unmarried, joined them as Tertiaries, and even priests embraced their doctrines. There speedily grew up a sect, by no means confined to Franciscans, to replace the fast-vanishing Cathari as an object for the energies of the Inquisition. ”

“ In the eleventh century we hear of Cathari in certain places in North Italy, in France, and even in Germany; but although in Italy the name of Patarins came to be applied to the sect, we need trace no connection in the popular rising at Milan, which was stirred up by the Church reformers against the simony and clerical marriage practised by the Church of St. Ambrose. In the twelfth century the movement is heard of in an increasing number of places, in certain parts of France including Brittany, in Flanders among all classes, in the Rhine lands. ”

“ The Cathari, especially in Piedmont, formed separate societies, which were screened, in a great measure, from the popish prelates, by the retired seclusion of their habitations in the valleys, from which they were called Valdenses.
These people were regarded with jealousy by the prelates, and their enemies commonly accused them of grievous errors; but it is well known that they were slandered, and that, while they rejected the claims and idolatries of the Romish priesthood, they generally held the essentials of the Gospel, as they derived their principles from the Scriptures. ”

“ The Lombard sect went farther in (3) and (4) , holding that no one in mortal sin could consecrate the sacrament, and that the Roman Church was the scarlet woman of the Apocalypse, whose precepts ought not to be obeyed, especially those appointing fast-days. This account sufficiently shows the difference of the Waldenses from the Cathari: they were opposed to asceticism, and had no official priesthood; at the same time their objection to oaths and to capital punishment are closely related to the principles of the Cathari. ”

“ Some Cathari held that the Virgin was only symbolical—of the Catharan church.27 Some, too, held that John the Baptist was one of the demons of the evil god, who acted as an obstacle to the beneficent God, by preaching the material baptism of water instead of the true baptism which is purely spiritual.28
Such were some of the main doctrinal features of Catharism. Its ethical teaching was intimately connected with its theology. Refusing to credit that the good God could predestine any to perdition, they held that salvation ultimately awaited all. ”

“ Concerning those who call themselves Cathari, if they come over to the Catholic and Apostolic Church, the great and holy Synod decrees that they who are ordained shall continue as they are in the clergy. But it is before all things necessary that they should profess in writing that they will observe and follow the dogmas of the Catholic and Apostolic Church ”

“ Yet, even in the distant city of Leon, Catharism had obtained a foothold. Bishop Rodrigo, who died in 1232, expelled a number of Cathari, on his attention being called to them by their circulating a story to excite hatred of the priesthood, relating how a poor woman placed a candle on the altar in honor of the Virgin, and on her leaving it a priest took it for his own use. The following night the Virgin appeared to her votary and cast burning wax into her eyes, saying, “Take the wages of your service. As soon as you went away a priest carried off the candle ”

“ Fresh heresies spread during this century, and we everywhere met with one corrective—death. Most of them appear to have grown out of the old Manichæan heresy, and taught much of the old asceticism. The Cathari were hunted down and put to death throughout Italy. Arnold of Brescia, who loudly protested against the possessions of the Church, and maintained that church revenues should be handed over to the State, proved himself so extremely distasteful to the clergy that they arrested him, crucified him and burned his dead body (A.D. 1155) . ”

“ It is somewhat remarkable that we hear nothing specifically of the Cathari in Aragon proper. Matthew Paris, indeed, tells a wild tale of how, in 1234, they were so numerous in the parts of Spain that they decreed the abrogation of Christianity, and raised a large army with which they burned churches and spared neither age nor sex, until Gregory IX. ordered a crusade against them throughout western Europe, when in a stricken field they were all cut off to a man ”

“ The Waldenses themselves regarded the Cathari as heretics to be combated intellectually, though the persecution which they shared forced them to associate freely together. [61]
In a sect so widely scattered, from Aragon to Bohemia, consisting mostly of poor and simple folk, hiding their belief in the lowlands, or dwelling in separate communities among the mountain fastnesses of the Cottian Alps or of Calabria, it was inevitable that differences of organization and doctrine should arise, and that there should be variations in the rapidity of independent development. ”

“ Jesus (1 Cor. xv. 47) to earth in the appearance of man to teach men their heavenly origin and the means of restoration. The Cathari rejected the O.T., but accepted the N.T., which they read in the vernacular. Marriage they regarded as a hindrance to Christian perfection. They treated with contempt water baptism, the Supper, and ordination, as well as all veneration of saints and relics, and tolerated no images, crosses, or altars. Prayer, abstinence, and baptism of the Spirit were regarded as the only means of salvation. Preaching was next to prayer most prominent in their public services. ”

“ Such are the outlines of Paulicianism as they have reached us, and their identity with the belief of the Cathari is too marked for us to accept the theory of Schmidt, which assigns to the latter an origin among the dreamers of the Bulgarian convents. A further irrefragable evidence of the derivation of Catharism from Manichaeism is furnished by the sacred thread and garment which Avere worn by all the Perfect among the Cathari. ”

“ For three months they thus labored diligently, like real evangelists, finding thousands of heretics and few orthodox, but the harvest was scanty and conversions rarely rewarded their pains — in fact, the only practical result was to excite the heretics to renewed missionary zeal. It speaks well for the tolerant temper of the Cathari that men who had been invoking the most powerful sovereigns of Christendom to exterminate them with fire and sword, should have incurred no real danger in a task apparently so full of risk. ”

“ Energetic only in evil, when its powers might have been used on the side of virtue, it held its hand and gave the people to understand that the only sins demanding reparation were doubt as to the accuracy of the Church’s knowledge and attendance on the Sabbath. In its long career of blood and fire the only credit which it can claim is the suppression of the pernicious dogmas of the Cathari; and in this its agency may be regarded as superfluous, for those dogmas carried in themselves the seeds of self-destruction, and higher wisdom might have trusted to their self-extinction. ”

“ It may be partially explained by the belief that a painful death for the faith insured the return of the soul to God ; but human weakness does not often permit such habitual triumph of the spirit over the flesh as that which rendered the Cathari a proverb in their thirst for martyrdom. The hostile testimony to this effect is virtually unanimous. In the earliest persecution on record, at Orleans, about 1017, out of fifteen, thirteen remained steadfast in the face of the fire kindled for their destruction ”

“ Then Catharine, docile to the lessons of Wisdom, would fall on her knees, before her mother, soften her by words full of humility and sweetness, entreating her to calm herself, and promising to repose by her side in accordance with her wishes. She would then lie down on the extreme edge of the bed and there meditate with fervor; and when she found her mother was asleep, she would softly arise and return to her devout exercises. It would not be long; for Satan provoked by her constancy, would awaken Lapa. ”

“ F. C. Conybeare, Key of Truth, A Manual of the Paulician Church of Armenia, Oxford, 1898, 46.
273 The term ‘Cathari’ was said to come ‘from their kissing Lucifer under the tail in the shape of a cat’. Lea, loc. cit., iii. 495.
274 Lea, loc. cit., i. 105, ii. 334, &c. The main evidence is Conrad of Marburg’s report to Pope Gregory XI, 1233: ‘A tissue of inventions’, but ‘apparently doubted by no one’. ”

“ Catharine by the Blessed Raymond of Capua, her confessor, is a work that may be compared to those churches of the middle ages, which charm us as much by their general harmony, as by the richness of their details. The soul reposes within, far from the contests of the world; she is sensible too of the presence of God which invites her to prayer, and excites her to become better. ”

“ It does not seem to occur to the ingenious framers of heretical beliefs for the Templars that they must construct a heresy whose believers will not suffer death in its defence, but will endure to be burned in scores rather than submit to the stigma of having it ascribed to them. The mere statement of the case is enough to show the fabulous character of all the theories so laboriously constructed, especially that of M. Mignard, who proves that the Templars were Cathari—heretics whose aspiration for martyrdom was peculiarly notorious. ”

“ Nothing could be more lovely than St. Catharine swooning at the Saviour’s apparition—a figure full of divine languor, grace, and softness. Two nuns tenderly sustain her. Her stigmata are radiant. An angel bears a lily. The whole painting is delicate, ethereal, and heavenly as a vision. It is on the gospel side of the altar; on the other side she kneels between two nuns with her eyes raised to heaven, where, above the Virgin and Child, appears the Padre Eterno. Angels bear the cross and crown of thorns. Another brings the Host. A death’s head and lily are at her feet. ”

“ Then the heir to your husband's estates will be a Catholic, and so the true faith get rooted in the soil."
"Alas!" said Catharine, "are we to look but to the worldly interests of the Church?"
"They are inseparable from her spiritual interests here on earth: our souls are not more bound to our bodies."
Catharine was deeply mortified.
"So the Church rejects me because I am poor," said she, with a sigh.
"The Church rejects you not, but only the Convent. No place is less fit for you. You have a high spirit, and high religious sentiments: both would be mortified and shocked in a nunnery. ”

“ Catharine can never be yours. A glove is the emblem of faith, and a man of my craft should therefore less than any other break his own. Catharine's hand is promised — promised to a man whom you may hate, but whom you must honour — to Henry the armourer. ”

“ During forty years S. Catharine governed the convent of Prato with a prudence, a sweetness, and a firmness that made it the perfect type of a religious community. She combated most energetically all abusive exemptions from common life, and showed herself a faithful guardian of holy observances. But if she was the enemy of relaxation of the rule, she also censured severely the proud zeal of those souls whose whole perfection consisted in repeating the prayer of the Pharisee: "O God, I thank you that I am not as the rest of men. I fast twice a week." ”

“ Prayer, word and example render them powerful in heaven and on earth. They triumph over justice itself and change its most vigorous decrees into treasures of mercy. It was thus that St. Catharine influenced the events of her time.
After having made known Saint Catharine in the verity of her life we hope to cause her to be admired in the beauty of her doctrine, and in the greatness of her action. If God permit, we shall give to the public her spiritual dialogues, which contain the sublimity of her teaching, and her letters which will lead to the comprehension of her extended power. ”