Message #243688

[1090Crusader]

Origin

The Catholic Church had always dealt sternly with heresy, but before the 12th century these tended to centre around individual preachers or small localised sects. By the 12th century, more organized groups such as the Waldensians and Cathars were beginning to appear in the towns and cities of newly urbanized areas. In Western mediterranean France, one of the most urbanized areas of Europe at the time, the Cathars grew to represent a popular mass movement[2] that included religion and politics, and the belief was spreading to other areas. Relatively few believers took the consolamentum to become full Cathars, but the movement attracted many followers and sympathisers.

The Cathari were dualistic, believing not in one all-encompassing god, but in two, equal and comparable in status. They held that the physical world was evil and created by the demiurge Rex Mundi (Latin, "King of the World"), who encompassed all that was corporeal, chaotic and powerful; the second god, the one whom they worshipped, was entirely disincarnate: a being or principle of pure spirit and completely unsullied by the taint of matter. He was the god of love, order and peace. Procreation was evil, so women were suspect. Civil authority had no claim on a Cathar, since this was the rule of the physical world. The goal of a Cathar was to become perfect. Cathar missionaries would point out examples of clerical immorality and would contrast that behaviour with uprightness of their own actions. They took special attention to point out the grievances the people of the south received from the Frech kings, and exalted a local sense of nationalism and independence. Thus, the religious movement moved into the political arena. The Catholic Church was deeply concerned by the spread of Cathar teachings and its developments.