did the cathars exist

The scholar C. S. Lewis points out how, in the modern day, these themes seem commonplace and far from surprising but if one compares the poetry of 12th-century CE Provence with works like Bede’s history or Beowulf, one realizes what a startling departure this was. Medieval Languedoc was a region of southern France with its unofficial capital at Toulouse. After 1209 CE and the sack of Carcassonne, the earl Simon de Montfort (l. c. 1175-1218 CE) led the crusade which continued the destruction of the region while enriching the northern barons who participated. Almost everything known about the Cathars comes from confessions of “heretics” taken by Catholic clergy during the inquisition which followed the Albigensian Crusade. Persecuting Cathars, Jews, and other minorities, and making them wear yellow "badges of infamy" was a requirement of the Catholic Church imposed on the rulers of the Languedoc. There are some who believe that that elements of the Cathar religion rose with Luther and Protestantism but there are no real supporting documents or links to this supposition. The Visigoths did not believe Jesus was the Son of God, nor did they believe in the Trinity. They appear in small numbers in records from the 1140’s CE in France, but by 1167 CE, there were enough communities in the region to require an assembly to set rules and boundaries. Cathars did continue to exist in hiding and by all accounts, had eventually died off as a continuing sect. Some historians have even denied that there was a recognisable group of heretics in the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries who were called ‘Cathars’, arguing that such a group never existed but was rather an invention of medieval theologians and clergymen. ( Log Out /  The belief that the world is evil led to the belief that the evil god is responsible not just for the bad things in the world but also for the world itself. Catharism succeeded the spiritual tradition of Slavic and Balkan Bogomilism, and went even fur­ther back in history. Most importantly, the poems celebrated romantic love, which was considered quite different, and far superior, to marriage because in marriage the couple had no choice (the match was arranged by the parents) while one chose to engage in extra-marital or pre-marital love affairs. Bélibaste’s death did signal the end of the official Occitan Cathar Church, which blossomed in the 11th century, got organised in 1167, and died in 1321. The faith did not remain restricted to the peasantry for long but spread up the medieval hierarchy to artisans like weavers and potters, writers and poets, merchants and business owners, members of the Catholic clergy, and finally nobility. Coincidence? (This is a very long document, about 35,000 words.) ( Log Out /  Almost everything known about the Cathars comes from confessions of “heretics” taken by Catholic clergy during the inquisition which followed the Albigensian Crusade. Trapped in these bodies, the soul would live, die, and be reborn in another as long as that soul remained attached to the body and the pleasures which the devil had promised it back in heaven. The Cathars repudiated the symbol of the cross and a literal reading of any of the biblical books. The Book of Two Principles related, among other aspects of the faith, the dualist nature of life and how humans, once divine spirits of light, came to be bound in corruptible mortal flesh. The Cathars, we are told, believed in two Gods, a good one and an evil one. Home › History › The War on the Cathars. The Cathars (also known as Cathari from the Greek Katharoi for “pure ones”) were a dualist medieval religious sect of Southern France which flourished in the 12th century CE and challenged the authority of the Catholic Church. What really happened, and what did the Cathars actually believe? Not surprisingly, the Cathars were condemned as heretical by the Catholic Church and massacred in the Albigensian Crusade (1209-1229 CE) which also devastated the towns, cities, and culture of southern France. The Cathars came from the region west-north-west of Marseilles on Golfe du Lion, the old province of Languedoc. This license lets others remix, tweak, and build upon this content non-commercially, as long as they credit the author and license their new creations under the identical terms. The cathars are expelled from Carcassonne, in the year 1209 That is, they believed in two universal principles, a good God and a bad God, much like the Jehovah and Satan of mainstream Christianity. They were a heretical sect of Christians who lived in Southern France during the 11th and 12th centuries. They shared their possessions and took care of each other as a family. Ancient History Encyclopedia, 02 Apr 2019. Because of this they despised killing in any form. Cathar beliefs ultimately derived from the Persian religion of Manichaeism but directly from another earlier religious sect from Bulgaria known as the Bogomils who blended Manichaeism with Christianity. The first Cathar Synod was held between 1167 and 1176 at St. Felix-de-Caraman, near Toulouse. Cathars who were not celibate practiced birth control and abortion, believing that sex was a natural aspect of the human condition and could be engaged in for pleasure, not only for procreation; in fact, procreation was discouraged. Organization registered in Canada that much of the sexes in Cathar communities the nativity story were Zoroastrians Persian! 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