SC - Cathari, Vegetarian Heretics (long)

[H B]

> I don't know what a heretical Cathars was, can someone clue me in?
> Also, when was it considered dangerous to be a veggie?  I just 
> remember veggie options surfacing like for lent, or because of a 
> clerical vow.  someone wanna fill me in, or give me some reference 
> books?  love to come up with some excuses!
> 

I ran across a reference to the Cathari in a historical novel, but it
got returned to the library before I got more than a chapter in, so I
don't know how well they were portrayed; but it caught my interest
enough to look them up.  Since I know there are other vegetarians out
there, I thought this might be of wide enough interest to send it to
the list; sorry to those of you who are not interested.  I'm sure there
are other sects too, but I don't know how to look them up until I know
who they were.  Anyway:


>From _The Oxford Dictionary of the Christian Church_, F.L. Cross,
ed., 2nd edition. Oxford Univ. Press, 1958, 1974.  ISBN 0 19 211545 6.

CATHARI (Gk. [ ], ‘pure’).  The name has been applied to several
sects, e.g. to the Novatianists by St. Epiphanius and other Greek
Fathers, and, acc. to St. Augustine, in the form ‘Catharistae’ to a
group of Manichaeans.  But it is mostly used for a medieval sect, which
first came to be so known in Germany in the second half of the 12th
cent.  It was later applied to this sect also in Italy, whereas its
adherents in S. France are commonly called ‘Albigenses’ (q.v.).

In France they first appeared at the beginning of the 11th cent., when
a
group of heretics was condemned at a Council of Orleans in 1022. 
>From this time to the 13th cent., Catharist influences spread widely,
being particularly strong in N. Italy and S. France.  The origin of the
movement is obscure.  Their doctrines were similar to those of the
Bogomiles of Bulgaria, and from c. 1160 there is clear E. influence on
the W. Catharists.  It is, however, difficult to find evidence of this
during the early history of the movement, and it remains a matter of
doubt whether W. dualism was an import from the Balkans or an
independent development.  They posed a major threat to the Catholic
Church, which reacted both by preaching and, through the Inquisition,
by persecution.  By 1300 the combined effect of force and persecution
had greatly weakened the Catharists, and thereafter they did not play a
major part in the history of the W. Church.   For an account of their
doctrine, see Albigenses.

(Here follows an extensive list of primary material and scholarly
treatments of it; if anyone wants the list, email me privately and I’ll
send it.)

ALBIGENSES.  A medieval term for the inhabitants of parts of S.
France, and hence applied to the heretics who were strong there in the
late 12th and early 13th cents.  These were a branch of the Cathari. 
Their doctrine in its purest form was strongly dualist, akin to the
Manichaean beliefs, and they rejected the flesh and material creation
as
evil, affirming two eternal principles of good and evil.  There are
signs in their writings of both an absolute dualism (of equal and
opposite principles) and a ‘mitigated’ dualism (envisaging the ultimate
triumph of God over the devil).  It is not clear whether one should
think of distinct schools of belief within Catharism, or whether these
were different tendencies inside one system of thought.  The purpose of
redemption was the liberation of the soul from the flesh and the end of
the ‘mixed’ state which had been brought about by the devil.  Though
retaining the NT and the prophetic parts of the OT, the Albigenses
interpreted them as allegories, teaching that Christ was an angel with
a
phantom body who, consequently, did not suffer or rise again, and
whose redemptive work consisted only in teaching man the true (i.e.
Albigensian) doctrine.  The Catholic Church, by taking the NT
allegories literally, had been corrupted and was doing the work of the
devil.

Rejecting the sacraments, the doctrine of hell, purgatory, and the
resurrection of the body, and believing that all matter was bad, their
moral doctrine was one of extreme rigorism, condemning marriage, the
use of meat, milk, eggs, and other animal produce.  As, however, these
ideals were too austere for the majority of men and women, they
distinguished two classes, the ‘perfect’, who received the
‘consolamentum’, i.e. baptism of the Holy Spirit by imposition of
hands, and kept the precepts in all their rigor, and the ordinary
‘believers’ who were allowed to live normal lives but promised to
receive the ‘consolamentum’ when in danger of death; if they
recovered, they were obliged to lead the life of the ‘perfect’ or die
by
the  ‘endura’.

The Albigenses were condemned by successive Councils, at Lombers
in 1165 and at Verona in 1184, and at the Fourth Lateran Council of
1215 Catholic doctrine was defined with special reference to their
errors.  The heresy, however, spread rapidly, since the ‘perfect’
gained
a hold on the people by the austerity of their lives which contrasted
with the laxity of many of the Catholic clergy.  Innocent III sought to
convert them by several missions, which were all unsuccessful.  At
last,
after the assassination of the Papal legate Peter of Castelnau in 1208,
the Pope decided upon a Crusade against them, the leader of which was
Simon de Montfort.  The actual Crusade, often conducted with great
cruelty, ended in 1218, the year of Montfort’s death, the outstanding
events being the massacre of Beziers in 1209, and the battle of Muret
in
1213, where Simon decisively defeated Peter of Aragon, their leader. 
>From 1219 to the treaty of Paris in 1229 the war was mainly a fight for
the incorporation of Languedoc into France.  In 1233 Gregory IX
charged the Dominican Inquisition with the final extirpation of the
heresy, of which no trace was left at the end of the 14th century.

(More references.)


Does anyone else know of specific sects?  This book is great on
defining things, but you have to know what to look up, and 'vegetarian'
isn't in there!  I know a lot of the church's justification for eating
meat came from the 'dominion over the Earth and all its creatures' bit
(which was still being used as justification for exploitation/
destruction of any natural resource you can think of into this
century); since the Catholic Church said meat was a good thing to eat,
and you only don't eat it on fast days when you give it up BECAUSE it's
a good thing, I imagine there might have been a bit of tension over
other vegetarians sects too -- though not necessarily as much as with
these guys, who not only didn't believe in the divinity of Christ but
even his humanity!  

In the novel (wish I could remember the title!) a newcomer is looked at
with suspision because she is not eating meat at a meal, and the priest
especially asks her what is wrong with her dinner, and the whole tone
is such that this woman (who IS Cathari, but trying to hide it)
basically has the choice of choking down some flesh and breaking her
oath, or being branded a heretic and presumably killed for it.  Fun,
huh?  Sounds like that much might be plausible based on the above
reference to crusades and inquisitions.

- -- Harriet
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