CATTIARS (CATHARI or CATHARISTS), a widespread heretical sect of the middle ages. This article relates to the Western Cathars, as they appear (I) in the Cathar Ritual written in Provencal and preserved in a 13th-century ms. in Lyons, pub lished by Cledat, Paris, 1888; (2) in Bernard Gui's Practica inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis, edited by Canon C. Douais, Paris, 1886; and (3) in the proces verbal of the inquisitors' re ports. Some are dualists, and believed that there are two gods or principles, one of good and the other of evil, both eternal ; but as a rule they subordinated the evil to the good, and all were uni versalists in so far as they believed in the ultimate salvation of all men.
Their tenets were as follows :—The evil god, Satan, who inspired the malevolent parts of the Old Testament, is god and lord of this world, of the things that are seen and are temporal, and especially of the outward man which is decaying, of the earthen vessel, of the body of death, of the flesh which takes us captive under the law of sin and desire. This world is the only true purgatory and hell, being the antithesis of the world eternal, of the inward man renewed day by day, of Christ's kingdom which is not of this world. Men are the result of a primal war in heaven, when hosts of angels incited by Satan or Lucifer to revolt were driven out, and were imprisoned in terrestrial bodies created for them by the adversary.
How shall man escape from his prison-house of flesh, and undo the effects of his fall? For mere death brings no liberation, unless a man is become a new creation, a new Adam, as Christ was ; un less he has received the gift of the spirit and vehicle of the Paraclete. If a man dies unreconciled to God through Christ, he must pass through another cycle of imprisonment in flesh; per haps in a human, but with equal likelihood in an animal's body. For when after death the powers of the air throng around and persecute, the soul flees into the first lodging of clay that it finds. Christ was a life-giving spirit, and the boni homines, the "good men," as the Cathars called themselves, are his ambassadors. They alone have kept the spiritual baptism with fire which Christ instituted, and which has no connection with the water baptism of John; for the latter was an unregenerate soul, who failed to recognize the Christ, a Jew whose mode of baptism with water belongs to the fleeting outward world and is opposed to the kingdom of God.
The Cathars fell into two classes, corresponding to the Baptized and the Catechumens of the early church, namely, the Perfect, who had been "consoled," i.e., had received the gift of the Paraclete; and the credentes or Believers. The Perfect formed the ordained priesthood and controlled the church; they received from the Believers unquestioning obedience, and as vessels of election in whom the Holy Spirit already dwelt, they were adored by the faithful, who were taught to prostrate themselves before them whenever they asked for their prayers. They alone were become adopted sons, and so able to use the Lord's Prayer, which begins, "Our Father, which art in heaven." The Perfect alone knew God and could address him in this prayer, the only one they used in their ceremonies. The mere credens could at best invoke the living saint, and ask him to pray for him.
All adherents of the sect seem to have kept three Lents in the year, as also to have fasted Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays of each week; in these fasts a diet of bread and water was usual. But a credens under probation for initiation, which lasted at least one and often several years, fasted always. The life of a Perfect was so hard, and, thanks to the inquisitors, so fraught with danger, that most Believers deferred the rite until the death-bed, as in the early centuries many believers deferred baptism. The rule imposed complete chastity. The passages of the New Testament which seem to connive at the married relation were interpreted by the Cathars as spoken in regard of Christ and the church. The Perfect must also leave his father and mother. The family must be sacrificed to the divine kinship. He that loveth father or mother more than Christ is not worthy of him, nor he that loveth more his son or daughter. The Perfect takes up his cross and follows after Christ. He must abstain from all flesh diet except fish. He may not even eat cheese or eggs or milk, for they, like meat, are produced per viam generationis seu coitus. Everything that is sexually begotten is impure. Fish were supposed to be born in the water without sexual connection, and on the basis of this old physiological fallacy the Cathars framed their rule of fasting. And there was yet another reason why the Perfect should not eat animals, for a human soul might be imprisoned in its body. Nor might a Perfect or one in course of probation kill anything, for the Mosaic commandment applies to all life.
The central Cathar rite was consolamentum, or baptism with the spirit. The spirit received was the Paraclete, the Comforter, derived from God and sent by Christ, who said, "The Father is greater than I." Of a consubstantial Trinity the Cathars naturally had never heard. Infant baptism they rejected because it was un scriptural and because all baptism with water was an appanage of the Jewish demiurge Jehovah, and as such expressly rejected by Christ. The consolarnentum removes original sin, undoes the effects of the primal fall, clothes upon us our habitation which is from heaven, restores to us the lost garment of immortality. A Consoled is an angel walking in the flesh, whom the thin screen of death alone separates from Christ and the beatific vision. The rite was appointed by Christ, and has been handed down from generation to generation by the boni In the case of a candidate for initiation the Perfect addresses the postulant by the name of Peter; and explains to him from Scripture the indwelling of the spirit in the Perfect, and his adoption as a son by God. The Lord's Prayer is then repeated by the postulant after the elder, who explains it clause by clause. Then came the Renunciation, primitive enough in form, but the postulant solemnly renounced, not Satan and his works and pomp, but the harlot church of the persecutors; he renounced the cross which its priests had signed on him by baptism and other magical rites. Next followed the spiritual baptism itself, consist i_ig of imposition of hands, and holding the Gospel on the pos tulant's head. The elder begins a fresh allocution by citing Matt. xxviii. 19, Mark xvi. 15, 16, John iii. 3 (where the Cathars' text must originally have omitted in v. 5 the words "of water and," since their presence contradicts their argument). Acts ix. 17, 18, viii. 14-17, are then cited; also John xx. 21-23, Matt. xvi. 18, 19, Matt. xviii. 18-20, for the Perfect one receives in this rite power to bind and loose. The Perfect's vocation is then defined in terms of a strictly literal observance of the Commandments and the Sermon on the Mount. Asked if he will fulfil these demands, the postulant answers : "I have this will and determination. Pray God for me that he give me his strength." The next episode of the rite exactly reproduces the Roman confiteor as it stood in the 2nd century ; "the postulant says : Partite nobis. For all the sins I have committed, in word or thought or deed, I come for pardon to God and to the church and to you all.' And the Christians shall say : `By God and by us and by the church may they be pardoned thee. and we pray God that he pardon you them.' " There follows the act of "consoling." The elder takes the Gos pel off the white cloth, where it has lain all through the ceremony, and places it on the postulant's head, and the other boni homilies present place their right hands on his head ; they shall say the parcias (spare), and thrice the "Let us adore the Father and Son and Holy Spirit," and then pray thus : "Holy Father, welcome thy servant in thy justice and send upon him thy grace and thy holy spirit." Then they repeat the "Let us adore," the Lord's Prayer, and read the Gospel (John i. 1-17). This was the vital part of the whole rite. The credens is now a Perfect one; the Perfect ones present give him the kiss of peace, and the rite is over.
The Cathar Eucharist was equally primitive, and is thus de scribed by a contemporary writer in a 13th-century ms. in the Milan Library:—"The Benediction of bread is thus performed by the Cathars. They all, men and women, go up to a table and standing up say the `Our Father,' [as according to St. Gregory (Ep. ix. 12-26), was the custom of the apostles]. And he who is prior among them, at the close of the Lord's Prayer, shall take hold of the bread and say : `Thanks be to the God of our Jesus Christ. May the Spirit be with us all.' And after that he breaks and distributes to all. And such bread is called bread blessed, although no one believes that out of it is made the body of Christ." AUTHORITIES.--J. B. Mullinger, art. "Albigenses" in Hastings, Authorities.--J. B. Mullinger, art. "Albigenses" in Hastings, Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics, vol. i.; C. H. Haskins, "Robert le Bougre" in American Historical Review, 1902 ; F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth (Oxford, 1898) ; J. J. I. Dellinger, Beitrdge zur Sektengeschichte (Munchen, 189o) ; Jean Guiraud, Questions d'histoire (Paris, 1906) ; C. Douais, Les Heretiques du midi au XIIle siecle (Paris, 1891) ; L. Cledat, Le Nouveau Testament, traduit au X IIIe siecle en langue provencale, suivi d'un rituel cathare (Paris, 1887) ; Ch. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares (Paris, 1849).