CATHARI, or CATRARISTS (Gr. pure), a name very generally given to various sects which appeared in the church during the middle ages. It appears to have been some times assumed in profession of a purity of doctrine and morals superior to that which generally prevailed in the church, sometimes bestowed ironically in ridicule of such a profession, and perhaps was first used as a designation of the Paulicians (q.v.). It became a common appellation of sects which appeared in Lombardy in the beginning of the llth c., and afterwards in France and the w. of Germany. Having some connec tion with the Bulgarian Paulicians, they were sometimes called Bulgarians; sometimes also Patarenes or Patarines, sometimes Publicans or Popelitans, and in the Low Countries, Piph,les. The names Albigenses and C. arc often used as equivalent to one another; but we are under the disadvantage of having to depend entirely on the writings of very bigoted adversaries for our knowledge of their doctrines and practices. and considerable
obscurity rests on all this interesting part of ecclesiastical history. .Manicheism, Gnos ticism, and Montanism are ascribed to the C.; but there is much reason to think that the errors of a few were often indiscriminately charged upon all, and that such charges indeed sometimes rested on ignorant or willful misconstruction. It appears quite certain, that the C. differed in their doctrines and in the degree of their opposition to the dominant church. Some of them advocated and practiced a rigid asceticism. There is no good evidence that any of them nearly approached to the doctrines of the reformation; although in their rejection of tradition, of the authority of Rome, of the worship of saints and images, etc., there are notable points of agreement with the views of the reformers.