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10

THE CATHARS: MEDIEVAL GNOSTICS?*

The decision to deal with the Cathars in a book on and Herrneticism from Antiquity to modem times is by no means self• evident. 1 Earlier in this century, there was a strong trend in Cathar scholarship to trace back the distinctive ideas of Catharism through the Byzantine and Slav Bogomils and Paulicians to the Manichees of Late Antiquity and, finally, even to Zoroaster. 2 When seen from this perspective, Catharism becomes a corpus alienum within the west• ern medieval world, a gnostic offshoot of eastern and non-Christian traditions. In reaction to this view, an increasing number of scholars has argued that Catharism can only be understood within the context of the typically western movements of resistance against the power and wealth of the Church of and the luxury and corruption of its officials. They refuse to label the Cathars as gnostics and are eager to point out that there are no demonstrable links between Catharism and the various kinds of we know from the late antique world. According to this view, the Cathars derived most of their characteristic ideas and practices from their independent,

* Revised text of a lecture given at the Amsterdam Summer School on I 7 August 1994; also published in R. van den Broek & W. Hanegraaff(eds.), Gnosis and .from Antiquiry to Modem Times, Albany 1997. 1 For an extensive survey of scholarship on the Cathars and Catharism, from the 16th century to 1976, see M.-H. Vicaire (ed.), Historiographie du catharisme (Cahiers de 14), & Fanjeaux 1979. General works on the Cathars, based on all the sources available, are J. Duvemoy, Le catharisme, I: La religion des cathares, Toulouse 1976 (reprinted with a few additions 1979), II: L'histoire des cathars, Tou• louse 1979, and Anne Brenon, Le vrai visage du catharisme, Toulouse 1988 (reprinted 1993); good introductions in A. Brenon, "Les cathares: Bons chretiens et hereti• ques", in: Christianisme medievale: Mouvements, dissidents et novateurs (= Heresis. Revue d'hiresiowgi,e mediioale, 13/ 14 [1990)), 115-170, and M. Lambert, Medieval : Popular Movements .from the Gregorian Reform to the , 2nd ed., 1992 (reprinted 1994), 105-146. A French translation of the surviving Cathar writings in R. Nelly, Ecritures cathares. Nouvelle edition actualisee et augmentee par Anne Brenon, Monaco 1995; English translations of all important Cathar and anti-Cathar writings in W.L. Wakefield & A.P. Evans, ef the High : Selected Sources Translated and Annotated, New York & London 1969. 2 The most extreme representative of this position was H. Soderberg, La religion des cathares: Etude sur le gnosticisme de la basse antiquite et du Moyen Age, Uppsala 1949. 158 GNOSTICISM

somewhat self-willed reading of the , just like the Waldenses did. The ecclesiastical, political and social conditions in and Southern formed a fruitful soil for the development and expansion of these movements. The proponents of this view admit that the ritual of the -the of the by the laying-on of hands-resembles the Bogomil ritual so closely that it must have been introduced from the Balkans. 3 But not everybody is prepared to take the same stand with respect to Cathar dualism and their doctrine of the soul.4

As a result of these recent studies, Catharism can no longer be seen as a completely alien element in western society; it has its firm place within the reform movements of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries with their emphasis on poverty and apostolic life. But this stress

3 For a study of both rites, see Ylva Hagman, "Le rite d'initiation chretienne chez !es cathares et !es bogomils," Heresis 20 (1993) 13-31. Nevertheless, Christine Thou• zellier, the editor of the Latin Cathar Ritual, showed herself somewhat reluctant to accept the eastern origin of that Ritual, Rituel cathar: Introduction, texte critique, traduction et notes (Sources Chretiennes 236), Paris 1977, 184: "II y a done parallelisme entre la liturgic des heretiques de Dalmatie, Bosnie, et celle des sectes de Lombardie et du , sans que !'on puisse, faute de documents, determiner leur filiation." For the influence of eastern texts among the Cathars, see now B. Hamilton, "Wisdom from the East: The Reception by the Cathars of Eastern Dualist Texts," in Peter Biller & Anne Hudson, Here~ and Literacy, I 000-1530, Cambridge 1994, 38· 60. 4 Duvernoy, Religi,on, 361-386, sees at the base of Catharism, in addition to a strong biblical influence, a mixture of Origenistic theology and Basilian monasticism; see his conclusion on p. 387: "Le Catharisme apparait ainsi relativement teinte de judeo-christianisme, essentiellement origeniste, par ailleurs dote du canon integral de la Bible, organise sous une forme monastique manifestement basilienne"; and the defence of his position against his critics, on the unnumbered pages at the end of the 1979 reprint of his book. Christine Thouzellier sees in the whole ritual of the consolamentum a revival of early Christian liturgical traditions which had been in disuse for many centuries; cf. for instance, Rituel cathare, 191: "Elle (i.e. la ceremonie cathare) resume, clans ses deux parties, Jes solennites diverses que, aux IVe et ye siecles, l'Eglise pratiquait pour le bapteme, la transmission du Pater, la reconciliation des pecheurs, la consecration des eveques." The mere fact that so many divergent and long-forgotten traditions would have contributed to the Cathar ritual makes this theory highly unlikely. The studies of Anne Brenon mostly give a well-balanced assessment of the position of the Cathars in the western medieval world, although she, too, shows a tendency to play down the influence of eastern "heretical" traditions. Thus, in "Bons chretiens et heretiques," 137, she says that the Cathar doctrine of appears "plus comme une consequence logique de la metaphysique dualiste absolu, que comme un surgeon medieval de la gnose antique." Lambert, however, seems unimpressed by these efforts to consider Catharism primarily as a medieval type of ; he emphasizes its strongly heretical character and says of its radical dualism that it "can hardly be regarded even as extreme Christian heresy. With its belief in two and two creations, it might almost be described as another religion altogether" (Medieval Heresies, 124).