What is Catharism?

358 And now as regards the origin of Vaudois. Of Waldo I need say nothing. The facts as to him may be found in most church histories, and (with a trifling difference) the date of his coming forward as a herald of what truth he knew, and getting the scripture translated. He was forced to retire from Lyons, but it is admitted that the Vaudois sect was spread over all Western Europe. It is said Philip Augustus of France in the earlier part of the thirteenth century razed three hundred castles of Vaudois Seigneurs. This could hardly be from Waldo, who only began to preach at the end of the twelfth. But further Waldo first received serious impressions from a Troubadour, of whom many carried piety and anti-Roman doctrines around where they penetrated with their songs; and it is expressly said by Stephen of Borbonne that when driven out, Waldo went and joined other heretics of Provence and Lombardy. They were therefore already there. And this question then arises, Were these simply Albigenses or Manicheans as is alleged? That there were Manicheans spread from Bulgaria, originally from the east of Asia Minor, on into Spain itself, can hardly be questioned. But not even the Inquisition ever charged the Waldenses with this. The archives of the Inquisition of Toulouse published by Limborch demonstrate this; and the well-known testimony of Reinerius Saccho which declares that they live justly and believe all the articles of the creed; which makes them, he says, so dangerous. But, if we are to believe Mosheim, there were two parties even among these Bulgarian teachers who filled the whole south of Europe, and particularly Lombardy and the south of France, the latter being exterminated by the crusade of de Montfort, for which the Inquisition was invented. The one, or Albenanses, really held the doctrine of two principles, and thus were Manicheans; the other Baioli, of whom came the Albigenses, held nothing of the kind, but that there was one God the Creator, Father of the Lord Jesus Christ, but that Satan, after his fall, had ruined the earth, making the four elements. So they were divided into three parties as to the flesh of Christ, some holding He took flesh of the Virgin Mary, some not; others that He took it really and suffered in it, but did not take it to heaven on His ascension. The sacraments of the Roman body they wholly rejected. They had a certain but unsatisfactory faith in the Trinity. All this had nothing to do with the Vaudois.

359 We have clearly then, I think, three parties: Waldo's followers, who amalgamated with the Vaudois, and the Cathari, of whom there were two parties, Manicheans, and non-Manicheans, though of unsatisfactory doctrine. We cannot be surprised, as all were opposed to Rome, at Rome's burning all together. She did not care for truth but for authority, and pulled up some tares contrary to Christ's direction and much wheat (as the blessed Lord foretold) with it. She will have to answer for the blood of all saints. But if we seek to trace out the history of the Vaudois proper, those of the valleys of Piedmont, it is not very difficult.

201 It will be alleged that there was individual sanctity. Now that there were God's hidden ones in all times I cannot doubt a moment. And if the character of their holiness shewed want of scriptural light, it was not necessarily the less sincere. Still it is beyond all question that the universal unholiness of the professing world, and especially of the priests, and the idolatry prevalent in Christendom, exposed those whose consciences were oppressed by what was all around them to fall into the snares laid for them by Satan in the shape of false doctrine. The effect of this was, that Christendom was composed of, first, unholy, iniquitous, and persecuting orthodoxy (a few souls groaning under the state of things, such as Bernard, who said, All that remained was for Antichrist to come; and others, that he was born already at Rome); secondly, of a vast number (for they filled the country from Asia to Spain) who had fallen into Manichean notions, and sought holiness by judging all matter as itself unholy, but whose devoted and blameless walk won the conscience of the population, till they were put down by fire and sword; and thirdly, of a number — whose doctrines it is hard to discover — whose constancy and blameless walk astonished conscientious men; and lastly, of others who were counted only schismatics, whose only fault was that they could not own the corruption which reigned around them. One class or another of these was spread all over Europe. It is a sad history; for they were all hunted as wild beasts all over the country, burned and tortured, and it is often hard to ascertain what they really did hold. The inquisition was invented for putting them down. Of one large class, Albigenses and Waldenses (of whom the former, I suppose, were, as to their leaders at any rate, more or less Manichean), the judgments at Toulouse may be found in the end of Limborch's History of the Inquisition, other notices in many popular books. and a good deal of research as to them collected in a note to Elliott's Horae Apocalypticae. Of the Moravians, before they were driven out of Bohemia and Moravia, the best account is a German work — History of the Bohemian Brethren by Gindely. Prague, 1857.

Now, there is not an attempt to say that the church is holy; in fact, I do not admit the doctrines of Rome to be holy. It is not holy to confound sanctity and justification; it is not holy to make sacraments the principal means, leaving out the word and Spirit of God, to which Christ and His apostles directly ascribe sanctification. It is not holy, it is Manicheism, to make holiness, and a holiness necessary to the clergy, by a prohibition to marry. It was the most unholy and wicked doctrine, against which the apostle warns us as a doctrine of devils, the fruit of a conscience seared with a hot iron. The fruits of it have been produced. They characterized the church. If a man can devote himself to the Lord, body, soul, and spirit, without a snare to himself, be it so. It is a grace and gift from God. But the moment you forbid to marry, you are on Manichean and Gnostic ground. It is urged, in order to defend Rome, that the passages in Paul's Epistle to Timothy apply to Gnostics. I admit it. They held that matter was a bad thing, hence that Christ had no material body, and other extravagances of every kind; but as a way or means of holiness, they taught abstinence from women. This was the doctrine of the Alexandrian school Dr. N. admires. They were infected with it. The Albigenses, the medieval fruit of Gnosticism in Christendom, constantly practised it; their perfect, or bonshommes, did not eat meat, nor have to say to women.

During this dark and dreary period we have many Protestants. Despotism and error reigning, the faithful and the truth of God existing, necessarily brought out the principles of Protestantism. Besides the Paulicians, the Nestorians, and the Armenians in the East; we have our well-known friends in the West — the Waldenses, the Albigenses, the Wycliffites, and the Bohemians. There were others distinguished by various appellations, such as the Cathari, Leonists, etc.; but these were the four great branches of the noble stock of witnesses for Christ and His gospel; and though called by different names, had one common origin and one common faith.

England was gradually enslaved by Rome. Henry II. strongly opposed the encroachments of the pope, but had to give way. He joined the the French king in persecuting the Cathari of Toulouse, who are believed to have been true Christians, though styled Arians by Rome.

Such was the state of things on the accession of Pope Innocent III. With anxious forebodings, and a far-seeing eye, he watched this spirit of religious independence, but how to crush it effectually was the question. Besides, at that time, as the reader will remember, his hands were full. He was seeking to destroy the balance of power in Germany and Italy, he was contending with the kings of France and England by turns, he was directing the march of the Crusaders, and overturning by their means the Greek empire at Constantinople; yet was he watching, and determined to punish every dissent from the tenets of the church of Rome, and every exercise of the thinking faculty on religious subjects. It was loudly rumoured about this time that the two principal seats of this disaffection towards Rome were the valleys of Piedmont and the south of France. The Piedmontese Christians flourished in comparative obscurity, while the Albigenses were rendered more notorious, as well as more dangerous, by the protection afforded them in the wealthy cities of Languedoc. Raymond VI., Count of Toulouse, not only favoured those of the Waldensian creed as the best of his subjects, but employed them in his family, though avowedly himself a Roman Catholic. The Count of Foix was married to a Waldensian, of his two sisters, one was said to be a Waldensian, and the other a catharist, or puritan.

The Waldenses

Our history naturally reverts to the fatal crusade against the Albigenses in the thirteenth century. That once beautiful region, in some respects the richest and most civilized province in the spiritual empire of St. Peter, we have -seen depopulated and desolated. The peaceful inhabitants had presumed to question the dogmas of the Vatican and the authority of the priesthood, which was sin unpardonable against the majesty of Rome. The edicts of Innocent, the sword of De Montfort, the fires of Arnold, the treachery of Fouquet, and the Inquisition of Dominic, did their terrible work. But the combined powers of Europe, with fire and sword and suffocating dungeons, failed to touch the root of that which Innocent called heresy. The divine, vital principle of Christianity was far, far beyond his reach. The sword may hew down the branches, and the fire may consume them; but the living root is in the truth and grace of God, which can never fail. The spirit of Christianity is stronger than the sword of the persecutor, and the arm on which faith leans is more powerful than the combined forces of earth and hell. The weakness of the papacy was manifested in its apparent triumphs in Languedoc. The heretics, as Jezebel thought, had been drowned in blood, but a bleeding remnant was spared, in the good providence of our God, to bear testimony in every part of Europe to the injustice, the cruelties, and the spiritual despotism of papal Rome.

The exiles from the south of France who had escaped the sword went forth to the utmost limits of Christendom preaching the doctrines of the cross, and testifying with holy indignation against the falsehoods and corruptions of the dominant church. In different parts of France, in Germany, Hungary, and the neighbouring regions, the sectaries appeared in great numbers. And the popes found many of the kings little inclined to exert themselves for the suppression of the Cathari, as they were called, or the various religious sects. It is also more than probable that many of the persecuted about this time sought a place of rest in the quiet valleys of Piedmont. The more secluded of these regions appear to have been a secure asylum for the witnesses of God until the fourteenth century. Though known to Claudius, bishop of Turin, in the ninth century, they seem to have escaped notoriety and conflict till about the thirteenth, if not later. But as the darkness of popery thickened around them, the brightness of their example became more seen and felt. Calumnies were invented, and the godly Waldenses were singled out as reprobate schismatics. They were spread over the valleys on both sides of the Cottian Alps — Dauphiny on the French side, and Piedmont on the Italian side, of the mountains.

It is a matter for rejoicing, however, that in spite of persecution, the number of these seceders from Rome increased. The abbot above referred to, describes them as "the multitude of heretics;" and another writer, Eckbert, affirms, that "they increased to multitudes in all countries;" while William of Newbury testifies, that "they seemed to be multiplied beyond the sand of the sea." Eckbert further informs us, that the "heretics" went by different names according to the countries in which they were found. In Germany they were called Cathari, in Flanders, Piphles, and in France, Tisserands, from the art of weaving which was their common occupation. In England they were called Publicans. It is related that during a persecution at Cologne in the year 1163, when four men and a little girl, belonging to the Tisserands, were delivered over to the secular power to be burned, the people, taking pity on the child, held her back in the hope that she would recant. But the child, watching her opportunity, suddenly broke from their control, and cast herself into the flames.

332 The other form these speculations took was wilder, if not worse. There was a πλήρωμα, a fulness, of Godhead, which, in spiritual abstractions, of which depth, man, church, wisdom, and other scriptural subjects, formed part in male and female characters: an idea which entered into all Brahminical, Rabbinical, Egyptian, and Gnostic theology, the Egyptian being nearest to the Rabbinical. The πλήρωμα was limited by ὄρος (boundary). The πλήρωμα was within; outside was ὔλη, or matter. The male and female of each pair were called συζύγεις, or yoked pairs. Σοφία (wisdom), one of the lower members of the πλήρωμα, wanted to unite herself with, penetrate into by research, βάθος, or depth, the first origin of the whole πλήρωμα. She got outside the limit (ὄρος), and hence this world, a mixture of matter and spirit. Christ, a new member of the πλήρωμα, came out to disengage what was spiritual from what was material, and bring it back within the limit or ὄρος. This branched out into a thousand forms and speculations useless to follow here. It connected itself with Manicheism in Persia, and reached on to the Bulgarians and Albigenses in France and Italy. But for a long time it was a great plague for the Church. They forbade to marry; commanded to abstain from meats. Christ had no real body (there was no atonement — could not be, if He was not a man). Abstinence and disengaging spirit from matter — that was really saving. This also the Spirit anticipated. The apostle John carefully tells us that confessing Jesus Christ come in flesh was essential to Christianity; that the Word was made flesh, that they had touched Him with their hands; and Paul, that all the fulness (πλήρωμα) was pleased to dwell in Him; and He was not an aijwvn, as they were called, but that all the fulness (πλήρωμα) of the Godhead dwelt in Him bodily; that every creature of God is good and to be used with thanksgiving — marriage honourable in all.

At Rome matters were brought to an open rupture at the election of a bishop. Cornelius, a presbyter, was nominated but Novatian strongly opposed his election because he would admit those who had fallen. But his election was carried, and, a synod being called, Novatian was condemned. On this, seeing no remedy for the increase of corruptions in the professing body, he withdrew with many others, and was also elected bishop by some who held with him. They were the first class of Christians called Cathari (Puritans), but whether the name was adopted by themselves is not now known.