Catharism

Catharism was a Christian quasi-dualist and pseudo-Gnostic movement which thrived in northern Italy and southern France between the 12th and 14th centuries.
Denounced as a heretical sect by the Catholic Church, its followers were attacked first by the Albigensian Crusade and later by the Medieval Inquisition, which eradicated them by 1350. Thousands were slaughtered, hanged, or burned at the stake.
Followers were known as Cathars or Albigensians, after the French city Albi where the movement first took hold, but referred to themselves as Good Christians. They believed that there were not one, but two Godsthe good God of Heaven and the evil god of this age. According to tradition, Cathars believed that the good God was the God of the New Testament faith and creator of the spiritual realm. Many Cathars identified the evil god as Satan, the master of the physical world, who was the same as the God of the Old Testament. The Cathars believed that human souls were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god. They thought these souls were destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum, a form of baptism performed when death is imminent. At that moment, they believed they would return to the good God as "Cathar Perfect". Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who set few guidelines, leading some Catharist practices and beliefs to vary by region and over time.
The first mention of Catharism by chroniclers was in 1143; four years later, the Catholic Church denounced Cathar practices, particularly the consolamentum ritual. From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and persuading the local authorities to act against the Cathars. In 1208, Pierre de Castelnau, Innocent's papal legate, was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars. Pope Innocent III then declared de Castelnau a martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade in 1209. The nearly twenty-year campaign succeeded in vastly weakening the movement. The Medieval Inquisition that followed ultimately eradicated Catharism.
There is academic controversy about whether Catharism was an organised religion or whether the medieval Church imagined or exaggerated it. The lack of any central organisation among Cathars and regional differences in beliefs and practices has prompted some scholars to question whether the Church exaggerated its threat while others wonder whether it even existed.

Term

Though the term Cathar has been used for centuries to identify the movement; whether it identified itself with the name is debated. In Cathar texts, the terms Good Men, Good Women, or Good Christians are the common terms of self-identification.
In the testimony of suspects who were put to the question by the Inquisition, the term 'Cathar' was not used amongst the group of accused heretics themselves. The word 'Cathar' was coined by Catholic theologians and used exclusively by the inquisition or by authors otherwise identified with the Orthodox church—for example in the anonymous pamphlet of 1430, Errores Gazariorum. The full title of this treatise in English is, The errors of the Gazarri, or of those who travel riding a broom or a stick.
However, the presence of a variety of beliefs and spiritual practices in the French countryside of the 12th and 13th centuries that came to be seen as heterodox relative to the Church in Rome is not actually in question, as the primary documents of the period exhaustively demonstrate.
Several of these groups under other names, such as the Waldensians or Valdeis, bear a close similarity to the 'creed' or matrix of beliefs and folk-traditions pieced together under the umbrella of the term 'Catharism.' The fact that there was clearly a spiritual and communal movement of some sort can scarcely be denied, since legions of people were willing to part with their lives to defend it. Whether they acted in defense of the doctrine or in defense of the human community who held these beliefs, the fact that many gave themselves up willingly to the flames when the option to recant was given to them in many or most cases is significant.
As the scholar Claire Taylor puts it, in arguing against Pegg and Moore, two scholars questioning whether or not the Cathars exist, this issue

matters at an ethical level, because by being cleverly iconoclastic and populist in suggesting that those using 'Cathar' have made 2+2=5, Pegg and Moore make 2+2=3 by denying the existence of the persecuted group. The missing element is a dissident religious doctrine, for which historians using a fuller range of sources believe thousands of people were prepared to suffer extreme persecution and an agonising death."

Several times in history the term "Cathar" was used to different groups that were deemed as heretics rather than a specific one. For example, Saint Augustine, writing in the fourth century, describes a group referred to as "Catharistas", who added the mixture of male and female sexual fluids to flour to create a "Sacrament" which they ate, in the belief that they were purifying the substance through eating it. John Damascene, writing in the 8th century AD, also notes of an earlier sect called the "Cathari", in his book On Heresies, taken from the epitome provided by Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion. He says of them: "They absolutely reject those who marry a second time, and reject the possibility of penance ". These are probably the same Cathari who are mentioned in Canon 8 of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in the year 325, which states "... f those called Cathari come over , let them first make profession that they are willing to communicate with the twice-married, and grant pardon to those who have lapsed ...". It is certain that these "Cathars" were not the same as the self-designated The Perfecti of the Albigenses, however reflects the historical usage of the term in orthodox circles as a term to designate "heretics".

Origins

The origins of the Cathars' beliefs are unclear, but most theories agree they came from the Byzantine Empire, mostly by the trade routes, and spread from the First Bulgarian Empire to the Netherlands. The movement was greatly influenced by the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire, and may have originated in the Byzantine Empire, namely through adherents of the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Anatolia who were resettled in Thrace.
The name of Bulgarians was also applied to the Albigensians, and they maintained an association with the similar Christian movement of the Bogomils of Thrace. "That there was a substantial transmission of ritual and ideas from Bogomilism to Catharism is beyond reasonable doubt." Their doctrines have numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils and the Paulicians, who influenced them, as well as the earlier Marcianists, who were found in the same areas as the Paulicians, the Manicheans and the Christian Gnostics of the first few centuries AD, although, as many scholars, most notably Mark Pegg, have pointed out, it would be erroneous to extrapolate direct, historical connections based on theoretical similarities perceived by modern scholars.
The writings of the Cathars were mostly destroyed because of the doctrine's threat perceived by the Papacy; thus, the historical record of the Cathars is derived primarily from their opponents. Cathar ideology continues to be debated, with commentators regularly accusing opposing perspectives of speculation, distortion and bias. Only a few texts of the Cathars remain, as preserved by their opponents which give a glimpse into the ideologies of their faith. One large text has survived, The Book of Two Principles, which elaborates the principles of dualistic theology from the point of view of some Albanenses Cathars.
It is now generally agreed by most scholars that identifiable historical Catharism did not emerge until at least 1143, when the first confirmed report of a group espousing similar beliefs is reported being active at Cologne by the cleric Eberwin of Steinfeld. A landmark in the "institutional history" of the Cathars was the Council, held in 1167 at Saint-Félix-Lauragais, attended by many local figures and also by the Bogomil papa Nicetas, the Cathar bishop of France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy.
The Cathars were a largely local, Western European/Latin Christian phenomenon, springing up in the Rhineland cities, particularly Cologne, in the mid-12th century, northern France around the same time, and particularly the Languedoc—and the northern Italian cities in the mid-late 12th century. In the Languedoc and northern Italy, the Cathars attained their greatest popularity, surviving in the Languedoc, in much reduced form, up to around 1325 and in the Italian cities until the Inquisitions of the 14th century extirpated them.
Catharism is generally believed to be a syncretic form of Zoroastrianism and Gnosticism and the heir to Manichaeism.

Beliefs

Cosmology

cosmology identified two creator deities. The first was the creator of the spiritual realm contained in the New Testament, while the second was the demiurge depicted in the Old Testament who created the physical universe. The demiurge was often called Rex Mundi.
Some gnostic belief systems including Catharism began to characterise the duality of creation as a relationship between hostile opposing forces of good and evil. Although the demiurge was sometimes conflated with Satan or considered Satan's father, creator or seducer, these beliefs were far from unanimous. Some Cathar communities believed in a mitigated dualism similar to their Bogomil predecessors, stating that the evil god Satan had previously been the true God's servant before rebelling against him. Others, likely a majority over time given the influence reflected on the Book of the Two Principles, believed in an absolute dualism, where the two gods were twin entities of the same power and importance.
All visible matter, including the human body, was created or crafted by this Rex Mundi; matter was therefore tainted with sin. Under this view, humans were actually angels seduced by Satan before the War in Heaven against the army of Michael, after which they would have been forced to spend an eternity trapped in the evil God's material realm. The Cathars taught that to regain angelic status one had to renounce the material self completely. Until one was prepared to do so, they would be stuck in a cycle of reincarnation, condemned to suffer endless human lives on the corrupt Earth.
Zoé Oldenbourg compared the Cathars to "Western Buddhists" because she considered that their view of the doctrine of "resurrection" in Christianity was similar to the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth.