The Cathars were called Manicheans by the Catholics.
Manichean page on Wikipedia.
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Later movements accused of "Neo-Manichaeism"[edit]
During the Middle Ages, several movements emerged that were collectively described as "Manichaean" by the Catholic Church, and persecuted as Christian heresies through the establishment, in 1184, of the Inquisition.[57] They included the Cathar churches of Western Europe. Other groups sometimes referred to as "neo-Manichaean" were the Paulician movement, which arose in Armenia,[58] and the Bogomils in Bulgaria.[34] An example of this usage can be found in the published edition of the Latin Cathar text, the Liber de duobus principiis (Book of the Two Principles), which was described as "Neo-Manichaean" by its publishers.[59] As there is no presence of Manichaean mythology or church terminology in the writings of these groups, there has been some dispute among historians as to whether these groups were descendants of Manichaeism.[60]
Manichaeism - Wikipedia
Part of the Cathar page.
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Catharism (/ˈkθərɪzəm/; from the Greek: καθαροί, katharoi, "the pure [ones]")[2][3] was a Christian dualist or Gnostic revival[4] movement that thrived in some areas of Southern Europe, particularly northern Italy and what is now southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries. The followers were known as Cathars and are now mainly remembered for a prolonged period of persecution by the Catholic Church which did not recognise their belief as truly Christian. Catharism appeared in Europe in the Languedoc region of France in the 11th century and this is when the name first appears. The adherents were also sometimes known as Albigensians after the city Albi in southern France where the movement first took hold. The beliefs are believed to have been brought from Persia or the Byzantine Empire.
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The idea of two Gods or principles, one being good and the other evil, was central to Cathar beliefs. The good God was the God of the New Testament and the creator of the spiritual realm, contrasted with the evil Old Testament Godthe creator of the physical world whom many Cathars, and particularly their persecutors, identified as Satan.[citation needed] All visible matter, including the human body, was created by this evil god; matter was therefore tainted with sin. This was the antithetical to the monotheistic Catholic Church, whose fundamental principle was that there was only one God, who created all things visible and invisible.[9] Cathars thought human spirits were the genderless spirits of angels trapped within the physical creation of the evil god, destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum.[10]
From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and by persuading the local authorities to act against them. In 1208 Innocent's papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars.[11] Pope Innocent III then abandoned the option of sending Catholic missionaries and jurists, declared Pierre de Castelnau a martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade which all but ended Catharism.[11][12]
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Theology[edit]
Some[who?] believe that the Catharist conception of Jesus resembled nontrinitarian modalistic monarchianism (Sabellianism) in the West and adoptionism in the East.[29][30]
Bernard of Clairvaux's biographer and other sources accuse some Cathars of Arianism,[31][32] and some scholars see Cathar Christology as having traces of earlier Arian roots.[33][34] According to some of their contemporary enemies[who?] Cathars did not accept the normative Trinitarian understanding of Jesus, but considered him the human form of an angel similar to Docetic Christology.[35] Zo Oldenbourg (2000) compared the Cathars to "Western Buddhists" because she considered that their view of the doctrine of "resurrection" taught by Jesus was, in fact, similar to the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation.[36] The Cathars taught that to regain angelic status one had to renounce the material self completely. Until one was prepared to do so, he/she would be stuck in a cycle of reincarnation, condemned to live on the corrupt Earth.[37]
The alleged sacred texts of the Cathars besides the New Testament, include The Gospel of the Secret Supper, or John's Interrogation and The Book of the Two Principles.[38]
Social relationships[edit]
Killing was abhorrent to the Cathars. Consequently, abstention from all animal food (sometimes exempting fish) was enjoined of the Perfecti. The Perfecti avoided eating anything considered to be a by-product of sexual reproduction.[25] War and capital punishment were also condemnedan abnormality in Medieval Europe. In a world where few could read, their rejection of oath-taking marked them as social outcasts.
Cathars also rejected marriage. This practice was based principally on the belief that the physical world, including the flesh, was irredeemably evilas it stemmed from the evil principle or "demiurge".[39] Therefore, reproduction was viewed by them as a moral evil to be avoidedas it continued the chain of reincarnation and suffering in the material world. It was claimed by their opponents that, given this loathing for procreation, they generally resorted to sodomy. Such was the situation that a charge of heresy leveled against a suspected Cathar was usually dismissed if the accused could show he was legally married.
Catharism - Wikipedia
Here is a Brill book which quotes an orthodox document attacking the Cathars.
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Feast, Fast or Famine: Food and Drink in Byzantium
Wendy Mayer, Silke Trzcionka
(BRILL, 2005)
There is no doubt that the rejection of meat-eating became a criterion for assessing heresy in Byzantium and the western Middle Ages. Writing against the Cathars in the twelfth century Eckbert of Schnau details ten charges against them and the second he says is the avoidance of meat:
those who have become full members of this sect avoid all meat. This is not for the same reason as monks and other followers of the spiritual life abstain from it: they say meat must be avoided because all flesh is born of coition and therefore they think it unclean.
The authors of the book then said.
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The rejection of meat on the ground that it was a product of sexual relations and therefore unclean harks back to earlier statements attributed to Gnostic groups and the Manicheans.
Now, the thread author's text.
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For those who don't know, Manicheanism is the belief that the material world is evil (having been created by an evil spirit such as Satan), but that human beings contain a spark of spirit that connects them to God.
In the early Christian era this was a common belief (so common that the Church fathers are constantly railing against it). Coupled with the belief that salvation could only be achieved by receiving some secret knowledge about Christ's teaching, this formed the basis of what we term 'Gnostic Christianity'.
On the "knowledge" or gnosis issue.
If one looks at the origins of the use then, I think it is instructive.
The whole issue of secret knowledge seems to be traced to what was presented as Jesus' REAL teachings and (IMO) is a form OR type of authentic "apostolic" tradition.
Call it "faith" in the actual teachings.
It seems to have been something of a way of combating perceived corruption and perversion of Jesus' actual teachings.
The Gospel of Thomas has Jesus telling people to go to James the Just for understanding of the proper or real teachings.
It has to do with authentic religion.
The Jewish Christianity teachings of Jesus and James.
Manichean's came later and did seem to reject Jewish scriptures (it isn't clear if that was much the case with the Jewish-Christians who followed James and who had many anti-Old Testament views that would later be a major part of Gnosticism) as perversions and instead liked Paul.
This whole Gnosis thing seems to have been simply a way of "knowing Jesus" and is more like "faith".
Just an issue of what is the true teachings of the religion (in a world of deception).
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