by Sean Martin
The Spread of Catharism
Once the Church had become aware of the Cathars, they also noted two things: that Catharism was already a fully fledged church that had suddenly emerged, as if from nowhere, and that the Cathars – along with fellow-travellers such as the Publicans and the Waldensians – seemed to be everywhere at once, undermining the foundations of Church and society. In Cologne, more Cathars were unearthed the same year as Eckbert denounced the faith in his Sermones. Like their predecessors of 20 years earlier, they went to the stake. In England, a group of Publicans – who may have been Cathars under another name47 – preached at Canterbury and Oxford, hoping to win new converts to the faith. They were denounced, branded, and thrown out into the winter snow, which no doubt did something to ease the pain of their burning skin. People were forbidden from helping them and were not allowed to give them shelter for the night. All of the Publicans were said to have died of exposure.
Another group of Cathars came to light in 1165 in Lombers, a town ten miles to the south of Albi. With their sensitivities heightened by the Council of Tours and Eckbert’s pronouncements, the Church took the Cathars very seriously indeed. The heretics were arraigned before no fewer than six bishops, eight abbots, the local viscount and Constance, one of the king of France’s sisters. The Cathars themselves knew that they had to be careful, as word would have no doubt reached them that their brethren in Germany had been burnt for their beliefs. Led by a Perfect called Olivier, the Cathars at Lombers engaged in debate with the clergy. They answered questions astutely, referring frequently to the New Testament. They came unstuck, however, over the issue of oath-taking: this was something they simply would not do under any circumstances. They claimed Biblical authority, citing Matthew 5.33–37: ‘But I say unto you, swear not at all: neither by heaven, for it is God’s seat: nor yet by the earth, for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of that great king… your communication shall be yea, yea: nay, nay. For whatsoever is more than that, cometh of evil.’ In mediaeval society, oaths were the glue that held things together: between lord and vassal, between Church and state. They were the middle ages’ equivalent of modern legally binding contracts, and to refuse to swear an oath was an act of the greatest subversion. At this point, Olivier and his fellow Cathars went into a scathing tirade of abuse, denouncing the Church as hypocritical and accusing the assembled bishops of being little better than ravening wolves. However, unlike their unfortunate brethren in the Rhineland, the Lombers Cathars were allowed to remain at large. With anticlericalism running at an all-time high in the Languedoc, there were no doubt many people at Lombers that day who, while not necessarily supporting the Cathars in their beliefs, were unwilling to see them burnt. Such apparent toleration of heresy did not go unnoticed, and would not bode well for the future.
The Council of St Félix
The theological showdown at Lombers was nothing compared to what happened two years later48 in the village of St Félix de Caraman in the Lauragais, south of Toulouse. The gathering of Cathars there in 1167 was ‘the most imposing gathering ever recorded in the history of the Cathars.’49 It was nothing less than an international symposium of Cathars from all over Europe, including – crucially – a delegation from eastern Europe. The purpose of the meeting seems initially to have been to reorganise the Cathar church, and to decide on important issues such as the creation of new bishoprics, the demarcation of diocesan boundaries and the appointment of new bishops.
Presiding over the council was the still enigmatic figure of Papa Nicetas. He had travelled to the Languedoc from Lombardy in the company of Italian Cathars (more of whom later), and was evidently treated with the utmost respect. The word papa is Latin for pope, but it is not certain whether he was one of the fabled heretical Balkan antipopes so feared by the Church. In all probability, he was a bishop of the Bogomil church in Constantinople, although it has been suggested50 that he was merely a charismatic preacher exploiting western hunger for eastern wisdom. He may even have been both. We shall probably never know. What is known, however, is that Nicetas effected a profound shift in Languedocian Catharism, which would change the nature of the movement forever.
That a Bogomil bishop should be invited to chair an important Cathar gathering is the first real evidence we have of the kinship between the two heresies. While they shared numerous beliefs and practices, as we have already noted, strangely no evidence has come to light linking Bogomilism and Catharism prior to the meeting at St Félix. ‘As far as extant records are concerned,’ writes Malcolm Lambert, ‘no Bogomil was ever caught preaching [in the west], leading a group of neophytes or disseminating literature.’51 Quite how the Bogomils spread their dualist creed in the west therefore remains a mystery. Bernard Hamilton has suggested52 that heretical Byzantine monks could have spread Bogomilism while on pilgrimages to shrines in the west, although where in the west they could have made their first landfall is open to conjecture. Palermo in Sicily seems to have had a Bogomil presence by about 1082, possibly due to Bogomils escaping Alexius’s persecution back home. Bogomilism may have had another route into Europe via returning Crusaders, some of whom could have become infected with the heresy while campaigning in the east.53 In short, we don’t know for sure. The Bogomils remain amongst the most elusive of all mediaeval sects, and the lack of firm evidence about their activities in the west gives them the air of phantoms.
Catharism had almost certainly been developing quietly for some decades before the events of 1143 brought it to the notice of the authorities, and, despite its Bogomil ancestry, was ‘never subservient to the East: as soon as we have records of its existence, it is unmistakably and thoroughly westernised and develops a life of its own.’54 The Cathar faith as Nicetas encountered it in 1167 was rapidly expanding, and used the occasion of St Félix to put its house in order. The rambling diocese of Toulouse was split up: Toulouse, Carcassonne, and either Agen or Val d’Aran became bishoprics, and the border between Toulouse and Carcassonne was settled. One aspect of the Cathar church that remained intact, however, was the process by which bishops were elected. Each Cathar bishop would have two bishops-in-waiting beneath him, known as the filius major (elder son) and filius minor (younger son). When the bishop died, retired or resigned, the filius major automatically became the next bishop, and the filius minor became the filius major. A new younger son was then chosen. This helped maintain the unity of the Cathar church, and, in the case of the Languedocian church, helped to unify and strengthen it. Unlike the Catholic Church, there were no protracted rows about succession and election.
At some point in the proceedings at St Félix, however, Nicetas delivered a bombshell. He spoke of the unity of the eastern dualist churches, naming them as Ecclesia Bulgariae (situated probably in eastern Bulgaria or Macedonia), Ecclesia Dalmatiae (Dalmatia), Ecclesia Drugunthia (also known as Ecclesia Dragometiae, which was probably in Thrace or Macedonia), Ecclesia Romanae (Nicetas’s own church in Constantinople), Ecclesia Melenguiae (location unknown, possibly somewhere in the Peloponnese) and Ecclesia Sclavoniae (also Dalmatia, possibly another name for Ecclesia Dalmatiae). While Nicetas claimed that these churches enjoyed cordial relations with one another, they did not in fact see eye to eye on matters of doctrine. The Cathars of the Languedoc were derived from the ordo – or rule – of Ecclesia Bulgariae, which meant that they were moderate dualists. Nicetas informed his captive audience, however, that the ordo of Bulgaria was invalid, as the person or persons from whom the Cathars of the Languedoc had first been consoled had made ‘a bad end’. This was potentially disastrous news, as it meant that all the Perfect in St Félix that day were no longer Perfect. The issue was a crucial one, as the moral life of the clergy in the Catholic Church had been one of the main rallying points in calls for reform from eleventh- and twelfth-century critics, and the Cathars took some pride in the fact that the Perfect were wholly unlike the average Catholic priest in that they were actually holy; they practised what they preached, literally. To have th
e Perfect who had consoled you be exposed as sinful – even if it were only through a minor indiscretion – meant having to be reconsoled. Nicetas had a solution to the problem. His church in Constantinople lived by the ordo of Ecclesia Drugunthia, and he proposed that everyone accept the new ordo. There was one crucial difference between the churches of Bulgaria and Drugunthia: the latter were absolute dualists who were, in the eyes of Rome, even more dangerously heretical than the moderates. After some debate amongst themselves, the delegates at St Félix chose to accept the ordo of Drugunthia.
Catharism in Italy
As has been noted, Nicetas travelled to St Félix in the company of Italian Cathars. In Italy, as elsewhere in Europe, anticlericalism was rife. Arnold of Brescia’s campaigns against the pope only ended with Arnold’s execution in 1155, but stability did not return to the Italian peninsula. The papacy remained locked in conflict with the Holy Roman Emperor, the formidable Frederick Barbarossa, and a series of imperially sponsored antipopes. The situation was exacerbated by the influence of the Pataria, a group of pro-reform clergy which opposed the abuses of a mainly aristocratic clergy during the pontificate of Gregory VII. Like their brethren north of the Alps, the Pataria called for a morally pure clergy and remained deeply suspicious of conspicuous wealth and privilege amongst churchmen. The Pataria remained popular even after the movement’s dissolution, and the time seemed ripe for someone to step into Arnold of Brescia’s shoes.
According to Anselm of Alessandria, a thirteenth-century Inquisitor and chronicler, Catharism came to Italy from Northern France. Sometime in the 1160s, a ‘certain notary’ from that area encountered a gravedigger by the name of Mark in Concorezzo, to the north-east of Milan. Mark, evidently enthused by what the French notary had told him of the new faith, spread the word to his friends John Judeus, who was a weaver, and Joseph, who worked as a smith. Soon there was a small group of would-be Cathars in Milan, and they asked the notary from France for further instruction in the faith. They were told to go to Roccavione, a village on the road that led over the Alpes Maritimes to Nice, where a group of Cathars from northern France which followed the ordo of Bulgaria had established a small community. Mark received the consolamentum and returned to Concorezzo, where he founded a Cathar church and began to preach. Gathering followers, Mark spread the word in both the March of Treviso and Tuscany. It is probable that John Judeus and Joseph the smith also received the consolamentum, and began preaching careers. Further Cathar churches were established at Desenzano, in the March of Treviso (also known as Vicenza), Florence, Val del Spoleto and Bagnolo (sometimes known as the church of Mantua, which was nearby).
Nicetas’s appearance, sometime prior to the gathering at St Félix, changed things in Italy. But unlike the situation in the Languedoc, where his mission had a unifying effect, in Italy he was to sow the seeds of discord. As he was to do at St Félix, Nicetas told Mark and his group that the consolamentum they had received was invalid, presumably as the Perfect who had administered it had also come to a bad end. Nicetas duly reconsoled Mark and his colleagues, and the group then accompanied Nicetas on his historic trip to the Languedoc. The situation, however, got dramatically worse after St Félix. Nicetas disappeared, presumably returning to Constantinople, never to be heard of again. In his place another eastern bishop appeared, Petracius from the church of Bulgaria. He informed Mark that Simon, the Drugunthian bishop who had consoled Nicetas, had been caught with a woman in addition to other, unspecified, immoralities. (Others believe that it was Nicetas himself who had made a bad end, thereby lending weight to the theory that he was something of a charlatan.) This left Mark and his group with no choice: they had to be reconsoled for the second time.
Mark set off, determined to seek a valid reconsoling, but was thrown into prison – presumably after receiving the consolamentum in the east, but before he could return to Concorezzo. John Judeus managed to speak with Mark in prison, and was reconsoled by him. However, John did not have the support of all the Italian Cathars, and some formed a breakaway group under Peter of Florence. At length, an attempt to broker peace between the two factions was made. Delegates from both sides went to the bishop of the northern French Cathars, from whom all the Italians had originated, to seek arbitration. The bishop declared that the matter should be settled by the drawing of lots, a precedent established in the Acts of the Apostles, where the disciples drew lots to elect Judas’s successor. The winning candidate should go to the east, be reconsoled, then return to Italy and proceed to reunify the Cathar church. The plan was scuppered by Peter of Florence, who, in a fit of pique, declared that he would not submit to the drawing of lots. Peter then found himself out of the running, with John Judeus seemingly the winning candidate for the journey to the east. However, some of Peter’s party were not happy with this arrangement, and protested. John Judeus, less of a primadonna than Peter, resigned, not wishing to cause further trouble.
In an attempt to sort out the mess, a council was convened at Mosio, which lay between Mantua and Cremona. The new plan was that each side would propose a candidate from their rivals. The chosen candidates were Garattus, from John Judeus’s party, and John de Judice from Peter’s. Again deferring to apostolic precedent, lots were drawn and Garattus was elected. Preparations were set in motion for his journey to the east: he started to choose travelling companions, and money was collected for the trip. Just as Garattus and his party were about to depart, however, two informers claimed that he had been with a woman. This proved to be the last straw and Italian Catharism splintered permanently. Desenzano remained faithful to the ordo of Drugunthia – and therefore Nicetas – and became a stronghold of absolute Dualism, while Concorezzo, Mark the gravedigger’s church, reverted to the ordo of Bulgaria and moderate Dualism. The church in the Trevisan march took the middle line, and sent their candidate to Ecclesia Sclavoniae, which was impartial in the dispute between Bulgaria and Drugunthia. Unlike their counterparts in the Languedoc, the Italian churches would continue to bicker for the rest of the movement’s existence.
3
The Albigensian Crusade
The Languedoc at the Turn
of the Thirteenth Century
The Languedoc in the year 1200 was a society in remarkable flower. It was one of the most cosmopolitan and sophisticated areas of Europe: trade flourished in the great towns of Toulouse and Carcassonne, with Toulouse itself being only outclassed by Rome and Venice in terms of size and cultural life. The arts were enjoying a renascence, with the ideals of courtly love being praised in the songs and poems of the Troubadours. Religious tolerance was conspicuous, and Jews in particular enjoyed freedoms that they were denied elsewhere. Woven into this rich fabric was Catharism, which, by the turn of the thirteenth century, was endemic throughout the Languedoc. Encouraged by the momentous visit of Nicetas, the Perfect had been hard at work for over a generation, spreading the dualist word throughout the south, creating an heretical kingdom that stretched from Provence to Aragon. That they had been so successful is a tribute both to the temerity and faith of the Perfect, but also to the unique way of life that the Languedoc was enjoying at this high-water mark in its history.
The name Languedoc is a contraction of langue d’oc, the ‘language of yes’, a reference to the fact that in the region’s native tongue, Occitan, yes is oc, not oui. The French language and those who spoke it were far to the north in the Île de France. Power in the Languedoc was shared between the counts of Toulouse, Foix and Comminges, and the viscounts of Béziers and Carcassonne. Although the Languedocian Cathars did not argue amongst themselves, the lords of Languedoc resembled the Italian Cathars: disputes were frequent, quarrels habitual, petty vendettas the norm.
The most powerful of them all was Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. His court was a kaleidoscopic mix of Catholic, Cathar and Jew, entertained by Troubadours and Jongleurs. His friends, as Stephen O’Shea notes, ‘were not distinguished for their piety.’55 Raymond had inherited his title in 1194 from his father, Raymond V. His pa
rents seem to have been on opposite sides of the fence in matters of faith: Raymond’s mother, Constance, had been present at Lombers in 1165 when the Cathars had faced down their Catholic opponents, while his father had invited a group of churchmen to investigate the heresy situation in his lands in 1177. They came, they saw, and promptly concluded that eradicating Catharism from the Languedoc was an impossible task, and went home as soon as possible. The one man whom they did manage to convict was sent to Jerusalem as penance. When he got back to Toulouse, far from having his tail between his legs, he was given a hero’s welcome and was promptly given a well-paid job. This pretty much summed things up: as St Bernard had found to his cost, the Languedoc was indeed a ‘land of many heresies’ and respect for the Church was about as low as it could possibly be.
