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The Motives of the Cathars: Some Reflections

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

M. D. Lambert
M. D. Lambert*
Affiliation:
University of Bristol
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Extract

Catharism in the affected regions of Languedoc, especially the eastern Toulousain, Carcassès, part of the Albigeois, where the problem of heresy first reached crisis point for twelfth-century churchmen, affected all classes. This is admitted by Marxist as well as non-Marxist historians. A working hypothesis has been put foward by Griffe to explain why the heresy, which affected a whole series of localities in the twelfth century, built up support more strongly in these areas of Languedoc than anywhere else. Usurpation of tithes, he suggests, predisposed an impoverished rural nobility to support cathar preachers who confirmed them in their hostility to the church by suggesting religious reasons why they should not give up the detained tithes. Disputed allegiances, conflicts and war costs weakened the position of the lords who might otherwise have supported persecution at the early and vulnerable stage of the heresy’s development. So preachers were free to gain converts.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 15: Religious Motivation Biographical and Sociological Problems for the Church Historian , 1978 , pp. 49 - 59
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1978

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References

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2 Les Débuts pp 166-208; compare Wakefield, [W. L.], Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition [in Southern France, 1100-1250] (London 1974) pp 65–81 Google Scholar.

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8 Koch, Frauenfrage pp 49-70; Griffe, Le Languedoc Cathare pp 77-184 passim; for examples of the importance of women in one noble family see Wakefield, W. L., ‘The Family of Niort in the Albigensian Crusade and before the Inquisition’, Names 18 (Potsdam, New York 1970) pp 97–117 Google Scholar, 286-303.

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17 Sacconi in Dondaine, Traité pp 69-70.

18 Borst, Die Katharer p 184.

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24 Lambert, Medieval Heresy pp 126-32. For the siting of these meetings see the comment of Fine, J. V. A. Jr. in Speculum 41 (1966) pp 526-9Google Scholar.

25 Dictionary of American Biography 2 (New York 1929) pp 361-3 and literature given.

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32 Ibid pp 134-5.

33 Ibid p 85; Borst, Die Katharer p 107.

34 Koch, Frauenfrage p 28.

35 For examples of villages where the deathbed consolamentum became the norm, see Le Languedoc cathare p 91; cemeteries of heretics, ibid pp 92, 96, 101, 123, 147, CaF 3 (1968) p 80.

36 L’Épopée cathare p 126.

37 See comment on the dating of the decline of catharism by Wakefield in Names 18 (1970) p 303.

38 Grundmann (2 ed) pp 13-38.

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40 Borst, Die Katharer pp 240-53.

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42 PL 182 (1879) cok 676-80.

43 Revue Belge 38 (1960) p 828.

44 Clédat, Le Nouveau Testament p xvii; trans by Wakefield, Evans, Heresies p 489; compare the Latin ritual in Dondaine, Un Traité p 159 lines 22-4.

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55 Ibid p 531.

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58 I owe this account to the kindness of professor W. L. Wakefield, formerly of State University College in Potsdam, New York. For his source, Toulouse, town library, MS 609, see Dossat, Y., Les crises de l’inquisition toulousaine (Bordeaux 1959)Google Scholar. The confession is to be found on fol 42r (Petrus Faure) and a corroborating one by Na Mateus, the mother, on fol 29v.