566

CATHARISTS OF THE MILDER AND THE MORE RIGID PARTY.

ference in the oriental systems at bottom, from which these sects were derived, or from modifications of a peculiar kind, introduced by the later occidental schools.

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As it regards the most important difference, the question admits of a very easy decision. This main difference consists in the following particulars: That one party among the Catharists started from an absolute Dualism, assumed the existence of two ground-principles, one opposed to the other, and of two creations corresponding to these principles; while the other party admitted only a relative Dualism, and regarded the evil principle as a spirit fallen from God, who became the author of a revolution in the universe. In the last party we cannot fail to perceive a relationship with the Bogomiles, and their derivation from this sect, a derivation confirmed also by the apocryphal gospel under the name of the apostle John, which their bishop Nazarius brought along with him from Bulgaria. Now the matter admits, it is true, of being so represented as if the derivation from the Bogomiles was common to the entire sect of Catharists, and as if this view of Dualism was the original one amongst them, while absolute Dualism is to be considered as a later modification introduced in the West. But notwithstanding all the affinity between the systems of the Catharists which sprung out of these two tendencies, still, that fundamental difference is too essential a one, it appears in a form too clearly bearing the impress of its primitive oriental origin, to favor the supposition of such an origin. We might with greater propriety trace many of the affinities in the two classes of Catharists to a later commingling of the sects together, brought about by their common hostility to the dominant church system, and to the monistic principle of dogmatism, in which union their doctrines mutually exerted an influence upon, or passed over into, each other. We may feel ourselves warranted, therefore, to assume the existence of another sect from the East, different from the Euchites, or Bogomiles, as the source whence to derive the other principal party of Catharists. In this case we might first, with contemporary writers, consider Manichaeanism as this source, from which the above-mentioned more abrupt Dualistic tendency is to be derived; but the marks of Manichaeanism are by no means indisputable. Their doctrine concerning creation, concerning

the unknown festival of the Catharists was the Manichaean Bema is a mere conjecture, refuted by what the writer himself states; for his informers, who had once been members of the Catharist sect, told him that this festival, which they called Malilosa, took place in autumn. But Mani's festival of the martyrs happened in the month of March. Again, Ecbert cites, it is true (1. c. f. 103), the declarations of Catharists themselves to prove their derivation from Manichaeanism, to wit, that they accused Augustin of divulging their mysteries. But neither from this circumstance could so much be inferred. The Catharists, it is probable, had simply allowed themselves

the origin of man, concerning Christ, is by no means a Manichaean one, and we are led much more naturally to think of the Paulicians and other sects related to Gnosticism; though they distinguish themselves from the Paulicians, who, consistent to their original tendency, admitted no opposition of esoterics and exoterics within their body, by the fact that such a distinction actually existed among them.

To speak first of the party which started from an absolute Dualism; they supposed two principles, then, subsisting from all eternity, and two creations corresponding to these principles. The good God they regarded as the primal source of a world of imperishable existence related to himself; while they were of the opinion that all perishable existence, as being null, untrue, could only be traced and referred to the evil principle. With this they united, however, the doctrine of a correspondence of the lower and higher worlds. Everything existing here below, as visible and perishable, they taught, has its correspondent, though under a form adapted to that higher region of existence in the upper world; a view which reminds one of the Manichaean doctrine of the pure elements, but which not less finds its analogy in the Gnostic opposition between an original and a representative world. In defence of their Dualism, they appealed to many passages of the Old and New Testament; all that is said concerning the opposition between flesh and spirit, world and God, being interpreted by them in this sense. They insisted especially on the passage in John 8: 44, where, as they would have it, the devil is described as one who had never, from the first, stood in truth and goodness. Like their opponents, who regarded Aristotle as the irrefragable authority for all rational truth, they too appealed confidently to his authority as favoring their views.2 In the processes of nature, these Dualists did not believe it was possible to recognize the self-revealing God. Its unconsciously working, destructive powers, making no difference between good and evil, seemed to them, and this was a point on which both classes of Catharists agreed, to bear testimony of an opposite principle. "How can the fire," said they, "or the water which destroys the dwellings of the poor, of the holy, proceed from the good creation ?""3 The evil principle, Satan, they taught, seized with envy of the good, had exalted himself to the heaven of the latter, and led a third part of the heavenly souls into apostasy. Those heavenly souls they regarded as middle beings between a higher and a lower class. To each soul corresponds a related spirit, of which it is the organ, by which it suffers itself to be determined and guided; and

to fall into the mistake of their adversaries, when they looked upon the Manichaeans, combated by Augustin, as their forerunners. Besides, in pointing out the age and originality of their doctrines, they might be very willing to adopt the view which assigned them such predecessors; and because the hypothesis pleased them, they might notice only the resembling points and overlook the rest; and as they rejected the church, and all her authorities, they would

be likely to rejoice at any chance of criminating Augustin as a traitor to the truth.

In veritate non stetit, ergo non fuit in ea, ergo fuit semper spiritus mendax, ergo non fuit a bono creatore.

2 They appealed to the Aristotelian maxim: Contrariorum contraria sunt principia. See Moneta, lib. i, c. iv, § i, f. 44. 3 L. c. f. 124 et 126.

To which they applied Rev. 12: 4.

each soul also had an organ subordinate to it, a heavenly body, wholly dependent on it, as itself was on that higher spirit. Those spirits were the same as the angels. We may, perhaps, recognize here the Syzygia of the Gnostical doctrine. By their apostasy, these heavenly souls forsook the harmonious connection with that higher world. Hurled with Satan from heaven, they were separated from the spirits belonging with them, and from those heavenly bodies which remained behind in heaven, and Satan succeeded to bind them fast in the corporeal world. So it is those fallen heavenly beings, which in their banishment are ever reappearing under the veil of some human body, in which Satan has confined them. This probably has some connection with their doctrine of metempsychosis. On this basis they combated creatianism. They referred to Sirach 18: 1,3 and particularly to the word "simul," to prove that no new creations took place, and to Deut. 18:1; for, so they argued, if the people to whom Moses spake was the same with those who should hear Christ, then they were not a new people who were born in the time of Christ, but the same that lived already in the time of Moses, which also serves to prove that they held to a metempsychosis. But among these heavenly souls they distinguished different classes, according as they belonged to different princes of heaven. The highest class was composed of those who were described as the spiritual Israel, at whose head stood the highest spirit living in the intuition of God, the arg óour zor veór, as they understood the name Israel, the ὁρατικόν, θεραπευτικὸν γένος. In that name they believed they found a proof of their doctrine, for it certainly referred to such as had seen God. But when and where? Here below it cannot have been; therefore, in an earlier, heavenly existence. The Alexandrian, Gnostic ideas are too plain here to be mistaken.5 Matth. 15: 24 might thus be reconciled, they supposed, with John 10:16. It was especially to save that highest race of souls, the lost sheep of the house of the heavenly prince Israel, that Christ came; but at the same time to redeem also the souls belonging to other princes of heaven, which are the heathen. These Catharists are said to have denied the freedom of the will. They made it an argument against the doctrine of a free will, determining itself by choice between good and evil, that no such will can be supposed in the case of God. They appealed to the texts in the ninth chapter of the epistle to the Romans, employed by others also, in proof of the doctrine of unconditional predestination. It may be questioned, however, whether their opinion on this point has been correctly represented;

for it does not exactly accord with their doctrine of the fall, of repentance, and of the purifying process of fallen souls. Perhaps they only objected to the doctrine which derived evil generally from the creaturely freewill, as they were obliged to do by their Dualism; or to a Theodicy, which referred everything in the progressive development of the earthly life to the free will; while they, on the contrary, believed it must proceed from an original difference of nature, or from the conditions of an earlier existence. They regarded Christ as the highest spirit after God, yet differing from him in essence, and subordinate to him; as they supposed, again, a like subordination between the Son of God and the Holy Ghost. They referred here to those passages of the Old and New Testament which had always been quoted in support of the doctrine of subordination; among others, to Proverbs 8: 22, where they had the reading ixtioaro, not exzoazo,2 which again indicates their connection with the older oriental sects. But if it were inferred from this use of the passages cited, that they considered Christ as merely a creature, this would certainly be wrong; since they were undoubtedly in favor of a doctrine of emanation. The Son of God, then, was sent down, so they taught, to overthrow the kingdom of Satan, to release the fallen souls from the bonds of the corporeal world and of Satan, and to bring them back to the community of heaven, to restore them to their original condition. The Son of God united himself to a spirit, soul, and body, in that heavenly world, and so descended, with the annunciation of the angel, into Mary, and again went forth from her.3 Herself, however, they regarded as a higher spirit, who appeared on earth for the purpose of becoming the instrument or channel for the appearance of the Son of God in humanity. They taught, like the Valentinians, that the heavenly body of Christ was, by a special act of divine power, so modified that it seemed like an earthly one, and could be perceived by the senses. Yet they must explain all sensuous acts and affections, to which Christ subjected himself, as unreal, mere appearances. They maintained, likewise, that all the accounts of the miracles wrought by Christ, were to be understood only in a spiritual sense, as symbols of the spiritual miracles wrought by him. In proof that these accounts should be so understood, they appealed to the words of St. Paul: "The letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive." In a dialogue, written probably in the thirteenth century, between a member of this party and an orthodox man, the Catharist, in reply to the question, Why do you work no such miracles as are adduced in the Catholic church, in testimony of its truth and divinity? says: "We perform a miracle when we convert a man to God; then we drive out from him the evil spirits, his sins. We exorcise the poisonous serpents when we drive out these evil spirits; we speak in other tongues, when we set before our hearers

'As in the texts concerning Jacob and Esau, in the Epistle to the Romans, ch. ix. 2 Moneta, f. 235.

4 L. c. lib. i, c. ix, f. 99 et 222.

5 Disputatio inter Catholicum et Paterinum, published by Martene and Durand, in the Thesaur. nov. anecdotor. t. v.

Moneta, f. 5 et 232: per aurem intravit and per aurem exivit.

truths never before heard. A covering is still over your souls, who believe that Christ and the apostles wrought visible miracles. The letter killeth, the spirit maketh alive. Spiritually we must understand it, and not suppose that Christ called the soul of Lazarus back again to his body, but that he awakened the sinner, one spiritually dead, and passed already, through sin, to putrefaction, by converting him to the faith. So will it happen to you, also, if you will but understand, spiritually, all that is said of the miracles of Christ and of the apostles." The denial of miracles did by no means proceed, in the case of this party of Catharists, from an original tendency of opposition to the supernatural principle; but it grew out of their spiritual Dualism, which led them to regard the sensible world as a work of the evil principle; to disparage, uniformly, the things of sense, and to set little value on deliverance from bodily evils. A kind of miracles quite different from corporeal ones, must be wrought by the representative of the good principle. It belonged to an organ of the evil principle, from which this sensible world proceeds, to perform visible miracles. We may rather look upon these Catharists as the representatives of an ultra supernaturalistic direction, when, instead of contemplating phenomena in the natural connection of cause and effect, we find them representing the powers of the higher world of spirits as everywhere coming into play. While they made the virgin Mary an angel, sent down to the world on a particular errand, a party among them declared the apostle John, whom they especially reverenced, to be an angel who, as Christ said of him that he should remain till he came, was still upon earth. Yet that spiritualizing Docetism might pass over to a rationalistic tendency, setting lightly by or wholly discarding the historical Christ. We find, accordingly, a party among the Albigenses in South France, who taught that the Christ who was born in the earthly and visible Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, belonged to the evil principle, and they did not hesitate to blaspheme him. The Christ of the good principle they would recognize only as an ideal one, a Christ that never ate nor drank, that never took a real body, that existed in this world only in a spiritual manner, in the person of the apostle Paul; so that the apostle Paul was here exalted above the historical Christ, as his doctrine also was recognized as the genuine spiritual Christianity, the historical appearance of the ideal Christ having first taken place in him. We will not deny that, as this account proceeds from the fiercest enemies of the sect, we might be tempted to consider the whole report as a manufactured conclusion, or a pure invention of heresy-hating spite; but as a representation like this is entirely foreign from the spirit of these times, it is not very probable that a story of this sort would be invented. We find mentioned, again, a party of Catharists

1 L. c. f. 1750. "According to Martene and Durand, t. v, f. 1722, Mary was an archangel.

3 The opinion of the Slaves, according to Moneta, 1. c. f. 233.

See the Chronicle of Bal Cernay, be

longing to the thirteenth century, in Du Chesne Scriptores hist. Frane. t. v. c. ii: Bonus enim Christus nunquam comedit vel bibit nec veram carnem assumsit nec unquam fuit in hoc mundo nisi spiritualiter in corpore Pauli.