Samaria for the purpose of communicating, by the imposition of hands, the Holy Ghost to those who had received water-baptism. When it was objected to them that it was in contradiction with their own principles, according to which all sensible things proceeded from the evil principle, to attribute so much importance to a sensible act, and represent it as the instrument of an inward operation of divine grace, they replied: The Holy Spirit is communicated, not by the visible but by an invisible hand; the invisible hand is contained under the visible. St. Paul distinguishes an inner and an outer man; and so likewise there must be an inner and an outer hand. This consolamentum seems to have been twofold; the rite of initiation, whereby one was received into the communion of the sect, adopted among the number of the believers (credentes); and that whereby he was received into the circle of the fully initiated, into the number of the perfects. This latter act was doubtless so called by them in the stricter sense, since it was only by means of it that the new birth and the impartation of the Holy Spirit were effected; as we may gather from the fact that the perfects were distinguished by the epithet Consolati.2 Answering to this consolamentum in the stricter sense, was the rite likewise so called, whereby he who had hitherto belonged only to the number of the credentes was, in the hour of death, received into the more limited circle of the sect, so as to be in a condition to enter, immediately after death, into the heavenly world.3 The consolamentum of adoption into the number of believers was performed, according to a description of the rite drawn up in the twelfth century, after the following manner: "They assembled in a room dark and closed in on all sides, but illuminated by a large number of lights affixed to the walls. Then the new candidate was placed in the centre, where the presiding officer of the sect laid a book (probably the gospel of St. John) on his head, and gave him the imposition of hands, at the same time reciting the Lord's prayer." As it regards the Lord's supper, they were of the opinion that Christ, with the words "This is," pointed to his own body; or they explained the words of the institution in a symbolical sense. "This is," was equivalent to this signifies. They referred, in proof, to those paragraphs of the New Testament, where the thing itself is mentioned in place of that which it may serve to represent; as, for example, in 1 Corinth. 10: 4.5 They referred to the fact, that Christ himself says: "My flesh profiteth nothing; my words are spirit and life," that is, are to be spiritually understood. His words, by which he communicates himself, are his true body. Moreover, they said, in partaking of the means of nourishment, in communion with Christ as his members, the bread and wine were converted into the body and blood of the Lord. This was to be represented in their love-feasts, at which the presiding officer of the sect imparted the blessing by reciting the Lord's prayer. They combated the doctrine of the sacrament of penance, of the necessity of a satisfaction for sins committed after baptism; according to their own doctrine, the consolamentum was a substitute for all other penance. When the members of the sect came to the bishop for the purpose of confessing their sins, they prostrated themselves before him, after the manner of the East. Each person said, "Have mercy upon us, O Lord. I never must die; but inherit thee on high, that I may have a good end." The bishop then bestowed on each, with the imposition of his hands, the consolamentum; thrice repeating, "And that thou mayst be a good man."2 Many Catharists appealed to the fact that Christ, the great High Priest, enjoined no works of satisfaction on the woman caught in adultery.3 Contending against the externalization of religion in the dominant church, they said: God dwells not in houses made with hands. It is not the house of stone, but the good man and the good woman, and the community of such, that constitutes the church. Prayer in the church is no better than prayer in the closet. It is better to clothe the poor than to decorate the walls of a church. Yet we are not to suppose that this sect held on in the true direction to an interior vital Christianity. On the contrary, they united with their mystical element another species of externalization. To the consolamentum was ascribed a magical efficacy; the fellowship of heaven was made as dependent upon it as it was in the dominant church on the priestly acts. We recognize the same tendency of the times, in those cases where laymen of the Catholic church eagerly put on, at the very hour of death, the monkish cowl, in order to make sure of salvation, and in those cases where others were eager to obtain, in the very hour of death, the consolamentum by the Catharists, and to be buried among them.5 If men elsewhere sought to make themselves more certain of the forgiveness of their sins by bequests to the clergy and 1 Ecbert, l. c. f. 602: Se solos in mensis suis corpus Domini facere dicunt, verba sancta dicunt esse panem, quia cibus animae sunt verba evangelica. Ebrardus contra Catharos, c. viii. Bibl, patr. Lugd. t. xxiv, f. 1547. See the dialogue betwixt the Catholic and the Catharist in Martene and Durand, t. v. f. 1730. 2 The German words, "Und werdest ein gut Mann," are so given by Rainer, c. vi, Bibl. patr. Lugd. t. xxv, f. 272. 3 Moneta, f. 306: Quidam garruli objiciunt dicentes, quod Christus summus sacerdos et pontifex secundum ordinem Melchisedek nulla satisfactionis opera injunxit mulieri in adulterio deprehensae. Ebrard. Bibl. patr. Lugd. t. xxiv, f. 1537. Rainer, c. v. Bibl. patr. Lugd. t. XXV, f. 266. In the Chronicle of Puy Lorent, the following anecdote is related. Bishop William, of Alby, in South France, received a message in the night from Pierre de Beres, a knight notorious for robbery, and other VOL. IV. 49 crimes, who was a kinsman of his, requesting him to come to his castle, some hours distant, the knight being very sick and near to death, and wishing to speak with him on certain affairs, before he left the world. When the business was finished for which the bishop had been summoned, the latter asked the knight where he wished to be buried, naming several consecrated places. The knight replied, he needed give himself no trouble about that matter, for he had already made up his mind on the subject. When the bishop pressed him further, he declared that it was his wish to be conveyed to a community of the Catharists. The bishop now assured him that this would not be allowed; but said the knight, "Better give yourself no trouble about it; for if I could not do otherwise, I would crawl to them on all fours." See the Chronicon magistri Guilelmi de Podio Laurentii, c. iii, in Du Chesne Scriptores hist. Franc. t. v, f. 668. to the churches, bequests to the communities of the Catharists were made on precisely the same principle. We may believe, therefore, that as the former suffered themselves to be misled, by trusting in the outward things of the church, into a false security; so the same effect was produced on the latter, by reliance on the consolamentum in the hour of death.2 In fact, the externalization in the Catharistic doctrine of the consolamentum, which stood them in place of all the sacraments, may have been pushed farther than it was in the church doctrine of the sacraments. While the necessity of the consolamentum was unconditionally asserted, for instance, by the Catharists, the votum might serve on the contrary, according to the doctrine of the church, as a substitute for the sacraments, when they were unavoidably omitted." In the case of such a sect, limited to itself, this principle of externalization, having once gained a foothold, would be the more likely to be pushed to an extreme, as those manifold tendencies of the religious spirit in different directions were here absent, which, acting as a check on each other, preserved the Catholic church from too stiff a uniformity and too downright one-sidedness. It is quite evident, also, how little capable the Catharists were of understanding their own straightness and confinement, by comparing it with the manifold diversity which distinguished the Catholic church of this period, when we find them proceeding on the principle, that there is but one uniform way of salvation, which was to be found in their own sect alone, and hence regarding that manifoldness as a reproach to the church, as a proof that she did not know the one only way of salvation. Although the Catharists, in opposing the authority of church tradition,5 the hierarchy, the worship of saints and images, the value of pilgrimages, are precursors of the Protestant principle, still it is evi See the words of Moneta, f. 393: Nesciunt enim, quod plures viae ad unam Nonne tua synagoga legata recipit mortudeveniunt viam. Bibl. patr. Lugd. t. xxiv, orum? Nonne aliquoties cum aliquis mori- f. 1563. tur, recepta manuum impositione a te, legat ecclesiae tuae tantum vel tantum et alii totidem aut plus vel minus. Which is also confirmed by other evidence. 2 As is shown in the above-stated example. 3 Hence Moneta, from this starting-point, combats, in connection with the church mode of thinking, the externalization which was carried to such extremes. See Moneta, f. 304, col. 2, where he cites against it the example of the thief on the cross. 4 Quod unica est via ad salvationem secundum Christum, Joann. 14, 6, cum ergo via ecclesiae Romanae multiplex sit, alia enim est via monachorum, alia canonicorum regularium, et alia clericorum aliorum, alia fratrum praedicatorum, alia minorum, ecclesia Romana non est de via salutis. Moneta, lib. v, c. i, f. 396. So likewise Ebrard. contra Catharos, c. xix: Dicunt unam tantum salutis esse viam, ad quam ipsi prae caeteris devenerunt. 5 Rainer says, particularly, they did not receive the writings of the fathers; but the four evangelists having written, as they said, in a saving way, because they had written upon the heart, these they received — sed tantum moraliter exponunt; an expression too general, correctly applying only to those spiritualizing Catharists. The other four, say they, had written unprofitably, because they only wrote on the lifeless parchment, namely, Jerome, Augustin, Ambrose, and Bernard. The writings of these fathers they despised, and said of them that they were damned. It deserves to be noticed, however, that they are said to have made an exception here of St. Bernard, eo quod ipse conversus ab errore suo sit et salvatus. What may have led them to make this exception? The kindred mystic element, or the way in which he protected the Catharists from the bloodthirsty rage of the populace? See Rainer, contra Cath aros, c. vi; Bibl. patr. Lugd. t. xxv, f. 267 dent from what has been said, that in other respects they are the farthest possible removed from it; and among these may be mentioned the great importance they gave to works as a condition of salvation. Their opponents combated them on this very point, and set up faith and grace in opposition to the merit of works. It is from this point of view that Eberhard of Schönau, in attacking them, gives the priority to faith; because, where there is faith, works will invariably follow of themselves, while with works faith is not necessarily given.1 From the principles of the Catharists proceeded a rigidly ascetic system of morality, to the observance of which, however, none but the perfects were obligated. Those principles required abstinence from meat, eggs, and cheese; from everything that is the product of the sexual intercourse of animals. Perhaps only by a part it was held unlawful to kill animals, or certain species of animals. This probably stood in some connection with their doctrine of metempsychosis. They condemned marriage, so far as connected with sexual intercourse; for, according to the doctrine of one party of the Catharists, this is the very means whereby the heavenly souls are continually confined anew in the corporeal world, while, according to the other, this intercourse was the capital sin into which Adam suffered himself to be beguiled by the evil spirit. The words of Christ: "What God has joined together let no man put asunder," the more Dualistic Catharists explained of the spiritual marriage between Christ and the church;3 and accordingly they permitted only a spiritual marriage, without sexual intercourse. To the Esoterics and Exoterics in this sect correspond the two classes of perfecti, or boni homines, who were called Catharists in the stricter sense, and the credentes. According to the testimony of Rainerio Sacchoni, who wrote against the Catharists, in the first half of the thirteenth century, there were countless numbers in all quarters of the world, who belonged to the second class; but only four thousand of both sexes belonging to the class of the "perfect." A numerical statement of this sort, relating to a sect that propagated itself in secret, is of course a matter of uncertainty, still, the statement becomes more probable when we are informed that he himself had been for seventeen years a member of the sect. He refers, moreover, to a census repeatedly taken among themselves; and notwithstanding opposite parties existed among them, such a census might very well have been made; for, in spite of these differences, they still mutually acknowledged one another as belonging to the same community.5 The perfects stood in the same kind of relation to the entire sect, as the elect in the sect of the Manichaeans. They In operibus solummodo confidentes, fidem praetermittunt, cum fides operibus potius sit praeponenda. He appeals to the fact that to the question (John vi): Quid faciemus, ut operemur opera Dei? Christ answered, Hoc est opus Dei, ut credatis in eum, quem misit ille. Ecce, quod credere hic appellat operari, omnis enim, qui credit, operatur, sed non omnis, qui operatur, cre- 2 Rainer, c. vi, t. xxv, f. 268. 5 Omnes ecclesiae Catharorum recipiunt represented themselves as being persons who in utter poverty, amidst constant persecutions, wandering about without a settled home, truly copied the life of Christ and of the apostles, while the walk of the worldly-minded clergy was in direct contradiction to that life. From the number of these perfects, as in the case of the Manichaeans, were chosen the presiding officers of the sect; first, a bishop; then under him a filius major and a filius minor; finally, a deacon. It deserves to be noticed, that several were destined from their childhood to the office of bishop, and educated for this purpose, who received for their food no other milk than the milk of almonds, and no flesh but fish, and who were obliged to observe the rigid diet of the perfects.3 But an opposition of this sort, so entirely at variance with the essence of the Christian life, could only be injurious in its influence on that life, so that the higher the requisitions made on the strict living of the perfects, the greater would be the disposition to overlook the failings of the credentes. Yet how shall we reconcile it with the above statement that, according to the testimony of the first opponents themselves, it was their blameless and strict mode of life that distinguished the Catharists generally; that they abstained from cursing and swearing, and simple yea or nay was a substitute with them for the strongest attestations. It may be, that it was not till after the sect had be come more widely spread and acquired a proselyting spirit, that this opposition between the moral life of the perfects and of the believers became more prominent, and the standard of conduct required of the latter was lowered down. But it may be, too, that those who were no better than the great mass of the dominant church, did not belong to the believers among the Catharists, but to the Catechumens, the auditores; that the opponents of the Catharists, who noticed only the distinction between the perfects and the believers, failed duly to distinguish the Catechumens from the latter, and many things which might be true of the Catechumens came to be transferred to the believers. And so it may have been these auditors, who put off the consolamentum which they were bound to receive, till the hour of death, in the expectation that they might then pass over, purified from all their sins, into the higher world. It is plain, at least, from the report of the proceedings of the inquisition at Toulouse,5 published by Philip of Limborch, which contains the trial of several men and women belonging to the sect of the Catharists, that such persons entered into an agreement with the presiding officer of the same, in virtue of se invicem, licet diversas habeant opiniones et contrarias. L. c. f. 271. See e. g. the letter of the provost Everwin of Steinfeld, giving a report to abbot Bernard of Clairvaux, of the Catharists, discovered in the region of Cologne, in the 3d vol. of Mabillon's Analecta, in the octavo ed. Rainer, f. 269. Nutrientes cum lacte amygdalino et pecudis, in Rainer, f. 272, should read, without doubt: et non pecudis. The provost Everwin of Steinfeld, in the above-mentioned letter, distinguishes the following three classes: Prius per manus impositionem de numero eorum, quos auditores vocant, recipiunt quemlibet inter credentes et sic licebit eum interesse orationibus eorum, usquedum satis probatum eum faciunt electum. In the Appendix to his Historia Inquisitionis. Amstelodami, 1692. Called La convenensa. |