The Lost Teachings of the Cathars

The Lost Teachings of the Cathars: Their Beliefs and Practices
by Andrew Phillip Smith
Published in November 2015
256 Pages
Thibault’s Score: 4/5

The Cathars were a group of heretical Christians who lived in Southern France. It is unclear exactly when they appeared, but were a small but demographically noticeable minority by the early 1200s. In 1209, Pope Innocent III declared the Albigensian Crusade - an internal “mini-crusade” within France, supposedly to exterminate the Cathars.

The Cathars lived in a territory called Languedoc in the south of what is today France. The crusade was led by French crusaders, but had international participants from England, Germany, Spain, and Italy. When the crusaders arrived, they massacred the people of Languedoc - exterminating the local Catholic nobility and massacring the civilian population. The local nobles were replaced by French nobles, and Languedoc was incorporated into France.

The Cathars were a tiny minority within Languedoc. Languedoc was nominally a fief of the Catholic King of Aragon, but the Aragonians had no effective control. The political effect of the crusade was to permanently sever Languedoc and Foix from Aragon, and integrate it into France.

The Cathars were demographically insignificant in most areas affected by the crusade. The crusaders exterminated them along with the majority Catholic population. One crusader famously declared “kill them all, and let God sort them out.” When the war was coming to a close, and it became politically unprofitable to kill civilians, the crusaders spared all civilians - including the Cathar heretics. This proves that the crusade was predominantly about politics and the papal sanctioned annexation of Languedoc into France; not about exterminating a heresy. The Cathars were essentially semi-innocent bystanders caught in the mix.

The Cathars would later be hunted down and nearly exterminated by the inquisition over the following century and a half. It is notable that the Cathars continued to exist long after the Albigensian Crusade. They experienced several re-emergences, then re-exterminations, and ultimately disappeared from history.

Despite their disappearance, many clues suggest that others took on their most important ideas. There are protestant movements in the 1600s that seem to take their ideas; some of their iconography appears on everything from Tarot cards to watermarks on paper; and future authors and artists seem like they are influenced by them. In the 19th century, romantics and theosophists influenced by Rudolf Steiner travelled to Languedoc. There, they rediscovered and re-imagined Catharism, forming various neo-Cathar revival movements. These movements are, at best, fantastic re-imaginings because much of what the Cathars themselves believed has been lost to time.
Catharism was a gnostic Christian sect that drew most of its ideas from Bogolimilism. They seem to have maintained contacts with the Bogomils until the bitter end, with there even being a visit of “Bulgarian Cathars” (likely in fact Bogomils) who came to Northern Italy to help retrain Cathar bishops following the inquisition and Crusade. The Catholic Inquisition itself wrote that the Cathars came to France because of returning Crusaders who were influenced by Bogomils while travelling through the Balkans.

The Cathars likely drew on other cultural traditions such as other Christian gnostic sects, remnants of Languedoc folk religion, Manicheism, and perhaps even Buddhism. It is hard to trace exactly how these influences moved, because there were significant cultural contacts with both the Cathars via the Crusades to the Holy Land, as well as the Bogomils via Constantinople. Smith doesn’t cover this, but various steppe people like the Pechenegs, Avar, and Cuman all raided the Balkans. These peoples originally came from Central Asia, where Buddhism and Manicheanism thrived and survived well into the 11th century. The idea that ideas came alongside raiders and merchants is now widely accepted by historians; but significant ambiguity remains about which ideas came and when.

Smith spends much time discussing the specific beliefs of the Cathars. I found this to be the least interesting part of the book; because they seem like fairly generic Gnostic ideas I’ve come across before. Smith is himself a neo-gnostic Christian and is very sympathetic to the Cathars; while I very much see these as some of the most repulsive anti-human ideologies to ever exist. Despite my distaste for their actual ideas, I still recommend these chapters. Readers coming across gnosticism for the first time will find Smith’s explanations to be very clear and refreshing.

Smith is obviously biased; and makes no effort to hide his pro Cathar bias. This is actually refreshing. Many historical books are biased, but cloak themselves with a veneer of academic neutrality. They hide their nonsense by using academic jargon. Their jargon substitutes short words for long, without adding any specificity or insight. I was pleased to find that Smith’s writing style is particularly clear and concise.

Smith ends the book with a discussion of neo-Cathar movements, and how they intersected with a wide array of unrelated groups such as the followers of Rudolf Steiner, Nazi Germany, Christian revival movements, occultists, and hippies.

If you want to get a good introduction to the Cathars, I very highly recommend this book. This book answers most of the supposed “mysteries” by clearly outlining all of the available evidence.

​