Search results
Results From The WOW.Com Content Network
A Cathar Perfect had to undergo a rigorous training of three years before being inducted as a member of the spiritual elite of the religious movement. [ citation needed ] This took place during a ceremony in which various Scriptural extracts were quoted, including, most particularly, the opening verses of the Gospel of John [ citation needed ] .
Catharism (/ ˈ k æ θ ər ɪ z əm / KATH-ər-iz-əm; [1] from the Ancient Greek: καθαροί, romanized: katharoí, "the pure ones" [2]) was a Christian quasi-dualist or pseudo-Gnostic movement, which thrived in the anti-materialist revival in Southern Europe, particularly in northern Italy and southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries. [3]
Following the ceremony the consoled individual became a "Cathar Perfect" or "Parfait". According to the Albigenses [a] and other Cathars, the consolamentum was an immersion (or baptism) in the Holy Spirit. It implied reception of all spiritual gifts including absolution from sin, spiritual regeneration, the power to preach, and elevation to a ...
Having become "perfect," the soul, upon the death of the body, could escape the perpetual cycle of death and rebirth and achieve salvation. [10] Prior to becoming a perfect, believing Cathars were encouraged but not always required to follow Cathar teaching on abstaining from sex and meat, and most chose not to do so.
Guilhabert de Castres (about 1165 – 1240) was a prominent Cathar theologian. Born in Castres, he became a Cathar Perfect and, between 1223 and 1226, Bishop of Toulouse in the Cathar Church.
The Cathars who had not yet reached the status of perfect were also allowed to go free. The Cathar perfects were given the choice to return to Catholicism or face death. This solution angered many of the soldiers, who had wanted to participate in a massacre.
The terms Cathar, Catharism and even Perfecti and Credentes were ones used by their persecutors, the religious and temporal authorities of the time. The Cathars themselves never referred to themselves as such, calling themselves only "Bons Hommes", "Bonnes Femmes" or "Bons Chrétiens" (i.e. "Good Men", "Good Women" and "Good Christians").
Cathar castles; Cathar Perfect; Cathar yellow cross; Caussou; Château de Puilaurens; Comparison of Catharism and Protestantism; Conrad Dorso and John the One-Eyed; Consolamentum; Council of Saint-Félix; Credentes