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92-634: Catharism ( / ˈ k æ θ ər ɪ z əm / KATH -ər-iz-əm ; from the Ancient Greek : καθαροί , romanized :  katharoí , "the pure ones") was a Christian quasi- dualist or pseudo-Gnostic movement which thrived in Southern Europe , particularly in northern Italy and southern France , between the 12th and 14th centuries. Denounced as a heretical sect by the Catholic Church , its followers were attacked first by

184-718: A legate to the Cathar district in order to arrest the progress of the Cathars. The few isolated successes of Bernard of Clairvaux could not obscure the poor results of this mission, which clearly showed the power of the sect in the Languedoc at that period. The missions of Cardinal Peter of Saint Chrysogonus to Toulouse and the Toulousain in 1178, and of Henry of Marcy , cardinal-bishop of Albano , in 1180–81, obtained merely momentary successes. Henry's armed expedition, which took

276-537: A martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade in 1209. The nearly twenty-year campaign succeeded in vastly weakening the movement. The Medieval Inquisition that followed ultimately eradicated Catharism. There is academic controversy about whether Catharism was a real and organized movement or whether the medieval Church imagined or exaggerated it. The lack of any central organisation among Cathars, regional differences in beliefs and practices, as well as

368-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in

460-569: A general rule did not possess these spiritual warrants. His conviction eventually led to the establishment of the Dominican Order in 1216. The order was to live up to the terms of his rebuke, "Zeal must be met by zeal, humility by humility, false sanctity by real sanctity, preaching falsehood by preaching truth." However, even Dominic managed only a few converts among the Cathars. Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes

552-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and

644-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in

736-405: A lull in the Albigensian Crusade , the bishopric of Razès was added. Bishops were supported by their two assistants: a filius maior (typically the successor) and a filius minor , who were further assisted by deacons. The Perfecti were the spiritual elite, highly respected by many of the local people, leading a life of austerity and charity. In the apostolic fashion, they ministered to

828-407: A man to break the cycle. This belief was inspired by later French Cathars, who taught that women must be reborn as men in order to achieve salvation . Toward the end of the Cathar movement, Catharism became less equal and started the practice of excluding women Perfects. However, this trend remained limited. For example, later on, Italian Perfects still included women. In 1147, Pope Eugene III sent

920-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment

1012-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek

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1104-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c.  300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as

1196-413: A vile end, which, they say, could not happen if God were in it. Of baptism, they assert that the water is material and corruptible and is therefore the creation of the evil power, and cannot sanctify the spirit, but that the churchmen sell this water out of avarice, just as they sell earth for the burial of the dead, and oil to the sick when they anoint them, and as they sell the confession of sins as made to

1288-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and

1380-508: A woman and vice versa . The spirit was of utmost importance to the Cathars and was described as being immaterial and sexless. Because of this belief, the Cathars saw women as equally capable of being spiritual leaders. Women accused of being heretics in early medieval Christianity included those labelled Gnostics , Cathars, and, later, the Beguines , as well as several other groups that were sometimes "tortured and executed". Cathars, like

1472-526: Is Hildegard of Bingen , who in 1163 gave a rousing exhortation against the Cathars in Cologne . During this discourse, Hildegard announced God's eternal damnation on all who accepted Cathar beliefs. While women Perfects rarely travelled to preach the faith, they still played a vital role in the spreading of Catharism by establishing group homes for women. Though it was extremely uncommon, there were isolated cases of female Cathars leaving their homes to spread

1564-623: Is Ibadi , which differ from both of these groups on a few key points. Several ultra-orthodox groups such as the Wahhabis , in turn, see themselves as the only truly orthodox groups within Islam. According to Philip Hitti , during the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphates there was a marked tendency among several quite unrelated heterodox groups to affiliate themselves with the Shiites, particularly

1656-570: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of

1748-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected

1840-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to

1932-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in

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2024-521: Is derived primarily from their opponents. Cathar ideology continues to be debated, with commentators regularly accusing opposing perspectives of speculation, distortion and bias. Only a few texts of the Cathars remain, as preserved by their opponents (such as the Rituel Cathare de Lyon ) which give a glimpse into the ideologies of their faith. One large text has survived, The Book of Two Principles ( Liber de duobus principiis ), which elaborates

2116-476: Is my doxy; heterodoxy is anybody else's doxy who does not agree with me. The Arabic word ghulat is used by Shia Muslims for beliefs perceived as being extremely heterodox (more in line with the Christian use of the word "heresy" ). In particular, the term is used to describe the beliefs of minority Muslim groups who ascribe divine characteristics to a member of Muhammad 's family (especially Ali ) or

2208-588: The Albigensian Crusade and later by the Medieval Inquisition , which eradicated the sect by 1350. Many thousands were slaughtered, hanged, or burnt at the stake, sometimes without regard for age or sex. Followers were known as Cathars or Albigensians , after the French city Albi where the movement first took hold, but referred to themselves as Good Christians . They famously believed that there were not one, but two Gods—the good God of Heaven and

2300-544: The Book of Revelation not a prophecy about the future, but an allegorical chronicle of what had transpired in Satan's rebellion. Their reinterpretation of those texts contained numerous elements characteristic of Gnostic literature. Cathars, in general, formed an anti- sacerdotal party in opposition to the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, protesting against what they perceived to be the moral, spiritual and political corruption of

2392-530: The Book of the Two Principles , believed in an absolute dualism, where the two gods were twin entities of the same power and importance. All visible matter, including the human body, was created or crafted by this Rex Mundi ; matter was therefore tainted with sin . Under this view, humans were actually angels seduced by Satan before a war in heaven against the army of Michael , after which they would have been forced to spend an eternity trapped in

2484-517: The Eastern Orthodox Church , the term is used primarily in reference to Christian churches and denominations not belonging to the communion of Eastern Orthodox churches and espousing doctrines contrary to the received Holy Tradition . Charles Spurgeon said: [Y]ou shall find spiritual life in every church. I know it is the notion of the bigot, that all the truly godly people belong to the denomination which he adorns. Orthodoxy

2576-703: The Gospel of John , the Cathars saw Mary Magdalene as perhaps even more important than Saint Peter , the founder of the church. Catharism attracted numerous women with the promise of a leadership role that the Catholic Church did not allow. Catharism let women become a Perfect. These female Perfects were required to adhere to a strict and ascetic lifestyle, but were still able to have their own houses. Although many women found something attractive in Catharism, not all found its teachings convincing. A notable example

2668-759: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect

2760-615: The Papal Legate , Pierre de Castelnau , was assassinated in January 1208 in Provence. To the Cathars, reproduction was a moral evil to be avoided, as it continued the chain of reincarnation and suffering in the material world. Such was the situation that a charge of heresy levelled against a suspected Cathar was usually dismissed if the accused could show he was legally married. Despite the implicit anti-Semitism of their views on

2852-837: The Supreme Court of India ruled that Hinduism cannot be narrowed down to particular beliefs or doctrine, saying that it "incorporates all forms of belief without mandating the selection or elimination of any one single belief". In late 1999, legislation was created in China to outlaw "heterodox religions". This was applied retroactively to Falun Gong , a spiritual practice introduced to the public in China by Li Hongzhi ( 李洪志 ) in 1992. Heterodox economics refers to schools of economic thought considered outside of mainstream economics , referred to as orthodox economics, often represented by expositors as contrasting with or going beyond neoclassical economics . Heterodox economics refers to

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2944-707: The Virgin Mary , another angel in human form, or possibly a human born of a woman with no involvement of a man. They firmly rejected the Resurrection of Jesus , seeing it as representing reincarnation, and the Christian symbol of the cross , considering it to be no more than a material instrument of torture and evil. They also saw John the Baptist , identified as being the same entity as the prophet Elijah , as an evil being sent to hinder Jesus's teaching through

3036-472: The Waldensians or Valdeis , bear a close similarity to the 'creed' or matrix of beliefs and folk-traditions pieced together under the umbrella of the term 'Catharism.' The fact that there was clearly a spiritual and communal movement of some sort can scarcely be denied since legions of people were willing to part with their lives to defend it. Whether they acted in defense of the doctrine or in defense of

3128-446: The consolamentum ritual. From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and persuading the local authorities to act against the Cathars. In 1208, Pierre de Castelnau , Innocent's papal legate , was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse , who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars. Pope Innocent III then declared de Castelnau

3220-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)

3312-820: The trade routes and spread from the First Bulgarian Empire to the Netherlands . The movement was greatly influenced by the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire , and may have originated in the Byzantine Empire , namely through adherents of the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Anatolia who were resettled in Thrace ( Philippopolis ). The name of Bulgarians ( Bougres )

3404-456: The " consolamentum ", a form of baptism performed when death is imminent. At that moment, they believed they would return to the good God as " Cathar Perfect ". Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who set few guidelines, leading some Catharist practices and beliefs to vary by region and over time. The first mention of Catharism by chroniclers was in 1143, four years later the Catholic Church denounced Cathar practices, particularly

3496-539: The "Cathari", in his book On Heresies , taken from the epitome provided by Epiphanius of Salamis in his Panarion . He says of them: "They absolutely reject those who marry a second time, and reject the possibility of penance [that is, forgiveness of sins after baptism]". These are probably the same Cathari (actually Novations) who are mentioned in Canon 8 of the First Ecumenical Council of Nicaea in

3588-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):

3680-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from

3772-600: The Cathar Church of the Languedoc had a relatively flat structure , distinguishing between the baptised Perfecti (a term they did not use; instead, bonhommes ) and ordinary unbaptised believers ( credentes ). By about 1140, liturgy and a system of doctrine had been established. They created a number of bishoprics , first at Albi around 1165 and after the 1167 Council at Saint-Félix-Lauragais sites at Toulouse , Carcassonne , and Agen , so that four bishoprics were in existence by 1200. In about 1225, during

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3864-576: The Cathar regions. They had to contend not only with the Cathars, the nobles who protected them, and the people who respected them, but also with many of the bishops of the region, who resented the considerable authority the Pope had conferred upon his legates. In 1204, Innocent III suspended a number of bishops in Occitania . In 1205, he appointed a new and vigorous bishop of Toulouse , the former troubadour Foulques . In 1206, Diego of Osma and his canon,

3956-696: The Cathars ). The full title of this treatise in English is, " The errors of the Gazarri, or of those who travel riding a broom or a stick." However the presence of a variety of beliefs and spiritual practices in the French countryside of the 12th and 13th centuries that came to be seen as heterodox relative to the Church in Rome is not actually in question, as the primary documents of the period exhaustively demonstrate. Several of these groups under other names, e.g.

4048-408: The Cathars exist] make 2+2=3 by denying the existence of the persecuted group. The missing element is a dissident religious doctrine, for which historians using a fuller range of sources believe thousands of people were prepared to suffer extreme persecution and an agonising death." The origins of the Cathars' beliefs are unclear, but most theories agree they came from the Byzantine Empire , mostly by

4140-587: The Cathars was the Council , held in 1167 at Saint-Félix-Lauragais , attended by many local figures and also by the Bogomil papa Nicetas , the Cathar bishop of (northern) France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy . The Cathars were a largely local, Western European/Latin Christian phenomenon, springing up in the Rhineland cities, particularly Cologne, in the mid- 12th century , northern France around

4232-476: The Church, especially the sacrament of the eucharist, saying that it cannot contain the body of Christ, for had this been as great as the largest mountain Christians would have entirely consumed it before this. They assert that the host comes from straw, that it passes through the tails of horses, to wit, when the flour is cleaned by a sieve (of horse hair); that, moreover, it passes through the body and comes to

4324-591: The Church. In contrast, the Cathars had but one central rite, the Consolamentum , or Consolation. This involved a brief spiritual ceremony to remove all sin from the believer and to induct him into the next higher level as a Perfect . Many believers would receive the Consolamentum as death drew near, performing the ritual of liberation at a moment when the heavy obligations of purity required of Perfecti would be temporally short. Some of those who received

4416-717: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs,   Heterodoxy Heterodoxy is also an ecclesiastical jargon term , defined in various ways by different religions and churches. For example, in some groups, heterodoxy may describe beliefs that differ from strictly orthodox views but that fall short either of formal or of material heresy . In

4508-523: The Gnostics who preceded them, assigned more importance to the role of Mary Magdalene in the spread of early Christianity than the church previously did. Her vital role as a teacher contributed to the Cathar belief that women could serve as spiritual leaders. Women were included in the Perfecti in significant numbers, with numerous receiving the consolamentum after being widowed. Having reverence for

4600-481: The Invisible Father had two spiritual wives, Collam and Hoolibam (identified with Oholah and Oholibah ), and would himself have provoked the war in heaven by seducing the wife of Satan, or perhaps the reverse. Cathars adhering to this story would believe that having families and sons would not impede them from reaching God's kingdom. Some communities also believed in a Day of Judgment that would come when

4692-689: The Ismailis, in a general feeling of heterodox solidarity in a Sunni-controlled empire. The cause of the Alids thus became a rallying point for a diverse range of heterodox Islamic movements. The view that Ali was divine, though never mainstream within Shiism, is attested in the early centuries of Islam. The main schools of Indian philosophy that reject the absoluteness of the Vedas , including Buddhism and Jainism, were regarded as heterodox by Hinduism. In 2015,

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4784-589: The New Testament, included the Bogomil text The Gospel of the Secret Supper (also called John's Interrogation ), a modified version of Ascension of Isaiah , and the Cathar original work The Book of the Two Principles (possibly penned by Italian Cathar John Lugio of Bergamo). They regarded the Old Testament as written by Satan, except for a few books which they accepted, and considered

4876-570: The Old Testament God, the Cathars had little hostility to Jews as people and Jews probably had a higher status in Cathar territories than they had anywhere else in Europe at the time. Cathars appointed Jews as bailiffs and to other roles as public officials, which further increased the Catholic Church's anger at the Cathars. Despite their condemnation of reproduction, the Cathars grew in numbers in southeastern France. By 1207, shortly before

4968-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has

5060-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in

5152-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West

5244-578: The common terms of self-identification . In the testimony of suspects who were put to the question by the Inquisition , the term 'Cathar' was not used amongst the group of accused heretics themselves. The word 'Cathar' (aka. Gazarri etc.) is coined by Catholic theologians and used exclusively by the inquisition or by authors otherwise identified with the Orthodox church--for example in the anonymous pamphlet of 1430, Errores Gazariorum (Re: Errors of

5336-411: The demiurge was sometimes conflated with Satan or considered Satan's father, creator or seducer, these beliefs were far from unanimous. Some Cathar communities believed in a mitigated dualism similar to their Bogomil predecessors, stating that the evil god Satan had previously been the true God's servant before rebelling against him. Others, likely a majority over time given the influence reflected on

5428-508: The demons revealing he was not the real god, or alternatively, an attempt by the Invisible Father to destroy the giants. The Holy Spirit was sometimes counted as one single entity, but to others it was considered the collective groups of unfallen angels who had not followed Satan in his rebellion. Cathars believed that the sexual allure of women impeded a man's ability to reject the material world. Despite this stance on sex and reproduction, some Cathar communities made exceptions. In one version,

5520-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of

5612-633: The earlier Marcianists , who were found in the same areas as the Paulicians, the Manicheans and the Christian Gnostics of the first few centuries AD, although, as many scholars, most notably Mark Pegg , have pointed out, it would be erroneous to extrapolate direct, historical connections based on theoretical similarities perceived by modern scholars. John Damascene , writing in the 8th century AD, also notes of an earlier sect called

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5704-560: The early companions of the Prophet such as Salman the Persian . The assumption is that the groups thus described have gone too far and have come to associate them with God ( shirk ). Sunni and Shia Muslims see each other as heterodox, differing in practice mainly on matters of jurisprudence or fiqh , splitting historically on the matter of the succession of Ali to the caliphate by Muawiyah . A third and much smaller movement

5796-428: The evil God's material realm. The Cathars taught that to regain angelic status one had to renounce the material self completely. Until one was prepared to do so, they would be stuck in a cycle of reincarnation , condemned to suffer endless human lives on the corrupt Earth. Zoé Oldenbourg compared the Cathars to "Western Buddhists" because she considered that their view of the doctrine of "resurrection" taught by Christ

5888-491: The evil god of this age ( 2 Corinthians 4:4 ). According to tradition, Cathars believed that the good God was the God of the New Testament faith and creator of the spiritual realm. Many Cathars identified the evil god as Satan , the master of the physical world. The Cathars believed that human souls were the sexless spirits of angels trapped in the material realm of the evil god. They thought these souls were destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through

5980-423: The existence of a spirit realm created by the good God, the "Land of the Living", whose history and geography would have served as the basis for the evil god's corrupt creation. Under this view, the history of Jesus would have happened roughly as told, only in the spirit realm. The physical Jesus from the material world would have been evil, a false messiah and a lustful lover of the material Mary Magdalene . However,

6072-434: The faith. In Cathar communal homes (ostals), women were educated in the faith. These women would go on to bear children who would then become believers. Through this pattern, the faith grew exponentially through the efforts of women, as each generation passed. Despite women having a role in the growth of the faith, Catharism was not completely equal. For example, the belief that one's last incarnation had to be experienced as

6164-621: The false sacrament of baptism . For the Cathars, the "resurrection" mentioned in the New Testament was only a symbol of re-incarnation. Most Cathars did not accept the normative Trinitarian understanding of Jesus, instead resembling nontrinitarian modalistic Monarchianism ( Sabellianism ) in the West and adoptionism in the East, which might or might not be combined with the mentioned Docetism. Bernard of Clairvaux 's biographer and other sources accuse some Cathars of Arianism , and some scholars see Cathar Christology as having traces of earlier Arian roots. Some communities might have believed in

6256-563: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c.  1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c.  1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c.  800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c.  500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been

6348-438: The future Saint Dominic , began a programme of conversion in Languedoc. As part of this, Catholic–Cathar public debates were held at Verfeil , Servian , Pamiers , Montréal and elsewhere. Dominic met and debated with the Cathars in 1203 during his mission to the Languedoc. He concluded that only preachers who displayed real sanctity, humility and asceticism could win over convinced Cathar believers. The institutional Church as

6440-506: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from

6532-424: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to

6624-435: The human community who held these beliefs, the fact that many gave themselves up willingly to the flames when the option to recant was given to them in many or most cases is significant. As the scholar Claire Taylor puts it, "[This issue] matters at an ethical level, because by being cleverly iconoclastic and populist in suggesting that those using 'Cathar' have made 2+2=5, Pegg and Moore [re: scholars questioning whether or not

6716-399: The killing of all animal life, apart from fish, which they believed were produced by spontaneous generation . The Cathars could be seen as prefiguring Protestantism in that they denied transubstantiation , purgatory , prayers for the dead and prayers to saints . They also believed that the scriptures should be read in the vernacular . The alleged sacred texts of the Cathars, besides

6808-482: The lack of sources from the Cathars themselves, has prompted some scholars to question whether the Church exaggerated its threat, and others to wonder whether it even existed. Though the term Cathar ( / ˈ k æ θ ɑː r / ) has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether it identified itself with the name is debated. In Cathar texts, the terms Good Men ( Bons Hommes ), Good Women ( Bonnes Femmes ), or Good Christians ( Bons Chrétiens ) are

6900-740: The murder of the Papal Legate Castelnau, many towns in that region, i.e. Provence and its vicinity, were almost completely populated by Cathari, and the Cathari population had many ties to nearby communities. When Bishop Fulk of Toulouse , a key leader of the anti-Cathar persecutions, excoriated the Languedoc Knights for not pursuing the heretics more diligently, he received the reply, "We cannot. We have been reared in their midst. We have relatives among them and we see them living lives of perfection." It has been alleged that

6992-408: The number of the just equalled that of angels who fell, when the believers would ascend to the spirit realm , while the sinners would be thrown to everlasting fire along with Satan. The Cathars ate a pescatarian diet. They did not eat cheese, eggs, meat, or milk because these are all by-products of sexual intercourse. The Cathars believed that animals were carriers of reincarnated souls, and forbade

7084-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which

7176-412: The people and travelled in pairs. Catharism has been seen as giving women the greatest opportunities for independent action, since women were found as being believers as well as Perfecti, who were able to administer the sacrament of the consolamentum . Cathars believed that a person would be repeatedly reincarnated until they committed to self-denial of the material world. A man could be reincarnated as

7268-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c.  1450 BC ) are in

7360-518: The priests. Killing was abhorrent to the Cathars. Consequently, abstention from all animal food, sometimes exempting fish , was enjoined of the Perfecti. The Perfecti avoided eating anything considered to be a by-product of sexual reproduction. War and capital punishment were condemned—an abnormality in Medieval Europe, despite the fact that the sect had armed combatants prepared to engage in combat and commit murder on its behalf. For example,

7452-402: The principles of dualistic theology from the point of view of some Albanenses Cathars. It is now generally agreed by most scholars that identifiable historical Catharism did not emerge until at least 1143, when the first confirmed report of a group espousing similar beliefs is reported being active at Cologne by the cleric Eberwin of Steinfeld . A landmark in the "institutional history" of

7544-457: The sacrament of the consolamentum upon their death-beds may thereafter have shunned further food with an exception of cold water until death. This has been termed the endura . It was claimed by some of the church writers that when a Cathar, after receiving the Consolamentum, began to show signs of recovery he or she would be smothered in order to ensure his or her entry into paradise. Other than extreme cases, little evidence exists to suggest this

7636-587: The same time, and particularly the Languedoc —and the northern Italian cities in the mid-late 12th century. In the Languedoc and northern Italy, the Cathars attained their greatest popularity, surviving in the Languedoc, in much reduced form, up to around 1325 and in the Italian cities until the Inquisitions of the 14th century extirpated them. Gnostic cosmology identified two creator deities . The first

7728-528: The stronghold at Lavaur , did not extinguish the movement. Decisions of Catholic Church councils—in particular, those of the Council of Tours (1163) and of the Third Council of the Lateran (1179)—had scarcely more effect upon the Cathars. When Pope Innocent III came to power in 1198, he was resolved to deal with them. At first, Innocent tried peaceful conversion, and sent a number of legates into

7820-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies

7912-540: The true Jesus would have influenced the physical world in a way similar to the Harrowing of Hell , only by inhabiting the body of Paul . 13th century chronicler Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay recorded those views. Some Cathars told a version of the Enochian narrative, according to which Eve 's daughters copulated with Satan's demons and bore giants . The Deluge would have been provoked by Satan , who disapproved of

8004-458: The year 325, which states "... [I]f those called Cathari come over [to the faith], let them first make profession that they are willing to communicate [share full communion ] with the twice-married, and grant pardon to those who have lapsed ..." The writings of the Cathars were mostly destroyed because of the doctrine's threat perceived by the Papacy; thus, the historical record of the Cathars

8096-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,

8188-481: Was a common Cathar practice. The Cathars also refused the sacrament of the eucharist , saying that it could not possibly be the body of Christ. They also refused to partake in the practice of Baptism by water. The following two quotes are taken from the Inquisitor Bernard Gui 's experiences with the Cathar practices and beliefs: Then they attack and vituperate, in turn, all the sacraments of

8280-576: Was also applied to the Albigensians, and they maintained an association with the similar Christian movement of the Bogomils ("Friends of God") of Thrace . "That there was a substantial transmission of ritual and ideas from Bogomilism to Catharism is beyond reasonable doubt." Their doctrines have numerous resemblances to those of the Bogomils and the Paulicians , who influenced them, as well as

8372-516: Was similar to the Buddhist doctrine of rebirth . Cathars venerated Jesus Christ and followed what they considered to be his true teachings, labelling themselves as "Good Christians". However, they denied his physical incarnation and Resurrection. Authors believe that their conception of Jesus resembled Docetism , believing him the human form of an angel, whose physical body was only an appearance. This illusory form would have possibly been given by

8464-615: Was the creator of the spiritual realm contained in the New Testament, while the second was the demiurge depicted in the Old Testament who created the physical universe. The demiurge, often called Rex Mundi ("King of the World"), was identified as the God of Judaism . Some gnostic belief systems including Catharism began to characterise the duality of creation as a relationship between hostile opposing forces of good and evil. Although

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