The Cathars represent a Gnostic survival into the Christian Middle Ages. They were dualists who argued for an egalitarian church founded on angelic purity, apostolic poverty, and through a single sacrament sought to release the soul from it's physical prison. The Catholic Church saw them a utterly heretical and sought to systematically destroy their popular strongholds in southern France through 20 years of Crusader Violence and Inquisition. There's only one problem with this story: recent, maverick scholarship has forcefully argued that the Cathars and Catharism, quite simply, never existed at all. Join me, in collaboration with ‪@LetsTalkReligion‬ , as we discuss the Cathars, Catharism and the arguments for and against their historical existence.

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#cathars #catharism #albigensians

Comments which reject or mock the skeptical position without showing evidence of serious engagement with it (i.e., citations, counterpoints, evidence from historical records or traditionalist scholarship) will be deleted. Regardless of one's position, respect and careful treatment of the work of scholars is a nonnegotiable on this channel.

Recommended Readings:

Primary Sources:
Wakefield Heresies of the High Middle Ages 9780231096324
Léglu, Catherine, Rebecca Rist and Claire Taylor (eds.) The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade: a Sourcebook (London: Routledge, 2014)

Traditionalists:
Barber, Malcolm, The Cathars: Dualist heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages, Second edition (Harlow, United Kingdom: Pearson, 2013)
Lambert, Malcolm, The Cathars (Oxford; Malden, Mass.: Blackwell Publishers, 1998)
Lansing, Carol, Power and purity: Cathar heresy in Medieval Italy (New York: Oxford University Press, 1998)
Taylor, Claire, Heresy in medieval France: Dualism in Aquitaine and the Agenais, 10001249 (Woodbridge, UK; Rochester, NY: Royal Historical Society/Boydell Press, 2005)

Skeptics:
Moore, R. I., The War on Heresy (Cambridge, Mass.: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012) https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/141...
Pegg, Mark Gregory, A Most Holy War: the Albigensian Crusade and the battle for Christendom (Oxford; New York: Oxford University Press, 2008) https://clio.columbia.edu/catalog/141...
Sennis, Antonio (ed.), Cathars in Question (York: York Medieval Press, 2016)