BOGOMILS, CATHARS AND THE EVIL OF MATTER

I still remember my puzzlement when reading, back in 1978, how some strange Californian cult that had decamped to Guyana had committed mass suicide at their base, the so-called Jonestown. 

Over nine hundred had died by drinking something laced with cyanide, except for the leader, Jones, who had shot himself in the head.  I never really got to the bottom of what had happened.  Guyana was a long way away – I wasn’t even sure where it was - and Jones sounded like one of those crackpots that California seems to have a genius for producing. What appeared to have prompted the mass extermination was the shooting by Jonestown guards of an American politician who had gone there to investigate reported irregularities.  The question that lingered with me was this: even if they hadn’t shot an outsider and invited further investigation, would they have ended up killing themselves anyway?  Was this another of those cults that hate the world so much that death is the only solution?   At least no one could accuse them of not taking the problem of evil seriously.

Somebody said of Christian Science that it was neither science nor Christian.  Jones seems to have cooked up something called ‘spiritual socialism’ that likewise ended up by being neither. I came away from reading about Jonestown, or the People’s Temple, or whatever it was, with the firm conviction that all religions do not say the same thing, and with an equally firm rejection of the claim that any faith is better than no faith.  When the result is Jonestown, it may be better to believe nothing at all.

I thought of Jones when I read The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, and found out about the Cathars and their mass death on Montségur.  I thought of Jones again when I read The Name of the Rose and came across the references to strange heretical groups like the Bogomils: religious lunacy had a distinguished pedigree long before the Californian variety.

Tracking down what the medieval sects actually believed is not easy: either because the beliefs themselves were confused, or because books like Holy Grail muddy the waters further by adding an agenda of their own, or because the practices of the various cults were so secret.  Of necessity: to proclaim them openly came to mean a death sentence. 

The best and clearest account that I have come across of the beliefs of the Bogomils, Paulicians, Paterenes, Cathars etc is Steven Runciman’s The Medieval Manichee.  This is not easy to get hold of, however: it first came out in 1947.  While there is no substitute for reading the work itself, I have therefore attempted a brief summary.  Runciman helped me: I hope I can likewise help others confused by Umberto Eco or Dan Brown.

 

The Bogomils, from whom the Cathars were descended, squarely confronted the problem of evil.   That indeed was a part of the reason for their popular success: they thought seriously about human suffering and tried to deal with it.  They considered the Persian Manichaean tradition - two equal and opposite powers in eternal conflict - and the Judaeo-Christian tradition, and lots of other bits as well, and produced a sort of synthesis.  Life was a conflict between spirit (good) and matter (evil).  The world, being material, was evil, and had therefore been created by the Devil. 

            It was clear, however, that matter could not be entirely evil, because otherwise humans would not be able to think about good.  Trapped within each human – or only within some humans: opinion differed – was a bit of divine spark.  The purpose of life was to be rid of the body so that the divine spark could return to God.  When all the bits of divine spark were reunited, the world could come to an end.

 Following that through to its conclusion, what is needed is the extinction of the human race as soon as possible.  While many of us may have had that thought after a bad day, with the average human it is a merely transitory sentiment.  The Cathars sought to put it into practice.

There were two grades of Cathar: the Perfects and the ordinary believers.  The Perfects were actually known as ‘Parfaits’ but I shall keep to the English translation because the French original conjures up mental images of a French dessert. 

Perfects, those who had received the Consolamentum (rough equivalent of both confirmation and ordination), were strict vegetarians.  This, if I understand the argument correctly, was because they believed in metempsychosis, or transmigration of souls between humans and animals.  If you ate an animal that had been a human, you might be adding a bit of divine spark to your own, rather than getting rid of it.

I have a lot of problems with that: apart from not believing in metempsychosis in the first place.  If an animal has a bit of divine spark, and you kill it, then surely in death its divine spark goes to wherever the divine spark goes: rather than into you?  And why didn’t it go directly to the rest of the divine sparkiness in the first place, rather than into an animal? And if you do inherit it, then surely you should eat meat and then kill yourself, to rid the world of two bits of divine spark in one go?  Also, if matter is evil, and vegetables are matter, then surely vegetables are evil and it is as wrong to eat them as it is to eat meat?  Surely the only escape from evil is to eat nothing at all?

These questions do, in fact, seem to have occurred to the Perfects, and some of them acted upon the inferences.  Perfects with the courage to do so, starved themselves to death. 

The rigours of being a Perfect were not for every believer.  Some received the Consolamentum that made them Perfects, only on their deathbed.  If they looked like recovering, they might be given a judicious dose of poison.  There was logic to that as well: after all, who wanted a bit of divine spark heading in the wrong direction back into the world?

            At the other end of the scale, it was important that more humans should not be produced.  Marriage was therefore the great evil: it might mean regular sex, and regular sex might mean regular children.  The Perfects abstained from sex altogether.  Ordinary believers, being evil since composed of matter, had to be allowed the occasional orgy to let off steam.  Forms of sexual expression that could not lead to procreation were to be preferred.  Hence the modern word ‘bugger’ from ‘bougre’, a French word for Bogomil. 

The Church and the State combined against the Cathars.  The Church, citing Genesis, did not believe that matter had always been evil; and whatever matter’s current condition might be, it could be redeemed through Christ.  The State was concerned about the potential mass disappearance of its citizens.  The State, after all, needed people it could tax, and who could grow its food and fight its wars, and fund the expenses of its politicians.  A rigorous solution was needed for the problem of the Cathars.  It was found, and the form it took probably confirmed the Cathars in their conviction of the intolerable evil of the world.

Runciman’s concluding paragraphs are nearly always memorable.  I can do no better than quote his conclusion here in full.

The Christian heresy of Dualism, the Tradition that found its origin in the days of

Cerdon and Valentine, died without issue, before the sword of the Turks and the fire of the Dominicans. It was not an ignoble religion. It taught the value of the fundamental virtues; it faced with courage the anxious question of evil; but it was a religion of pessimism. It held out no hope for individual men and their salvation. Mankind should die out, that the imprisoned fragments of Godhead should return to their home. It was a religion without hope, and such a religion cannot survive unless it be helped artificially. For Hope is a necessary part of religion.  Faith and Charity alone are not enough.

Long ago Plotinus, the greatest of the Neoplatonists, cried out against the Gnostics for the tragedy of terrors that they saw in the spheres of the Universe. This tragedy was the tragedy of the Dualist Tradition. Confident of the truth of their cause, but in no expectation of their own salvation, its children went uncomplaining to the stake, and their hopeless faith was burnt with them.