There seems to be some uncertainty about the details of what the Cathars believed. It is noted that like many other religious sects or movements in ancient times, that there appears to have been some variations in the rules and beliefs of different Cathar groups. This was certainly true of early Christianity, itself. Let us examine in this article the roots of Cathar beliefs, so we may better try to understand them.
Catharism originally did not have a ‘church’ or bishops in the beginning of the movement. This came later and they styled their organization after the Church of Rome, ironically enough. They were simply groups of people who believed in certain ideas and concepts. Many of those ideas and belief appear to have come from other, earlier eastern gnostic belief systems.
They were divided into the two groups, the ‘perfecti’ and the ‘credenti’. The perfecti served as their teachers, guides and holy persons and were upheld to live their lives as ascetic exemplars of their faith. The credenti were not held to the same stringent rules as the perfecti, and were the average person who happened to be a Cathar.
The Cathars believed that each being was enlivened by a ‘divine spark’ that had fallen from heaven to become trapped in the material world which was created by an evil demiurge they called Rex Mundi, the King of the World. This is very similar to Gnostic beliefs, however it goes back even further than that to a belief system that was most likely developed in the Far East by a certain Iranian prophet named Mani. Mani’s philosophy became known as Manichaeism, but it was heavily influenced by Zoroastrianism, Christianity and Buddhism. Mani’s father was a member of the Messianic Jewish sect known as Elkasites, who were one of the many various groups of Christians in the early development of Christianity. These in turn were a branch of the Ebionites, who advocated voluntary poverty. They too were seen as heretical in their day by the early Church and most of what is known about both sects is largely derived from polemics against them by the early Church Fathers.
Like Zoroastrianism, Manichaeism is based in a rigid dualistic belief of good versus evil which are locked in a constant struggle for domination of the world and the souls of men. Like Buddhism, they believed in the sanctity of all life and that each person was responsible for their own salvation. Those who did not escape the bonds of the material world were reincarnated, according to how they’d lived their previous life. The Cathars also believed in reincarnation. There was always another chance to escape and become reunited with the Wholeness, the True God. No one could save you but yourself. Jesus was a prophet, much like John the Baptist and was not born of a miraculous union but was the flesh and blood son of Mary and Joseph, who rose above the material world.
It is said that Mani traveled to what is now Afghanistan and there learned Buddhism from the Caucasoid Saka (Scythian) people who lived there. These have also been called ‘Tocharians’. Their beliefs seem to have been a sort of gnostic Buddhism which may likely have been heavily influenced by the earlier teachings of the Greek Pythagoras. They were highly active in the development and spread of Buddhism in the Far East. Speculating now, Pythagoras may have in his turn been influenced by one of these same people and their beliefs for he was an Ionian Greek. The Ionians were well known in India and were called Yavana. They were originally Mycenaeans and like the Tocharians, the Mycenaeans also had A and B languages, the B language being that of the common folk.
To be continued in Part II.
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