§ 5. PARTLY INDIGENOUS
It is not therefore to Spain or Africa that we must look for the origin of the Albigensian heresy, but rather to the East, for in that direction the names Manichean, Bogomile, Bulgar, Paulician, Poplican[12] and Catharist point, but we can only speak in generalities. We cannot say of this heresy: "In the year —— a band of missioners under —— came to France to convert it to Catharism," as we can say of the English Church: "In the year 597 a band of missioners under Augustine came to England to convert it to Christianity." When we have stretched our historical data to their utmost capacity, when we have made full allowance for the devastation wrought by friend and foe—by friend in the destruction of the records against themselves of the Inquisition, by foe in the destruction of heretical literature—we are convinced that the imports from the East fail in quantity and quality to account for the Albigensian heresies as we find them in full vigour and variety. Their germs might have been found almost anywhere in Western Christendom in the Middle Ages, but the stimulus to growth came not from without, but from within. It was a spontaneous outburst of a profound discontent with a Church which by its Ultramontanism opposed all national independence, and by its unspirituality forfeited all respect for its creed. Just as the Church turned back to Aristotelian and Platonic philosophy to illuminate the mystical element—the relationship between the outward and the inward—in its own entity and in its Sacraments—a philosophy which had long lain dormant in her midst—so the Catharists turned back to Dualistic Gnosticism to illuminate the origin of good and evil, and its bearing upon ecclesiastical organization. But whereas the students of the North were attracted to dialectics, the light-hearted of the South of France were drawn to picturesque myths. It was an age when men everywhere, and especially in France, were devoting themselves to a reconsideration of the Church, in its essence, its doctrines and its activities; but while the Church forced facts to suit philosophic theories, the Catharists adopted and devised Dualistic theories to suit the facts. The Church claimed that its doctrines, such as that of the Holy Roman Empire or of Transubstantiation, were not new, but inherent in and developed from the authority and teaching of its Divine Head. The Catharists maintained that they were corruptions and profanities, weeds not fruit, and only when they were swept away would the Christian Church be pure and therefore powerful. How far circumstances favoured them falls now to be considered.
[3] Sermones in Cant. LXVI.
[4] Priscillianists rejected the Pentateuch but highly esteemed the Apocryphal "Ascension of Isaiah," and the "Memoirs of the Apostles."
[5] Quid est imperatori cum ecclesia? ('Optatus,' III, c. 3.)
[6] v. infra, p. 17, note.
[7] Neander, "Ch. Hist." Vol. V pp. 346 seq. (Bohn).
[8] This has been questioned. The word probably means "The friend of God" (Theophilus). So Gieseler, who says that the complete sentence in Slavonic for "Lord, have mercy" (Kyrie eleison) would be "Gospodine pomilui" (Schmidt Vol. II, pp. 284 seq.).
[9] A significant connection with Asia Minor.
[10] v. infra, p. 83.
[11] In Lombardy called Gazari. Mosheim thought Gazari to be the original form (and Cathari a corruption) from Gazar, the ancient Chersonese of the Taurus. But there is nothing to show there were Dualists there. Neander, while deriving Gazzari from the same place, distinguishes them from Cathari. Ketzer is the common German word for "heretic."
[12] To the several solutions proposed of this word (v. Du Cange s.v.), I would add the suggestion that it is a popular abbreviation of Philippopolicani, Philippopolis being the most active and most western centre of Paulician propagandism. Such popular abbreviations of cumbersome words are found in all languages.