It was one of the charges against the sect that their professed hatred for life and its pleasures was accompanied by promiscuous sexual orgies. Nor is there anything improbable in such accusations: they have been true of occasional heretical bodies from the earliest Christian times to Rasputin and certain contemporary Russian sects. Nevertheless, there is no evidence to prove that such sexual orgies were ever regularly practised or officially encouraged by the sect. The weight of testimony would rather seem to prove their extreme asceticism, out of which would naturally come occasional excesses of self-indulgence on the part of the “weaker brethren.”
Naturally, with such a régime as that laid down for them, the Albigensian “Perfect” were few. The sect made up its numbers by including also “Believers,” who were admitted on their mere promise to renounce the Catholic faith and to receive the Albigensian “Consolamentum” or initiation of the “Perfect,” at least in the hour of death, as many of the early Christians used to receive baptism. The lives of the “Believers” were as unrestrained as those of the “Perfect” were strict. Except to “venerate” or do homage to the “Perfect” according to certain prescribed forms and ceremonies whenever they met, their religion seems to have laid upon them no prescribed duties whatsoever. They were allowed to marry and to eat meat. To be sure they could not be finally saved without undergoing the “Consolamentum,” and, when this was once received, the jaws of the system closed upon them with a ferocity so extraordinary that we shudder at it as we shudder at the lurid horrors imagined by Poe. But this ugly possibility weighed light in comparison with the easy absence of any code of morals for everyday living. Clearly, Albigensianism aimed to meet all tastes.
If we ask why such a life as that of the Albigensian “Perfect” ever attracted anyone, we must go back one step further and ask why asceticism, deprivation for its own sake, has always had such power over mankind. It is one of the unanswerable mysteries of the human soul why men have so often felt that their God, or Gods, would be pleased at seeing the worshipper voluntarily submit to deprivation, discomfort and pain. It has been argued that limitation in pleasure is necessary for the physical, mental and spiritual well-being and that asceticism (itself a word derived from the training of the Greek athletes) merely sets one free for undivided effort. But this does not meet the case. For the fact is that there is always in man the tendency to condemn pleasure for its own sake, as evil in itself, as if there was something holy in the mere state of being deprived or uncomfortable. And this curious state of mind is as strong to-day as it ever was, witness the extraordinary savageness of the campaign waged by what an Englishman would call the “Dissenting” religious bodies in America to-day against any pleasure or amusement that strikes them as “sinful.” Finally, it is also the fact that many who would not dream of denying themselves a certain amount of physical satisfaction of different sorts will applaud ascetics. Accordingly, the Albigensian system addressed itself to a fundamental instinct of human nature.
Finally, it must be remembered that the Albigenses claimed to be purifying, not destroying, Christianity. Just so, the Humanitarians of to-day reduce Christianity to “Social Service” and throw over supernatural teaching altogether. In most cases the Albigensian system had certain outward likenesses to the Catholic. Their distinction between “Perfect” and “Believers” was somewhat like the Catholic distinction between clergy and laity, or that between monastic people and people “living in the world.” The form of their promise to renounce “Satan” (i.e., the Catholic Church), by which one became an Albigensian believer, was a little like baptism, and their “Consolamentum” was like Communion and Extreme Unction combined. They claimed to be true followers of Christ, they particularly reverenced the Lord’s Prayer, and they even went through a form of Lord’s Supper. The fasts of the “Perfect,” except when prolonged into the “Endura,” were not altogether unlike the Catholic fasts. As to the points in which they differed from the Church, they made the usual heretical claim of following “purer” traditions. Certain modern scholars see reason for believing that they possessed apocryphal writings dating from the apostolic or post-apostolic age.[16] In their propaganda they laid stress upon the negative side, that is, of their opposition to the “corruptions” of Catholicism, and thus secured for themselves the support of much of the prevailing dissatisfaction with the Church.
Why their practice of fasting themselves to death, in what they called the “Endura,” did not drive away converts is the hardest question to answer concerning them. That the “Perfect” voluntarily practised it was bad enough. What was worse was their treatment of believers who had received the “Consolamentum” when thought to be on death-beds and had then been so unlucky as to begin to get well. The “Perfect” had probably learned by experience that “Believers” who had been “consoled” on their death-bed and had then recovered, were not likely to follow the extraordinarily strict rules for the “Perfect” as all “consoled” persons were bound to do. For them, the relapse of a “consoled person” was the greatest conceivable horror. Therefore, when a “consoled” sick person showed signs of recovery the “Perfect” forbade the family to give the patient food, and, if the family showed signs of weakening, they stationed themselves by the bedside or took away the sufferer to some place of safety where they might starve him or her to death in peace!
How such amiable folk ever led away much people after them is a riddle. And yet, despite the appalling features of their system, during the eleventh century Manicheanism is found sprouting up here and there throughout Western Europe. In the second half of the eleventh century we find it powerful in Northern Italy, and especially in Milan, but it seems not to have had any deep root north or west of the Alps before 1100. We hear of Manicheans at Toulouse in 1018, at Orleans in 1022, at Cambrai and Liège in 1025, and at Châlons in 1045. By the middle of the century they had penetrated north into the Germanies as far as the city of Goslar. Nowhere do we hear of their appearance without hearing also of their persecution.
It is one of man’s deepest instincts to defend that which he holds sacred, and to the man possessed of a religion, nothing is so sacred as his gods. What can be more natural than to wish to punish offences against the gods? Limborch has a long account of “Persecution among the Pagans.” For us it will be enough to remember that Athens itself put Socrates to death on the charge of teaching men not to believe in the gods of the city. And this in spite of the fact that Bacon truly says, “... the religion of the heathens consisted rather in rites and ceremonies, than in any constant belief; for you may imagine what kind of faith theirs was, when the chief doctors and fathers of their church were the poets.”[17]
Roman tolerance was born of the necessities of ruling over many races, none of whom except the Jews had an exclusive, “Jealous” God. Almost all the other people of the Empire were willing to accept the gods of strangers as differing from their own merely in name. Naturally, when one fanciful story about a god or goddess was as good as another, the educated man cared little about the whole body of myths. As an administrator, this same educated man was easily able to be “tolerant” to all religions because he cared little or nothing for his own, and was, in reality, indifferent and therefore not “tolerant” at all in the strict sense of the word. St. Paul’s Gallio, so much maligned by fools but so worthily celebrated by Kipling, is a fine specimen of the type. Such a man was devoted solely to the public interest. His feeling would not be as clear cut as our national patriotisms: “Rome” was almost the whole civilized world, so that the chance of her perishing was unthinkable. Nevertheless, she could still be an object of affection; her government represented the definite benefit of order. Devotion to her was not vague emotionalism like that of our internationalists of to-day. After a fashion she could be worshipped.
On the other hand when any religion or religious practice seemed to threaten the government upon which order reposed, the Roman magistrate struck at once. The rediscovered Roman law, remember, was to be a great force actively informing the twelfth century.
In adopting Christianity, Europe exchanged a religion in which one god, or one story about a god, was about as good as another, for a religion which claimed a definite, historical founder who had left behind him a corporate teaching body, the Church. To such a body, the out-and-out pagan or disbeliever is an open and possibly generous enemy. Whereas he who proclaims himself a fellow Christian, but meanwhile falsifies the Church’s doctrine by twisting and altering it to suit himself, is a traitor, a snake in the grass compared to whom the heathen is an angel of light.