The long probation called “abstinence” which led up to it is a survival of the primitive catechumenate with its scrutinies. The prostrations of the credens before the Perfect were in their manner and import identical with the prostrations of the catechumen before the exorcist. We find the same custom in the Celtic church of St Columba. Just as at the third scrutiny the early catechumen passed a last examination in the Gospels, Creed and Lord’s Prayer, so after their year of abstinence the credens receives creed and prayer; the allocution with which the elder “handed on” this prayer is preserved, and of it the Abbé Guiraud remarks that, if it were not in a Cathar ritual, one might believe it to be of Catholic origin. It is so Christian in tone, he quaintly remarks elsewhere, that an inquisitor might have used it quite as well as a heretic. In it the Perfect addresses the postulant, as in the corresponding Armenian rite, by the name of Peter; and explains to him from Scripture the indwelling of the spirit in the Perfect, and his adoption as a son by God. The Lord’s Prayer is then repeated by the postulant after the elder, who explains it clause by clause; the words panis superstantialis being interpreted not of the material but of the spiritual bread, which consists of the Words of Life.
There followed the Renunciation, primitive enough in form, but the postulant solemnly renounced, not Satan and his works and pomp, but the harlot church of the persecutors, whose prayers were more deadly than desirable. He renounced the cross which its priests had signed on him with their chrism, their sham baptisms and other magical rites. Next followed the spiritual baptism itself, consisting of imposition of hands, and holding of the Gospel on the postulant’s head. The elder begins a fresh allocution by citing Matt. xxviii. 19, Mark xvi. 15, 16, John iii. 3 (where the Cathars’ text must originally have omitted in v. 5 the words “of water and,” since their presence contradicts their argument). Acts ix. 17, 18, viii. 14-17, are then cited; also John xx. 21-23, Matt. xvi. 18, 19, Matt. xviii. 18-20, for the Perfect one receives in this rite power to bind and loose. The Perfect’s vocation is then defined: he must not commit adultery nor homicide, nor lie, nor swear any oath, nor pick and steal, nor do unto another that which he would not have done unto himself. He shall pardon his wrongdoers, love his enemies, pray for them that calumniate and accuse him, offer the other cheek to the smiter, give up his mantle to him that takes his tunic, neither judge nor condemn. Asked if he will fulfil each of these, the postulant answers: “I have this will and determination. Pray God for me that he give me his strength.”
The next episode of the rite exactly reproduces the Roman confiteor as it stood in the 2nd century; “the postulant says: ’Parcite nobis. For all the sins I have committed, in word or thought or deed, I come for pardon to God and to the church and to you all.’ And the Christians shall say: ‘By God and by us and by the church may they be pardoned thee, and we pray God that he pardon you them.’”
There follows the act of “consoling.” The elder takes the Gospel off the white cloth, where it has lain all through the ceremony, and places it on the postulant’s head, and the other good men present place their right hands on his head; they shall say the parcias (spare), and thrice the “Let us adore the Father and Son and Holy Spirit,” and then pray thus: “Holy Father, welcome thy servant in thy justice and send upon him thy grace and thy holy spirit.” Then they repeat the “Let us adore,” the Lord’s Prayer, and read the Gospel (John i. 1-17).
This was the vital part of the whole rite. The credens is now a Perfect one. He is girt with the sacred thread round his naked body under the breasts. Where the fear of the persecutor was absent he was also clad in a black gown. The Perfect ones present give him the kiss of peace, and the rite is over. This part of the rite answers partly to the Catholic confirmation of a baptized person, partly to the ordination of a pope of Rome or Alexandria. The latter in being ordained had the Gospel laid on their heads, and the same feature occurs in old Gallican and Coptic rites of ordaining a bishop.
Thus the Cathar ritual, like that of the Armenian dissenters (see [Paulicians]), reflects an age when priestly ordination was not yet differentiated from confirmation. “Is it not curious,” says the Abbé Guiraud, “to remark that the essential rite of the consolamentum is in effect nothing but the most ancient form of Christian ordination?”
The Cathar Eucharist was equally primitive, and is thus described by a contemporary writer in a 13th-century MS. of the Milan Library:—”The Benediction of bread is thus performed by the Cathars. They all, men and women, go up to a table, and standing up say the ‘Our Father.’[4] And he who is prior among them, at the close of the Lord’s Prayer, shall take hold of the bread and say: ‘Thanks be to the God of our Jesus Christ. May the Spirit be with us all.’ And after that he breaks and distributes to all. And such bread is called bread blessed, although no one believes that out of it is made the body of Christ. The Albanenses, however, deny that it can be blessed or sanctified, because it is corporeal” (i.e. material).
As Tertullian relates of his contemporaries in the 2nd century, so the Cathars would reserve part of their bread of blessing and keep it for years, eating of it occasionally though only after saying the Benedicite. The Perfect kept it wrapped up in a bag of pure white cloth, tied round the neck,[5] and sent it long distances to regions which through persecution they could not enter. On the death-bed it could even, like the Catholic Viaticum, take the place of the rite of Consolamentum, if this could not be performed. Once a month this solemn rite of breaking bread was held, the credentes assisting. The service was called apparellamentum, because a table was covered with a white cloth and the Gospel laid on it. The Perfect were adored, and the kiss of peace was passed round.
The influence of Catharism on the Catholic church was enormous. To counteract it celibacy was finally imposed on the clergy, and the great mendicant orders evolved; while the constant polemic of the Cathar teachers against the cruelty, rapacity and irascibility of the Jewish tribal god led the church to prohibit the circulation of the Old Testament among laymen. The sacrament of “extreme unction” was also evolved by way of competing with the death-bed consolamentum.
Authorities—J.J.I. Döllinger, Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte (München, 1890); Jean Guiraud, Questions d’histoire (Paris, 1906); F.C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth (Oxford, 1898); Henry C. Lea, History of the Inquisition (New York, 1888); C. Douais, L’Inquisition (Paris, 1906), and his Les Hérétiques du midi au XIIIe siècle (Paris, 1891); Les Albigeois (Paris, 1879); also Practica Inquisitionis (of Bernard Gui or Guidon), (Paris, 1886); L. Clédat, Le Nouveau Testament, traduit au XIIIe siècle en langue provençale, suivi d’un rituel cathare (Paris, 1887); E. Cunitz in Beiträge zu den theol. Wissensch. (1852), vol. iv.; P. van Limborch, Liber Sententiarum Inquis. Tholos. 1307-1323 (Amsterdam, 1692); Hahn, Gesch. der Ketzer im M.A. (Stuttgart, 1845); Ch. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares (Paris, 1849); A. Lombard, Pauliciens bulgares et Bons-Hommes (Geneva, 1879); Fredericq, Corpus documentorum haer, pravitatis Neerlandicae (Gent, 1889-1896); Felix Tocco, “Nuovi documenti” in Archiv. di studi ital. (1901), and his L’Eresia nel media evo (Florence, 1881); P. Flade, Das romische Inquisitions-verfahren in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1902); Ch. Molinier, “Rapport sur une mission en Italie,” in Archives scientifiques de Paris, tom. 14 (1888); C.H. Haskins, “Robert le Bougre,” in American Hist. Rev. (1902).