(F. C. C.)
[1] A certain Peter (Doc. Doat., 22, p. 98) declared that could he but get hold of the false and perfidious God of the Catholics who created a thousand men in order to save a single one and damn all the rest, he would break him to pieces and tear him asunder with his nails and spit in his face.
[2] Here we have a doctrine of metempsychosis which seems of Indian origin (see [Asceticism]). But Julius Caesar (de B.G. vi. 13) attests this belief among the ancient Druids of Gaul.
[3] The Abbé Guiraud remarks that in refusing to take oaths the Cathars “contraried the social principles on which the constitutions of all states repose,” and congratulates himself that society is not yet so thoroughly “laicized” as to have given up oaths in the most important acts of social life.
[4] Cf. S. Gregorii Ep. ix. 12 (26): “Mos apostolorum fuit ut ad ipsam solummodo orationem oblationis hostiam consecrarent.” (“The custom of the apostles was to use no other prayer but the Lord’s in consecrating the host of the offering.”)
[5] Cf. Duchesne, Origines, ed. 1898, p. 177.
CATHAY, the name by which China (q.v.) was known to medieval Europe and is still occasionally referred to in poetry, as in Tennyson’s “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” It is derived from Khitāī, or Khitāt, the name which was properly that of the kingdom established by the Khitān conquerors in the northern provinces of China about a.d. 907, which after the fall of this dynasty in 1125 remained attached to their former territory, and was subsequently applied by the nations of Central Asia to the whole of China. Thus “Kitai” is still the Russian name for China. The name penetrated to Europe in the 13th century with the fame of the conquests of Jenghiz Khan. After the discovery of southern China by European navigators Cathay was erroneously believed to be a country to the north of China, and it was the desire to reach it that sent the English adventurers of the 16th century in search of the north-east passage.