§ 80. THE CATHARI. 473
Their only appearance in England was at Oxford, 1161, when more than thirty illiterate Germans, men and women, strove to propagate their errors. They were reported as " detesting " marriage, the eucharist, baptism, and the Catho lic Church, and as having quoted Matt. 5 : 10, " Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven." A council of bishops ordered them branded on the forehead and flogged.1 Henry II. would not allow heretics to be burnt to death, though of fences in his reign against the forest laws were punished with blinding and castration.2
In France the Cathari were strong enough in 1167 to hold a council at St. Felix de Caraman near Toulouse. It was attended by Nicetas of Constantinople, to whom the title of pope was given. He was accompanied by a Catharan bishop, Marcus of Lombardy.3 Contemporary reports represent the number of heretics as very large. They were compared by William of Newburgh to the sand of the sea, and were said by Walter Map to be infinite in number in Aquitaine and Burgundy.4 By the end of the twelfth century they were re ported to have followers in nearly 1000 cities.5 The Do minican Rainerius gave 4,000,000 as a safe estimate of their number and declared this was according to a census made by the Cathari themselves.6 Joachim of Flore stated that they were sending out their emissaries like locusts.7 Such state ments are not to be taken too seriously, but they indicate a widespread religious unrest. Men did not know whereunto heresy might grow. In Southern France the priests were the objects of ridicule. In that region, as well as in many of the cities of Lombardy, the Cathari had schools for girls and boys.
1 William of Newburgh, Hamilton's ed., pp. 121-123. Walter Map, De Nugis, p. 62, reduces the number to sixteen. They were called Publicani by the Oxford council, 1260.
2 Stubbs, ed. of De Hoveden, II. p. liv. sq.
8 Dollinger, I. 121 sq. , has no hesitation in declaring him a bishop of the Paulicians.
4 Superabundant jam ad omnem infinitatem.
5 Czesar of Heisterbach, quoted by Dollinger, I. 124.
6 p. 1768. 7 Dollinger, I. 125.
474 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1204.
Agreed as the Cathari were in opposing many customs and doctrines of the established Church, they were divided among themselves and broken up into sects, — seventy-two, according to one document.1 Chief among them were the Albanenses and Concorrezzi, deriving their names from two Lombard towns, Alba and Concorreggio, near Monza.2 A position intermediate between them was occupied by the Bagnolenses, so called from the Italian town of Bagnolo, near Lodi. This third party had a bishop whose authority was acknowledged by the Cathari in Mantua, Brescia, and Ber gamo.3
The differences between the Albanenses and Concorrezzi were of a theological character and concerned the nature of God and the origin of matter. The Albanenses were strict dualists. Matter is eternal and the product of the evil god. Paul speaks of the things, which are seen, as dung. The Concorrezzi seem to have rejected dualism and to have regarded evil as the creation of Lucifer, the highest of the angels.
In matters of ritual and practical conduct, and in antago nism to the Church establishment, all groups of the Cathari were agreed. Since Schmidt wrote his History of the Cathari, it has been common to represent Catharism as a philo sophical system,4 but it is difficult to understand the move ment from this standpoint. How could an unlettered folk, as they were, be concerned primarily or chiefly with a meta physical construction ? Theirs was not a philosophy, but a daily faith and practice. This view alone makes it possible
1 Dollinger, II. 300.
* Ibid., I. 117 ; II. 82. Schmidt derived them from Albania and from Coriza in Dalmatia.
8 Rainerius is our chief authority for these statements. He makes the above threefold classification (Martene, V. 1761), and then proceeds to give the doctrinal and practical errors the sects had in common, and those which separated them. He also gives a list of the Catharan centres in Lombardy and other parts. See also the important document, the Supra Stella, by Salvus Burce, 1235, published by Dollinger, II. 52-84. The title was chosen to distinguish it from a Catharan treatise entitled Stella, the Star.
4 See also Alphande'ry, p. 35. Lempp, in a criticism of Alphande'ry 's work, LU.-zeitung, 1905, p. 601, takes the view which is presented in the text.