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Updated: June 10, 2025
Fulk of Neuilly, a priest, obtained a licence from Innocent III to preach, and met with marvellous success among the Cathari until he was turned aside by Innocent's exhortation to preach a new crusade.
It condemned the dying heresies of the Albigenses and the Cathari, and prescribed the methods and punishments of the unrepentant heretic. It strove to rekindle zeal for the crusade. It drew up a drastic scheme for reforming the internal life and discipline of the Church.
The asceticism of the Cathari would have resulted, if not in the extinction of the race, at least in the destruction of the family: their identification of matter with the work of Satan would have been a bar to attempts at material improvement. Moreover, if ever theirs had become the conquering faith, they would have developed a sacerdotal class as privileged as the Catholic priesthood.
Long after him arose the Albigenses, the Poor Men of Lyons, the Picards, the Cathari old and new: all of whom were condemned legitimately long ago.
But it was in the south of France that the Cathari, no less than the Waldenses, were chiefly to be found; with this difference, however that, whereas the Waldenses confined themselves chiefly to Provence and the valley of the Rhone, the Cathari were scattered over a much larger area, although their chief strength lay in the valley of the Garonne.
In the eleventh century we hear of Cathari in certain places in North Italy, in France, and even in Germany; but although in Italy the name of Patarins came to be applied to the sect, we need trace no connection in the popular rising at Milan, which was stirred up by the Church reformers against the simony and clerical marriage practised by the Church of St. Ambrose.
To the earlier views was added the doctrine of metempsychosis, or the transmigration of souls, which, acting as a means of reward and retribution, seemed fully to account for man's sufferings. These views together explain the avoidance as food by the Cathari of everything which was the result of animal propagation, and also the severity of the ascetic practices which were charged against them.
Whether the Catharist movement was spread westwards by the Paulicians who in the tenth century were transplanted from Armenia to Thrace, or sprang spontaneously from teachers who saw in the dualistic philosophy a condemnation, if not an explanation, of the materialisation of Christianity by the Church, may not be very certain; but there is no doubt that the Cathari of Western Europe always looked to the eastern side of the Adriatic as to the headquarters of their faith.
But there existed in different countries bands of people who opposed the doctrines and ecclesiastical tyranny of Rome and who claimed adherence to the simple, primitive faith of Christ as expressed in the gospel. Among these were the Cathari, Lombards, Albigenses, Waldenses, and Vaudois.
But the reasons for opposition to the Church were not the same among the Waldenses and the Cathari; and the latter soon parted company with the seekers after primitive Christianity by developing an organisation of their own. Thus as the Cathari grew in numbers and carried on a vigorous missionary work, their devotees tended to form themselves into a Church.
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