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Lilli
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« Vastaus #60 : 07.03.2007 11:57:53 » |
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RV, ERITTÄIN mielenkiintoista. Näinköhän oltaisiin oltu samassa paikassa samaan aikaan???
Tähän tulee nyt pätkä englantia kataareista. Lähdeteos on "The paranormal, an illustrated encyclopedia", kirjoittajana Stuart Gordon. Ostin opuksen ulkomailta, mutta olen muistaakseni nähnyt sen ihan Suomenkin kirjastoissa.
Cathars: Exterminated by the Church in the thirtheenth century, the Cathars of the Pays d´Oc in France not only saw themselves as the only true Christians, but were the last sect to proclaim the tenets of classical dualism in public. Believing in reincarnation, the equality of good and evil as basic universal principles, and that the Creator of the physical world is Devil, alias the Old Testament Jehovah, they took their Gnostic and Manichaean faith from the Bogomils of Bulgaria. Their priests, called Perfecti or "perfect ones", were vegetarian, chaste, and espoused non-violence. They thought the crucifixion fictious and that Jesus had never lived as a man. Their rule of travelling in pairs of the same sex led to the calumny that they were homosexual - "buggers", from "bougres", meaning "Bulgarians". This arose also from their rejection of marriage and sexual relations as tending to the incarnation of more poor souls in hell - for so they saw this earthly life. In fact such abstinence was asked only of the Perfecti who had undertaken the consolamentum: a rite which most believers undertook only on their deathbed. The faith, though mystic in its attitude to Christ, was entirelly practical in terms of human psychology: requiring nothing of those unable to overcome their nature.
As such, it bacame so charismatic that it threatened the power of the Church. It seemed as if the entire Pays d´Oc was about to fall to Cathar control. In 1208, following the murder of a papal envoy, Pope Innocent III declared a crusade. The resulting forty-year war waged by the King and barons of north France (interested more in brabbing land than in converting souls) led to the establishment of the Dominican Inquisition and to razing over 400 villages by Simon de Montfort.
The destruction began with the sack of Béziers in 1208, the Church´s attitude being enshrined in the remark supposedly made by the Abbé de Cîteaux. "Kill them all", he told soldiers complaining they couldn´t tell between Cathars and Catholics, "Good will know his own".
The last important Cathar stand took place at the Pyrenean castle of Montségur. At its fall in March 1244 over 200 Cathars were burned alive. It is said a treasure was removed from Montségur before the capitulation. What it was remains the subject of occult speculation. Some claim it the Holy Grail.
Their interest today arises from: 1. a rebirth of interest in Gnostic beliefs, 2. their apparent connection with esoteric movements such as the troubadours and Knights Templar, 3. their place in a mythology rendering Montségur as mystical as Arthurian Camelot and 4. the odd events recorded by English psychiatrist Arthur Guirdham in the 1960s suggesting that some of his patients, distrubed by recurrent dreams, were reincarnated Cathars who had lived and died in the years preceding the fall of Montsésgur.
Apart from these aspects Catharism is remembered for its attempt to maintain in Europe a spiritual path that the Church Militant crushed so utterly that for over seven centuries it was as if dead and gone - forced underground. That it and its tents survive to require reassessment today only goes to show that spiritual belief is hard to destroy.
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