The Cathari, Saints and Holy Martyrs of the Gnostic Faith

This website is dedicated to the memory of the Cahari Martyrs, who are the primary patrons (saints) of the Apostolic Gnostic Church in America. This means that we remember them in a special way in all that we do, and ask for their prayers and their blessings upon our work here on Earth, so "the holy elect iin spirit free may help us on this earthly tree," to paraphrase an early Manichean hymn. The Cathari (usually pronounced KA-har in the singular and ka-HAR-ee in the plural, though some use the plural "Cathars" instead; regardless, each word beginning like the English word "cabin" and with a silent "t") were spiritual descendants of a Gnostic-Manichean group that journeyed from what is now Eastern Europe into Gaul in present-day France, most likely around the 8th century. While their main center of activity was southern France, their influence extended as far as modern-day Switzerland, Italy, Bosnia, and Croatia (in the former Yugoslavia). Their most important ceremony was the initiatory sacrament of the consolamentum. Fragments of the text from some of the Cathari rituals can be found here.

In 1209, the western Christian leader Pope Innocent III declared a so-called "crusade" intended to wipe out Catharism as a heresy against the "true faith," and for the next twenty years, a combination of religious and military force under the leadership of a vicioius bloodthirsty Christian priest named Domingo de Guzman (ironically known to mainstream Christians as "St. Dominic") was leveled against the Cathari throughout the south of France. In each town captured by the mainstream Christian juggernaut, Cathari were singled out from the population and subjected to barbarities and atrocities, savagery and torture. Countless Cathari martyrs went to their death, and even the "crusaders" noted the way they went to these martyrdoms without fear, unwilling to betray the sincerity of their faith. Over time, Innocent III himself came to regret the "excesses" of the "crusade," and it drew to a close in 1229.

This, however, marked but a new phase in the mainstream Christian genocide against the Cathari, with the establishment of the Inquisition in southern France and a continuation of the military campaign against the remaining Cathari communities. The Cathari retreated into fortresses, which were gradually taken one by one. Although minor action would continue until 1255 (the fall of Queribus), the last major fortress to fall was Montsegur, in 1244. For unknown reasons, the attackers allowed the Cathari a two week truce, probably to perform some final religious ceremonies in preparation for Easter, but about 16 March, 1244, over two hundred Cathari "parfaits" or holy people from Montsegur were condemned for heresy and burned en masse in a stockade outside the fortress by the authority of "the Holy Inquisition" -- neither the first nor the last martyrs to die by fire for their "heretical" Gnostic beliefs.

Let us pray in veneration of the Cathari martyrs: Holy men and women of the Cathari, you gave the final gift of sacrifice for Christ and Sophia and for your faith, against those who falsely and perversely used that very name of Christ to kill, maim, and destroy. When the princes of this world, blind servants of the archons, demanded that you surrender – surrender not just your bodies but your faith, your hope, your love – you refused, and you went bravely into the darkness of death with trust in the one God of love, whose presence you could feel moving within your spirits. The flames of their hatred consumed your bodies that cold day so many years ago, but for all their power, they could not extinguish the flames of love that burned inside you.

Holy men and women of the Cathari, we praise you and we bless your name now and always. You have fought the good fight, you have kept the faith, you have written your name with your own blood of sacrifice in the book of life; yours is the glory, the kingdom, the power, yours the golden crown, yours the prize of life in the spirit; your way into the realm of the Pleroma was paved with the palm leaves of the martyrs. Pray for us, holy Cathari Martyrs, and teach us your strength, your love, your devotion, your sacrifice. Teach us to step bravely into the flames of hatred, to bare our necks to the sword of intolerance, and look with love on those that attack us. We ask this in the name of Christ and Sophia, for whom you gave that last gift of devotion, and with whom you now rest in the Pleroma until all things return to their earliest origins: Amen.

Cathari News! In honor of the Cathar martyrs, our local parish group in Tennessee has taken the name Cathari Circle.

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