Lost Teachings of the Cathars, page 9
Thus we can almost get to have our cake and eat it. For the Cathars, Mary was either the concubine of a pseudo-Christ or the wife of the true celestial Christ. Yet there was probably an independent tradition in the south of France, which was not preserved by The Golden Legend, that she was indeed the wife or concubine of Jesus. We are left with uncertainty. When I began the research for this section some years ago I felt certain that Mary could only be the wife of Jesus in some metaphysical way, but now it seems fair to say that it is an independent tradition. How far this tradition goes back is anyone’s guess.
However, although Mary is described, in the Gospel of Philip, as the companion of Jesus, and he used to kiss her on the mouth, her main role in Gnostic writings is not as a wife but as a prominent teacher in her own right. According to Mary Ann Beavis, there is ‘quite orthodox-sounding evidence that the Cathar preachers held out the Magdalene as an example of hope for female listeners, probably because of her post-repentence chastity...’28 The common and popular notion of Mary as a reformed prostitute would not have presented a problem for the Cathars because whatever sins one committed in a previous life, they were irrelevant once one became a Perfect.
So it is very unlikely that the Cathars believed that there was a bloodline running down from Jesus and Mary Magdalene. As far as the Cathars were concerned, they already knew of a secret transmission from Jesus: it was the laying on of hands from Jesus to his disciples, passed on through the centuries to the Perfect. Some Cathars may well have believed that Mary Magdalene was herself part of that tradition.
The sections in the Gospel of Philip that refer to Mary Magdalene call her koinonos, or ‘companion’, which may be interpreted as concubine. Yet the Gospel of Philip is very much concerned with the inner meaning of things, and much of the time it uses elaborate spiritual metaphor. Thus it is unlikely to be intended to refer to an actual relationship between Jesus and Mary Magdalene. Yet here we can have our cake and eat it too. The Gospel of Philip is widely believed to be an anthology of excerpts from other writings, some of which might be earlier. So the Mary Magdalene section could be from another gospel that was actually concerned with the relationship between Mary and Jesus, which in turn got used by the compiler of the Gospel of Philip for more spiritual purposes. It’s little more than a guess, but allows honour to be preserved for those who are intent on Mary Magdalene having been the partner of Jesus.
Chapter 6
A Baptism of Fire
and Spirit:
The Consolamentum
and Other Practices
The consolamentum has been a persistent thread running through the history of the Cathars. It was at the very heart of their religion, uniting myth and practice, tying together their ascetic discipline, social organization, personal conscience and much more. It was a baptism of fire, or of fire and spirit as in the Gospel of John, as opposed to the Catholic Church’s baptism of water, which was merely the baptism of John the Baptist who, as far as many Cathars were concerned, had been sent by the devil to distract people from the message of Jesus. The Catholic baptism of water had no effect whatsoever, the Cathars stated.1 The consolamentum was derived from the southeastern European Bogomils, who had a very similar ritual.
The consolamentum was the spiritual baptism, the baptism of the Holy Spirit. It removed guilt and the need for penance. Penance, the Cathars thought, to the shock of the Inquisitor Rainerius Sacconi, didn’t lessen the tortures of hell or reduce the length of time spent in purgatory, nor did any sin lessen the eternal glory of heaven.2
The imposition of hands that took place during the consolamentum was the baptism of the Holy Spirit, performed by the bishop or, if he was not available, by the two ‘sons’ of the bishop – or, in the absence of the filius major or minor any Perfect. When a bishop died the younger son, the filius minor, ordained the elder son, the filius major, as bishop, and the filius minor was then ordained as elder son and a new filius minor elected by all Perfect and ordained by the new bishop.3 These Bogomil-derived practices were adapted in western Europe so that the bishop ordained the filius major as bishop immediately before he died, and the filius major ordained the filius minor. If the bishop transgressed and then died the consolamentum of every Perfect could potentially be invalid.
When Catharism was at its peak, the consolamentum was typically performed in front of a large number of fellow Cathars. The candidate for Perfecthood had to wait a year before receiving the consolamentum. If no bishop was available it could be performed by a deacon, or in the absence of any of the limited Cathar hierarchy, any Perfect. The two ‘sons’ acted like wandering clerics, going from place to place visiting Cathars and instructing them in their teachings. The deacons remained in a fixed location, keeping a hospice for the local Cathars. James Capelli, a Franciscan friar, admitted that they offered: ‘...the boom of hospitality, cheerfully providing for the latter’s necessities with careful attention, for they are strongly linked to each other by a bond of affection.’4
The consolamentum ritual began as follows: ‘Bless us; have mercy upon us. Amen. Let it be done unto us according to Thy word. May the Father, the son, and the Holy Spirit forgive all your sins.’ This was repeated three times, followed by the Lord’s Prayer, then the beginning of the Gospel of John, ‘In the beginning was the Word...’.5 After that there were appeals for a pardon from God, which were also used in the monthly ceremony of the apparellamentum, the group confession.
The probationer was then instructed to reject the Roman Church and its promises or sacraments. He or she was instructed in the practices and tenets of the Good Christians (or Good Men and Good Women, the Cathars’ preferred designation for themselves), instructed to ‘bear all misfortune with constancy and steadfastness for the preservation of his faith and doctrine’. The Believer answers that he, or she, will accept all adversity and hold to the tenets cheerfully for the rest of his, or her, life.
A New Testament, or the Gospel of John, was placed on a table covered with a cloth and the applicant made the melioramentum greeting and received the book. An interpretation of the Lord’s Prayer (see page 86) followed, or a series of quotations from scripture, backing up the significance of the ritual. The preliminaries over, the essential part of the consolamentum began:
‘You wish to receive the spiritual baptism by which the Holy Spirit is given in the Church of God, together with the Holy Prayer and the imposition of hands by the Good Men ft This holy baptism, by which the Holy spirit is given, the Church of God has preserved from the apostles until this time, and it has passed from Good Men to Good Men until the present moment, and it will continue to do so until the end of the world.’6
The strictures that the Perfect was bound by were given and he/she was commanded to ‘hate this world and the things of this world’. Once the new Perfect had confirmed the vows, he or she made another melioramentum and the book was held over the Believer’s head and each person present placed his or her hand on the Believer’s head or shoulder. The Act, or Kiss, of Peace was given during which the men embraced and kissed each other on the cheek, the women did likewise, and kissed the Gospel that was placed on the new Perfect’s head.
Receiving the consolamentum meant that any sins of the former life were forgiven and the Holy Spirit was infused in the newly consoled Perfect. If any of the various strictures imposed on the Perfect were broken – eating meat, having sexual relations, committing various crimes, and so on – the Perfect had to be re-consoled, after perhaps doing penance, and every person that this perfect had himself or herself consoled would have to be re-consoled by someone with a valid consolamentum.7
During the ritual of the consolamentum, the Spirit Paracelete would descend on the new Perfect. The term was derived from the Gospel of John (which was, after all, balanced on the head of the petitioner at that point) in which Jesus promises to send the Paraclete (a Greek word that may be translated as ‘advocate’, ‘comforter’ or ‘consoler’); it is the Latin translation of the Greek that gives us the term consolamentum.8
The laying on of hands of the consolamentum had to occur physically, perhaps something of a contradiction in a religion for which matter was of the devil. An example was given that if a Cathar reached his arm through a window to grant the consolamentum to a dying person on his sickbed, even if the finger was only as far away as the nose is from the mouth the consolamentum would not be valid.9
A single female Cathar could perform the consolamentum, though it was preferable to have someone, or more than one person, higher up in the hierarchy.10 After the ritual the initiate was told that he was ‘in the world in precisely the situation of a sheep among wolves’.11
The consolamentum may seem a little underwhelming, packed as it is with moral obligations and familiar quotes from the New Testament. Yet Colum Hayward, a member of the modern-day White Eagle Lodge, which has neo-Cathar connections, has found that the rite makes quite a different impression when performed:
‘Enacted they take on a new character. The ritual of kneeling, in context, has touched something in me that I cannot quite explain. There is a dignity in the movement when it comes, and a deep simplicity in the way the simple act contains so much. It is the same with the Kiss of Peace. Rituals can hold memories much better than words at times; here, the ritual action stirs something profound, at a level beneath the conscious, and on all three occasions those present have shared that experience with each other afterwards. The laying on of hands, which Cathars rightly claimed connected them with apostolic times and which the Church felt undermined priestly authority, has felt to me to be the real transmission of a power words do not quite convey.’12
Nor was the consolamentum considered to be merely a formal ceremony. Strange lights were said to have appeared during the ritual. One such case was that of Sibylla, wife of Peter Pauc of Ax-les-Thermes: ‘A great light descended from the sky on the house and reached to the sick woman who lay upon the bed.’13 This was a deathbed consolamentum, but she survived for another two years and then could not be re-consoled just before she did actually die because she had lost her memory.
Perhaps there is an echo of these strange events in a miracle attributed to St Dominic. During his campaign to win over the hearts of Languedocians by his example of poverty and his debating skills, he persuaded three young female Perfects to become Catholics. From a hilltop he then saw three balls of fire arc down into a small hamlet. Dominic saw it as a sign that he should build a convent for them there, replacing for them the house of Perfects in which they were living with other Perfect women. These balls of fire have been intended as a counter example to the light that visited a Perfect when he or she was being consoled.14
Arbitrary judgments were inevitably made during borderline cases in which it was not clear if the conditions of the consolamentum had been met. Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay recounted the case of a Believer who was receiving the consolamentum while in the throes of death. The Perfect laid hands on him but the dying man was unable to repeat the Lord’s Prayer before he died. Since the receiving of the consolamentum was key to salvation, was the poor man saved or damned? The matter was referred to a Cathar knight, Bertrand of Saissac, who judged: ‘In the case of this man, I should support him and declare him to be saved. It is my judgment that all others, unless at the last moment they have repeated the Lord’s Prayer, are damned.’15
Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay gave that example to highlight the absurd aspects of deathbed consoling. Surely it should be the whole pattern of one’s life, the general trajectory, that should determine if someone is saved (assuming that one accepts the concept of salvation)? Yet a deathbed consolamentum is not intrisically more ridiculous than any deathbed conversion, confession or extreme unction. In any case, such religious structures are essentially arbitrary the world over, which is not to deny that they can have a significant effect, psychologically or spiritually, on the recipient. The Cathars were perhaps guilty of throwing stones in glasshouses when they ridiculed Catholic sacraments such as water baptism and the Eucharist.
Peter was also keen to point out that if a Perfect ate meat then all those consoled by him would lose the Holy Spirit and must be re-consoled. Again, this seems out of proportion to the offense, but the system itself had its strengths. Perfects were well aware of the consequences of breaking their vows. The solution to invalidating consolamentums was not to break the vows in the first place.
According to Peter, the consolamentum involved actual verbal rejection of the Catholic Church, specifically rejecting the baptismal water, the sign of the cross and the veil that the priest placed on the head of the baptised. The consoler says, ‘Receive, then, the Spirit from the Good Men,’ and breathes into the recipient’s mouth seven times.16
The endura
At the end of the Occitan version of the consolamentum the new Perfect was instructed on how to give the consolamentum to the sick and dying. This special form, known as the endura, was the most controversial action of the Cathars. It evolved as a result of the Inquisition’s oppression and the need for secrecy. No longer could Believers openly give the melioramentum in greeting to the Perfect, nor was it possible to hold large-scale consoling, so the only reliable way to become a Perfect was for the sick or dying to receive the consolamentum on the deathbed. But if the patient recovered unexpectedly, he or she would be bound by the restrictions of the Perfect vow and would inevitably break them. (See Chapter 9 on the Autiers and Bélibaste for some illustrations of this.) It may even be said that the consolamentum ended the life of a Believer: the old life was over and the spirit now lived within him or her.17
Thus the endura emerged as a vow to fast until death once the consolamentum was received. This was not taken without serious consideration. Even Inquisitor James Capelli conceded that, despite the evil rumours, Perfects did not strangle sick people who had received the consolamentum.18 A further rite, the covenensa, involved accepting a vow from Believers to receive the consolamentum and endura at the ends of their lives, in the eventuality that the Believer would be unable to speak and so be unable to make the necessary replies during the ceremony.19 In practice the Perfect who could give the endura often had some medical knowledge and was skilled in knowing if a Believer was likely to survive.
Conversely, it was in the interest of Catholic clergy to ensure that the recipient of an endura would break their vows or survive. Azemar de Avinhos, a Believer, was made to eat chicken soup on his sickbed by the Catholic bishop of Toulouse, so that de Avinhos’s consolamentum would no longer be valid. Azemar survived but was able to receive the consolamentum again before he died.20
The melioramentum
The single practice given to Believers was the melioramentum, (known as the reverentia in Italy), which the Inquisitors liked to call the ‘adoration’, implying that the Perfects were being worshipped. Although Believers could be present at the consolamentum, and other gatherings, the only obligation of the Believer was to give the melioramentum to Perfects.
The melioramentum may have had its origin in a Languedoc practice of paying respect to those of a higher class, a gradual accumulation of recognized piety and hence social status accruing to the recipient each time the greeting was given.21 In Cathar practice, however, it became an expression of the relationship between the Believers and the Perfects. The Believers were not saved and when they died would be reincarnated, undergoing more or less the same fate as anyone who was not a Perfect, though with a greater possibility of meeting the Good Men and Good Women in the next lifetime. This reliance on the Perfects is reflected in the form of the greeting, ‘Bless us, Good Men [Women], pray to God for us.’ The Believers had no ability to pray, so they had to request that of the Perfects. An extended version added, ‘Lord, pray to God for this sinner that He deliver him from an evil death and lead him to a good end.’ The Perfect would reply, ‘God be prayed that God will make you a good Christian and lead you to a good end.’ Each melioramentum increased the Believer’s familiarity with the Perfect and would no doubt have increased the likelihood of meeting the Good Men and Good Women in the next life.
The melioramentum could be delivered in the street with a nod to a passing Perfect. In its most formal aspect, when it was used in ceremonies such as the consolamentum, the Believer would kneel, palms on the ground, and bow his or her head to her hands, reciting a portion of the greeting on each bow, the Perfect replying in turn. Female Perfects gave male Perfects the melioramentum and received it from Believers.22
The Inquisition was obsessed with the melioramentum. They interrogated far more Believers (who were more numerous and therefore easier to catch) than Perfects. A confession of performing the melioramentum to a Perfect was crucial to establishing the guilt of the Believer. Thus the records are full of statements along the lines of, ‘I adored the heretic three times.’
The melioramentum may seem a slender basis on which Believers could build an involvement with the Cathar Church but it seems to have worked. To this day a number of minority religions in the Middle East, such as Zezidis, the Druze, the Alawites and the Mandaeans employ a similar model: a small priesthood entrusted with the esoteric secrets of the religion and a large outer circle of lay people with little knowledge of the depths of their religion beyond a few standard practices. Believers could also attend the consolamentum and apparellamentum in some capacity. Although Believers were encouraged to follow the morality and strictures of the Perfects, the melioramentum was their only obligation. True salvation was for the Perfects; the secondary salvation of the Believers merely provided the future possibility, in this life or the next, of becoming Perfects.
The apparellamentum
The chief meeting of the Cathars, which was held monthly (no daily or weekly church services for them!) was known as the apparellamentum and it involved a confession by a Perfect in front of a deacon or higher member of the Church: ‘We have come before God, and before you and before the order of the holy Church to receive the Service , pardon and penance for all our sins ...’
