Along the century V, the Roman Church lived serious menaces to its survival
and, about 490, the situation became precarious desesperadoramente. She
was still very far away of having the hegemony of the spiritual power in
the Christendom, and the implosion of the Empire turned the menace of barbaric
invasion the main focus of the attentions of the Latin population. Between
384 and 399, with I support him official, the bishop from Rome papa was
already denominated, but this didn't mean a lot because its official condition,
in terms of Christendom, was very different than some centuries it became
later when it started to carry out leader's paper and supreme head of the
Christendom. Actually, the papa was an illustration that just represented
a centralizing function of veiled interests of the Roman ecclesiastical
school, that was just a school dentre many other lines different from the
Christianity, whole fighting for they maintain her alive and they adopt
its point of view freely regarding Christ's message. The Church of Rome
fought hopelessly to stand out dentre the others, combatting a theological
great point-of-view variety different from yours. To weigh of having imbeded
in the heart of the Empire, the Church of Rome didn't possess larger authority
that other, as, for example, the Greek Church or the Celtic Church. And
its authority was not larger than the one of another Christian currents.
If the Church of Rome wanted to survive and, still, to create a hegemony
on the whole Christian thought, exercising a great authority and power,
she would need of the I support of a strong kingdom and of a powerful secular
illustration that it could represent it rescuing a little of the mystic
of the Empire of Césares, imposing great reverence and respect.
Of there that, so that the Christian world developed according to the Roman
doctrine, the Catholic Church should be disseminated, implemented and imposed
by means of the secular force - a force sufficiently powerful to face
and finally exitirpar the challenge of the other Christian schools.
About 486, the king franc-merovíngeo Clóvis had expanded
extraordinarimente the extension of its domains, enclosing kingdoms and
adjacent principalities and winning several rival tribes. Important cities
started to do part of its kingdom, like Troyes, Rehims and Amiens. In not
very more than 10 years of conquests, Clóvis was Europa Westerner's
most powerful boss. And it went in Clóvis that had found a champion
for its interests to Catholic Church. And it went through Clóvis
that to Catholic Church finally would get to establish a supremacy that
was not questioned for more than a thousand years.
The pact established between Clóvis and the Church assured a political
victory for both parts. To the first it assured legitimacy in a time in
that the Christian ideals supplanted the pagans, and on Monday its survival
was assured, consolidating it as equal, in conditions, to the Greek Orthodox
Church, of Constantinople (very influential due to the Roman Empire of
the East), what would make it to settle down as the supreme spiritual authority
in Europa Ocidental. The conversion and Clóvis' baptism would mark
the birth of a new Roman Empire, Christian pretensamente, based on the
Church of Rome and administered, at the secular level, for the frank kingdom
and for the lineage merovíngea - later on traída and knocked
down by the own Church.
With powerful efficiency, the Catholic faith was imposed hopelessly by
the sword, and the lines in the other churches way out (partly) of the
history; with the sansação of the Church, the frank kingdom
expanded to the east, including most of France, Germany and other modern
countries.
Two centuries later, the Church was already sufficiently powerful to think
Clóvis' lineage merovíngea began to be a difficulty. Dagobert
II, descending of Clóvis, a strong king that got to tame the anarchy
was that, before him, it dominated the kingdom, reestablishing the order,
and recognizing the interests more and more less spiritual of the Church.
So much that he seems to have miscarried the attempts deliberately of this
of expanding still more. And, by virtue of her to have married with a Visigothic
princess (whose people, in spite of decalar fidelity Rome, they had an
immense sympathy for heretical " considered " ideas) there was
adquirdo an immense territory, where today it is Languedoc, base of future
Cátaros. Dagobert seems to have acquired some of the Aryan tendencies
that questioned the authority of the Church. With all this, it is not of
if extranhar that he has obtained countless political enemies, among them
its chancellor, Cucumber, the Fat, that, joining with other enemies and
with the Church, they planned the murder of Dagobert and the extermination
of the lineage merovíngea.
He/she fits to point out that, two centuries after its death, Dagobert
II was canonized, as a form of hiding the visible betrayal of the Church
to the pact that had done with Clóvis.
In the words of the Roman Church, in the century XII the area of Languedoc
was infected by the heresy of a noxious movement, called of catarismo,
" the crazy leprosy of the south ". Although it was known by
everybody that the followers of that heresy went essentially peaceful,
they constituted a serious menace to the Roman authority, the most serious
than Rome would find in the three following centuries, until Martinho Lutero's
arrival. About 1200 there was really the real possibility that the Roman
Catholicism was substituted, as predominant form of Christianity, in Languedoc,
for the catarismo that was being irradiated for another parts of Europe.
And, 1165 the Church there was condeando formally the catarismo in the
city of Albi, in Languedoc. Of there why also met them for albigenses we.
Many of our information on them come from Catholic ecclesiastical sources,
and to create a correct picture of the cátaros starting from these
documents is as understanding the Brazilian student resistance, in the
time of the Dictatorship, starting from the reports of the military ones
and of the HURT-CODI, or to understand the French Resistance, in Second
World War, starting from the reports of Gestapo.
In general, the cátaros believed in the doctrine of the reincarnation
and they recognized God I don't eat a beginning purely masculine, but as
tends, equally, feminine beginnings (what sends us the doctrine of Druids).
So much that the pregadores and teachers of the congregations cátaras,
known as parfaits, were of both sexes. At the same time, they rejected
veementemente the authority of the Catholic Church and they denied the
validity of the clerical hierarchies, or of official intercessors between
God and the man. In the center of this opposition an extremely important
pincípio resided: the faith lived as as a direct mystic experience,
without passing for a second hand. Such emphasis was given in the direct
mystic experience that see the influence of Plotinus
clearly in the thought cátaro. Today we would say that the cátaros
looked for vivenciar a communion experience with God, or a transcdendência
experience, in a domain Transpersonal, that,
before, we called mystics. This experience called herself gnosis, that
means " knowledge " in Greek, and it was privileged on all the
other forms of credos and dogmas by the cátaros. The emphasis in
the direct experience with the transcendent, the transpessoal, turned superfluous
priests, bishops and any other ecclesiastical authorities.
Thus, the Church, feeling really threatened, it took the initiative of
forming a Crusade (the first inside of Europe and against Christian irmãoes)
in order to extirpate once and for all with the heresy cátara: Crossed
Albigense.
In 1209, an army of more than 30 thousand men, it got off the north of
Europe in direction to Languedoc, in the south of France, for they execute
one of the largest carnificinas of the human history. In the war that it
was proceeded, the population took the sword and denfendeu with emphasis
the cátaros against the Catholic despotism. The whole territory
of the area was plundered and the cities and villas razed without dó
nor pity. Only in the city of Beziers, for example, 15 thousand men women
and children were exterminated, many even inside of churches. When an official
one asked a representative of the papa like him it would recognize a heretic
of the true believers, the answer it was: " Kill them everybody. God
will recognize yours ". The own papal representative wrote proud to
Inocêncio III that " nor age, nor sex, nor position forms saved
".
The cruel war lasted about forty years. When it finished, the whole Europe
dropped in a type of heaviness and barbarism.
One of the movements that more he/she had connections with the cátaros
it was the Order of Templários, servant in the Terra Santa, and
that represented a Christian military association open to the study and
discussion of mystic subjects. Acoselho the reader to click below in the
links to read more on both orders:
The texts here presented they are, respectively, of:
Michael Baignet, Richard Leigh and Henry Lincoln, whose book The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail, Publisher in Brazil for Nova Fronteira, 1997, it served
as inspiration and motivation for this page
Carles Cerveras, for the page of Cátaros
A removed article of the Newspaper " Harmony deMolay ", on Templários.
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