Abstract

Medieval ecclesiastics in the 12th and 13th centuries considered the evolution of heresy throughout Christian history as being a continuous, unbroken line from the earliest days of Christianity until their time, displaying notions of intolerance and prejudice when confronted with divergent beliefs, far removed from the openness and pluralism of thought and expression that some early Christian writers possessed. The so-called “Cathar” heresy possessed possible historical links with past heresies, mainly Manichaeism and Bogomilism; however, tracing these links is a task that has eluded many modern historians, mainly because of the lack of textual evidence on the part of the heretical party that can identify these links, as well as the time-gap that is prevalent between the appearances of these sects. The political and religious climate of the 12th century spurred anti-clerical movements within parts of the laity that stressed the return to a purer faith, identifying the simplicity of the vita apostolica as the ideal model for Christian life. These anti-clerical movements accentuated a fear in the ecclesiastical class, and its members perceived these movements as revivals of ancient heresies, whereupon the polemical literature that was produced by ecclesiastics in response to these movements “amplified” the existence of heresy within Christendom, especially that of “Catharism” in the Languedoc. The Church, needing to eradicate the spread of this “poison” used tools like preaching, crusade, and inquisition, the latter being the most successful. Inquisitorial sources, just like the medieval polemical literature that preceded them, did not display a lived reality of heresy due to the lack of evidence on the part of the heretical party.