time of his departure into heaven. Hence the initiated would sometimes escape the sufferings of illness, or the recent convert flee from the temptation of the desire for the temporal things he had renounced, by suicide. Such Catharan suicide was known as the Endura.

Yet more remarkable than the sanction of suicide was another consequence of the Manichæan creed—the condemnation of matrimony.35 The connection of thought was logical and the conclusion perhaps logically inevitable. If it be accepted that the carnal body is the invention of the Devil and the propagation of the species his device for prolonging his power, the love of the sexes original sin, then it is clear that marriage is service of Satan. So the Cathari enjoined the severest possible chastity.36 As usual they found evidence of their belief in the Bible. But for them there was no difference between one form of sexual intercourse and another. Adultery, even incest, was not one whit more iniquitous than marriage. On the whole they were rather less evil. For adultery was only temporary and produced a feeling of shame; whereas marriage was permanent, a lasting living in sin, contemplated without shame. The bearing of children was regarded with horror. Every birth was a new triumph for the evil one; a pregnant woman was possessed of the Devil, and if she died pregnant, could not at once be saved.37

Catharan beliefs inevitably involved the denunciation of Catholicism.38 It was the Catholic that was the heretic; the wearer of the pontifical tiara could not possibly be even a disciple of Him who wore a crown of thorns, was indeed antichrist. The clergy from the highest to the lowest were pharisees; the sacraments—infant baptism, the sacrificial mass—were declared to have no warrant in Scripture, to be mere figments of the imagination.39

The Cathari, it has to be remembered, were a church. They had an organization, held services with a certain very simple ritual, for example substituting for the mass a simple blessing of bread at table, the Catharan meal bearing a close resemblance to the early Christian ἀγάπη. Confessions were made to elders of the church once a month. But the most distinctive ceremony of the sect was the Consolamentum, an imposition of hands whereby the ordinary believer was admitted into the select ranks of the Perfected. The number of the latter was always small, and consisted principally of the avowed ministers of the faith. The Consolamentum, which meant re-entrance into communion with the spiritual world, was the desire of all true Cathari, but was apt to be postponed until late in life, often until the death-bed. The actual ritual of the Consolamentum—or hæretication, as Catholics termed it—was very brief. The candidate, after a series of genuflections and blessings, asked the minister to pray God that he might be made a good Christian.40 Such prayer having been offered, the candidate was then asked if he was willing to abjure prohibited foods and unchastity, and to endure persecution if necessary. When the Consolamentum was given to a man on his death-bed, it was frequently followed by the Endura, which commonly took the form of suffocation or self-starvation.

The Perfected consisted of four orders—bishop, filius major, filius minor, deacon—their duties being to preside at services and missionary work, in which the Cathari were zealous. Outside their ranks were the simple adherents, the Believers or, as they were sometimes called, Christians. These bound themselves eventually to receive the Consolamentum; but, generally speaking, they were under no obligations save to venerate the Perfected who, in the strictest sense, composed the true Catharan Church, and to live the pure life their faith enjoined. But they were under no coercive authority, and were even permitted to marry.

Wherein lay the attraction of the Catharan doctrine and system? For evidently they were attractive, as their great and rapid spread over Europe shows. It is at first difficult to discern anything attractive in teaching so austere; and if the Catharan promised a reward in heaven, so also did the Catholic. In his case purgatory had first to be faced, but then the ordeal on earth was less exacting. There would appear to be two explanations, the one high-minded, the other the reverse. In its early days the gospel of Catharism probably made to some a lofty appeal. It denounced palpable clerical abuses, repugnant to the moral consciousness. The austerity of its ethical principles seemed to point to a higher standard of living in days when any outstanding examples of asceticism, whether in the Church or outside it, evoked admiration. In its hatred for the evil spirit of materialism, in its detestation particularly of that worst of human passions, cruelty, there was an element of nobility which finds a response in the instinct which we to-day call humanitarian.41 In so far as its appeal was of this nature, it was sincere and fine. Unhappily, however, Catharism unquestionably developed another appeal of a wholly different character, which resulted almost inevitably from the complete impracticableness of its ideal. A creed that approved of suicide and denounced marriage stands self-condemned. It was at war with the very principles of life itself. The ascetic rule it enjoined was one ‘more honoured in the breach than the observance.’ There was taint of unhealthiness and corruption in a rule so hopelessly at variance with nature; while a creed which, if it meant anything, held as its highest hope the speediest possible destruction of all human life, was devoid of the balance and sanity which is essential in any doctrine that is to be of any practical service in the world. Such a religion as Catharism could not harmonize with the most elementary facts of life and human nature. The consequence was—and herein lies the greatest condemnation of the sect—that it went on proclaiming an impracticable ideal while admitting that it was impracticable, sanctioning a compromise, itself antithetical to its essential dogma, whereby alone the heresy was able to continue at all. The compromise is seen in two practices—the distinction made between the Perfected and the Believers and the postponement of the Consolamentum, or complete initiation, until the end of life. The Believers—the great bulk of the adherents of the creed—might do pretty well as they liked, in fact ignore all the Catharan precepts of conduct, might marry, have riches, make war, eat what they chose, provided only they were prepared to receive the Consolamentum before they died. Such an arrangement is merely the apotheosis of the system of