the death-bed repentance, it is an encouragement to insincerity and hypocrisy. This does not mean that most, or necessarily even many, Cathari were hypocrites. Most of them, probably, were originally simple-minded labourers and artisans, attracted by a novel gospel, which discerned the evils of the times, gave hopes of heaven and was marked by the ascetic and missionary enthusiasms which were then regarded as the hall-mark of a spiritual origin and divine inspiration.

Nevertheless, the temptation to insincerity was clearly present. ‘Believe in the Catharan creed, venerate the Perfected, receive the Consolamentum before death,’ made a simple and an attractive faith for one who wished to enjoy the pleasures of life to the full, yet to whom the tortures of a material hell were painfully vivid. ‘We are the only true Christians, the Catholic church is but an usurpation, utterly corrupt,’ made a convenient excuse for the feudal lord, by whom only the excuse was wanted, to harry the clergy and make inroads on their property. Nor need we wonder that these holders of a doctrine of ultra-asceticism, of a complete celibacy, were credited with even the foulest of sexual orgies. The distinction between Perfected and Believers was an antinomian arrangement. Intense asceticism among the very select number of the former was made compatible with excesses among the latter. Was not the very rigour of existence among the completely initiated an invitation positively to extreme indulgence prior to such initiation? It would be highly uncritical to place a great deal of credence in the many stories told of immoral practices among Cathari. Such stories were bound to be told. We find them in connection with practically every mediæval heresy; it was such an obvious device for the discrediting of unholy beliefs to demonstrate that they involved unholy lives. But it would also be uncritical to reject the stories altogether. There is an inherent probability that a certain percentage—it may be only a small percentage—of those told of the Cathari were true. The critic’s objection, ‘what abomination may one not expect of those who hold incest no worse a crime than marriage?’ is pertinent and sound.42 What results are likely, once given the impossibility of complete continence, from such a perverted teaching?

Indeed, notwithstanding its better qualities, its still better possibilities, Catharism was essentially perverted: and the antagonism it aroused and the efforts made to suppress it are in no way surprising. It has been termed ‘a hodge-podge of pagan dualism and gospel teaching, given to the world as a sort of reformed Christianity.’43 A hodge-podge it undoubtedly was, an amalgam of ancient Manichæism and elements of eastern origin, which were not Christian at all but Mazdeist, together with certain features of pure Christianity. It is no wonder that the Catholic Church viewed with alarm the challenge made by a faith so compounded when it claimed to be the only true Christianity. Catharism was not an antagonist to be despised. Its missionary enterprise, its anti-social tendencies and the evident popularity of its anti-sacerdotal features made it undeniably dangerous. Moreover, it did not stand alone. Taken together, the different anti-sacerdotal heresies, of which Waldensianism and Catharism were the chief, which were abroad in Europe before the end of the twelfth century, presented a serious problem and indeed a menace. Was not the widespread phenomenon of organized heresy a challenge to the whole conception of the Civitas Dei alike on its spiritual and its secular side? If only in self-defence must not the Church—society on its spiritual side—take special measures to counteract the influence of rebels, who had deliberately made war upon it by declaring themselves alone to be the true repositories of the sacred truths upon which God’s Kingdom here upon earth was founded? There were three possible methods of answering the challenge of heresy. The first was reform, the weeding out of those abuses which gave anti-sacerdotalism its case and its opportunity, reform whereby all might be enabled to recognize incontestably that Christ was plainly revealed in the life of His Church. The second was missionary propaganda, the utilization of the same weapon which the enemy so trenchantly wielded—that of persuasion. The third possible method was constraint.