Cathar Sentence Examples

Some Gnostics sprinkled the heads of the dying with oil and water to render them invisible to the powers of darkness; but in the East generally, where the need to compete with the Cathar sacrament of Consolatio was less acutely felt, extreme unction is unknown.

This article relates to the Western Cathars, as they appear (1) in the Cathar Ritual written in Provencal and preserved in a 13th -century MS. in Lyons, published by Cledat, Paris, 1888; (2) in Bernard Gui's Practica inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis, edited by Canon C. Douais, Paris, 1886; and (3) in the proces verbal of the inquisitors' reports.

The central Cathar rite was consolamentum, or baptism with spirit and fire.

Just as at the third scrutiny the early catechumen passed a last examination in the Gospels, Creed and Lord's Prayer, so after their year of abstinence the credens receives creed and prayer; the allocution with which the elder "handed on" this prayer is preserved, and of it the Abbe Guiraud remarks that, if it were not in a Cathar ritual, one might believe it to be of Catholic origin.

To counteract it celibacy was finally imposed on the clergy, and the great mendicant orders evolved; while the constant polemic of the Cathar teachers against the cruelty, rapacity and irascibility of the Jewish tribal god led the church to prohibit the circulation of the Old Testament among laymen.

Here seems to belong in the order of development the Cathar Eucharist (see Cathars).

This being so, it is of the deepest interest to study the Cathar cult, since through its rites we can get a glimpse of those of the primitive church, about which want of documents leaves us too often in the dark."

Thus the Cathar ritual, like that of the Armenian dissenters (see Paulicians), reflects an age when priestly ordination was not yet differentiated from confirmation.