NOTE: This was one of several semester project papers I wrote in the Spring Semester of 1994 as a graduate student at Florida State University. Unfortunately, the original citations are long gone.
Medieval Europe was not ruled by political power. Political states did not yet exist, and power was spread thinly among many nobles all over Europe. The only absolute authority to endure throughout the Medieval period was the universal, or Catholic, Christian doctrine. The Catholic church filled the vacuum left by the collapsed Roman Empire. Though church authority remained decentralized until the eleventh century, it remained highly effective in bishoprics at the local level. Consequently, Medieval life and religion were inextricably connected, as the only authority for the society was the church. God and demons, saints and miracles were not simply something to be believed in; to the Medieval people, they were an integral part of reality.
It follows then that heresy, or a deviation from the prescribed doctrine of the Catholic church, was indeed perceived as the greatest of threats to humanity. That a great divinity had invested its power in the Catholic church on earth was not questioned; for a sect to reject that god- sent doctrine was the greatest of catastrophes. Though the doctrine of the Cathars does not appear remarkably different on the surface from the Catholic model, it was nonetheless condemned as a heresy.
The Cathars were often called Albigensians in the thirteenth century, being especially numerous in the region of the French town of Albi. Yet they were an old and well- established group long before coming to Albi. The name Cathar expresses their most basic and enduring of beliefs. The Cathari were the "pure ones", those who had broken their ties to evil, material things as much as possible. It is best to describe them by the name which symbolizes their rejection of the material world and its hierarchy.
This inquiry is primarily concerned with those aspects of Cathar doctrine which conflicted with orthodox Christianity. The relative positions of women living under both systems in the area of southwestern France, called Occitania1 from the twelfth to the fourteenth centuries will be examined. The issue to be resolved is whether there existed a marked difference in the status of Cathar women. Was there a kind of "Cathar feminism"? If so, to what extent did it exist in theory or practice?
A specific, working definition of feminism is necessary for this evaluation. "Feminism" here is meant primarily to denote a certain level of empowerment and/or respect for women above and beyond the social norm. This includes decision making on a woman's behalf for herself, freedom in lifestyle choices, and a situation approaching equality between the sexes. Instances where any of these conditions have been met help to substantiate the existence of an Cathar feminism, if not by modern standards of equal rights and liberation, in comparison with orthodox Christian society. This study is a search for such instances.
It should be mentioned that most sources available on this period, and on the Middle Ages in general, deal exclusively with the upper classes and the clerics. A simple explanation; these were the people with the power, influence, and, most significantly, the literacy. Peasants neither had the leisure time to learn to read and write, nor could they afford to pay a scribe to write for them. The best and most extensive records come from and document minority of the population. Consequently, this silent common population will not be included in this study. This affects the presentation of orthodox feudal society much more than the Cathar, for the great majority of Cathars were nobles themselves. However, there is a limited scope in feudal Catholicism to be used to adequately represent the feudal society as a whole.
The Catholic philosophy concerning women in the Middle Ages was at best unfavorable, and almost entirely the product of the early church fathers. Such a bias doomed Medieval woman to be relegated to the lower ranks of humanity, as "the Christian writings were the ones that continued to exert the most direct and vital influence on the atmosphere in which Europeans lived and worked throughout the Middle Ages, for the Bible and the Church Fathers were still regarded as having spiritual and practical authority in the fifteenth century and beyond." Selected teachings of Saint Paul on the subject of women became important Christian doctrines. Paul wrote that women must me subordinated in the home and mute in the churches. He permitted no woman to teach, or have authority over men, "For Adam was formed first, then Eve; and Adam was not deceived, but the woman was the transgressor". According to Saint Augustine, woman was the root of all evil, and as such must be necessarily suppressed.
Many later theologians and preachers maintained that the fact that God had created woman from man's rib rather than from some lower member, like a foot, proved that God intended her to be man's equal. But the ascetic tendencies of Christianity impelled the church to consider woman the original source of sin and a weak vessel peculiarly liable to vice. Her mere existence tempted good men to sins of the flesh, and her inclinations to provocative behavior increased the menace. Moreover, the actual position of woman in contemporary society was bound to influence the ideas of ecclesiastical writers. Thomas Aquinas held that she was ordained to be completely subject to man. "As man stands to God, so stands woman to man".
Men of the Middle Ages had no doubt that all traits were inherited, and that "a good soldier must come from the blood of good soldiers". From the time of the early Germanic codes down through the entire Medieval period, the adultery committed by a wife with a social inferior was a particularly heinous offense. Yet even when the offense was committed with a nobleman of like class, the biological theories of the day held small hope for the offspring of adulterous unions. A child was produced from the merging blood of father and mother; a child of adultery would come from mixed and confused blood and become a man unfit to inherit. This strengthened the inclination on the part of nobles to demand virgin brides, and feudal law insisted on the chastity of wives and young girls.
The social order followed the example of the church in placing restrictions on women's sexuality. If a husband suspected his wife of infidelity, he could kill both her and her lover after issuing a warning. If a father considered anyone to be a menace to the chastity of his daughter, the father could forbid him to approach her, and slay the offender if he violated the prohibition.
It could be surmised that the conditions which governed the lives of the orthodox feudal class forced women to occupy a low place in society. The supreme function of a man was war, and women could not fight. Although the attitude of feudal law towards women had improved considerably by the twelfth century, they were never accorded many rights. Daughters could inherit a fief when there were no sons, but their control of the fief was greatly restricted by male relatives. A woman was never her own mistress, and could exercise her inherited privileges only through her husband or guardian. Before marriage, she existed as the property of her father, to later be turned over to her husband. A woman could not sue in court except through the male in whose charge she was at the time. In short, a woman was always a minor in the tutelage of some male.
A wife bore sons while a mistress satisfied momentary lusts. Concubinage was by no means condoned by the church; however, the church lacked the power to enforce its doctrine. This is one example of the great double standard that existed between men and women. While the woman was expected to be chaste and faithful, her husband had no such obligations. This is made clear by the tremendous numbers of illegitimate births each year. The imposing number of bastards mentioned in the documents of the period shows how thoroughly the nobles appreciated their mistresses. "The noble chose his wife because of her family connections, her dowry, and her ability to bear sons. Beauty, charm and compatibility rarely entered into the matter". As a result, the nobleman was inclined to satisfy his lust where he found the process most pleasant.
Such conditions, of course, varied from region to region. In Occitania, no feudal lord had overriding influence in ecclesiastical appointments, nor was any court active enough to serve as a training ground for bishops. The bishops therefore represented either the interests of a small region or the triumph of one local faction over another. Unable to cooperate effectively, the bishops did not consider the common welfare of Occitania or of Christendom. The papacy, aware of this weakness in the hierarchy of the universal church, had much bigger problems to contend with in the twelfth century.
The lack of ecclesiastical organization in Occitania fostered a slightly deviant society, which in turn contributed greatly to the evolution of the Cathar heresy. But what made the movement so successful was the willingness of the local people to accept Catharism. "The people of Occitania had lost much of their zeal, much of their devotion to the faith". Only a minority ever became Cathars, yet the Catholic majority seemed unconcerned about the heretical threat. The majority never expressed an aversion to the Cathars who were trying to subvert the fundamental institution of the society.
General concepts of Catharism originated in the dualist philosophies of pre-Christian Zoroastrianism and third- century Common Era Manicheanism. Essentially, dualist doctrine advocates the existence of two divine figures. One divinity is good, the god of light and the spiritual world, while the other indulges in evil, the god of darkness and the material world. These two bipolar powers were in constant conflict, which would eventually be resolved in favor of the god of light.
While Catharism was similar to the older dualist traditions, it developed independently, and was in no way a continuation. It was, by all standards, overwhelmingly more Catholic that Manichean or Zoroastrian. In Catharism, the gods of light and dark became the Christian God and Satan. The good God, the God of light, created only the spiritual world while Satan, the god of darkness, was responsible for the creation of the material world. Spirit was intrinsically good; matter was intrinsically evil. Similarly, the soul was good while the body remained evil. The human world served as a battleground between the forces of light and darkness, spirit and matter. Human life, then, freed the soul from the entanglement of the body so that it could enter the spiritual world of light after death.
As all material things had been created by Satan, the Cathar teaching claimed the perfect life was asceticism. Ideally, the Cathars needed to be absolutely celibate, to deny themselves all earthly things, and consume barely enough food and drink to sustain life. The problem of how this sect aspiring to such inhuman principles could survive was solved with the evolution of two classes of Cathars. The perfecti were bound to lead this ideal life of rigid asceticism, and constituted the priestly class. Through a ceremony called the consolamentum, the laying on of hands, a Cathar was inducted into the perfectus class. The ceremony not only eradicated any previous sins, but swore the Cathar to commit no more for the duration of their lives.
However, Catharism took human nature into consideration. It was recognized that a very few could ever become perfecti before their demise became imminent; simple Cathars were not made to feel guilty for their shortcoming. It is important to note that the high standards set for the perfecti were in no way intended to be met by average believers. This much larger group, the credentes or the true believers, were subjected to no restrictions of their lifestyle. Any vocation could be followed. Unlike orthodox Christianity, Catharism imposed no restrictions on eating or drinking. Most significantly, the codes of sexual morality were lax. The only crucial obligations for a Cathar were to renounce all allegiance to the orthodox church, and to undergo the consolamentum before death.
A Medieval Catholic would find surprisingly little in Cathar practice strange or offensive. He would hear verse after verse of familiar passages from the New Testament, repeat the Lord's Prayer, and ask for his sins to be forgiven. Much of what would be found in the Catholic Mass had been omitted, but very little contradiction was added. However, Catharism contradicted Catholicism on the most fundamental of tenets. Most sources on the Cathar beliefs come from the writings of their orthodox Christian enemies. Accordingly, the best-known features of the doctrine are those that directly opposed the teachings of the church. The one real hope of the Medieval people was the blessed life of those who would be called to salvation. Only the church could put men on the path to salvation. Only by believing those eternal "truths" taught in the church, only by receiving grace through the sacraments, could salvation be possible. Anyone who denied these "truths" and the church was therefore the greatest enemy of mankind, "a murderer who sought to kill the immortal soul rather than the earthly body".
The Cathars believed in reincarnation and repudiated the tenet of eternal damnation for sinners. A soul was obliged to live many lifetimes in a human body until it achieved salvation. If earthly bodies were evil, as the Cathars taught, then God could not become incarnate in a man. Therefore, according to the Cathars, the Christian Christ was not God, only an emissary of God; he became a man in appearance only. To the Cathars, the sacraments that the Catholic church claimed to confer divine grace through material elements such as water, bread and wine were inherently blasphemous. Marriage was also condemned, as it led to the production of children and so entrapped more spiritual souls in evil, material bodies.
This last item provides a good starting point for the exploration of a Cathar feminism. The condemnation of marriage was particularly obnoxious in the eyes of their orthodox opponents. Instead, the Cathars advocated a complete reversal of orthodox teaching. Catholicism championed that sex belonged only in marriage, and that sex in marriage must be for reproduction and without pleasure. While the Cathars thought childbearing a great sin, they did not object to sexual motivations other than reproduction. Coupling the indifference placed on performance in the material world with the belief that all bodily sins would be erased by the consolamentum before death, Cathar society virtually destroyed any orthodox restrictions on sexual conduct. It is interesting to note that the population of Occitania grew rapidly during the years of the Cathar expansion.
How this relative sexual liberation affected Cathar women varied from area to area. In the village of Montaillou, the philosophy of sex and marriage was summarized by Guillaume Belibaste, a Cathar holy man. He saw no purpose in adopting the Catholic theology which had governed sternly the institution of marriage. However, he realized that simple Cathar believers would never adopt the perfectus ideal of absolute chastity. "It amounts to the same, and the sin is the same, to know one's wife carnally or to do the same with a concubine. This being so, it is better for a man to attach himself to a definite woman".
Whether Cathar or Catholic, every married woman could expect a fair amount of beating. As the man possessed the initiative in the courtship, he later on claimed the right to violence. The reaction to Guillemette Clergue's black eye is indicative of the sort of behavior expected from husbands. Through some accident or infection, Guillemette had a bad eye, and was travelling to find a cure. On the way, she encountered the perfectus Prades Tavernier, who assumed she had been beaten. Later, in her testimony to Jacques Fournier, Guillemette admitted to keeping her rapport with Tavernier a secret from her husband for fear of abuse, perhaps even death.
Certain enlightened Cathars who had carefully studied the Bible advocated more humane treatment of women. But as far as the institution of marriage was concerned, civilization was misogynous. Pierre Authoe himself, despite his affection for his daughter, generally considered women as something base. Belibaste, who married and unmarried his mistress to Pierre Maury within a few days, never made a mystery of his male chauvinism and masculine imperialism. According to Belibaste, a woman's soul could not be allowed into paradise after her death, and would only achieve that glorious end after being reincarnated as a man.
One area in which Catharism differentiated sharply from orthodox Christianity was the opportunity offered to women in the hierarchy of the religion itself. An imperfect parallel can be drawn between orthodox monasticism and the perfecti. Both were committed to lives of celibacy and self-denial. Although certain monasteries allowed women to participate, and a few convents existed, women were generally relegated to lower, insignificant positions.
Women could, however, be accepted among the perfecti; it is widely speculated that this was the main appeal of Catharism for women. The perfecti were the ministers of the Cathar faith, wandering in pairs through the countryside to be with the credentes. Women and men worked together to gain converts to the faith and maintaining devotion. To be a perfecta gave a woman a higher status than she could ever attain in the Catholic church.
A connection that cannot be overlooked is the development of courtly love ideals in the area most permeated by Catharism. Some explanation of courtly love and its origins is a necessary contribution to this overall investigation. In Occitania, the noblewoman was subject to her husband, but was also mistress of her household. Servants performed their tasks and children received their training under her supervision. In the absence of the lord, the woman took control of both household and fief.
The ideas of courtly love first appeared in the lyric poetry composed by the troubadours of Southern France. In Occitania, many of these wandering minstrels were also Cathar. Speculatively, the Occitanian troubadour ideas of love and relations with women grew spontaneously out of the environment supplied by the region in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. A popular anecdote of the first troubadour poetry begins around 1150. A hungry minstrel, wandering around the duchy of Aquitaine, came to a castle where he hoped his tales of battles, broad stories and tumbling tricks would earn him a good dinner. Unfortunately, the lord was absent; the lady of the castle had become weary long before of boring tales of endless battles and masculine aggression. It occurred to the minstrel that if he composed a song in praise of the lady's beauty and virtue, whether or not she had either of these, and described the effect they had on him in glowing terms, he may be fed after all. The experiment must have been successful. Soon, the halls of Occitania were ringing with songs in praise of ladies who were able to dispense lavish hospitality. While the minstrels sang for a living, barons and knights indulged in the musical fad because it was pleasant and fashionable.
Courtly songs were inspired by a new conception of love. Love was the emotion produced by the unrestrained adoration of a lady. Love might be rewarded by smiles, kisses, or higher favors, but their presence or absence had no essential effect on love itself. All the benefits and torments which came to the lover grew out of simple worship of a worthy woman. This love would be inspired by the lady's good qualities, such as her beauty, wit, charm and character.
The effects of this love were not purely emotional and physical; it improved a man in every way. By developing the idea that a noble could not be a perfect knight unless he loved a woman the Cathar troubadours laid the foundation of courtly chivalry. Women were bound to enjoy a more elevated position in society, Although she could not fight herself, she could make a man a better warrior. The women of Occitania were accorded a great deal more respect than was common, and in this way did there exist an ideological, courtly, and chivalric kind of feminism.
That courtly love did at least improve women's collective egos in this period is probable. However, ladies were revered as passive goddesses, who were adored whether they wished to be or not. Women played no active role in the poetic courtship. Additionally, the ideas of courtly love had little effect on the lives of wives and maidens.
The essentially innocent practice of courtly love might furnish temptation. An orthodox rebuttal to the Occitanian troubadours can be found in Andrew the Chaplain's De Amore. The attitude of the church was fully explained and supported with solid arguments; in arguing for the traditional customs of the feudal world and Catholic church, Andrew's heart was fully in his work. The section entitled De reprobation amoris consists largely of a furious diatribe against women. "Love for a woman is a passion which comes from looking at and thinking too much about the body of the other sex". Geoffrey de la Tour Landry composed a book of advice for the instruction of his young daughters. He rejected without hesitation the precepts of courtly love. Accepting fully the feudal and ecclesiastical attitude toward adultery, he had nothing but condemnation for any woman who slipped from the path of strict virtue. He was careful to point out that a woman who lost her reputation for chastity would be scorned by all worthy people; however, a promiscuous male would be lauded. La Tour Landry bemoaned the fact that such excellent ancient customs as burying illicit lovers alive had fallen into disuse.
How fully the courtly love philosophy was developed in practice among the Cathars is virtually undocumented. "Though it is certain that the joyous love songs of the troubadours and the worship of the pure ones were often heard together, that one influenced the other to any degree can only be speculated". Only an educated guess can be made as to how much courtly love affected the life of the average Cathar woman.
Although it appears that feminism would be an exaggeration in describing the status that Cathar women enjoyed, the difference between their lives and the lives of their orthodox sisters is still significant. That Cathar women had the chance to become perfectae is difficult to credit fully from the modern viewpoint. In allowing women to join its most holy ranks, the Cathar church deviated wildly from orthodox Christianity; in attaining this status, the Cathar women discovered a success in their lives that has no modern parallel.
The body was by definition evil, woman's body was no more so. Yet only in rare cases was this theoretical equality actualized, the general Cathar acceptance of sexuality being such a case. Holy or courtly pleas to respect one's spouse or daughter were nodded at politely in public, but ignored in the home. The gentility of the Cathar faith could not overcome the ruthless patriarchal domination of the feudal system.
