That is why she was interested in the
Cathari, who had renounced procreation and whom she discusses in Positions with White Roses.
Still more serious for the Waldenses was the existence of doctrinally heretical movements, such as the
Cathari, who not only criticized the worldly life of many clergymen but also revived heresies already condemned by the Councils and Doctors of the early Church.
In the thirteenth century, more than 50,000
Cathari were annihilated as heretics under the strong arm of the Medieval Inquisition.
Greek Orthodox Byzantines and Western Catholics (d = 1) fought dualists (d = 2) such as Paulicians from the seventh to the ninth centuries, Bogomils in the 12th and 13th centuries, and
Cathari in the 13th century.
He says nothing about flaws in historic Christian conduct, such as the Crusades; the persecution of the Jews, the Albigenses (
Cathari), or the Moros in Spain; the Inquisition in general; or even our historic doctrinal divisions.
A remarkable example of this procedure, which is also characteristic of his methods, is his treatment of the troubles of the Provencal Jews with the Dominican Inquisition during the struggles of the church with the Albigensians or
Cathari.(3) Cantor claims that [t]he jews were not entirely innocent victims within the religious structure of southern France, nor was the inquisitorial friars, attack on them idiosyncratic and fortuitous."(4) As usual, no documentation is given for this hardly empirical claim.
Chapter two looks at his precursors; chapter three at the general plan of the work; and the following chapters examine in detail Epiphanius' notices of ten heresies (those of Noetus, Menander, Satornilus, Basilides, Carpocrates, the Nicolaitans, Tatian, the Quartodecimans,
Cathari and Nazoreans), selected with a view to illustrating his approach.
In the creative mix of the
Cathari culture, which benefited from Muslim and Jewish contacts, women were the equals of men; they owned and inherited property and preached the gospel, as the women of the early church preached.
