Beliefs

I have heard that is is impolite to talk about politics and religion – more than impolite, it can in many part of the world be downright dangerous.

So today I am talking about religion with a newsletter reader – I made a comment in my last newsletter of the brief period of ‘enlightenment’ in Languedoc in in 12th century. This was brutally put down by the catholic church and has been the source of legend and a recent plague of (very successful) ‘mystery’ books, it is good for tourism in Languedoc.

A reader brought up the point that the actions of the church were understandable, as I did not expand my thoughts in the original piece I am publishing this and my reply here….

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Good to see your page again.
Many thanks.
The Cathars have a very good press in your region and they have also many modern adherents who are mixed up in the rosacrucian/ leonardo synthesis. I call them The Bones of Jesus Brigade.
The true facts about the Cathar heresy read somewhat differently. The heresy is one that was to divide the world later on at the reformation – the belief that humanity is depraved and must be subjected at every turn. Jokingly it is said that protestants believe in Original Sin and catholics believe in Original Goodness. There is some truth in that – but it does need explanation.

Cathars believed in two gods – one good and the other evil – Dualism The official teachings of The Church say that creation was of One God – who is good – and therefore it is inherently good – but having been given free choice it is fallen.

Cathars were gnostics – that is they believed that there were ‘Secrets’ of the universe and that Jesus was in some way linked to the ‘secrets’ that would unlock the secrets for those who penetrated its depths by rituals, secret societies and all the temptations of one upmanship that plague every aspect of society even today!
The Church – that is Jesus and the church he founded have always been on their guard against the lure of these ‘secrets’ – there are no secrets, no inner core of believers, no higher place for the ‘perfect ones’ in Christianity. All of the creation and even the Prime Mover – God- is available for everyone – the means of grace and the hope of glory is for everyone just for the taking
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St. Dominic was at pains to say that people should be argued back into the Church by way of reason and logic – the traditional intellectual tools of the great medieval universities like The Sorbonne, Oxford, Cambridge and Valadolid(Palencia)where Dominic was educated. Of course there were military leaders of the day like Simon de Montfort who thought that soldiering was a very good way of getting rid of the opposition – I tend to think that Dominic’s way was best!

Where politics and territory got involved the cleansing of the faith got out of hand – as at Bram in France – but that had little to do with the aspirations of the crusaders themselves.
Umberto Eco who teaches at the University of Bologna is a specialist in this field and The Name of the Rose is a piercing exposee of not only the politics but also the currents of thought abounding in medieval Europe, many of which led to perdition. Foucauld’s Pendulum by him, is also a good and clever antidote to much of the hooha about such books as the Da Vinci Code – long before that misleading and silly document was written.
You might find a trip to Prouillhe (spelt variously) of great interest. It is the monastery for the Cathar women that were living under strict vows within the Cathar communities and who were displaced by the crusades.
Dominic was placed in charge of these holy women. being a celibate priest they presented something of a problem for him. I seem to remember there were twelve of them. In answer to his prayers God showed to him by way of a thunderbolt, the place where he should build a house for them – in a valley near to Fanjeaux in Languedoc.

http://www.prouilhe.com/accueil.htm They are still there!

Their work was to pray into existence The Order of Preachers who were to go out and preach the true and unadulterated faith.
It is hard to imagine now but before almost universal literacy and before TV etc. it was almost impossible to gain any real knowledge of the faith except for preaching (dubious when done by ill educated people) Mystery Plays and stained glass windows.
Odd ideas and heresies abounded.
The poor and uneducated were very much at the mercy of charlatans and mountebanks – reading Chaucer will confirm that!
The Dominicans are still the intellectual driving force in the church and a great debt is owed to them for preserving the intellectual purity of the faith.
As St. Paul said – people do like to have their ears waggled and so the peculiar enchantments of the Da Vinci Code and its ilk still abound – unfortunately. But, as some people from here on a ‘Da Vinci Code trip’ found recently it was all hog wash and when they decided to scrap the trip and explore some of the realities on their own they found that reality and history were far more exciting than any cheap novelette could imagine.
Thanks agin for your interesting newsletters – I really enjoy them.
Kind regards from José-Elizabeth ( sometimes at home in the USA and sometimes at home in The Limousin and more rarely at home in Good Ole England!)

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Hello Jose-Elizabeth

Of course there are always different interpretations of history, as many as there are people considering past events – also as many different visions, hopes and dreams of the future.

I certainly did not mean to suggest that Cathar or Templar believers were the true and enlightened people of the 12th century – anymore than I would suggest that any belief or religion was the only way for humans to follow and structure their lives, now or then.

I was thinking only of Languedoc and my observations living here that not much had deeply affected the region for hundreds of years as local folk memories were rooted in the happenings based around the Albigensian heresy and actions going back to the 12th century.

I do not believe that anyone today can comprehend the feelings, thoughts and life of people living at that time. I take your point that illiteracy would mean that people would be influenced by images and were likely to be malleable by manipulative people, for whatever motive, but I do not accept that they would be more inclined to outside influences than people today with Google and information abundance. We are all gullible and always were.

I don’t understand your implication that the Christian churches do not have ‘secrets or mysteries’ surely the whole concept of a god or gods assumes a mystery, I understand that Christians (and people of most beliefs assume an afterlife), surely this is a paradox.

The protection of ‘the purity of the faith’ has been, and is, the justification for burning people alive and car bombing – to me this is a call to intolerance, and worse.

I agree that the book The Da Vinci Code is hog wash – I enjoyed reading it as a paced, although silly, story. Cobbled together from odd bits of legend, writings and leeching from the gossip around existent ‘secret’ societies it delivers a fantasy conclusion. But is this book any the less credible than the conclusions in the 4th century from the council of Nicea and the ‘adjustments’ and deletions made to create a state religion.

Thank you for the link to http://www.prouilhe.com/, it is not far from us and I will visit and hope to learn a little more.

In life there are many many signposts and guides advertising their services to show us the way. But any guide can only show you a path they themselves know, a good guide will get you to your desired destination perhaps, but there may be many different paths, all of them correct. However, you must already have decided on where you want to go and, as you believe a guide is needed, you have not been there before, so the whole journey is based on the marketing skills of these guides to persuade you to use their services.

Perhaps some people do not need to make any journey as they believe they are already at their destination – perhaps they are the wise ones, perhaps not.

It would seem from your mail that your belief is in one of the Christian paths. I wish you a good journey.

best wishes

Tony