Digital Continent Digital Continent Easter 2017 | Page 16

created by the devil, Lucifer. The Cathar created a “rich mythology of the Creation and the
Fall.” 24 Lucifer made his way into heaven where he tricked God into putting him in charge of the
angels. Lucifer eventually “seduced and drew out of heaven a third part of the angels…The souls
were seduced by Lucifer and fell from grace, leaving the bodies and spirits abandoned in heaven.
In the world of matter which evil had created, captive souls were incarcerated in human bodies
made by the devil.” 25 Once incarcerated the soul needed to be freed from the body that held it
prisoner and this freedom came through consolamentum followed by living out the tenets of the
heresy. If a person died without having “done a perfect penance” his soul could only be saved
through reincarnation into either a human or animal body where a “perfect penance” could be
completed. 26
As stated, the Cathars were well organized and structured to bring about obedience to the
practice. There were enough members that dioceses were created, they had bishops who
“presided over an order of succession consisting of elder and younger ‘sons,’ deacons and
perfecti and perfectae” who were ministers of the church. 27 They had rituals such as the
melioramentum, where the believers ‘venerated’ the perfected asking the perfected to bless them
that they “might receive the consolamentum before they died.” They had a monthly confession
known as the apparellamentum where minor sins were said in public by the perfected. If the
perfected took part in mortal sin, “e.g., drinking milk, taking an oath, stealing, murder,” they
would need to go through the consolamentum process again as mortal sin could only be forgiven
through consolamentum. They ‘blessed’ bread prepared by the perfected, who would then pray
24
Michael Costen, The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, (NY: Manchester University Press, 1997), 58.
Walter Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100-1250, (CA: University of California
Press, 1974),34.
26
Michael Costen, The Cathars and the Albigensian Crusade, (NY: Manchester University Press, 1997), 65.
27
Malcolm Barber, The Cathars: Dualist Heretics in Lanquedoc in the High Middle Ages, (England: Pearson
Education, 2000), 1.
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