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Cathar Connections to Gnosticism: Part 2

© Michelle Powell-Smith

The Paulicians flourished in the Eastern Mediterranean during the seventh through ninth centuries; however, the Thonraki continued into the twelfth century. The Paulicians and Thronraki were dualists, believing in a good and evil deity. These two heresies were similar, and may have occasionally been confused with one another or used interchangeably. The evil deity was identified by the name "demiurge" and the good deity by "Three in One" by the Paulicians. The Thonraki identified the evil principle by the term Satan, rather than as the demiurge. Both the Paulicians and the Thonraki were docetists, rejecting both the bodily nature of Christ and the sacrament of the Eucharist. The Paulicians and Thonraki can perhaps serve as a bridge between the early gnostics and the later medieval Cathars.

The Cathars, whether or not direct descendants of the Bogomils, were certainly influenced by them. The Bogomils, following their founder, Bogomil, believed in a life of repentance, prayer, and worship to escape a world under the influence of an evil deity. The Bogomils seem to refer to themselves as Bogomils. The dualism of the Bogomils was mitigated, that is to say that they had a single God, and the evil creator was a "son" of God, rather than a God in his own right. There is no evidence of a fully developed emanationist system in Bogomil theology. The Bogomils were docetic, not believing that Christ had taken on actual human flesh. In the doctrine of the Bogomils, Christ had not been responsible for the creation of the orthodox church, thus, the teachings of the orthodox church were, quite simply, heresy.

The clearly gnostic tendencies of the Bogomils continued into Catharism, although the dualism of the later Cathars was absolute rather than mitigated. The Cathar heresy appears to have taken a much of its theology and belief system from Bogomilism. While early Cathars followed the Bogomil tradition of a single God and explained evil by saying that it was the result of an error, usually by the "son" of God, later Catharism became more extreme, believing in two Gods, one good and one evil. Both the Cathars and the Bogomils encouraged an ascetic life, encompassing fasting, dietary restrictions, celibacy and the avoidance of material goods.

While there is no way to know if the Cathars had access to any of the Nag Hammadi texts, it seems clear that they were influenced, if not by these texts, then by similar ones. I propose that the Cathar heresy was a continuation of earlier gnostic and Manichean belief systems. These heresies appear to be part of a historical continuum whether or not we can actually trace the historical and literary connections. The tradition was, in all likelihood, passed down in a number of ways, both textual and oral. Some support for this position may be found in the continuing existence of dualistic movements throughout the Middle Ages. I will trace the conceptual parallels between the Valentinian Gnosticism of the second century, as illustrated in several of the Nag Hammadi texts and various Cathar writings.

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