The Cathars:  Cathar Beliefs:  The Legacy

The influence of Catharism on the Catholic Church was marked in the medieval period, and is still visible today.  Here are just a few examples. 

In attempting to present itself in the same light as the popular Parfaits, the papacy created new preaching orders like the Dominicans and Franciscans.  The Dominicans in particular are a very obvious attempt to copy of the Parfaits.  When they were set up they traveled around the Languedoc countryside in pairs, walking, dressing simply in sandals and plain habits, avoiding the ostentation of other churchmen, and preaching poverty.  In this they were consciously and explicitly emulating Parfaits.  You can see them today, still wearing their black robes, almost identical to the habit of the people they were responsible for exterminating.  Again, the first nunnery, set up by Dominic Guzmán (St Dominic), was a copy of a convent for Cathar Parfaites.

To emulate Cathar asceticism, celibacy was imposed on the Roman Catholic clergy after centuries of lip service. 

New ecclesiastic buildings were notable for their simplicity and lack of the usual ostentation (the Cathedral at Albi shown on the right is a spectacular example). 

The doctrine of transubstantiation, first formally declared at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215, looks suspiciously like a way of contradicting Cathar teaching on the impossibility of combining earthly and spiritual elements.  Again, the sacrament of extreme unction appears to have evolved by way of competing with the deathbed Consolamentum.  Marian devotion was developed by St Dominic as a way of countering the role accorded to women by the troubadours and perhaps to a lesser extent by the Cathars.

There is a strong case that the Reformation was fueled by the preserved ideas of the Cathars and their fellow "heretics".  Certainly, many Cathar ideas can be found in modern Protestant doctrine.  Click on the following link for a summary of Cathar ideas developed by Protestants.

It can also be argued that the Roman Church itself is slowly catching up with the Cathar Church, slowly abandoning its traditional teachings, and embracing ever more Cathar ideas.  Click on the following link for a summary of Cathar ideas adopted by Roman Catholics.