Tea at Trianon: The Cathars and the Eucharist

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Thursday, July 25, 2024

The Cathars and the Eucharist

The Cathars were not Christians nor did they belong to any monotheistic religion because they believed in more than one God. From William Hemsworth:

The Cathars were dualists who believed in two gods. One who created everything good and another who created everything evil. Essentially they believed that the god of the Old Testament was Satan, and the New Testament was the God we know. As they did with the Eucharist, they didn’t hold to the validity of any sacraments because the sacraments involve some kind of material. In their view all material is bad.
The human body was an evil construct because in entrapped angels in human flesh. Therefore anything to do with the human body was also deemed evil. Even procreation. Suicide was seen as a good way of escaping human bondage. Yes, they were opposed to the Eucharist as the Gnostics of old were. Their beliefs were dealt with by great saints such as St. Augustine and St. Irenaeus. Again I emphasize that they were not protestants that were persecuted by the Catholic church, but believers in type of modified Gnostic heresy. (Read more.)

Read more about the Cathars in my novel The Night's Dark Shade.

May said...: There is a tendency among Protestants to claim various individuals or groups as forerunners of Luther and the Reformation, when these supposed forerunners were in fact Catholics or some unrelated dissident group. I haven't personally seen them do this with the Cathars, but it wouldn't surprise me.; August 31, 2020 at 7:21:00 PM EDT