superstantialis being interpreted not of the material but of the spiritual bread, which consists of the Words of Life.
There followed the Renunciation, primitive enough in form, but the postulant solemnly renounced, not Satan and his works and pomp, but the harlot church of the persecutors, whose prayers were more deadly than desirable. He renounced the cross which its priests had signed on him with their chrism, their sham baptisms and other magical rites. Next followed the spiritual baptism itself, consisting of imposition of hands, and holding of the Gospel on the postulant’s head. The elder begins a fresh allocution by citing Matt. xxviii. 19, Mark xvi. 15, 16, John iii. 3 (where the Cathars’ text must originally have omitted in v. 5 the words “of water and,” since their presence contradicts their argument). Acts ix. 17, 18, viii. 14-17, are then cited; also John xx. 21-23, Matt. xvi. 18, 19, Matt. xviii. 18-20, for the Perfect one receives in this rite power to bind and loose. The Perfect’s vocation is then defined: he must not commit adultery nor homicide, nor lie, nor swear any oath, nor pick and steal, nor do unto another that which he would not have done unto himself. He shall pardon his wrongdoers, love his enemies, pray for them that calumniate and accuse him, offer the other cheek to the smiter, give up his mantle to him that takes his tunic, neither judge nor condemn. Asked if he will fulfil each of these, the postulant answers: “I have this will and determination. Pray God for me that he give me his strength.”
The next episode of the rite exactly reproduces the Roman confiteor as it stood in the 2nd century; “the postulant says: ‘Parcite nobis. For all the sins I have committed, in word or thought or deed, I come for pardon to God and to the church and to you all.’ And the Christians shall say: ‘By God and by us and by the church may they be pardoned thee, and we pray God that he pardon you them.’”
There follows the act of “consoling.” The elder takes the Gospel off the white cloth, where it has lain all through the ceremony, and places it on the postulant’s head, and the other good men present place their right hands on his head; they shall say the parcias (spare), and thrice the “Let us adore the Father and Son and Holy Spirit,” and then pray thus: “Holy Father, welcome thy servant in thy justice and send upon him thy grace and thy holy spirit.” Then they repeat the “Let us adore,” the Lord’s Prayer, and read the Gospel (John i. 1-17).
This was the vital part of the whole rite. The credens is now a Perfect one. He is girt with the sacred thread round his naked body under the breasts. Where the fear of the persecutor was absent he was also clad in a black gown. The Perfect ones present give him the kiss of peace, and the rite is over. This part of the rite answers partly to the Catholic confirmation of a baptized person, partly to the ordination of a pope of Rome or Alexandria. The latter in being ordained had the Gospel laid on their heads, and the same feature occurs in old Gallican and Coptic rites of ordaining a bishop.
Thus the Cathar ritual, like that of the Armenian dissenters (see Paulicians), reflects an age when priestly ordination was not yet differentiated from confirmation. “Is it not curious,” says the Abbé Guiraud, “to remark that the essential rite of the consolamentum is in effect nothing but the most ancient form of Christian ordination?”
The Cathar Eucharist was equally primitive, and is thus described by a contemporary writer in a 13th-century MS. of the Milan Library:—“The Benediction of bread is thus performed by the Cathars. They all, men and women, go up to a table, and standing up say the ‘Our Father.’[1] And he who is prior among them, at the close of the Lord’s Prayer, shall take hold of the bread and say: 'Thanks be to the God of our Jesus Christ. May the Spirit be with us all.' And after that he breaks and distributes to all. And such bread is called bread blessed, although no one believes that out of it is made the body of Christ. The Albanenses, however, deny that it can be blessed or sanctified, because it is corporeal” (i.e. material).
As Tertullian relates of his contemporaries in the 2nd century, so the Cathars would reserve part of their bread of blessing and keep it for years, eating of it occasionally though only after saying the Benedicite. The Perfect kept it wrapped up in a bag of pure white cloth, tied round the neck,[2] and sent it long distances to regions which through persecution they could not enter. On the death-bed it could even, like the Catholic Viaticum, take the place of the rite of Consolamentum, if this could not be performed. Once a month this solemn rite of breaking bread was held, the credentes assisting. The service was called apparellamentum, because a table was covered with a white cloth and the Gospel laid on it. The Perfect were adored, and the kiss of peace was passed round.
The influence of Catharism on the Catholic church was enormous. To counteract it celibacy was finally imposed on the clergy, and the great mendicant orders evolved; while the constant polemic of the Cathar teachers against the cruelty, rapacity and irascibility of the Jewish tribal god led the church to prohibit the circulation of the Old Testament among laymen. The sacrament of “extreme unction” was also evolved by way of competing with the death-bed consolamentum.
Authorities—J. J. I. Döllinger, Beiträge zur Sektengeschichte (München, 1890); Jean Guiraud, Questions d’histoire (Paris, 1906); F. C. Conybeare, The Key of Truth (Oxford, 1898); Henry C. Lea, History of the Inquisition (New York, 1888); C. Douais, L’Inquisition (Paris, 1906), and his Les Hérétiques du midi au XIII e siècle (Paris, 1891); Les Albigeois (Paris, 1879); also Practica Inquisitionis (of Bernard Gui or Guidon), (Paris, 1886); L. Clédat, Le Nouveau Testament, traduit au XIII e siècle en langue provençale, suivi d’un rituel cathare (Paris, 1887); E. Cunitz in Beiträge zu den theol. Wissensch. (1852), vol. iv.; P. van Limborch, Liber Sententiarum Inquis. Tholos. 1307–1323 (Amsterdam, 1692); Hahn, Gesch. der Ketzer im M.A. (Stuttgart, 1845); Ch. Schmidt, Histoire et doctrine de la secte des Cathares (Paris, 1849); A. Lombard, Pauliciens bulgares et Bons-Hommes (Geneva, 1879); Fredericq, Corpus documentorum haer, pravitatis Neerlandicae (Gent, 1889–1896); Felix Tocco, “Nuovi documenti” in Archiv. di studi ital. (1901), and his L’Eresia nel media evo (Florence, 1881); P. Flade, Das römische Inquisitions-verfahren in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1902); Ch. Molinier, “Rapport sur une mission en Italie,” in Archives scientifiques de Paris, tom. 14 (1888); C. H. Haskins, “Robert le Bougre,” in American Hist. Rev. (1902). (F. C. C.)
CATHAY, the name by which China (q.v.) was known to medieval Europe and is still occasionally referred to in poetry, as in Tennyson’s “Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” It is derived from Khitai, or Khitat, the name which was properly that of the kingdom established by the Khitan conquerors in the northern provinces of China about A.D. 907, which after the fall of this dynasty in 1125 remained attached to their former territory, and was subsequently applied by the nations of Central Asia to the whole of China. Thus “Kitai” is still the Russian name for China. The name penetrated to Europe in the 13th century with the fame of the conquests of Jenghiz Khan. After the discovery of southern China by European navigators Cathay was erroneously believed to be a country to the north of China, and it was the desire to reach it that sent the English adventurers of the 16th century in search of the north-east passage.
CATHCART, SIR GEORGE (1794–1854), English soldier, third son of the 1st Earl Cathcart, was born in London on the 12th of May 1794. He was educated at Eton and Edinburgh University. In 1810 he entered the army, and two years later accompanied his father to Russia as aide-de-camp. With him he joined the Russian headquarters in March 1813; and he was present at all the great battles of that year in Germany, and of the following year in France, and also at the taking of Paris. The fruits of his careful observation and critical study of these operations appeared in the Commentaries on the war in Russia and Germany 1812–1813, a plain soldier-like history, which he published in 1850. After the peace of 1814 he accompanied his father to the congress of Vienna. He was present at Quatre Bras and at Waterloo, as an aide-de-camp to the duke of Wellington, and remained on the staff till the army of occupation quitted France.
