— Malcolm Barber, Women and Catharism, Reading Medieval Studies 4 (1977)
Heretical fascination: Female participation and the sacred feminine in XII-XIII century Catharism
In the Catholic Church the ministry was of course exclusively male. No such distinction was made among the Cathars. Women became perfectae, indeed were sometimes brought up with this specific purpose in mind, rather as Catholic children were sometimes vowed to the Church from an early age.
From the Greek word καθαρός (katharos), meaning “pure” or Cathars as they came to be known in the period between the 11th and 15th centuries, were a religious group that spread throughout southeastern Europe and particularly in southern France, eastern Spain, north-central Italy, and the Rhineland. Despite the unshakeable stability and entrenchment of the Roman Catholic Church in Europe, Catharism was only one of the heterodoxies that found numerous followers. They were all indiscriminately branded as “heretics”. Being labeled a heretic was neither difficult nor rare; simply questioning the precepts proposed by the Church was enough to be considered one. Today heresy evokes above all the role of the witch, the embodiment of a female deviance that, in the 16th and 17th centuries, was at the center of inquisitorial repression and of a cultural construction charged with fear and misogyny linked in large part to the powerful work of demonization promoted by the Church. However, heretics were also all those who joined those creeds that opposed the corruption and secularity of the Church of Rome, its deficient pastoral activity and its departure from apostolic teachings. These groups were composed in a balanced way, and although women represented a massive component of the heterodoxies, they were certainly not the only one. Nonetheless, sin, subversion, seduction, and thus heresy, are attributes of Eve and of all women as her daughters, who are easily led astray by "devilish" ideas. On the other hand, as far as Catharism is concerned, female participation and the sacred feminine seem to be characterizing components also linked to the figure of Mary Magdalene who, held in the highest regard by the Cathars, would have justified even the highest regard of the female gender.
Women, never welcomed by the [Catholic] Church, became Cathars knowing they could earn respect and actively participate in the faith. Needless to say, this mixture of women, virtue and apostolic poverty…did not sit well with Rome.
— Sean Martin, The Cathars: The Most Successful Heresy of the Middle Ages (2005)
Catharism: The Dualist Religion
The Cathar doctrine, which believes in the opposition between the evilness of matter and the absolute divinity and goodness of spirit, is ontologically dualist. The origin of the World, contrary to Christian dogma, sinks not in an act of divine goodness but in an act of diabolical evil. Matter and all its earthly declinations are the creation of Rex Mundi (Latin for "King of the World”), who, by seducing the angels, forced them into the cage of human carnality¹. From this fundamental principle derive the further cornerstones of the Cathar creed: the sin of the flesh, self-denial, the repudiation of sexuality and mating, and, linked to it, also the prohibition for the perfect (order of complete initiates and preachers) to eat meat, eggs and milk precisely because they are products of reproduction². So, unlike Christians, sexual intimacy was not only to be avoided in the absence of the procreative purpose or in adultery, but also in the marriage contract. This premise underscores the rigidity of Cathar belief and hints at an implicit negative judgment on the female capacity to generate life, as it contributes to the continuation of the cycle of metempsychosis. On the other hand, however, this same doctrine leaves room for what Anne Brenon refers to as "metaphysical egalitarianism". In other words, if souls are indifferently good in their divine nature, those souls cannot be blamed for the body they inhabit. Cathar dualism, however, placed gender and sex on two distinct levels: while Cathar theory and practice advocated gender equality, sex was treated segregatively. Within the creed, therefore, women not only nurtured the ranks of the credentes (bonnes hommes and bonnes femmes, as the Cathars called each other), but could also be perfectae, a position that allowed for preaching and the officiating of rites. The most important of these was certainly the consolamentum, baptism by the laying on of hands, which was performed either on those who wished to be ordained perfect or on believers on their deathbeds as the only means of having their souls saved. As evidence of the authority of Cathar women, several names emerge in historical sources, including, for example, Esclarmonde de Foix³, whose Occitan name—formed from esclair for “light” and monde for “world”—means “light of the world.” She was, in every sense, one of the most outstanding women of her time. The daughter of the Count of Foix, she grew up in one of the regions of southern France where Catharism was most deeply rooted in the court culture of the local nobility, surrounded by troubadour poetry, the dynamic environment of the court, and influenced by the poetic and gentle image of women. She was initiated into the cult together with her brother Raymond-Roger and then at the age of fifty was consecrated perfect and, according to the chronicles, also archdeacon.
"Go Madame, tend your distaff; it does not appertain to you to speak in debates of this kind.”
— Brother Étienne de Nîmes, to Esclarmonde de Foix, Disputation of 1207 (recorded in Historia Albigensis by Peter of Vaux-de-Cernay).
It is obvious that in the European social and religious landscape such roles were by no means common, and indeed, women in the Catholic Christian religion have always had a participation that-though active-was absolutely deferred and subordinate to that of men. Therefore, the role that women were empowered to play among the Cathars represented a characteristic perhaps not found elsewhere in Europe and which may have justified such great fascination. Gottfried Koch in his essay Women in Medieval Waldism and Catharism (1977) offers a sociological and Marxist view for which, since the Church in the Middle Ages was the most dominant form of expression, dissent and social subversion would therefore have been expressed, perforce, precisely in religion. And women, equated with an oppressed social class, would therefore have pandered to this need through participation in heterodox cults. These, however, are not the only sources worth considering. Indeed, there are many historical and statistical assessments that need to be added.
The Historical Role and the Influenced Ideological Perception
Richard Abels and Ellen Harrison's study in The participation of women in Languedocian catharism (1979) offers a historical account of what the real role of women may have been, exploiting inquisitorial testimony and accounts of death sentences. Although the study does not deny a massive participation of women, very high especially among the ministers of the cult, it is the real possibilities and role of women that are scaled down. Indeed, what emerges is that although the religion did not by doctrine provide for the subordination of women, preaching, officiating rites, and hierarchical positions were largely entrusted to men more than to women. Confirming the statistical analyses is joined by one of the most important Cathar sources compiled by Raniero Sacconi, a member of the heretical group who later converted to the Dominican Order. In his treatise Summa contra Catharos (1250), Sacconi not only reports on the different declinations that the Cathar Church takes in the south of France and in Italy, pointing out the doctrinal differences between Cathars of Languedoc, Albigensians, Cathars of Carcassonne, Bagnolensians, and so on, but also reports regarding the duties and offices of the members of the creed.
In this regard, unfortunately, besides confirming as we know that women were indeed an integral part of it, when describing access to the offices of deacon and bishop women are not directly mentioned. Furthermore, regarding the rites, Sacconi reports that the consolamentum could indeed be officiated by women, but he suggests that this was only done in the absence of perfect men. The additional textual sources used by Abels and Harrison, such as the roster of judgments issued by the Inquisition, reports that despite the high presence of perfectae, the testimonies documenting public preaching by them are remarkably few: only 12 times, despite 1,435 testimonies regarding perfectae⁴.
One question cannot help but arise: if female participation among the Cathars was not as massive and authoritative as is popularly handed down, Where does this image come from? It is evident how the Christian image of women is so inextricably linked to the concept of sin that it greatly compromised the perception of any movement parallel to the Roman Church that was associated with female participation. Thus not only did ethical and theological reprobation prove detrimental to women's lives and possibilities, but it cast a negative light on all those initiatives that did not suppress their nature instead. Thus, too, the not well-documented Cathars' worship of the figure of Mary Magdalene and the theory that she may have been a concubine of Christ and by him begotten children, would be a theory probably only partly really related to the Cathars and originating in anti-heretical Christian writings, with the obvious aim of casting further discredit on the religious current. Indeed, there are no Cathar writings and testimonies confirming the cult of Mary Magdalene, who may instead have been held up by the perfects as an example of chastity after repentance. Still other sources claim that the symbolism of the cult of Isis, which developed in the region in the pre-Roman period, may have overlapped with the iconography and spiritual value of the Virgin and Mary Magdalene, but these seem to be poorly established sources. Unfortunately, the entire Cathar experience died out in violence. In 1208 Pope Innocent III launched the crusade against Occitan heretics, beginning a long season of violence that also affected French Christians and Christians, and only officially ended in 1229 but continued with the establishment of the Inquisition Tribunal. The destruction of the last Cathar stronghold, Montségur, occurred even later, in 1244.
The climate, which had already been unsafe since before the Crusade, went dark and forced the bonnes hommes and femmes to live in a more withdrawn way, moving cautiously from one town or city to another. Women, too, had attempted to move from place to place or to follow the withdrawn life of the woods which, not at all safe for a woman, went to cause a drastic decline in female participation of which, in fact, according to historical sources, the number of appearances, testimonies and preaching decreased. There is an additional social factor to take into account. The Occitan feudal nobility gradually became impoverished because of the equal division of wealth among all descendants, according to the pariage system, which did not exclude daughters. This situation persisted until women, in order to ease the burden on inheritance division, were increasingly directed toward religious life. In southern France, where the Cathar presence was considerable, many young women joined the maisons cathares out of convenience⁵. This suggests that the women who joined the creed were not only convinced believers or rebellious women seeking, as in Koch’s Marxist view, to express social dissent; nor were they only women claiming their sexual and social independence. Rather, the situation appears to be that of a community deeply influenced by religion, in which the members were not just convinced converts, but individuals formed within an established and culturally pervasive spiritual context.
Bibliography:
- Abels, Richard, and Ellen Harrison. "The Participation of Women in Languedocian Catharism." Mediaeval Studies, vol. 41, Jan. 1979, pp. 215-251, [https://doi.org/10.1484/j.ms.2.306245] (https://doi.org/10.1484/j.ms.2.306245).
- Barber, M. C. "Women and Catharism" Reading Medieval Studies, vol. III, 1977, pp. 45-62, centaur.reading.ac.uk/84350/.
- Baring, Anne. "Esclarmonde de Foix Cathar Parfaite." Anne-Baring.com, 2015, www.anne-baring.com/anbar49_esclarmonde.html. Accessed July 16, 2025.
- Beavis, Mary Ann. "The Cathar Mary Magdalene and the Sacred Feminine: Pop Culture Legend vs. Medieval Doctrine." Journal of Religion and Popular Culture, vol. 24, no. 3, Jan. 1, 2012, pp. 419-431, [https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.24.3.419] (https://doi.org/10.3138/jrpc.24.3.419) Accessed July 5, 2019.
- Bennett, Judith M., and Ruth Mazo Karras. The Oxford Handbook of Women and Gender in Medieval Europe. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2013.
- Bueno, Irene. “Preferire l’Eresia? Donne Catare in Linguadoca Nel Primo Trecento.” Storia Delle Donne, vol. 2, 2006, pp. 243–266.
- Elliott, Dyan. Proving Woman Female Spirituality and Inquisitional Culture in the Later Middle Ages. Princeton University Press, 2009.
- Gattermayer, Elena Bonoldi. Il Processo Agli Ultimi Catari. Inquisitori, Confessori, Storie. Biblioteca di Cultura Medievale, 2011.
- Merlo, Grado Giovanni. Eretici Ed Eresie Medievali. Bologna, Il Mulino, 1989.
- Walter Leggett Wakefield, and Austin P Evans. Heresies of the High Middle Ages. New York London Columbia University Press, 1991.
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