Arcadia Discussion Zone

Yuri Stoyanov, "The teaching of Mary Magdalene as the wife or concubine of Christ appears, morover, an original Cathar tradition which does not have any counterpart in the Bogomil doctrines".

That's from "The Templar Revelation" right? That quote led me to read Stoyanov's "The Hidden Tradition in Europe" and then just recently "The Other God" which is basically the same book, slightly updated. It is the best single history/explanation of dualism I have ever encountered. Well worth a read.

What Stoyanov leaves out is the fact that the Cathars weren't honoring her by proclaiming her to be the concubine (not wife) of the evil terrestrial Jesus, not Jesus the Christ who they regarded as pure spirit.

TCP

evidence please, Tim

Peter Vaux de Cernay. By the way, if you intend to go down this road you should probably pick up a copy of Wakefield & Evans' Heresies of the High Middle Ages.

TCP

Peter Vaux de Cernay, is not the best of sources as he is well known for leaning toward the church in the spirit of propoganda. Thanks Tim, I will get a copy of "Heresies".---Bill

Well, if you have a Cathar source that contradicts him, let's see it.

TCP

You misunderstand Tim, no I do not have a source that contradicts him, but you have to admit there is not much information available on the old Cathars. Why is that?

I didn't misunderstand anything ( ). The only known source that tells of the Cathars' belief that Magdalene was Jesus' concubine comes from a Catholic monk. I've always found it ironic (and have said as much many times over the years) that supporters of the married Jesus and Magdalene notion have no qualms about citing Vaux de Cernay as a reliable source when they can do so out of context; but when the context is framed, all of the sudden he was a biased Catholic making up lies.

There's actually quite a bit of information available on the Cathars. Unfortunately it just doesn't square very well with the modern reconfiguration.

TCP

Right, but in fairness to Stoyanov, his book isn't particularly Cathar oriented in general.

Didn't the Cathars consider all flesh as being evil? In which case the terrestrial Jesus would be no more evil in their eyes than any of their own fleshly beings. And the marriage itself no more evil then their own marriages.

The point of Catharism was for the soul to transcend the flesh and break the chains of human bondage. To them, the true Jesus Christ never existed in human form, while the false (terrestrial) Jesus was an agent of Rex Mundi, the evil, false god who keeps human souls tied to physical existence by means of reincarnation. They weren't ambivalent about the false deities, their purpose was to escape them. Neither were they ambivalent about marriage and child rearing, otherwise they wouldn't have dissolved marriages long after child-bearing years were behind them.

TCP

Isn't it generally understood that the church exaggerated these charges (brought up during heresy trials) to strengthen their position for the upcoming Albigensian Crusade?

As for not being ambivalent about marriage, the church seemed to hold a similar view. Catholics, as they wished to become monks or priests, could send their wives off to a nunnery. The church would then consider the marriage dissolved and that person could freely marry the church.

I understand that this could also be an exaggeration, but, spanish waldensian turned catholic theologian, Durand de Huesca wrote in the 13th century, "also they teach in their secret meetings that Mary Magdalene was the wife of Christ"

Why would the Church have to "strengthen its position"? Was it not true that the Church considered the Cathars to be heretics? Wasn't that enough without resorting to exaggeration?



That is 100% false.



Or maybe it isn't an exaggeration at all. Wife or concubine is really immaterial. The Cathars' saviour Jesus Christ was purely a spirit, never existed in human form, and never walked the earth according to them. They also believed in an evil doppelganger Jesus, son of Rex Mundi, enslaver of souls, who did exist in the flesh and did walk the earth. Which one of these do you think might have a human wife or mistress?

TCP

Sure they were considered heretics, but were they as heretical as the church claimed? Jehovah Witnesses believe Jesus came as a man, but was yet a god, and was crucified as does the church, and yet they are hated by the catholic faithful. Here we have a group (Cathar) that alledgedly denies the human Jesus as well as the crucifixion which is the crux of orthodox christianty, yet they are welcomed and protected by the catholic populace and the areas nobility.
It would also seem to me, because of this support which very seldom wavered that the church would attempt to paint a picture of a faith that should be hated by the average catholic, but again, it was not, at least by those catholics who knew it well. Any time an army seeks to invade it first attempts to garner as much local support as possible.
In Beziers the roman catholic population was given a chance to leave, but instead stayed within the city in support of their Cathar friends, and of course "familys".
The last major influence on the evolution of Catharism was the Bogomils. Wasn't it a Bogomil Bishop who first established Cathar Bishoprics?

Because of the fact that the Bogomil Bishop, "Nicetas" confirmed the office of several Cathar Bishops in 1167, there must of been more than a passing similarity between the tenents of Catharism and that of the Bogomils.
It is known that the Bogomils believed that Michael was sent by God in the form of man becoming identified as Jesus. Jesus being the angel Michael in human form. Also according to Bogomil belief the crucifixion did take place, although they, like the Cathars rejected the image of the cross as an object of worship. The Bogomils,also like the Cathars accepted the New Testament and not the Old T.
As the Cathars, by the mid 12th century had evolved into a Bogomil type religion, it seems unlikely that they would differ enough in doctrine to completely deny the earthly Jesus.
It is true that both groups considered all flesh to be evil and the goal to eventually shed the body. But, IMHO that doesn't necessarily mean that they would not accept the message of a god who took on a human form to deliver that message.
An interesting little fact is that the Jehovah Witnesses also believe that Jesus is Michael in human form.

They denied the Crucifixion and Resurrection, that would be enough in and of itself for the Catholics Church to consider them heretics.



The Cathars were very outspoken in their denunciations of the Church's power and greed, as were many southern Catholics who considered the ecclesiastical authorities to be corrupt. I wouldn't read too much into the situation beyond "common cause" - the Cathars didn't appear to be hurting anyone and were the focus of the Church's ire; a case of "the enemy of my enemy is my friend."



First, you overlook the fact that the average Catholic in that time and place had major issues of their own with the Church's authority structure. Second, you assume that Cathar beliefs were all out there on the table for Catholics to judge and render acceptable, rather than revealed incrementally after the acceptance of Cathar sacraments. Most Cathar credenti still attended mass and received the Eucharist as they always had, something the perfecti would not have done, nor I would imagine, anyone who hoped to receive the Consolamentum. Clearly there was a division between what the elect knew and believed, and what the masses knew and believed.



To have left would have meant surrendering their city to the northern knights and forces. There was a war on, you know. While it's nice to think that the Catholics of Beziers consciously preferred to stand behind their Cathar neighbors and chose death over freedom, that's a rather revisionist conclusion. As rebels against royal and ecclesiastical authority, they were the "enemy" as much as the Cathars were and there was no reason for them to expect mercy outside their walls.



Yes, of course.

TCP

That's sort of a given, don't you think?



You overlook the fact that Bogomil doctrine considered Michael's/Jesus' "body" to have been non-material, in human image but not of human substance.



See above.

TCP

Hey, thanks for coming back, I thought maybe you were going to let me talk to myself on this.

Just took the weekend off is all...

TCP

As I beieve the Jehovah Witnesses (Watchtower Bible and Tract Society) have adopted many Bogomil beliefs and seem to have the same views on both Michael and the crucifixion, it is difficult to understand why they would not be in agreement on this particular article. Watchtower, teaches that Jesus (Michael) was completely human, and physically died at the crucifixion.
btw, I cannot find substantial information for either of these ideas, can you?

Possibly a corruption of the Gospel of the Hebrews which (according to Clement of Alexandria) states that Michael came to earth as Jesus' mother. Interesting that the Bogomil text "The Interrogation of John" mentions Mary is as an angel but not Jesus.

Father Silence

I don't believe "Watchtower" gets it from the Gospel of the Hebrews, instead from 1st Thessalonians, Daniel, and Revelation, certainly not a corruption.

I have to put in my two cents here

Since this is The Magdalene

Vézelay Abbey (now known as Basilique Sainte-Marie-Madeleine) was a Benedictine and Cluniac monastery in Vézelay in the Yonne département in Burgundy, France. The Benedictine abbey church of Ste-Marie-Madeleine

I noticed the spelling of Madeleine
Vézelay also stood at the beginning of one of the four major routes through France for pilgrims going to Santiago de Compostela in Galicia, in the north-western corner of Spain.

About 1050 the monks of Vézelay began to claim to hold the relics of Mary Magdalene, brought, they related, from the Holy Land either by their 9th-century founder-saint, Badilo, or by envoys despatched by him. A little later a monk of Vézelay declared that he had detected in a crypt at St-Maximin in Provence, carved on an empty sarcophagus, a representation of the Unction at Bethany, when Jesus' head was anointed by Mary of Bethany, assumed in the Middle Ages to be Mary Magdalene. The monks of Vézelay pronounced it to be Mary Magdalene's tomb, from which her relics had been translated to their abbey

Freed captives then brought their chains as votive objects to the abbey, and it was the newly-elected Abbot Geoffroy in 1037 who had the ironwork melted down and reforged as wrought iron railings surrounding the Magdelen's altar. Thus the erection of one of the finest examples of Romanesque architecture which followed was made possible by pilgrims to the declared relics and these tactile examples demonstrating the efficacy of prayers. Mary Magdalene is the prototype of the penitent, and Vézelay has remained an important place of pilgrimage for the Catholic faithful,

So Vezelay hand many pilgrims coming


Saint Bernard of Clairvaux preached there in favor of a second crusade at Easter 1146, in front of King Louis VII. Richard I of England and Philip II of France met there and spent three months at the Abbey in 1190 before leaving for the Third Crusade. Thomas Becket in exile, chose Vézelay for his Whitsunday sermon in 1166, announcing the excommunication of the main supporters of his English King, Henry II, and threatening the King with excommunication too. The nave, which had burnt once, with great loss of life, burned again in 1165, after which it was rebuilt in its present form.

They picked Magdalene's church for the Second Crusade ...Louis Phillip and Richard

Vézelay remained a central figure in the history of the crusades. The tympanum was completed in 1130. Fifteen years after its completion, Bernard of Clairvaux chose Vézelay as the place from which he would call for a Second Crusade. Vézelay was even the staging point for the Third Crusade. It is there that King Richard the Lionheart of England and King Philip Augustus of France met and joined their armies for a combined western invasion of the holy land. It is appropriate, therefore, that Vézelay's portal reflect its place in the history of the crusades.


Magdalene seems to play an important part in the Crusades
WHY?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/V%C3%A9zelay_Abbey

You've already posted the answer to your question - location, location, location. Major crossroads, major crowds, major impact.

TCP