Table of Contents
At Instituto Civitas Solis, Beatriz Del Picchia answers questions about medieval Christians she has studied for years. Outsiders, she says, named them Cathars, while they called themselves true Christians and tried not to lie, even under questioning that could kill them. Rites stayed few and plain. Bread was blessed and hands were laid on in houses, because soul outranked property, rank, and flesh. Women could hold religious office, which she calls a twelfth century scandal and an argument that is not finished. Crusade and inquisition wiped out the movement and most of its writing in about two centuries, so study leans on the prosecutors’ files and never finds one closed doctrine. Curiosity lived on in folktales and in a story that a laurel would green again seven hundred years after a burning. She marks 2021 as that span from the last known French execution. For them the world was both suffering and a school, and they healed and taught anyway.
Key points
- Del Picchia says the Cathars named themselves Christians and risked death rather than lie to inquisitors.
- Home rites were simple because soul, not body or social rank, was what they valued.
- She stresses that women could serve in religious leadership, and retells clergy silencing a woman speaker.
- With books destroyed, she says modern study depends on inquisition records and cannot settle one official doctrine.
- A legend of a green laurel after seven centuries, and heavy online interest, show the memory did not end at the stake.
- She describes their world as painful and instructive at once, a path of inner ascent alongside practical care.
Short quotes
their rituals were few and very simple
Beatriz Del Picchia, In search of the Cathars
She sets a handful of household rites against the status the movement refused to treat as ultimate. Watch at 1:10
one could Ascend to higher levels of consciousness
Beatriz Del Picchia, In search of the Cathars
In the view she gives, ordinary life was also a school for inner ascent. Watch at 5:42
Video by Instituto Civitas Solis. Watch on YouTube.