Note 74 — Chapter III · THE CATHARI.

Lucæ Tudens. de altera Vita Lib. iii. cap. ii.

Before ridiculing the Catharan theory of Dualism, we must bear in mind how strong is the tendency in this direction of sensitive and ardent souls, who keenly feel the imperfections of man’s nature and its contrast with the possibilities of an ideal. Thus Flacius Illyricus, the fervid reformer, about 1560, came perilously near to the Catharan myths, and gave rise to a warm controversy by maintaining that original sin was not an accident, but the substance in man; that the original image of God was, through the Fall, not replaced, but metamorphosed into an image of Satan, a transformation of absolute good into absolute evil; a theory which, as he was warned by his friends Musæus and Judex, must necessarily lead to Manichæism.—See Herzog, Abriss der gesammten Kirchengeschichte, III. 313.

Orthodox asceticism also trenches closely on Manichæism in its denunciation of the flesh, which it treats as the antagonist and enemy of the soul. Thus, St. Francis of Assisi says, “Many, when they sin or are injured, blame their enemy or neighbor. This should not be so, for every one has his enemy in his power, namely, the body through which he sins. Thus blessed is that servant who always holds captive and guards himself against that enemy delivered to him, for when he does thus no other visible enemy can hurt him” (S. Francisci Admonit. ad Fratres No. 9). And in another passage (Apoph. xxvii.) he describes his body as the most cruel enemy and worst adversary, whom he would willingly abandon to the demon.

According to the Dominican Tauler, the leader of the German mystics in the fourteenth century, man in himself is but a mass of impurity, a being sprung from evil and corrupt matter, only fit to inspire horror; and this opinion was fully shared by his followers even though they were overflowing with love and charity (Jundt, les Amis de Dieu, Paris, 1879, pp. 77, 229).

Jean-Jacques Olier, the founder of the great theological seminary of St. Sulpice, in his “Catechisme Chrétien pour la vie interieure,” which I believe is still in use there as a text-book, goes as far as Manes or Buddha in his detestation of the flesh as the cause of man’s sinful nature—“Je ne m’étonne plus si vous dites qu’il faut haïr sa chair, que l’on doit avoir horreur de soi même, et que l’homme, dans son état actuel, doit étre maudit ... En verité, il n’y a aucune sorte de maux et de malheurs qui ne doivent tomber sur lui à cause de sa chair.”—See Renan, Souvenirs de l’enfance et de jeunesse, p. 206.

With such views it is simply a question of words whether the creator of such an abomination as the crowning work of the terrestrial universe is to be called God or Satan; he certainly cannot be the Good Principle.