without such payment, it seemed inevitable that the Manichaean, regarding all matter to be the work of Satan, should invoke him for worldly prosperity. The husbandman, for instance, could not pray to God for a plentiful harvest, but must do so to Satan, who was the creator of corn. It is true that there was a sect, known as Luciferani, who were said to worship Satan, regarding him as the brother of God, unjustly banished from heaven, and the dispenser of worldly good, but these, as we shall see hereafter, were a branch of the Brethren of the Free Spirit, probably descended from the Ortlibenses, and there is absolutely no evidence that the Cathari ever wavered in their trust in Christ or diverted their aspirations from the hope of reunion with God.[1]
Such was the faith whose rapid spread throughout the south of Europe filled the Church with well-grounded dismay ; and, however much we may deprecate the means used for its suppression and commiserate those who suffered for conscience' sake, we cannot but admit that the cause of orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to prove disastrous. Its asceticism with regard to commerce between the sexes, if strictly enforced, could only have led to the extinction of the race, and as this involves a contradiction of nature, it would have probably resulted in lawless concubinage and the destruction of the institution of the family, rather than in the disappearance of the human race and the return of exiled souls to their Creator, which was the summum honum of the true Catharan. Its condemnation of the visible universe and of matter in general as the work of Satan rendered sinful all striving after material improvement, and the conscientious belief in such a creed could only lead man back, in time, to his original condition of savagism. It was not only a revolt against the Church, but a renunciation of man's domination over nature. As such it was doomed from the start, and our only wonder must be that it maintained itself so long and so stubbornly even against a Church which had earned so much of popular detestation. Yet though
- ↑ Radulf. Coggeshall 1. c— Pauli Carnotens. Vet. Aganon. Lib. vi. c. iii. — Campana, Storia di San Piero Martire, Lib. ii. c. 2, p. 57.— Fragment, ady. Haeret. (Mag. Bib. Pat. XIII. 341).— Cf. Trithem. Chron. Hirsaug. ann. 1315.
