Cathari (Gr., 'pure'), or CATHARISTS, a name assumed by a widely diffused Gnostic sect of the middle ages, which took its rise most probably among the Slavs in Southern Macedonia, and spread over the whole of Southern and Western Europe. In Thrace it found a kindred sect in the Panlicians (q.v.), who had been transported thither about 970, and they were there known as Bogomili (q.v.). In the second half of the 12th century they were in great strength in Bulgaria, Albania, and Slavonia, and divided into two branches, distinguished as the Albanensians (the more extreme section), and the Concorezensians (named from Goriza in Albania). It is remarkable that the name Bulgari, by which they were known to the returning French crusaders, is the origin of the low French word Bougre, just as the German word for 'heretic' (Ketzer) is derived from Gazzari, the Lombard form of Cathari. In Italy the heresy first appeared at Turin about 1035, and existed down to the 14th century. Its adherents were called Patarini, from Pataria, a street in Milan frequented by rag-gatherers, where they held their secret meetings in 1058. The Cathari reached their greatest numbers in Southern France, where they were commonly called Albigenses (q.v.) or Poblicans, the latter term being a corruption of Paulicians, with whom they were confounded. After the great Albigensian wars, they were gradually rooted out by the Inquisition, and after the first half of the 14th century they disappear from history. The Cathari based their teaching on the New Testament and an apocryphal 'Vision of Isaiah' and 'Gospel of John.' The only extant Catharist writing is a short ritual in the Romance language of the 13th-century troubadours (printed at Jena in 1852 by Professor Cunitz from the MS. at Lyons). All the Cathari held more or less Manichean views, and practised a rigid asceticism. Deliverance from evil was only to be attained by renunciation of the (material) world, including marriage, property, and the use of animal food. They distinguished between the great mass of their Credentes or 'Believers,' and the Perfecti, who had received the Baptism of the Spirit by the laying on of hands, called Consolamentum, because in it the Comforter was imparted. These 'pure' ones, estimated at only 4000 in all Europe about the year 1240, formed the Catharist Church—the 'only true and pure church on earth.' Their worship was extremely simple, and their church government was by bishops (each with two assistants, the Filius Major and the Filius Minor) and deacons.
See C. Schmidt, La Secte des Cathares (1849); Lombard, Pauliciens et Bons-hommes (1879); Lea, History of the Inquisition (1888); and Döllinger, Sektengeschichte (1889).