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Books like The Da Vinci Code and The Holy Blood and the Holy Grail link modern secret societies to medieval groups such as the Knights Templar and the Cathars. The Cathars were a Christian sect that flourished in southern France, Germany and northern Italy from the 11th to the 13th century, who were in turn linked to a chain of descent from early Christian Gnosticism.
The Manicheans
The early centuries CE were a time of religious ferment across Europe and Asia. Christianity was spreading fast as were Mithraism and Gnosticism. In Sassanid Persia, a young Zoroastrian named Mani (216-276 CE) was overtaken by visions and became a prophet, preaching a Gnostic gospel of radical dualism. Supposedly, primal man, a being of pure light and spirit, had shattered into particles and been swallowed by the powers of darkness so that the particles of light were now imprisoned in matter – the human body, specifically the brain. Salvation was the ongoing process of freeing the sparks of light from their physical prisons in order that they could rejoin the divine, and a series of apostles of light, including the biblical prophets Buddha, Zoroaster, Jesus and Mani himself, had been sent to spread the word.
Mani and his followers were actively evangelical and for a while Mani succeeded in gaining the ear of the Sassanid emperor Shapur I, but later he fell foul of political maneuvering and was flayed alive. His Church lives on, spreading through Central Asia an reaching china, where it was practiced in one form or another up until the modern era. Manicheans were divided into two classes: the Elect (the Righteous) and the Auditors (“hearers”). The strict code of Manichean ethics meant that the Elect were forbidden to gather food for themselves and depended for their sustenance on the Auditors, who were free from these restrictions. The Cathars would later have a similar system.
Manicheanism became popular in the Roman world and particularly in Alexandra, and the Church Father St. Augustine was originally a Manichean before becoming a Christian. The triumph of orthodox Christianity saw it suppressed along with other forms of Gnosticism.
The Bogomils
In the 10th century, Gnosticism gripped the Balkans with the flourishing of a Christian sect founded by apriest who took the name Bogomil. The Bogomils, or Friends of God, subscribed to the teachings of an earlier sect called the Paulicians, who argued that the physical world and human beings had actually been created by Satan, not God, and that Jesus had not been a physical being, but had simply had the appearance of one. The dualism was probably passed down from the Manicheans, and they shared a similar hierarchy and moral code. The strictest code – abstinence from sex, marriage, meat and wine, and the giving up of all worldly possessions – was practiced only by a select few, known as the Perfecti, while the ordinary men and women lived normal lives but could achieve the state of grace of the Perfecti by taking the consolamentum – a sort of spiritual baptism – on their deathbed.
The Bogomil movement was popular in the Balkans and the Byzantine Empire up until the 14th century, but the conquest of Asia Minor (Turkey) and the Balkans by the Ottomans led to the adoption of Islam across the region. In Western Europe, the sect was known as the Bulgars because their heartland was Bulgaria; in France Bulgar became Bougre. The typical response of orthodox Christianity to heretical groups was to slander them with accusations such as homosexuality and sexual deviance, and hence the term “bougre” or “bugger” became associated with certain sexual practices.
Rise and Fall of The Cathars
The Bogomils had a direct influence on the best-known Gnostic sect of all, the Cathars, possibly by converting Crusaders passing through their territories, who took their new faith back to Western Europe. Like the Bogomils, the Cathars believed that the material world was corrupt and that salvation lay in freeing the divine spark within to reunite with the Godhead. They shared a similar organization, with a small number of elect known as Perfecti, and the mass of the laypeople known as Bonshommes. The word “Cathar” itself is said to derive from the Latin for “pure ones.” As with the Bogomils and the Manicheans before them, the Cathar Perfecti rejected sex, marriage and meat; initiates to the rank of Perfecti even had to renounce their marriages. Meanwhile, the Bonshommes were less restricted, waiting until near death to take the consolamentum and become purified. Also like the Bogomils, the Cathars had an anti-establishment character. The piety and simplicity of the Perfecti stood in stark contrast to the corrupt and worldly clergy of the time, and there was an egalitarian aspect to the sect – men and women were accounted as equals.
Catharism took root in Germany (where it was first recorded, in 1143) and northern Italy, but its heartland was in southern and central France, particularly the Languedoc region. The town of Albi was considered to be the center of the sect, and they were accordingly known as the Albigensians. At this point in the Middle Ages the Languedec was very different from the rest of France, with its own language and a culture formed from a blend of influences (including Moorish). The nobles of the region were more or less independent from the French monarch, and their embrace of Catharism, coupled with its growing popularity in other parts of Europe and the fact that it had set up its own hierarchy of priests and bishops, meant that the movement posed a great threat to the Catholic Church and its temporal allies.
After failing to “correct” the heretical errors of the Cathars, the Church instituted the Inquisition in 1184 to suppress it by force. Initially, progress was slow, but it gained impetus in 1199 when Pope Innocent III declared that local authorities could share in the property of convicted heretics. In 1208 the Pope declared a new crusade against the Albigensian heresy, unleashing a century of conflict and atrocities across the Languedoc region. Catharism was not finally crushed until 1255 (and there was even a brief revival in the early 14th century), but its defeat was sealed when its greatest stronghold, the impenetrable fortress of Montsegur, fell in mysterious circumstances 1244. According to some writers, the Cathars guarded a mysterious secret, perhaps a treasure, and this was spirited out of Montsegur the night before it fell. Despite the fact that this appears to be pure invention with no basis in evidence, it has become part of the tapestry of legend that weaves together the Cathars, the Knights Templar, the Rosicrucians and the Freemason.
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Related to the ancient mystery cults of the Greeks, Mithraism was the worship of the god Mithras. Originally a sun god from the Persian pantheon, Mithras became very popular in the Roman Empire, and the Mithraic religion flourished from the 2nd century CE, rivaling Christianity until the latter got the upper hand. Mithraism eventually died out in the 5th century CE. In practice it had many similarities with Christianity – the two religions probably shared the same sources and cross fertilized each other. Mithras was regarded as a savior or messiah figure; his holy day was Sunday and one of his main festivals was held on 25 December.
The Mithraic cult had many important parallels with modern secret societies such as the Freemasons. It was open only to men (and was particularly popular with soldiers, minor officials and freedmen), who had to undergo initiation rites. Within the cult, rank in the secular world was of no importance – all initiates started off at the same rank and worked their way up, so that a legionnaire could be superior to his centurion. There were seven grades of initiation, corresponding to the seven “planets”: Raven, Nymphus, Soldier, Lion, Persian, Heliodromus and Father. The Mithraic equivalent to a Masonic lodge was the “cave” – an underground (or mock underground) chapel, or Mithraeum, where members would meet for a ritual meal of bread and wine.
Each Mithraeum was equipped with low benches running on either side of an aisle. The men would recline on these benches while they ate. At the head of the aisle was a carved relief or mural displaying the iconic image of Mithras performing his greatest exploit, the slaying of a bull. These icons conformed to a strict symbolic code, with Mithras (wearing his characteristic Phrygian cap) and the bull always shown in the same pose, while animals related to the zodiacal constellations also featured. No texts remain to explain the exact meaning of these symbols, but one explanation is that they are an allegory of the cosmological journey of the soul, which descends to earth at birth but ascends to heaven at death. As with the older forms of mystery religion, Mithraism did not survive antiquity and there is no direct line of descent to secret societies in the modern era, although some have used Mithraic symbolism.
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One of the Spanish Inquisition’s most famous trials concerned the clairvoyant Lucrecia de Leon. Born in Madrid in 1568, she had visions from early childhood. Later she was given financial help and encouragement by influential friends. Lucrecia accurately predicted the defeat of Spain’s “Invincible Armada,” and the death of several of its military leaders. Then she announced that King Philip II would be assassinated before the walls of Toledo. When nothing happened on the appointed date, the Inquisition arrested her and her supporters. Lucrecia was brutally lashed and made to serve for two years in a hospital for destitute children in Toledo.
Although the Catholic Inquisition in Spain was considered fairly lenient by some in its treatment of witchcraft – from its beginnings in 1478 until it ended in 1834, only 25 or so Spaniards were burnt at the stake for this crime – it cut a swathe through non-conformists, Jews, reformers and the intelligentsia of the times. Records show that 114,350 citizens of Catholic Spain were tried for a multitude of sins, crimes and deviant behavior.
The persecutions started in the early thirteenth century, when the Catholic Church in Rome set up an inquisitorial body to eliminate heresy. In 1255 the Church formally allowed the use of torture as a weapon against the evils the Inquisition was later established to eradicate.
King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain obtained in 1478 the consent of Pope Sixtus IV to appoint ecclesiastical inquisitors. Their chief role was to persecute Jews who had converted to Christianity, and generally to challenge heresy within the Church. The procedures allowed were particularly strict and liable to corruption. For example, only one informer was required to press a charge against a defendant. Jewish converses were often accused of having falsely declared themselves Christians, yet one of the Spanish Inquisition’s primary aims was to exterminate Jews who would not become Christian.
The first inquisitor-general was Tomas de Torquemada, who persuaded the king and queen to institute the Holy Office of the Inquisition in Spain in 1483. He performed his duties with pitiless cruelty and was responsible for some 2,000 burnings and the expulsion of thousands of Jews. Torquemada was one of the most notorious characters from this miserable chapter in Spanish history.
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