Religious Devotions in the Southern Low Countries as an Opposition to Catharism 1150-1300

Abstract

Through contemplation, and the practice of actions with religious meaning, faith is taught and reinforced. Beliefs that conflict with the established teaching of a religious group are sometimes ruled by it as heretical. Effective in countering heresy are religious practices that would not be performed by those deemed heretical. The practices indicate those who are orthodox and safeguard them from accusations of heresy. Catharism was an expanding heretical sect in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, enticing adherents away from the Roman Catholic Church, rejecting the Catholic sacraments and holding to a dualistic theology. Through the study of eleven hagiographies (idealized biographies of saints) this thesis identifies and examines sixteen attributes of people who lived in the southern Low Countries, corresponding with contemporary Belgium and northeastern France. We show how these attributes aided the Catholic Church’s struggle against Catharism through the confirmation, dissemination, and distinction of orthodoxy, while serving to nullify heterodox suspicion of the hagiographical subjects.