Mary Magdalene and the Cathars (Pierre de Meuse)

Pierre de Meuse

The Church and the Cathars

Chapter 3

Esotericism and the Cathars

Subchapter

Mary Magdalene and the Cathars

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Mary Magdalene and the Cathars

In this concert of more than debatable historical theories, there is one that has recently taken a considerable place with Dan Brown’s book, it is the “revelation” of the love affair of Christ with Mary Magdalene. To exploit the new vein and take its place in this groundswell that comes from certain American circles, it is necessary, according to the recipe seen above, to link this information with the “knowledge” already disseminated. The poor Templars have already been put to use, as well as the Grail; and the Cathars? In an article distributed on the Internet under the title “rosa mystica”, Mr. Christian Doumergue, who runs a cultural pharmacy based in Rennes-le-Château, an essential Mecca of mystified history¹³, explains to us that “Many works, notably Anglo-Saxon, make the Cathars the keepers of secrets concerning Mary Magdalene. Does this assertion have any historical basis, or is it just another myth among the countless false truths peddled about heretics by a literary genre in need of sensationalism?” This falsely interrogative introduction has already whetted the reader's appetite; he will know a guaranteed secret of good quality. That is because, says the site of the famous “Priory of Sion”, in the midst of advertisements for washing products “one of the reasons the Catholic Church persecuted Catharism was because the Cathars worshiped Mary Magdalene powerfully and one theory is that they were eliminated because of this powerful secret. Like the other bodies cited in The Da Vinci Code, the Cathars found themselves at the heart of the intrigue of the time and one wonders why such a pacifist community was so chastised. As with the rest of the Mary Magdalene mystery there is no evidence that either affirms or disproves this theory.” If there is no evidence, why talk about it? But business has its requirements. Mr. Doumergue, he advances proofs, under an eloquent title: the concubine of Christ. We will examine them.

First “proof”: a book by the Abbé Faillon, (died in 1870) which under the title Monuments inédits, “evokes the blasphemous beliefs of the heretics of Béziers with regard to Mary Magdalene.” Written in 1849, this text would only have any value if the abbot in question quoted the sources of the time: “It will also be noted that the former fanatics of Béziers, accustomed to uttering horrible blasphemies against this saint, the patroness of their church, and against the adorable person of the Saviour, were vanquished by their enemies on the feast day of Saint Madeleine; and that as a punishment for their impiety towards this saint, their city had already been devastated several times on such a day.” In fact, we know very well where this observation comes from, but Mr. Doumergue prefers to cite several sources instead of one. Indeed, he quotes Voltaire and Henri de Sponde, bishop of the 17th century, who echoed it.

Second proof: the original document, which is presented as representative of “some texts, such as the Histoire albigeoise by Pierre des Vaux-de-Cernay.” In fact, there is only one. The work cited is the work of a Cistercian monk accompanying his uncle Guy, abbot of Vaux-de-Cernay, soon to be bishop of Carcassonne. His Chronicle of the Crusade is a work very oriented against the people of Toulouse. Doumergue quotes two passages from the first part, section 11 and section 93: “They said in their secret meetings that the Christ who was born in earthly and visible Bethlehem and died crucified in Jerusalem was the bad Christ and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine: she was the woman caught in adultery mentioned in the Gospels…” And Doumergue observes that later in the text, the chronicler again “echoed this assertion of the Cathars.”

Doumergue thus falsifies the meaning of the text, because he knows very well that the crusaders had no knowledge of Cathar theology, unlike the inquisitors, and that they in no way believed that there had been two Christs, a good and a bad one, but an evil God, creator of the world alongside the good God; for them Christ was not God. It is therefore a more or less involuntary confusion on the part of Pierre des Vaux. Especially since, if we refer to the rest of the text, which he does not quote, then it appears that the mention of the blasphemies which would have been uttered against Mary Magdalene only serves as a posteriori justification for the appalling massacre perpetrated by the Rovers of the Crusader army on the feast day of Mary Magdalene and in the church that bears her name. Similarly, he writes, “as the taking of Jerusalem by Titus and Vespasian took place twenty-five years after the crucifixion of Our Lord, so the sack of Béziers by the French from the north-east takes place twenty-five years after the murder of their Count and their bishop” in this same church and on this same date. A miracle, or divine punishment, in a way. In the texts of the inquisitors, however finicky and quick to detail the points of heresy, neither in Pons de Parnac, nor in the collections of Jacques Fournier, nothing in the “Cathar council” of Saint Felix, nowhere is mentioned a belief relating to the concubinage of Mary Magdalene with Jesus.

- There is another text: the Manifestatio heresis Catharorum Bonaccursi, public confession of a converted heretic, where this Milanese ex-Cathar repents, among other things, for having believed that Mary Magdalene was the bride of Christ. The authenticity of this text is disputed¹⁴.

It is little, for such an affirmation, especially since it is difficult to see how the Cathars could believe that Jesus had taken a wife, insofar as countless texts show that their religion refused the Incarnation of the Nicene faith: according to them Christ was not God, and was not a man, but an illusion, a decoy, without earthly need; “He neither ate nor drank, neither hungered nor thirsted, but lived on his own grace and that of his Father.” One wonders how he could have taken a wife¹⁵. These considerations weigh little for Mr. Doumergue, because it is important to connect to the wave of the Da Vinci and, piling up on each other arguments without value, to claim that the cult of Mary of Magdala is “a central element of Catharism”. Thus, in the 13th century there were Cathars in Vézelay. And the church of Vézelay is dedicated to Mary Magdalene. In addition, Franciscans (who fought against Catharism) also came to settle there. Are not these proofs? Similarly, the tomb, at least according to tradition, of Mary Magdalene was found in 1279 near Saint-Maximin. But at the same time, the Cathars are being persecuted. Here is another “proof” according to Christian Doumergue. The Dominicans were then settled there, to the dissatisfaction of the monks of Saint-Victor who would also be cryptocathars (in the 15th century!). The purpose of these juggling is to imply that the Cathars continued seven hundred years after the death of the saint in Provence, according to the pious legend, the worship of Madeleine, true successor of Christ and bearer of his hidden words of which she perpetuates the Teaching. And to mix all the various currents of Gnosticism, which was by no means a unified doctrine, but a proliferation of different schools, with opposing beliefs, incompatible morals, divergent sacred texts. The essential thing is that we replace in a Christianity upset the cult of the Virgin Mary, feminine principle exalting sacred motherhood, by a Mary Magdalene fabricated from scratch, representing the free woman, head of religion, successor of a Christ human, all too human, stripped of its divinity. With the help of falsified texts, such as the “apocryphal” Gospel of Philip, from which the incomplete content is extrapolated, claiming that Jesus kissed Mary Magdalene on the mouth, whereas the end of the sentence is incomplete, or the Gospel of Mary, another apocryphal. The Gospel of Thomas (another apocryphal) representing another opposing current of gnosis, is obviously only mentioned for the sake of number, as it contains strongly anti-feminist passages. In vain will one be able to retort that the dualistic heresy, if it takes up certain traits of gnosis, is in no way, in the state of our knowledge, its continuation, and that the documents of the sect in no way reserve a special place for Mary Magdalene, unlike Mary and Saint John; but would it really be of any use? The Cathars are here no more than a pretext, the vehicle emptied of its true meaning of an attempt to normalize Catholicism, aligned with the presuppositions of a drying modernity, and the manipulators who make it their work do not care much about the historical science.  

Text translated and formatted by Thierry Murcia, PhD, 2023

Subchapter Notes

13. It is true that this unfortunate commune of Rennes-le-Château has had a tradition of forgery scams since Abbé Saunière, a simoniac priest and concubinary. Abbé Saunière had indeed extracted large sums from the Countess of Chambord and her family.

14. V. Montanarip, La Manifestatio heresis Catharorum attribuita a Bonaccorso Convegno di studi sulla Riforma e sui movimenti religiosi in Italia No 35, Torre Pellice, Italy 04/09/1995.

Interrogation of Pierre Maury by the inquisitor Fournier, t. III, p. 225. According to Sacconi, a Cathar from Concorezzo quoted by Dondiane, p. 71, “He was an angel who never really ate, drank, suffered, died, or was buried. His resurrection was not real.” quoted by Duvernoy, op. cit. p. 85.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Biography of Pierre de Meuse

Doctor of Law, and former student of Science-Po, Pierre de Meuse was a professor at the École Supérieure de Management. Passionate about history, he is the author of several reference works.

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Mary Magdalene and the Cathars (Pierre de Meuse, 2008)

In this concert of more than debatable historical theories, there is one that has recently taken a considerable place with Dan Brown's book, it is the "revelation" of the love affair of Christ with

https://www.academia.edu/104958722/Mary_Magdalene_and_the_Cathars_Pierre_de_Meuse_2008_