Cathars of Languedoc
Sir: Ian Meadows' article on the Cathars or Albigenses (July 21) with its melange of astrology, dark suggestions of great Cathar secrets greedily hoarded by the Vatican (a Provencal Joanna Southcott's Box, no doubt), and its nice round figure. of " almost a million casualties" in the Albigensian Crusade, will hardly have made many Cathar converts.
All the same, it would be well if more would realise that the extirpation of Catharism by the Inquisition, which was instituted originally for that purpose. saved Europe t•rom death and even Ircim physical extinction, The Cathars taught that all matter had been made by an evil god, who was as powerful as the good god, and so all matter was intrinsically evil. It followed that the greatest evil was a fruitful marriage.
True, as Mr Meadows says, they were very modern in their views of life, death and marriage, but it is also true that societies such as ours which encourage perversion, contraception and abortion and discourage fruitful marriage will not exist for long. A -glance at the Registrar-General's figures will show that while the population of these islands is roughly stationary in number, the proportion of British people in it is declining fast, and Sir Keith Joseph has intimated that he sees the need to cut live births by another large fraction.
We can accept that, as the Encyclopaedia Britannica points out, " the mass of (Cathar) believers . , were free from all moral prohibition and all religious obligation " subject to promising a death-bed acceptance of the full Cathar system, and no doubt not all Cathars immediately killed their children and then themselves. Most were quite likely melancholy guitarstrummers somewhat similar to our drug-soaked hippies, or else just in it • for the debauches, or simply had to accept the then government's line. Can anyone believe that such a society would have made the great advances we have seen, or that it would have been able to resist invasion from the East? Let us recall that in the time of 'Louis XIV. the Turks almost captured Vienna, and we can see that a Cathar Europe would at best have bean something like the Middle East today. and most likely under Asian rlile.• G. J. A. Stern 6 .Eton Court, Shepherds Hill, London N6
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