Luciana: There's been much discussion both in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries and also today in the literature about the "lax" or "flexible"
morality of Cathar believers, and Montaillou and the material in MS 609
certainly shows that they or their society were not configured according
to the formalities of law, canon or other. But two aspects of this
information are to be considered:
1) how well behaved in normative terms was ordinary society not adhering
to Cathar separatism?
and
2) did a desire to improve "morality" dominate in the motives for the
orthodox development of the penitential system and the confessional?
Quite apart from the obvious fact that intimate statistics needed to
answer these questions are all but impossible to find,
one can argue that, surprisingly enough, Cathar believers seem no more
moral than the orthodox or seem about as moral (they were not Waldensian
rigorists!)
and that
there were so many other motives for elaborating the confessional
obligation and other penitential mechanisms that the imposition of
"morality" appears to me to be subsumed in the desire of the clergy to
multiply or expand its over-all police over the flock. This desire for an
active control of social circumstance was also characteristic of law
generally at the time, and I therefore suspect that it reflects a broad
social evolution and not just the wish of a clerical group.
But, as I say, numbers are lacking.
Yours, John
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