The Cathars:  Cathar Beliefs:  Roman Catholic Propaganda:  Suicide

The Roman Church regarded suicide as a mortal sin.   It therefore made much of this heinous crime.  

For Cathars, there was no reason to regard suicide as a sin. According to their theology, death represented an opportunity for the soul to escape this early hell and return to the realm of light.   They apparently did not regard the Commandment "Thou shalt not kill" as applying to suicide.

Theoretical acceptance does not imply, as some Catholic authors still suggest, that suicide was common.   We know that ordinary believers led fairly ordinary lives, almost in spite of their theology - they married, copulated, raised and cared for their families much like anyone else.   The Cathar practice was probably much the same as the one accepted by educated people in classical times and by the overwhelming majority of secular thinkers today.   Greeks, Romans, Cathars and Humanists could all condone suicide, finding no moral objection to it, without manifesting any inclination to practise it themselves.

Some Cathars are known to have undertaken the endura, a form of voluntary euthenasia, generally in anticipation of imminent death.   Similarly, believers who were mortally wounded might take the Consolamentum and then simply refuse to eat or drink.   In this they saved themselves unimaginable suffering and, as they believed, won their place in heaven.  

Oddly, There is no record (as far as I know) of Cathars captured by the Inquisition choosing to undertake the endura. Catholic propaganda might have been expected to make much of such heinous self-murder - it could easily have fabricated suicide stories (as some modern Catholic writers do) - but it did not. Why not?