The Cathars:  Cathar Beliefs:  Roman Catholic Propaganda:  Sexual Equality

The idea of women having power over men was hateful to the Roman Church, relying on an injunction by St Paul that women should have no dominion over men, and a number of similar biblical assertions. Soon after it had developed a priesthood in the early centuries, the Orthodox Church (from which the Roman Church would later split off), started to minimalise the role of women. They were barred from the new priesthood, and prominant women in the bible were concealed by a simple name change (eg Julia "who was prominent among the disciples" became Julian). Deaconesses disappeared later, and later still women were even excluded from choirs. By the Middle Ages the role of women in the early Church had been forgotten, and St Paul said everything on the matter that was needed. From this perspective, it seemed anti-Christian to allow any form of equality to women. Churchmen were horrified therefore to learn that Cathars had not only Parfaits (male members of the elect) but also Parfaites (women members of the elect). This was probably exacerbated by misunderstandings - for example Catholics never seem to have understood that Cathars did not recognise a priesthood, nor did they understand the nature of the Melhoramentum. In their minds women Parfaites were priestesses, worshipped by ordinary believers. The truth would have been bad enough, but this seemed to be an even more pernicious blasphemy.

Although the Waldensians were doctrinally as opposed to the Cathars as the Catholic Church, they nevertheless adopted some Cathar ideas, for example permitting women a role in spreading the faith. Here is the Cistercian Alan of Lille writing against this heretical idea around 1190-1202:

If it is a dangerous thing for wise and holy men to preach, it is most dangerous for the uneducated who do not know what should be preached; to whom, how, when, and where there should be preaching. These persons resist the Apostle [St Paul] in that they have women with them and have them preach in the gatherings of the faithful, although the Apostle says in the first Epistle to the Corinthians: "Let women keep silence in the curches, for it is not permitted them to speak, but to be subject, as also the law saith. But if they would learn anything, let them ask their husbands at home". [I Corinthians 14:34-35]

Alain de Lille (Alani de Insulis), De fide catholica (or Quadripartita editio contra hereticos Waldenses, Judeos et paganos. book 2, ch 1. English translation cited by Wakefield and Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages, 35 (p 219). The square brackets are mine.

Times change, and equality of women is now regarded as laudible outside the Roman Church. There is therefore a danger of misreprenting Parfaites as being fully equal to Parfaits. The truth is not quite so straightforward. Certainly, Parfaits underwent the same training as Parfaits. They took the same vows at identical ceremonies. They led the same ascetic lives, and probably enjoyed the same rights at least in theory. In practice Parfaites do not seem to have travelled and preached, nor did they normally administer the Consolamentum, nor do they seem to have been elected as bishops. Instead they lived together in communities, often in large town houses.

In summary, neither the propaganda of the Roman Church nor the rosy picture of the Cathar apologists is right, but both are near the truth, which is that women treated much more like the equals of men than they were in the Medieval Church, and than they are in the modern Roman Church. It is possible that the Cathars treated women in the same way that the earlist Gnostic Christians had treated women - initially unaware of St Paul because they predated him, and later ignoring his innovative and offensive opinions.