The Cathars were not Gnostics, but Puritan Christians: Historical Witness from Luther to Voltaire

Modern neo-gnostic and new age paeudo-scholarly hacks have made much ado in recent years about the "early gnostics" such as the Cathars (Bogomils, Waldensian, Albigensians). These opportunistic, anachronistic so-called "histories" have every one employed Catholic Inquisition sources in the attempt to reconstruct the "Cathari" theology that never existed among the Cathars.

The Puritan author John Milton even knew them to have been his early Puritan Christians brethren.

Here are some quotes that may provide some balance to this current historical propagandistic information war of modern nominal "neo-gnostics". In short, everything you think you know about the Cathars is a modern anachronistic lie popularized in new age works fit for dupes and morons who never cross check anything to see if it's actually true, but like the swallowers they are do nothing but swallow.

I conceived that it was well becoming a Christian to undertake the defence of innocence, oppressed and overborne by the blackest calumnies the devil could ever invent.  That we should be ungrateful towards those whose sufferings for Christ have been so beneficial to his church, should we not take care to justify their memory, when we see it so maliciously bespattered and torn.

“That to justify the Waldenses and Albigenses, is indeed to defend the Reformation and Reformers, they having so long before us, with an exemplary courage, labored to preserve the Christian religion in its ancient purity, which the Church of Rome all this while has endeavored to abolish … So long as the ministers  of the Church of Rome think fit to follow his conduct who was a liar and a murderer from the beginning, innocence should 
not be deprived of the privilege of defending herself …”
(William Jones, “History of the Christian Church,” pp. viii-ix)

“For at least a thousand years before the Reformation the true church was composed of multitudes of simple  Christians who were not part of the Roman system.  That  such believers existed, refused to be called ‘Catholics,’ and worshiped   independently of the Roman hierarchy is history.  It is a fact that they were pursued to imprisonment and death since at least the end of the fourth century.” (A Woman Rides the Beast , by Dave Hunt, p. 254)

“Oh brothers, listen to a noble lesson; We must watch and be diligent in prayer, Because we see the world is approaching its end. Already eleven hundred years have run their course
Since it was written, ‘these are the last times.’ But no man will know, when the end is to come.

We have all the more to fear.  We do not know If death will call us today or tomorrow. But when Christ comes on the Day of Judgment Each will receive his reward; As well, he who has done evil as he who had done good.
If we desire to love Christ and learn His doctrine
We must watch and search the Scriptures.
If we read them, we shall find,
That Christ was persecuted because He did good.
There are still many in our times
Who wish to teach the way of Christ,
But they are persecuted and can do but little.
False Christians are so blinded by error,
And particularly the teachers themselves,
That they ill-use and kill those who are better than themselves.
On the contrary they let the evil live in peace.
By this we may know that they are not good shepherds,
They love the sheep only for their wool.
If anyone loves God, and fears Jesus Christ,
And does not bear false witness, nor swear nor lie,
And does not commit adultery, nor kill, nor does violence,
Nor revenge himself on his enemies,
They say, ‘He is a Waldensian; he merits death!’
(Source: “The Martyrdom of a People, or The 
Vaudois of Piedmont and their History” by 
Henry Fliedner)

“Luther, in the year 1533, published the Confessions of the Waldenses, to which he wrote a preface.  In this preface, he 
candidly acknowledges that, in the days of his popery, he had hated the Waldenses, as persons who were consigned over to perdition.  But having understood from their confessions and writings the piety of their faith, he perceived that those good men had been greatly wronged whom the Pope had
condemned as heretics; for that, on the contrary, they were rather entitled to the praise due to holy martyrs.  He adds
that among them he had found one thing worthy of admiration, a thing unheard of in the popish church, that, laying aside the doctrines of men, they meditated in the law of God, day and night; and that they were expert, and even well versed in the knowledge of the Scriptures …” (Source: “The History of the Waldenses,” by William Jones, Vol. II, p. 79)


Furthermore, there were men who wanted no law but the gospels, and who preached ideas almost the same as those held today by the Protestants. They were called Vaudois (Waldenses), because they were numerous in the valleys of Piedmont; Albigensians, from the town of Albi; Goodmen, from the consistent goodness of their lives; and finally Manicheans, the name then given to heretics in general.” (Of the Crusade Against the People of the Languedoc, by Voltaire, 1756)

It is now clearly known that the Paulicans were not Manicheans …. the same thing may probably be said of the Albigenses.  The Albigenses were oppressed on account of this sentiment, which accusation was also made against the Waldenses.  Care must be taken on this point, and too prompt credence should not be given to the accuser.  The Roman Catholic Church sought diligently for excuses to persecute.  Even Luther was declared by the Synod of Sens to be a Manichean.  The 
celebrated Archbishop Usher says that the charge ‘of Manicheanism 
on the Albigensian sect is evidently false.’” (Rome & the Bible, by David W. Cloud, p. 60; citing Acland, 
The Glorious Recovery of the Vadois, 1xvii, London, 1857)

Avenge, O Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;
Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshiped stocks and stones … - John Milton, Puritan Christian (1608-1674)