Letters - 06 February 2015
From Cathars to fuel poverty
Cathars and Quakers
A very good article ‘Cathars and Quakers’ by Kris Misselbrook (23 January) suggested a spiritual link between the Cathars and the Couflaĩres (with correct spelling) of the Congénies area in the eighteenth century and that the group pre-dated the Quakers in France. There is a further link between the Couflaĩres and Quakers in the intended insult of the names. The patois word meant ‘swollen’, the English insult ‘trembling’. The 1993 Backhouse Lecture by Ursula Jane O’Shea gives a good explanation: ‘Quaking was sometimes taken as a sign of the power of the inward experience with which a Friend wrestled.’
Richard Thompson
It was most interesting to read Kris Misselbrook’s article about the similarity between Cathars and Quakers – a comparison that has come up in scholarship before. I’m sure the connections are real, and Kris’s reference to the conflaires or inspirés is new to me, and most interesting.
My own difficulty with Cathar scholarship and popular writing is that it takes Cathar dualism and – like newspapers thriving on bad news – makes the assumption that the preoccupation was with the world being bad. Many years of study, and visits to the Languedoc region, have convinced me that the Cathar preoccupation was actually with the light, not the dark, and was personally transformational – that is to say, in going through the ritual of the consolamentum you became, by sheer choice and conviction, totally light. In your consciousness you left the dark behind; you became Christlike, a true heir of Christ.
I am inclined to believe that this was an under-standing carried down from Apostolic times. All the keys to the tradition are there in the gospel of John, which was the book Cathars carried with them always. Maybe this focus on the light gives an even greater link with Quaker belief. It certainly links the Cathars strongly with my own preferred tradition, not far removed from Quakerism, known as the White Eagle Lodge.
I have a book in progress and would be delighted to hear of anything readers may share. My article ‘Cathar Joy’, in the book The Cathar View, may interest readers.
Colum Hayward
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