toys by corporations such as Disney steep children at an early age in the culture of warfare and killing. Urban's rallying cry has been copied over and over again. Contemporary right-wing American evange-lists such as Billy Graham call their campaigns “crusades.” In 2001, when U.S. president George W. Bush announced his “war on terror,” his words echoed the messages of Pope Urban II. He even used the word crusade. Though George W. Bush may not even have known who Urban II was, Urban's famous speech had become the standard way to sell a war.
IV
How he would have lashed out against anyone who dared to eat pork on a Friday, and yet now he cannot make the shedding of men's blood a matter of conscience ….
—PETR CHELCCICKÝ
on his 1420 debate in Prague with Jakoubek of Stribro
D uring the Middle Ages, the customary way to reject militarism was to retreat to a monastery. In fact, the monastic movement was to a large degree a rejection of the Church state with its wealth, power, and wars. This is why the Church refused, and still refuses, to support them. Monks and nuns produced crops, bread, jam, wine, liqueurs, and cheeses while they illuminated stunning manuscripts and sang some of the most beautiful music mankind ever created. Monasteries became citadels of learning in a violent age, enclaves for Christians who refused to take up arms.
Though the Church put aside its interdiction on Christians bearing arms, many of the monastic orders, such as the Franciscans, rigorously maintained the rule. At the same time, many sects arose that operated like the early Christians, outside of the machinery of state, shunning the politics of power. One of the first such groups was the Cathars, in the French-Catalan region of Languedoc.
The Cathars were inspired by the pre-Constantinian Church and traced their theology to a third-century Mesopotamian prophet named Mani, who had contact with not only Christians but Buddhists when he traveled to India. Mani taught a dualistic theology in which there was a realm of God and a realm of Satan, forces of light and forces of darkness. Manichaeism had escaped coopting by a state and so remained a nonviolent theology. This independence, of course, always has a price, and Mani died in a Persian prison.
In subsequent centuries Manichaeism spread. Augustine in his youth had been a Manichaen and later converted to Christianity. For centuries, followers of Mani had taught a message of nonviolence, or at least pacifism, throughout Europe as far north as England, where the religion developed into different sects with an increasingly Christian flavor. In the Balkans, Manichaeism created a sect called the Bogomils, God's Loved Ones. Bogomils were vegetarians who refused to kill animals because of a belief in reincarnation.The killing of humans was forbidden, and since an animal could have a human spirit, thus the killing of all animals was forbidden. But Bogomil pacifism suffered the same fate as Christianity. The religion was adopted by the ruling families of Bosnia, who quickly renounced the ban on killing, and after being conquered by the Turks they converted to Islam.
But the Cathars of southern France were not merely pacifists. They were nonviolent resisters who actively promoted their cause and attacked Roman Catholicism, rejecting the sacraments of the Church, including marriage, because they saw the medieval Church as a fraud, and refused to pay taxes to support the sham. They also scoffed at the notion of private property. The Cathars rejected all killing because it was against the teachings of Christ. They also did not accept the right of the state to kill, either in warfare or in the guise of capital punishment, and consequently they refused to participate in government.
The Church dealt with the Cathars in much the same way as it dealt with the Muslims. First it created myths to demonize them. The name Cathar, by which history has known them, was itself a Church-invented pejorative,
IV
How he would have lashed out against anyone who dared to eat pork on a Friday, and yet now he cannot make the shedding of men's blood a matter of conscience ….
—PETR CHELCCICKÝ
on his 1420 debate in Prague with Jakoubek of Stribro
D uring the Middle Ages, the customary way to reject militarism was to retreat to a monastery. In fact, the monastic movement was to a large degree a rejection of the Church state with its wealth, power, and wars. This is why the Church refused, and still refuses, to support them. Monks and nuns produced crops, bread, jam, wine, liqueurs, and cheeses while they illuminated stunning manuscripts and sang some of the most beautiful music mankind ever created. Monasteries became citadels of learning in a violent age, enclaves for Christians who refused to take up arms.
Though the Church put aside its interdiction on Christians bearing arms, many of the monastic orders, such as the Franciscans, rigorously maintained the rule. At the same time, many sects arose that operated like the early Christians, outside of the machinery of state, shunning the politics of power. One of the first such groups was the Cathars, in the French-Catalan region of Languedoc.
The Cathars were inspired by the pre-Constantinian Church and traced their theology to a third-century Mesopotamian prophet named Mani, who had contact with not only Christians but Buddhists when he traveled to India. Mani taught a dualistic theology in which there was a realm of God and a realm of Satan, forces of light and forces of darkness. Manichaeism had escaped coopting by a state and so remained a nonviolent theology. This independence, of course, always has a price, and Mani died in a Persian prison.
In subsequent centuries Manichaeism spread. Augustine in his youth had been a Manichaen and later converted to Christianity. For centuries, followers of Mani had taught a message of nonviolence, or at least pacifism, throughout Europe as far north as England, where the religion developed into different sects with an increasingly Christian flavor. In the Balkans, Manichaeism created a sect called the Bogomils, God's Loved Ones. Bogomils were vegetarians who refused to kill animals because of a belief in reincarnation.The killing of humans was forbidden, and since an animal could have a human spirit, thus the killing of all animals was forbidden. But Bogomil pacifism suffered the same fate as Christianity. The religion was adopted by the ruling families of Bosnia, who quickly renounced the ban on killing, and after being conquered by the Turks they converted to Islam.
But the Cathars of southern France were not merely pacifists. They were nonviolent resisters who actively promoted their cause and attacked Roman Catholicism, rejecting the sacraments of the Church, including marriage, because they saw the medieval Church as a fraud, and refused to pay taxes to support the sham. They also scoffed at the notion of private property. The Cathars rejected all killing because it was against the teachings of Christ. They also did not accept the right of the state to kill, either in warfare or in the guise of capital punishment, and consequently they refused to participate in government.
The Church dealt with the Cathars in much the same way as it dealt with the Muslims. First it created myths to demonize them. The name Cathar, by which history has known them, was itself a Church-invented pejorative,
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