Cathar Perfect

Perfect (also known as a Parfait in French or Perfectus in Latin) was the name given by Bernard of Clairvaux to the leaders of the medieval Christian religious movement in southern France and northern Italy commonly referred to as the Cathars.

[1] As "bonhommes" (their term), Perfecti were expected to follow a lifestyle of extreme austerity and renunciation of the world which included abstaining from eating meat and avoiding all sexual contact.

Catharism itself was a Christian religious movement with dualistic and Gnostic elements that appeared in the Languedoc region of France (Occitania at the time) around the middle of the 12th century.

Cathars held to a doctrine of Reincarnation, believing that the Soul was doomed to incarnate into this world time and again until through a process of spiritual growth and purification it was able to return to God through Christ and the Holy Spirit.

The famous female Perfect Esclarmonde of Foix, for instance, became a Bonne Femme after having reared eight children with her husband, who consented to her choice.

The Cathar Perfect was believed to have reached the point in his or her cycle of incarnations at which the state of spiritual purity had been achieved through which the Holy Spirit could dwell within them, thus releasing them from the burden of reincarnation and the suffering of this world.

The ceremony was completed by a ritual laying on of hands, or Manisola, as the candidate vowed to abjure the world and accept the Holy Spirit.

Once in this state of housing the Holy Spirit within themselves, the Perfect were believed to have become "trans-material" or semi-angelic, not yet released from the confines of the body but containing within them an enhanced spirituality which linked them to God even in this world, as expressed in the Gospel of Luke: But they which shall be accounted worthy to obtain that world and the resurrection from the dead, neither marry, nor are given in marriage: Neither can they die any more: for they are equal unto the angels: and are the children of God, being the children of the resurrection.

During the time of the Cathar suppression when the Church sent a Crusade to destroy them, many Perfects led a hidden and itinerant existence – moving around under cover of darkness, and spending the days in barns or the woods.