Cathar
Americannoun
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Cathari,
plural
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Cathars
plural
noun
Other Word Forms
Derived Forms
Inflected Forms
Nouns
Etymology
Origin of Cathar
First recorded in 1630–40; from Late Latin Catharī (plural), from Late Greek hoi Katharoí “Novatians,” literally, “the pure”; applied in Medieval Latin to various sects
Example Sentences
Examples are provided to illustrate real-world usage of words in context. Any opinions expressed do not reflect the views of Dictionary.com.
See Examples For:
This is the second, through Cathar country in the rarely visited eastern Pyrenees.
From The Guardian ● Jul. 10, 2021
The blood of St. Peter Martyr, who was killed by Cathar heretics in 1252, was also accorded medicinal properties.
From The New Yorker ● Jan. 7, 2019
The Cathar defenders pose a question to the skeptics: If the crusade was not about quashing this religious movement, then what motivated so many Christians to take up arms and kills thousands of other Christians?
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
Cathar scholars say doubters are too hung up on the name.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
The Ritual in Slavonic written by the Bosnian Radoslavov, and published in vol. xv. of the Starine of the South Slavonic Academy at Agram, shows great resemblance to the Cathar ritual published by Cunitz, 1853.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 4, Slice 1 "Bisharin" to "Bohea" by Various
Most of the Cathari, however, remained among the "believers," free to live ordinary lives in the world in the hope of salvation without the rigor of living as a "perfect."
From Time Magazine Archive
The burgesses of his cities, independent and intractable, were for the most part Cathari.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume I by Henry Charles Lea
Numerous as the Cathari of Western Europe became, they always looked to the east of the Adriatic as to the headquarters of their sect.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume I by Henry Charles Lea
It was hard to make head at once against so many enemies of the faith, and in the confusion the Cathari of Bosnia had a respite.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume II by Henry Charles Lea
With the eagerness of an impassioned convert he proceeded to reveal all that lifelong intercourse with the Cathari had brought to his knowledge.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume II by Henry Charles Lea
Mr. Hoare burnished his legacy in a slew of memoirs, and late in life spent two decades in France, studying a medieval Christian sect known as the Cathars that he chronicled in a historical novel.
From Washington Post ● Feb. 5, 2020
For their considerable pains, the Cathars were memorialized and celebrated as martyred religious rebels by a region of southern France that, eight centuries later, still promotes itself under their name: Pays Cathare.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
“The myth of the Cathars is even stronger because it allows people to identify with the vanquished of history.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
In the wake of the Montpellier exhibition and the media attention, she organized a late October presentation in Carcassonne to rebut the idea that the Cathars were a latter-day invention.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
The Cathars used only the Lord’s prayer in consecrating the bread and used water for wine.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 9, Slice 8 "Ethiopia" to "Evangelical Association" by Various
Definitions and idiom definitions from Dictionary.com Unabridged, based on the Random House Unabridged Dictionary, © Random House, Inc. 2023
Idioms from The American Heritage® Idioms Dictionary copyright © 2002, 2001, 1995 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company.
