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
This latest wave of attention has been vexing to local Cathar scholars who have spent decades battling to have their work taken seriously.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
The central Cathar rite was consolamentum, or baptism with spirit and fire.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 5 "Cat" to "Celt" 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
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Yet in Italy the Cathari lasted long after they had disappeared from France.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume II by Henry Charles Lea
The sectaries called themselves Cathari, or the pure.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume I by Henry Charles Lea
Gregory was relentless in the extermination of Waldenses, Beghards, and the remnants of the Cathari, but he saw nothing to object to in the mysticism and illuminism of his visitors.
From A History of The Inquisition of The Middle Ages; volume II by Henry Charles Lea
In the Turkish lands the Cathari for the most part embraced Mahometanism, and the sect which had so stubbornly endured the vicissitudes of more than a thousand years disappeared in obscurity.
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
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
“It does not need the ghost of the Cathars to arouse interest.”
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
That translates literally as “The Cathars, an idea received” but implies something that is widely accepted as fact but probably not true.
From Los Angeles Times ● Dec. 31, 2018
The Cathar Eucharist was equally primitive, and is thus described by a contemporary writer in a 13th-century MS. of the Milan Library:—”The Benediction of bread is thus performed by the Cathars.
From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 5, Slice 5 "Cat" to "Celt" 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.