"In Languedoc and Provence in the South of France, there was a civilization in advance of that in other countries. The pretensions of the Roman church to rule been generally opposed and set aside there. The congregations of believers who met apart from the Catholic Church were numerous and increasing. They were often called Albigenses, a name taken from Albi, a district where there were many of them, but this name was never used by them, nor of them until a later period. They had intimate connections with the brethen---whether called Waldenses, Poor Men of Lyons, Bogomils, or otherwise---in the surrounding countries, where churches spread among the various people. 1206 A.D. at a conference of Montreal, the Albigenses made the following confession "That the Church of Rome was not the spouse of Christ, but the church of confusion, drunk with blood of martyrs. That the policy of the church of Rome was neither good, or holy, nor established by Jesus Christ." (Peter Allix, The ecclesiastic history of the ancient churches of Albigenses, 1821 edition first published in 1692)" (1)

"affirming that the creation of all visible and material things was not the work of God the Heavenly Father and the Lord Jesus Christ, but of the devil and Satan, the evil deity, whom you [Peter Auterius, and Albigense] call the God of this world, the Creator and Prince of this world" (2)

"two creators: viz., one of invisible things, whom they call the benevolent god, and another of visible things, whom they named the malevolent god. The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent god, but the Old Testament to the malevolent god, and rejected it altogether, except certain authorities which are inserted in the New Testament from the Old, which, out of reverence to the New Testament, they esteemed worthy of reception. . . They also call him [the Old Testament god] a homicide because he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah and destroyed the world by the waters of the deluge . . . They also affirmed that all the fathers of the Old Testament were damned, that John the Baptist was one of the greater demons." (3)

"First it is to be known that the heretics held that there are two Creators; viz. one of invisible things, whom they called the benevolent God, and another of visible things, whom they named the malevolent God. The New Testament they attributed to the benevolent God; but the Old Testament to the malevolent God, and rejected it altogether, except certain authorities which are inserted in the New Testament from the Old; which, out of reverence to the New Testament, they esteemed worthy of reception. They charged the author of the Old Testament with falsehood, because the Creator said, "In the day that ye eat of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil ye shall die;" nor (as they say) after eating did they die; when, in fact, after the eating the forbidden fruit they were subjected to the misery of death. They also call him a homicide, as well because he burned up Sodom and Gomorrah, and destroyed the world by the waters of the deluge, as because he overwhelmed Pharaoh, and the Egyptians, in the sea. They affirmed also, that all the fathers of the Old Testament were damned; that John the Baptist was one of the greater demons. They said also, in their secret doctrine, (in secreto suo) that that Christ who was born in the visible, and terrestrial Bethlehem, and crucified in Jerusalem, was a bad man, and that Mary Magdalene was his concubine; and that she was the woman taken in adultery, of whom we read in the gospel. For the good Christ, as they said, never ate, nor drank, nor took upon him true flesh, nor ever was in this world, except spiritually in the body of Paul....

They preached that Holy Matrimony was meretricious, and that none could be saved in it, if they should beget children. Denying also the Resurrection of the flesh, they invented some unheard of notions, saying, that our souls are those of angelic spirits who, being cast down from heaven by the apostacy of pride, left their glorified bodies in the air; and that these souls themselves, after successively inhabiting seven terrene bodies, of one sort or another, having at length fulfilled their penance, return to those deserted bodies.

It is also to be known that some among the heretics were called perfect" or "good men;" others "believers" of the heretics. Those who were called perfect, wore a black dress, falsely pretended to chastity, abhorred the eating of flesh, eggs and cheese, wished to appear not liars, when they were continually telling lies, chiefly respecting God. They said also that they ought not on any account to swear.

Those were called "believers" of the heretics, who lived after the manner of the world, and who though they did not attain so far as to imitate the life of the perfect, nevertheless hoped to be saved in their faith; and though they differed as to their mode of life, they were one with them in belief and unbelief Those who were called believers of the heretics were given to usury, rapine, homicide, lust, perjury and every vice; and they, in fact, sinned with more security, and less restraint, because they believed that without restitution, without confession and penance, they should be saved, if only, when on the point of death, they could say a Pater noster, and received imposition of hands from the teachers.

As to the perfect heretics however they had a magistracy whom they called Deacons and Bishops, without the imposition of whose hands, at the time of his death, none of the believers thought that he could be saved; but if they laid their hands upon any dying man, however wicked, if he could only say a Pater noster, they considered him to be saved, that without any satisfaction, and without any other aid, he immediately took wing to heaven. (26)

The Transmission of the Lord's Prayer
If the believer has fasted and if the Christians [the perfect] have agreed to admit him to the Prayer, let them wash their hands, and such believers as are there shall do likewise. Andthen the leading Good Man [a perfecti], the one who ranks after the elder, shall make three bows to the elder and then prepare a table. Let him bow again three times: then let him spread a cloth on the table and again bow thrice. Then he shall put the Book [the Gospels] on the table and say: 'Bless us, have mercy on us'. Then, let the believer perform his melioramentum * and take the Book from the hand of the elder. And the elder should admonish him and preach to him from suitable texts. "from all this you must understand that in presenting yourself before the sons of Jesus Christ, you are confirming the faith and the teaching of the Church of God, as the Holy Scriptures give us to understand. For the people of God deserted the Lord God long ago. They departed from the wisdom and the will of their Divine Father, deceived by evil spirits and submitting themselves to them. And for these and many other reasons you must understand that Our Father wishes to have pity on his people and to receive them into His peace and harmony through the coming of His Son, Jesus Christ. Therefore, you are here in the presence of the disciples of Jesus Christ, in this place, where, as was shown before, the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost dwell in spirit, so that you may receive the holy prayer that the Lord Jesus Christ gave to his disciples and so that your petitions and your prayers may be heard by Our Father. You must understand that if you wish to receive this holy prayer you must repent for all your sins and forgive all man. . . Moreover, if God gives you grace to receive this holy prayer, you should vow in your heart that you will keep it all the days of your life, according to the custom of the Church of God, in truth and chastity ** and in all other good virtues which God may vouchsafe you. We therefore pray the Good Lord, who made the disciples of Jesus Christ worthy to receive and hold to this holy prayer, that He will give to you also the grace of receiving and holding to it, for His honor and for your salvation'. "Have mercy on us."

And then the elder shall say the prayer and the believer shall repeat it after him.. Then let the elder say: "We give you this holy prayer, so that you receive it from God, and from us, and from the Church, and so that you may repeat it at any moment of your life, day and night, alone or in company, and so that you must never eat or drink without first saying this prayer. And if you should fail to do so, you must do penance for your fault." And the believer must answer: "I receive it from God, from you, and from the Church." Then he should perform his melioramentum and give thanks. Then let the Christians say a dobla *** with genuflexions and requests for grace and forgiveness, and the believer shall do the same. (25)

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* melioramentum = an act of bowing 3 times before one of the "perfect" and receiving a benediction
** any act of intercourse, even between husband and wife, was considered adultery
*** dobla = repetitions of the Lord's Prayer

“However, enough primary material produced by both the sectarians themselves and by their enemies has survived, so that an informed judgment about their beliefs is still possible. Spokesmen . . . have tended to dismiss documents produced by opponents of the sects as hopelessly prejudiced and therefore unreliable. As we intend to show, this contention is not always valid, for we possess documents of Roman Catholic or Eastern Orthodox origin that have been cross-checked for accuracy. When two or more hostile sources who have had no evident contact with one another related the same account, there is a very high degree of probability that the account is substantially correct.” (9)

"Let those condemned be handed over to the secular authorities present, or to their bailiffs, for due punishment...Let secular authorities, whatever offices they may be discharging, be advised and urged and if necessary be compelled by ecclesiastical censure, if they wish to be reputed and held to be faithful, to take publicly an oath for the defence of the faith to the effect that they will seek, in so far as they can, to expel from the lands subject to their jurisdiction all heretics designated by the church in good faith." (27)

“Cathar belief, just like Bogomilism, to which it was heir, upset the structure of sacramental life in favour of one rite of supreme importantce, the consolamentum; replaced a Christian morality by a compulsory asceticism, which made faults consist rather in a soiling by matter than an act of will, eliminated redemption by refusing to admit the saving power of the crucifixion; and rejected the Trinity in favour of a subordination of two persons to the Father. Cathars could not admit that Christ was God - an angel, perhaps, or a son of God, but still not equal with the Father. Nor could they logically admit that he was man, with a body like that of other men. So the hinge of Christian belief, the Incarnation, was destroyed. Radical dualism went still further in its destruction of the pillars of Christian belief, and can hardly be regarded even as an extreme Christian heresy. With its belief in two gods and two creations, it might almost be described as another religion altogether.” (20)

“a dark night which came down with the weight of lead and with the coldness of ice upon the mind and the heart, a chancre of death which ate at all the luminous and elevated faculties of the human soul, a deadly folly that choked the joy of living and made existence here below like a bad dream” (21)

“the above description of Albigense beliefs and practices . . . shows conclusively that the Cathar movement was a major threat which the Catholic authorities had to combat.” (22)

“The contrary charge, that Catharism would have extinguished the human race by its denunciation of sexual intercourse is more logical…” (23)

“"However much we may deprecate the means used for its (Catharism) suppression and commiserate those who suffered for conscience' sake, we cannot but admit that the cause of orthodoxy was in this case the cause of progress and civilization. Had Catharism become dominant, or even had it been allowed to exist on equal terms, its influence could not have failed to prove disastrous (24)."