[1] The heretics called themselves "Cathari," or "the Pure." They wished thereby to denote especially their horror of all sexual relations, says the monk Egbert: Sermones contra Catharos, in Migne, P.L., cxcv, col. 13.
[2] On the origin of the Manichean heresy, cf. Duchesne, Histoire ancienne de l'Eglise, pp. 555, 556.
In the tenth century, the Empress Theodora, who detested the Paulicians, had one hundred thousand of them massacred; the Emperor Alexis Commenus (about 1118), persecuted the Bogomiles in like manner. Many, therefore, of both sects went to western Europe, where they finally settled, and began to spread.
As early as 1167, they held a council at St. Felix de Caraman, near Toulouse, under the presidency of one of their leaders, Pope or perhaps only Bishop Niketas (Niquinta) of Constantinople. Other bishops of the sect were present: Mark, who had charge of all the churches of Lombardy, Tuscany, and the Marches of Treviso; Robert de Sperone, who governed a church in the north, and Sicard Cellerier, Bishop of the Church of Albi. They appointed Bernard Raymond, Bishop of Toulouse, Guiraud Mercier, Bishop of Carcassonne, and Raymond of Casalis, Bishop of Val d'Aran, in the diocese of Comminges. Such an organization certainly indicates the extraordinary development of the heresy about the middle of the twelfth century.
About the year 1200 its progress was still more alarming. Bonacursus, a Catharan bishop converted to Catholicism, writes about 1190: "Behold the cities, towns and homes filled with these false prophets."[1] Cessarius, of Heisterbach, tells us that a few years later there were Cathari in about one thousand cities,[2] especially in Lombardy and Languedoc.
[1] Manifestatio hæresis Catharorum, in Migne, P.L., vol. cciv col. 778.
[2] Dialogi, Antwerp, 1604, p. 289.
There were at least seven to eight hundred of "the Perfected" in Languedoc alone; and to obtain approximately the total number of the sect, we must multiply this number by twenty or even more.[1]
[1] This is Döllinger's estimate, Beiträge, vol. i, pp. 212, 213.
Of course, perfect unity did not exist among the Cathari. The different names by which they were known clearly indicate certain differences of doctrine among them. Some, like the Cathari of Alba and Desenzano, taught with the Paulicians an absolute dualism, affirming that all things created came from two principles, the one essentially good, and the other essentially bad. Two other groups, the Concorrezenses and the Bagolenses, like the ancient Gnostics, held a modified form of dualism; they pretended that the evil spirit had so marred the Creator's work, that matter had become the instrument of evil in the world. Still they agreed with the pronounced dualists in nearly all their doctrines and observances; their few theoretical differences were scarcely appreciable in practice.[1]