Historic context

Catharism is the big heresy which conquered, in the XIth and XIIth centuries, a part of Europe, from Bosnia to Lombardy (Italy), from the north parts of the Rhin to what is our object: Languedoc, Occitan fields, wide South-West.

Catharism is a neo-manicheism. Mani, the manicheism's founder, a Persian heresiarch of the IIIrd century, supported the dualism dogma; that is to say the existence of two principles: a good one from which the spiritual field proceeded, and a bad one from which the material world proceeded. The purifications which had been committed throughout successive lives would allow man to get progressively free of the servitude of the living matter and to get access to purified spirit. Nevertheless, this doctrine is also deeply influenced by Iranian Mazdeism and obviously Roman Catholicism with some inheritance to the old Jewish theology. From the moral field, these Cathar Christians are "more christians" than the Catholics themselves since they would live in asceticism and with an imperative figure: chastity.

Cathars are non-violent, they preach a purified religion of sacraments, edifices, idol images: a kind of coming back to sources, condemning wealth and sexuality