Catharism was a Christian dualist or Gnostic revival movement that thrived in some areas of Southern Europe, particularly what is now northern Italy and southern France, between the 12th and 14th centuries. The followers were known as Cathars and are now mainly remembered for a prolonged period of persecution by the Catholic Church which did not recognise their belief as Christian. Catharism appeared in Europe in the Languedoc region of France in the 11th century and this is when the name first appears. The adherents were also sometimes known as Albigensians after the city Albi in southern France where the movement first took hold. The beliefs are believed to have been brought from Persia or the Byzantine Empire. Cathar beliefs varied between communities, because Catharism was initially taught by ascetic leaders who had set few guidelines. The Catholic Church denounced its practices including the Consolamentum ritual, by which Cathar individuals were baptized and raised to the status of perfect.Catharism may have had its roots in the Paulician movement in Armenia and eastern Byzantine Anatolia and certainly in the Bogomils of the First Bulgarian Empire, who were influenced by the Paulicians resettled in Thrace by the Byzantines. Though the term Cathar has been used for centuries to identify the movement, whether the movement identified itself with this name is debatable. In Cathar texts, the terms Good Men , Good Women , or Good Christians are the common terms of self-identification.The idea of two gods or principles, one good and the other evil, was central to Cathar beliefs. The good God was the God of the New Testament and the creator of the spiritual realm, contrasted with the evil Old Testament God—the creator of the physical world whom many Cathars, and particularly their persecutors, identified as Satan. All visible matter, including the human body, was created by this evil god; matter was therefore tainted with sin. This was antithetical to the monotheistic Catholic Church, whose fundamental principle was that there was only one God, who created all things visible and invisible. Cathars thought human spirits were the genderless spirits of angels trapped within the physical creation of the evil god, destined to be reincarnated until they achieved salvation through the consolamentum.From the beginning of his reign, Pope Innocent III attempted to end Catharism by sending missionaries and by persuading the local authorities to act against them. In 1208, Innocent's papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered while returning to Rome after excommunicating Count Raymond VI of Toulouse, who, in his view, was too lenient with the Cathars. Pope Innocent III then abandoned the option of sending Catholic missionaries and jurists, declared Pierre de Castelnau a martyr and launched the Albigensian Crusade which all but ended Catharism.
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