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There were differences among the Manichæans as to whether the evil deity was equal to the other or not. The Bogomiles believed that God had two sons, the younger Jesus, the elder Satan, who was entrusted with the administration of the celestial kingdom and the creative power. Satan revolted, was turned out of heaven, and thereupon created a new world and, with Adam and Eve, a new race of beings. Another Manichæan system saw in Lucifer, not a son of God, but an angel, expelled from heaven. Two other angels—Adam and Eve—agreed to share his exile. In order to secure their permanent allegiance to himself Satan created Paradise to drive the idea of heaven from their minds. Not satisfied with this device he hit upon another—the union of the sexes. He accordingly entered into the serpent and tempted Eve, awakening the carnal appetite, which is original sin, and has ever since been the main source of the continuance of the Devil’s power.23

The Manichæans of all sections regarded Jesus as having been sent by the good God to destroy the power of the evil one by bringing back the seed of Adam to heaven. In their view Jesus was inferior to God, not God Himself, but rather the highest of the angels.24 Denying His divinity, they also denied His humanity. For holding Satan to be essentially the lord of the material world and the originator of the propagation of the human race, they could not allow that Christ’s body was of the same substance as of the ordinary man. According to them, the transfiguration was Christ’s revelation of His celestial body to the disciples.25 The Passion and Crucifixion had no significance for the Cathari. Indeed Christ’s death was a delusion. The Devil tried to kill Jesus, under the impression that His body was vulnerable; whereas in reality it was as invulnerable as His spirit.

There was, therefore, no death, and of course no resurrection.26

The dogma of the expiatory character of Christ’s life the Cathari necessarily rejected. He came, according to them, solely to teach the duty of penitence and to show the way to salvation, which lay only through membership of the Catharan church.

The Virgin Mary possessed the same form of celestial body as Christ; though apparently a woman, she was actually sexless. Some Cathari held that the Virgin was only symbolical—of the Catharan church.27 Some, too, held that John the Baptist was one of the demons of the evil god, who acted as an obstacle to the beneficent God, by preaching the material baptism of water instead of the true baptism which is purely spiritual.28

Such were some of the main doctrinal features of Catharism. Its ethical teaching was intimately connected with its theology. Refusing to credit that the good God could predestine any to perdition, they held that salvation ultimately awaited all. What gain, in these circumstances, had the Catharan over his unconverted neighbours? Only a gain in point of time. Life on earth, the Devil’s domain, was thought of as a dwelling in and with corruption, a penance, a probation. The aim was to have done with such life, such probation, as soon as might be. The unbeliever, though he eventually reached heaven, did not do so immediately after death, but had to continue his penance in another material form. One of the essential ideas of Catharism, then, was the transmigration of souls.29 But for the Catharan, death meant the instant discarding of the filthy garment of the decadent flesh, the entrance at once into glory.

It was in the ability to cast aside the bondage of the material world that there consisted the Catharan’s supreme advantage over other people. The feeling that this was an advantage clearly depended on one’s attitude towards human life. To the Catharan the essential sin was worldliness. The Catharan made no distinction between mortal and venial sins for this reason. All concern and pleasure in the affairs of the world was mortal sin. Money-making was of course depraved; but so also was devotion to parents, children, friends. Had not Christ said as much?30 The Catharan must give up everything he held dear in life for the sake of the truth, which was the Catharan faith.31 While the Bogomiles sanctioned prevarication in order to escape persecution, the stricter adherents of the creed combined together with a Waldensian devotion to strict truthfulness without oaths, a conviction that to deny the smallest article of their faith was a heinous offence.32

His belief in metempsychosis meant that the Catharan was a vegetarian. He abjured cheese, milk and eggs as well as meat; but flesh was worst of all, because all flesh is of the Devil.33 But the human spirit was regarded with the greatest sanctity. The effusion of blood was always wrong, the circumstances made no difference—it was always murder. The parricide was no wickeder than the soldier in battle or the judge condemning the criminal to death.34 No human being was ever justified in preventing his fellow men from following out their own course to salvation. It may seem at first sight curious that the Catharan, so strongly condemning the taking of another’s life, should in certain cases condone and even encourage suicide. The explanation is, however, simple enough. Once granted the conception of the radically evil nature of the world and, secondly, of entrance into the Catharan fold as ensuring immediate entrance into glory without further probation after death, it was legitimate for a believer, conscious of his having accomplished the object of his earthly penance and made his salvation secure, to hasten the