The city of Carcassonne became the refuge of numerous Cathars.

A landmark in the " institutional history " of the Cathars was the Council, held in 1167 at Saint-Félix-Lauragais, attended by many local figures and also by the Bogomil papa Nicetas, the Cathar bishop of ( northern ) France and a leader of the Cathars of Lombardy.

Cathars who refused to recant were hanged, or burnt at the stake.

Moreover, the Church decreed lesser chastisements against laymen suspected of sympathy with Cathars, at the 1235 Council of Narbonne.

After the suppression of Catharism, the descendants of Cathars were at times required to live outside towns and their defences.

Recent artistic projects concentrating on the Cathar element in Provençal and troubador art include commercial recording projects by Thomas Binkley, electric hurdy-gurdy artist Valentin Clastrier and his CD Heresie dedicated to the church at Cathars, La Nef, and Jordi Savall.

At the beginning of his pontificate, he focused on the Albigenses, also known as the Cathars, a sect that had become widespread in the area that is now southernwestern France, but which at that time was under the control of local princes, such as the Counts of Toulouse.

In November 1184 Lucius held a synod at Verona which condemned the Cathars, Paterines, Waldensians and Arnoldists, and anathematized all those declared as heretics and their abettors.

In Western mediterranean France, one of the most urbanized areas of Europe at the time, the Cathars grew to represent a popular mass movement that included religion and politics, and the belief was spreading to other areas.

In June, Raymond of Toulouse, recognizing the disaster at hand, finally promised to act against the Cathars, and his excommunication was lifted.

Only around 1 percent, the most steadfast and relapsed Cathars were sentenced for treason, and faced burning at the stake.

Repression was severe, and many Cathars were burnt at the stake throughout the region.

The Cathars and Patarenes, the Waldenses, the Anabaptists, and in Russia the Strigolniki, Molokani and Doukhobors, have all at different times been either identified with the Bogomils or closely connected with them.

Similarly, heretical sects like Cathars, Waldensians and Lollards were brutally suppressed in western Europe, while, at the same time, Catholic Christians lived side-by-side with ' schismatic ' Orthodox Christians after the East-West Schism in the borderland of eastern Europe.

Upon being asked how to distinguish Cathars from Catholics at the besieged town of Béziers, Arnaud replied " Caedite eos.

He was present at the siege and subsequent massacre at Béziers on 22 July 1209 when the entire population of twenty thousand Cathars and Catholics were slaughtered.

Approximately 220 Cathars were burned en masse in a bonfire at the foot of the pog when they refused to renounce their faith.

* Kate Mosse's novel, ' Labyrinth ' also describes the besieging of the Cathars at Montsegur and explains some aspects of the connection between the Cathars and the Grail Legend

In June, Raymond of Toulouse, recognizing the potential disaster at hand, promised to act against the Cathars, and his excommunication was lifted.

In 1212, during the Albigensian Crusade, Simon de Montfort captured the Cathar fortress of Penne-d ' Agenais and burned Cathars at the stake.

Rahn believed it was possible to trace the Cathars, who guarded the Holy Grail in their castle at Montsegur, back to Druids who converted to Gnostic Manichaeism.

There are a few texts from the Cathars themselves which were preserved by their opponents ( the Rituel Cathare de Lyon ) which give a glimpse of the inner workings of their faith, but these still leave many questions unanswered.

Although the majority of sects within Judaism, Christianity and Islam do not believe that individuals reincarnate, particular groups within these religions do refer to reincarnation ; these groups include the mainstream historical and contemporary followers of Kabbalah, the Cathars, and the Shia sects such as the Alawi Shias and the Druze and the Rosicrucians.

The Errores Gazariorum ( Errors of the Cathars ), which mentions the Sabbat, while not discussing the actual behavior of the Cathars, is named after them, in an attempt to link these stories to a heretical Christian group.

Whether these records are merely anti-heretical propaganda ( other heretical movements such as the Cathars were accused of similar crimes ) or not is unclear.

Another of his theological textbooks that strove to be more minute in its focus, is his De Fide Catholica, dated somewhere between 1185 to 1200, Alan sets out to refute heretical views, specifically that of the Waldensians and Cathars.

The conflict in Germany and northern Italy arguably left the culture ripe for various Protestant sects, such as the Cathars, the Waldensians and ultimately Hus and Luther.

The movement was extinguished in the early decades of the thirteenth century by the Albigensian Crusade, when the Cathars were persecuted and massacred and the Inquisition was set up to finish the job.

The Cathars ' beliefs are thought to have come originally from Eastern Europe and the Byzantine Empire by way of trade routes.

" It is likely that we have only a partial view of their beliefs, because the writings of the Cathars were mostly destroyed due to the doctrinal threat perceived by the Papacy ; much of our existing knowledge of the Cathars is derived from their opponents.

One large text which has survived, The Book of Two Principles ( Liber de duobus principiis ), elaborates the principles of dualistic theology from the point of view of some of the Albanenses Cathars.

The Cathars were largely a homegrown, Western European / Latin Christian phenomenon, springing up in the Rhineland cities ( particularly Cologne ) in the mid-12th century, northern France around the same time, and particularly southern France — the Languedoc — and the northern Italian cities in the mid-late 12th century.

In the Languedoc and northern Italy, the Cathars would enjoy their greatest popularity, surviving in the Languedoc, in much reduced form, up to around 1325 and in the Italian cities until the Inquisitions of the 1260s – 1300s finally rooted them out.

Cathars, in general, formed an anti-sacerdotal party in opposition to the Catholic Church, protesting against what they perceived to be the moral, spiritual and political corruption of the Church.

In sharp contrast to the traditional Catholic church, the Cathars had a single sacrament, the Consolamentum, or Consolation.

It was claimed by Catharism's opponents that by such self-imposed starvation, the Cathars were committing suicide in order to escape this world.

Bernard of Clairvaux's biographer and other sources accuse some Cathars of Arianism, and some scholars see Cathar Christology as having traces of earlier Arian roots.

According to some of their contemporary enemies Cathars did not accept the Trinitarian understanding of Jesus, but considered him the human form of an angel similar to Docetic Christology.

Zoé Oldenbourg ( 2000 ) compared the Cathars to " Western Buddhists " because she considered that their view of the doctrine of " resurrection " taught by Jesus was, in fact, similar to the Buddhist doctrine of reincarnation.

Killing was abhorrent to the Cathars.

As a consequence of their rejection of oaths, Cathars also rejected marriage vows.

This portrays the story of a disputation between Saint Dominic and the Cathars ( Albigensians ), in which the books of both were thrown on a fire and St. Dominic's books were miraculously preserved from the flames.

In 1147, Pope Eugene III sent a legate to the Cathar district in order to arrest the progress of the Cathars.

Decisions of Catholic Church councils — in particular, those of the Council of Tours ( 1163 ) and of the Third Council of the Lateran ( 1179 )— had scarcely more effect upon the Cathars.

They had to contend not only with the Cathars, the nobles who protected them, and the people who respected them, but also with many of the bishops of the region, who resented the considerable authority the Pope had conferred upon his legates.