The Roman Catholic church and the papacy were alarmed and disturbed with the rise of the Cathars, which they considered a heretical sect of Christianity. The Cathars were flourishing mostly in western Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries who believed in two Gods. A good God who created and inspired the invisible spiritual world, and the evil God who created and inspired the visible world.

All things including the human body were considered evil and ruled by the evil God. They believed that the evil God was the God of the Old Testament. The Cathars claimed that the evil God imprisoned the human soul (which was from the good God)in the earthly body. They believed that the death of a human merely caused the soul to transfer to another body either human or animal.

They believed that salvation could only be attained by breaking the cycle. This is why Christ, the son of the good God, was sent to earth to show man the way to salvation. Christ was seen as a life-giving spirit that only appeared human. They accepted the New Testament and various teachings of the church but rejected the incarnation and any sacraments as they believed separated the spirit from the human.

The only sacrament which they believed was that the soul could escape from the evil material world was to have a spiritual baptism by laying on of the hands of a one of the Perfect. This baptism was called consolamentum and was seen instituted by Christ which gave the holy Spirit to the recipient and removed all his sin thus allowing him, upon death, to enter the pure world of the good God and be united in spirit. They believed that this sacrament was handed down from the apostles by a succession of 'good men'. They also believed that the church had completely perverted Christ's teachings and ordinances. They went as far as to believe that the papacy was enslaved by the evil God.

They were divided into two separate classes, the Perfect who were the ones who had received the baptism sacrament and the simple Believers who had not. The Perfects lived in poverty as ascetics such as Chasity, fasting, and no marriages. They, because of their lifestyle, were unquestioned in their words and to be not only respected but held in great veneration. Most would hold off taking the baptism until right before death to avoid living the Perfect lifestyle. Only the Perfect could pray to God and receive the directions and words of God.

After 1100 Catharism spread gaining strength, especially in France. The French Cathars were called 'Albigensians' because of the district of France they mostly were from. Inters tingly, England was almost completely unaffected with this movement. The life of the Perfect it was believed to be in complete contrast to those in the papacy of the Catholic Church and used it as proof of the corruption of the clergy. By 1200 it was looking as though France may become entirely Cathar.

This strengthening of the Cathar movement in France incited the crusades which were successful in destroying Cathar political power by 1250. It also ruined the civilization of the area in the process. During the Inquisitions that were established after the crusades to root out the heresy by relentless persecution by the papacy. The Cathars were undermined in reality by neither, but by the friars who were effective in winning people over to Christianity during the late 14th century.