442 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE Such measures were effective so long as the people be- lieved in the sacramental power of the priesthood. But The spread what could be done if an entire region lost faith of heresy [ n t he Church, its clergy, and its ceremonies? Such was threatening to become the situation in southern France when Innocent became pope. With the rise of towns, travel, and trade, and the reception of new ideas in science and philosophy, there had come in also through the eleventh and twelfth centuries strange religious doctrines and prac- tices. Often they spread by the same routes as trade. The leading heresy of this period — that of the Cathari or Patarins or Albigensians, as they finally came to be called from the town of Albi in southern France where they were especially prominent — spread from the East across the Balkans to the Adriatic, and then across Lombardy to Provence and Languedoc. Here they flourished most, but they were also frequently heard of here and there in Ger- many, Flanders, Brittany, and other parts of northern France. The Cathari or "The Pure," as they called themselves, were a revival of the sect of Manichaeans of Augustine's day. The Cathari They regarded themselves as Christians, how- or Albigen- ever, but accepted only the New Testament as their Bible. What we know of them is derived almost wholly from their enemies, so that the following brief summary of their beliefs and rites may not do them justice. It is hard to account for the existence of evil in the world, if we believe in but one good God. The Cathari, therefore, held that two forces forever contend in the world, one a good, the other an evil, deity. Everything material and physical and sensual they regarded as evil. This world, in short, with its crimes and lusts and diseases and wars and worldly bishops and robber barons, is evil. Christ was not a man born of a woman, but a pure spirit sent to introduce the new gospel of an "invisible, spiritual, and eternal uni- verse." The pope and clergy of the Roman Church are not representatives of Christ, but servants of the evil spirit, for they do not renounce the things of this world as they should
