CATHAR LITERATURE 735
made John the baptizer a true rival of Jesus, but while some Cathars saw John
as a false prophet because he baptized with water rather than spirit, others held
him to be an angel, as we note in the Book of the Two Principles. As for creat-
ing more evil bodies, the perfect (or elect) chose abstinence. Some of the per-
fect even chose endura, meaning they committed suicide through starvation.
The believers, however, were freer than their Catholic counterparts. They
could have sex outside of marriage, particularly if it did not lead to the con-
ception of children and more trapped sparks of light. So marriage contained a
dubious expression of sexuality, where conception was accepted as inevitable
but regrettable. These reversals of Catholic principles were deeply repugnant
to the established church.
THE ROLE OF CHRIST
In general the Cathar mythology of god and creation is, as in diverse gnostic
texts, poetic, fantastic, and contradictory. With so much of our knowledge still
dependent on summaries in archival documents of the Inquisition in France
and Italy, the nature of Cathar thought is difficult to classify neatly. Christ, for
example, is seen in sundry ways. All Cathar texts agree that he is not the son of
god, nor is he god by another name. He is god's first angel. Some declare that
because he fought the demon and was not contaminated, he earned the title—
but just the title, not the fact—of son of god. Others among the mitigated du-
alists claim that Christ's soul is god. All agree that to save souls he had to come
to earth and suffer—either by giving the appearance of suffering and sacrific-
ing himself in the phantasm of a Christ figure, or, as some believed, by be-
coming a man and truly suffering the passion. Another reason Christ was sent
below by the father was to instruct people that the god they worshiped in the
churches, the god of the Bible, was none other than the devil.
LES BONNES-HOMMES AND POPULARISM
The Cathars also adopted from the Bogomils a populist mode that esteemed
beggars, itinerant monks, and the common good people, which is to say, the
peasants. Indeed, while the Cathar theologians and ascetics also had their in-
evitable hierarchy, they held on to modest titles, even for the perfects, as in la
bona gen (Provencal) and le bon homme (French), both meaning "a good per-
son." The notion of the good everywhere in the celestial realm was at the core
of Catharism and has led scholars to speak of a pantheistic good. In the words