CATHAR LITERATURE 739
Cathar Treatise (Le Traite cathare anonyme), the Cathar Ritual (Le Rituel
cathare), the Ritual of Dublin (Le Rituel de Dublin), and the extensive Book
of the Two Principles (Le Livre des deux principes), as well as writings of the
heresiologists deposited in the offices of the Inquisition, which were written
to record the central doctrines, practices, and heresies of the Cathars. The
Anonymous Cathar Treatise, for example, is a scholastic interpretation of ab-
solute dualism, probably the work of Barthelemy of Carcassone, an antipa-
pist Cathar who employed reason to prove his heretical faith. The treatise is
included in the Book against the Manichaeans (Liber contra Manicheos),
written in 1222 or 1224 and attributed to Durand de Huesca, in which the au-
thor cites Cathar texts and then point by point refutes them, converting the
book into a Catholic essay in itself. The most important heresiological work
by far is the work of a former Cathar priest, Raynier Sacconi, who became a
romain, a church Catholic, and an articulate inquisitor, whose seminal work
against the Cathars is the Summa de Cataris. We also possess twelfth- and
thirteenth-century works with Catharist influence.
From the rituals of the Cathars, the pivotal work is the Consolamentum in
the Book of Ritual, which contains the sacramental words an initiate must re-
cite in order to become a perfect. The core of the ritual is a reading from
parts of the canonical Gospel of John. As we have seen throughout this vol-
ume, John was the favorite gospel among the gnostics: from the Alexandrian
gnostics, who explained and allegorized John as a gnostic gospel, to the
Cathars, for whom John was at the heart of their ceremony and scriptures.
The book of John persisted as a key source in the last centuries for all those
major groups who speculated on the alien god, and who looked for the light
of knowledge in its verse:
The light was the true light
which illuminates every person
who comes into the world. (John 1:9)