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T he Book of the Two Principles is the centerpiece of Cathar scripture. The single incomplete manuscript in Latin is preserved in the National Library of Florence. This book, in all about the length of a canonical gospel, is perfectly unified and consistent in its doctrine. It is an argumentum, always precise, sometimes colorful, but without prayers or rituals or songs, in favor of absolute dualism. The seven sections are “Treatise on Free Will,” “On Creation,” “On Universal Signs,” “A Shorter Version for the Instruction of the Unknowing” (part of which is translated here), “Against the Garatenses” (an argument about the superiority of absolute dualism over mitigated dualism), 1 “On Free Will,” and “On Persecutions.”

The two treatises on free will (the first and sixth sections) detail a theme constantly alluded to in “Instruction of the Unknowing”: the god of goodness cannot commit evil. This obviously limits the god’s freedom of will and power. But, the treatise explains, since the god of goodness wants only to do good, he has no conflict within him: he and his will are one. The syllogistic reasoning is relentlessly consistent through the book .

The good god’s sole wish to do good—the principle of good—and the evil god’s desire to inflict wickedness—the principle of evil—are elaborated throughout “Instruction of the Unknowing.” We have chosen this seminal and longest treatise in the Book of the Two Principles, with its focus on the two principles of the title, to represent the Cathar branch of absolute dualism.

The author of these seven treatises, composed around 1250, is likely to have been Jean de Lugio (Giovanni de Lugio) of Bergamo, an absolute dualist, who was a vicaire of the Cathar church and major assistant to the bishop of Desenzano in Italy. Our scant information about the author and even the attribution to Jean de Lugio comes from Rainier Sacconi, an Inquisitor and former Cathar priest, whose denunciations of the Cathars are contained in his Summa de Catharis . Sacconi discusses the rigorously philosophical basis of the writings. His summary and response actually refers to a larger, more inclusive volume. Preserved, however, is only this highly systematized metaphysical and polemical part—the rest is lost.

Unlike the Gospel of the Secret Supper, which contains some pages of a cosmology and myth, the Book of the Two Principles is a scholastic argument, repeatedly documenting its message in biblical evidence. Proven by biblical example, Lugio’s elaborate and logical argument will, he believes, inexorably lead all adversaries to reject the ways of the unknowing and to accept the Cathar truth. The reader is so instructed at the end of each segment. The treatise’s gods mirror the deities of gnostic scriptures in which the invisible father is good and nameless while the biblical creator god, who takes on many notoriously evil-sounding names, is evil. In brief, since god wants to do good and cannot do evil, he is not omnipotent but all powerful with regard to the good. Since there exists evil in the world, in the temporal and material world if not in his own eternal world, and since he the god of goodness cannot do evil or even create a being with free will to do evil, it follows that the evil, as well as the temporal world itself, has been created by a principle of evil. This principle precedes the god of evil, Satan, and is unredeemable. But in the day of reckoning, even Satan the god of evil has a soul, and when free of the body, it may be elevated to spirit and find redemption.

To prove that the biblical god is not the god of goodness, Lugio cites holy scriptures, seeking to demonstrate that the creator of the temporal universe is actually the demon, the principle of evil and creator of the infernal earth and its bodily inhabitants, in which our souls are imprisoned. The biblical god, he claims, is all iniquity: a fornicator, a destroyer and plunderer of village and city, a murderer of adults and little children, a liar who breaks oath promises. Once having understood these proved assertions, “our adversaries” should abandon the god of darkness, “who is the cause and the principle of all iniquity and malice, of all bitterness and injustice,” and turn to the true lord and god, “who is the light, who is good and saintly, who is the living fountain and the origin of sweetness, of all tenderness and justice.”

In a typical passage of “Instruction of the Unknowing” Lugio takes a passage from Deuteronomy (3:3–7) to show how the biblical god, principle of evil, urged his people to murder and plunder. “So when king Sihon came out against us, he and all his people for battle at Jahaz, the lord our god gave him over to us; and we struck him down, along with his offspring and all his people. At that time we captured all his towns, and in each town we utterly destroyed men, women, and children. We left not a single survivor.”

During the Crusade against the Albigensians, the Roman Catholics might have been able to authorize on the basis of these passages in the Bible the right to sack cities and castles and to exterminate the inhabitants, as they did many times. The Cathar morality, by contrast, formally condemned wars and massacres wherever they took place. Whatever one may say about it, Catharism represented then an indisputable moral progress. And even their refusal to attribute to a good god the horrors reported in the Bible is a measure of the change that they infused at that time in the conscience of the best of them. 2

The Cathars stood, then, in utter contrast to the crusading power-and-pillage portraits of soldiers of Christendom who dominated society during centuries of failed but devastating rampages to Jerusalem. Their inner light and obsession with goodness, peace, and justice are witnessed in the tragic history of their massacre and disappearance and in the luminous remnants of their song and scripture .

My proposal is to give here a résumé of what has been said previously on the creation of the sky, the earth, and the sea for the instruction of the unknowing. 5 I think that skies 6 and earth in the holy scriptures sometimes designate real creatures of the true god, who are endowed with mind and capable of comprehending and perceiving, and not only the elements, which always change and are deprived of reason. As David said in the Psalms, “The skies recount the glory of god, and the firmament proclaims the works of his hands.” 7 We read in Deuteronomy, “Skies, listen to what I am going to say: that the earth understands the words of my mouth.” 8 And in Isaiah, “Skies, listen, and you earth, lend me your ear, because the lord has spoken.” 9 Again in Jeremiah, “Earth, earth, hear the word of the lord,” 10 and in the Psalms, “You have made yourself a road in the sea. You have walked amid the waters.” 11 David refers to these ways when he says in the Psalms, “All the ways of the lord are but mercy and truth.” 12

And David in the Psalms, “I believe I see the goodness of the lord in the land of the living.” 14 He also says, “Let your good spirit lead me on a level path.” 15 Solomon declares, “But the just will inherit the earth and live on it forever.” 16 Christ has ordered “not to swear by any part of the sky because it is the throne of god.” 17 When he says “throne” he is surely thinking of David in Psalms when he says, “O god, your throne exists eternally,” 18 and again Matthew, “not on earth, for earth is god’s footstool.” 19 It is our lord himself who adds, in Hebrews, “because it is his footstool.” 20 David continues the footstool allusion in Psalms:

About creation, I wish to confess that our lord god is the creator and author, but not of the elements of the world, which are impotent and empty, and as Paul said in Galatians, “How can you now turn back to the impotent and empty elements under which you suffer a new slavery?” 22 The messenger 23 also says in Colossians, “If with Christ you died to the elemental spirits of the universe, why do you live as if you still belonged to the world? Why do you submit to regulations: ‘Do not handle, Do not taste, Do not touch’? All these regulations refer to things that perish with use.” 24

Even less can we admit that our lord is the creator and author of death, and of the things that are, by their essence, in death, because, as it is written in the book of Wisdom, “God has not made death, and he does not rejoice at the loss of the living.” 25 There exists, then, with no doubt whatsoever, another creature or factor, who is the principle and cause of death, of perdition, and of all evil, as we have explained above with sufficient clarity.

I wish to speak now of the omnipotence of the true lord god, which so often permits our adversaries 26 to play the glorious one when they claim against us that there is no other force or power than theirs.

Although in the testimony of the holy scriptures, the true lord god may be called all powerful, one must not believe that he is called that because he can do and does all evils, because there exist many evils that the lord cannot and will never do. As the Letter to the Hebrews says, “It is impossible for god to lie.” 27 And the same messenger declares in the Second Letter to Timothy, “If we are unfaithful to him, he will not cease being faithful, since he cannot deny himself.” 28 Nor must one believe that this good god has the power to destroy himself, and to commit all kinds of wickedness against wisdom and justice. That is even more impossible for him, since he is not the absolute cause of evil. And if one objects to us, saying, “We have the right to say that the true lord god is all powerful, and not only because he can do and does all the good things, but also because he could do all the wicked things, if he wanted to, even to lie and destroy himself, if he cared to. But he does not want to,” the answer to them is easy.

If god does not want to do all the wicked things, if he does not want to lie or destroy himself, surely he cannot. Because what god in his unity does not want to do, he cannot do. And what he cannot do, he does not want to do. And in this sense, one must say that the power of sinning and of doing evil does not belong to the true lord god. All that is thought to be god’s attributes and conduct is not accidental, as the learned know. It necessarily follows, then, that god himself and his will are one and the same. The good god cannot lie or commit every kind of evil, if he wants to, because this true god cannot do what he does not want to, we repeat, since he himself and his will are one and the same.

I can say again, very reasonably and without fear of deceiving myself, that the true god, with all his power, cannot, nor ever could, nor ever will, neither willfully or involuntarily, nor by any other means, create another god, lord, and creator resembling and equal to himself in any way. I prove that it is impossible for the good god to be able to make another god like himself with regard to every quality: the eternal and sempiternal, the creator and author of all his goodness, without beginning or end, the one who was never made or created or engendered. But in the holy scriptures it does not say that the true god is a weak god. One must believe with assurance that the good god is not endowed with omnipotence because he would then be able to or might commit all the evils that have been, that are, and that will be, but because he is truly all powerful concerning the good that has been, that is, and that will be. Moreover, he is the absolute and principle cause of all the good, and he is never, in any way, by himself and essentially, the cause of evil. It follows that the true god is called all powerful by the sages, in everything he does, has done, or will do in the future, but that those who think accurately cannot call him all powerful with regard to his supposed power that he might have to exert and that he has never exerted, that he never will exert, with regard to creating a god of evil. As for the argument that says that if he does not do it, it is because he does not want to, we have already shown that such a track is meaningless, since he, himself, and his will are only one.

Since god is not powerful in evil, nor has the power to appear to be evil, we must believe firmly that there is another principle, which is he who is powerful in evil. From him come all evils that have been, that are, and that will be. About him David surely wanted to speak when he said, “Why do you glorify yourself in your malice, you who are powerful only for committing an iniquity? Your language has contemplated injustice. You have sharpened your razor to let trickery sneak in. You have more evil than good, and you have preferred a language of iniquity to that of justice.” 29 And Saint John says in Revelation:

The prophet Daniel says, “As I looked, this horn from the fourth beast made war with the holy ones and was prevailing over them, until the ancient one came; then judgment was given for the holy ones of the most high.” 32 And he says further, “As for the ten horns, out of this kingdom ten kings will arise, and another will arise after them.” 33 And then, “But from one of those four horns a small one emerged, which began to grow toward the south and then toward the east, and then toward the glorious land. He raised his great horn toward the armies of the sky, and it cast down some of the armies and some of the stars to the ground and trampled them down.” 34

Leaning on such testimonies, the sages decided it impossible that this powerful god, and his might and force, had been created, essentially and directly, by the true lord god, since our god works feverishly every day against that force and vigorously combats him. And the true god would not respond in this fashion if evil had derived from him, in any way, as almost all our adversaries claim.

In the holy scriptures it is clearly expressed that the true lord god will destroy the powerful 37 and all his forces who work feverishly every day against him and against his creation. David has indeed said of the one who is a powerful malignancy, “That is why god will destroy you forever. He will tear you out of your place, drag you out of your tent, and strip your roots from the land of the living.” 38 And for asking help from his god against the powerful, David again says, “Break the arm of the impious and the wicked. You will punish him for his lies and he will be no more. The lord will reign forever and into eternity.” 39 David also sings out, “In a moment the wicked will be no more. You will look at the place where he was and you will no longer see him there.” 4 0

In Solomon’s Proverbs it is written, “The wicked are overthrown by their evildoing.” 41 The messenger Paul alludes to the destruction of the powerful through the coming of our lord Jesus Christ when he says to the Hebrews, “in order to destroy him through his death, he who has the empire of death and who is the devil.” 42 Likewise, our lord is forced to destroy not only the powerful but also all forces or dominations who through the powerful have appeared at times to dominate the creatures of the good god who has been exposed to the empire of evil. That is what the holy virgin says in the Gospel of Luke:

And the messenger in the First Letter to the Corinthians tells us, “Then comes the end when he hands over the kingdom to god the father, after he has destroyed every rule and every authority and power. For he must reign until he has put all his enemies under his feet. The last enemy to be destroyed is death.” 44 The same messenger says to the Colossians, “Give thanks to the father, who has enabled you to share in the inheritance of the saints in the light. He has rescued us from the power of darkness and transferred us into the kingdom of his beloved son.” 45 And Paul also says, “And when you were dead in sins and the uncircumcision of your flesh, god made you alive together with him, when he forgave us all our sins, erasing the record that stood against us with its legal demands. He set this aside, nailing it to the cross. He disarmed the rulers and the powers, and he made a public example of them, triumphing over them.” 46 And likewise Paul was sent by the lord Jesus Christ to strip this power, as it is written about him in Acts: “For I have appeared to you for this purpose, to appoint you to serve and testify to the things in which you have seen me and to those in which I will appear to you. I will rescue you from your people and from the gentiles, to whom I am sending you to open their eyes so that they may turn from darkness to light and from the power of Satan to god, so that they may receive forgiveness of sins and a place among those who are sanctified by faith in me.” 47 And Christ says in the Gospel of Matthew:

And in Luke, “But this is your hour, and the power of darkness.” 49 From all this one must believe that the power of Satan and of darkness cannot proceed directly and immediately from the true god. Since if the power of Satan and of darkness proceeds directly and immediately from the true god, with all the other powers, virtues, and dominations of evil—which is what the unknowing say—then one would not understand how Paul and all others faithful to Jesus Christ could have “removed power from darkness,” nor how they could have transferred this power of Satan to the true lord god. Above all, if one considers that in removing power from darkness, they become in reality, properly and essentially, attached to our lord god, since all powers and virtues, according to the belief of our adversaries, emanate properly and essentially from the good god. How then would the good god be able to strip and eliminate another power than its own, if it is true that there can exist no other before him, as all our enemies say of these true Christians whom one calls, by their right title, Albanenses? 50