What was the Cathars' or Albigensians' political philosophy? Was it the same as the Manicheans'? Who were these movements' prominent political philosopher-theologians? All these dualists thought that marriage and the body were evil; so it would seem that they would think the family, the fundamental cell of society, is evil, too, and thus all of civil society evil.

Cathars are known for having been a community which did not believe good things about the Old Testament deity and were based in the Languedoc region of today's southern France around the 12th century. Given that most Christian denominations in existence base their beliefs partly in the Old Testament deity, I was wondering, did the Cathars use as a guide any books of the Bible and if so, which? Were those books different than the ones we know? Did they have additional gospels besides the canon used by most Christians today?

What are Jansenism's views of marriage? Were they akin to Manicheans' and Albigensians'? Who was a prominent Jansenist who wrote about marriage?

I'm interested by [Catharism](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism) . Is there anywhere in Christendom where this faith has reappeared since being suppressed in the Middle Ages? I know that today some people in France, near Spain, are called Cathars, because they are living on the territory where the Cathars lived. But, from what I know, there are no believers in Catharism there.

If the premise for Marcion's Two Principles (Dualism) is correct; how does one decipher which words in the Bible belong to the Demiurge from those of the True God? [Marcion of Sinope (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcion_of_Sinope) Catharism later on also adopted a belief in a form of Dualism and one of their works "Book of Two Principles" outlines the apparent contradictions between the God of the Old and New Testaments; but how did they (like Marcion) discern between the words of the Demiurge from those of the True God? [Cathar Theology (Wikipedia)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catharism#Theology)

According to the a Wikipedia article on Catharism (a Gnostic Christian movement in the 12th to 14th centuries): > The idea of two Gods or principles, one being good and the other evil, was central to Cathar beliefs. The good God was the God of the New Testament and the creator of the spiritual realm, contrasted with the evil Old Testament God—the creator of the physical world whom many Cathars, and particularly their persecutors, identified as Satan. I find the statement about the Old Testament God being identified as Satan to be really surprising. How was this explained? I'm especially interested how references to Satan were handled (e.g. the book of Job) and how any "good" actions from God were interpreted. One point I would like clarification on is that modern Christians (say, Catholics) generally consider Satan a powerful being, but not a god. What was it in Cathar theology that "elevated" Satan to the level of an evil God? Was he just the most powerful evil being they knew of and so he must be the same Old Testament God that they viewed as evil? It's kind of a long shot in that this information may not exist, but I would love to know how they viewed God having Old Testament heroes of faith, like Enoch, Moses, and Elijah, not taste death. I figure having a soul be released without having to die would be very interesting to them.