One day, in the presence of St.Bonaventura, he cried, perhaps not without a touch of irony, "Alas! what shall we ignorant and simple ones do to merit the favor of God ?" "My brother," replied the famous divine, "you know very well that it suffices to love the Lord." "Are you very sure of that ?" replied Egidio; "do you believe that a simple woman might please Him as well as a master in theology ?" Upon the affirmative response of his interlocutor, he ran out into the street and calling to a beggar woman with all his might, "Poor old creature," he exclaimed, "rejoice, for if you love God, you may have a higher place in the kingdom of heaven than Brother Bonaventura!"[21] The Cathari, then, had no direct influence upon St.Francis,[22] but nothing could better prove the disturbance of thought at this epoch than that resurrection of Manicheism.

To what a depth of lassitude and folly must religious Italy have fallen for this mixture of Buddhism, Mazdeism, and gnosticism to have taken such hold upon it! The Catharist doctrine rested upon the antagonism of two principles, one bad, the other good.

The first had created matter; the second, the soul, which, for generation after generation passes from one body to another until it achieves salvation.

Matter is the cause and the seat of evil; all contact with it constitutes a blemish,[23] consequently the Cathari renounced marriage and property and advocated suicide.

All this was mixed up with most complicated cosmogonical myths.
Their adherents were divided into two classes--the pure or perfect, and the believers, who were proselytes in the second degree, and whose obligations were very simple.