Nobody really knows very little about the Cathars, since they were stamped out by the French Christians in the year 1244. However, the Cathars were not Manichaean, in the sense of an unbroken tradition going back to the 3rd century Persian Mani. While they shared the notion of dualism, and asceticism, the Cathars had no united ideology.
Apparently, the first record of the Cathars is from Germany in the mid-twelth century, where they are described as related to the Bogomils, but in fact, the Cathars may have been moderate dualists, in that, they ultimately believed that God was stronger than Satan.
