ABSTRACT
In his querulous letter to Abbot Alexander of Citeaux in 1177, Count Raymond V of Toulouse alleged that 'all the ecclesiastical sacraments are held for nothing and, what is sacrilege, even the two principles have been introduced ... '.1 He was right to be alarmed at the progress of heresy in his lands for, at the Council of St Felix-de-Caraman, probably held the previous year, the Drugunthian emissary from Constantinople, papa Nicetas, had indeed converted the leading representatives of the moderate Cathars of Languedoc to a belief in the two principles of absolute dualism, and he had consolidated this by drawing the previously disparate groups of Cathars in Lombardy, northern France, and Languedoc into an organised diocesan structure. While this wider unity lasted for only a brief period, Nicetas's work in Languedoc remained effective until the mid-thirteenth century, presenting the counts of Toulouse with a far greater challenge than anything they had encountered before the 1 1 70s.
