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The Cathars participated in a public debate, giving them an opportunity to outline their beliefs. They rejected the Catholic sacraments, as well as the institutional church system itself. They likened the Church of Rome to the Antichrist and to the Whore of Babylon. They rejected veneration of dead saints, whose relics they regarded as mere sticks and stones. They rejected the cross, considering it a symbol of torture and degradation rather than of redemption. They regarded material things as evil and earthly existence itself as a kind of purgatory. They believed the Jehovah of the Old Testament was actually Lucifer, the fallen angel, and that Jesus was sent not as redeemer but as an angelic messenger to teach the way of salvation.

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