Several heretical sects dating from the early Christian time had not ceased to have their obscure upholders in France. Such were the Manichæans or Paulicians who believed in the co-existence of a principle of good and a principle of evil. It was the Paulicians who were condemned to be burned at Orleans by King Robert (1022). During the time of the crusaders, the sect, revived by frequent intercourse with the Orient where it had originated, spread all over the centre of France. It is thought that this extension was the work of the emigrants who arrived from Bulgaria; at last the heretics received the name of Bulgarians or Boulgres, and it was rumoured that they had a mysterious chief, or, as they said, a resident pope in that country. They were called Albigenses because they were especially numerous in the vicinity of Albi, and by this last name they have been preserved in history. Some of their doctrines are known: they regarded the devil, or principle of evil, as the first author of the creation; they rejected the sacraments; they interpreted the Scriptures in a different way from the Catholic tradition. Also they possessed a kind of sacerdotal college whose members, called “the perfect ones,” performed special rites. It is very difficult to form any idea of their dogmas as a whole, for they had no theologian, no teacher, and they have left no writings. One can judge the basis of this heresy, and the sects belonging to it, only indirectly by the writings of the authors and teachers who fought them. These writers have attacked above all the strangeness of their practices and the vulgarity of their superstitions. [Sidenote: [1208-1209 A.D.]] But the dominant character of all these sects was their hatred of the church. They pretended to re-establish the primitive simplicity of the religion, which the church had corrupted, and among themselves they were known as _cathares_, or “the pure ones.”[e]