tended to the reproduction of animal life was to be shunned. To mortify the flesh the Catharan fasted on bread and water three days in each week, except when travelling, and in addition there were in the year three fasts of forty days each. Marriage was also forbidden except among a few, who permitted it between virgins provided they separated as soon as a child was born, and the mitigated Dualists who confined the prohibition to the Perfect and permitted marriage to the believers. Among the rigid, carnal matrimony was replaced by the spiritual union between the soul and God effected by the rite of Consolamentum. Sexual passion, in fact, was the original sin of Adam and Eve, the forbidden fruit whereby Satan has continued his empire over man. In a confession before the Inquisition of Toulouse in 1310, it is said of one heretic teacher that he would not touch a woman for the whole world; in another case a woman relates of her father that after he was hereticated he told her she must never touch him again, and she obeyed the command even when he was on the death-bed. So far was this carried that the use of meat, of eggs, of milk, of everything, in short, which was the result of animal propagation, was inhibited, except fish, which by a strange inconsistency seems to have been regarded as having some different origin. The condemnation of marriage and the rejection of meat constituted, with the prohibition of oaths, the chief external characteristics of Catharism, by which the sectaries were marked and known. In 1229 two leading Tuscan Cathari, Pietro and Andrea, performed public abjuration before Gregory IX. in Perugia, and two days later, June 26th, they gave solemn assurance of the sincerity of their conversion by eating flesh in the presence of a number of prelates, which was duly recorded in an instrument drawn up for the purpose.[1]
- ↑ S. Bernardi Serm. Ixvi. in Cantica, cap. 3-7. — Ecberti Schonaug. Serm. i. v. vi. contra Catharos. — Bonacursi Vit, Hsereticor.— Gregor. Fanens. Disput. Cathol. contra Ha^reticos cap. 1, 2, 11, 14. — Monetae adv. Catharos Lib. i. cap. 1. — Cunitz (Beitrage zu den theol. Wissenschaften, 1852, p. 14). — Radulf. Coggeshall. Chrou. Anglic. (D. Bouquet, XVIIL 92, 93).— Evervini Steinfeldens. Epist. ad S. Bernard, cap. 3. — Concil. Lombariens. ann. 1165. — Radulf. Ardent. T. I. p. ii. Horn, xix, — Ermengaudi contra Ha^ret. Opusc. — Bonacursus contra Catharos iBaluz. etMansi,!!. 581-586). — Alani de Insulis contra Haeret. Lib. i. — Monet, adv. Catharos. Lib. rv. cap. vii. § 3. — Rainerii Saccon. Summa. — Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolosan. pp. Ill, 115.— Coll. Doat, T. XXX. fol. 185 sqq.; XXXIL fol. 93 sqq.-
