Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 99
did not ask for any nourishment. She died the next
Saturday. 1
About the middle of the thirteenth century, when the
Cathari began to give the consolamentum to infants, they
were often cruel enough to make them undergo the en-
dura. "One would think," says an historian of the time,
"that the world had gone back to those hateful days
when unnatural mothers sacrificed their children to
Moloch." 2
It sometimes happened that the parents of "the con
soled" withstood more or less openly the cruelty of "the
Perfected."
When this happened, some of "the Perfected" re
mained in the house of the sick person, to see that their
murderous prescriptions were obeyed to the letter. Or
if this was impossible, they had "the consoled" taken
to the house of some friend, where they could readily
carry out their policy
of starvation. 3
But as a general rule the "heretics" submitted to the
endura of their own free will. Raymond
Isaure tells us
of a certain Guillaume Sabatier, who began the endura in a
retired villa, immediately after his initiation; he starved
1 Dollinger, Beitrage, vol. ii (Dokumente), p. 250.
2 Ibid., vol. i, p. 222; cf. p. 193.
3 "Post aliquot dies (after the Catharan initiation) haeretici extraxerunt
dictum infirmum de domo sua et portaverunt in domum hasreticorum, et ibi
dictus infirmus obiit." Boat, Ada Inquisit. Carcass. , vol. ii, fol. 115. This
was a frequent case in the Acts of the Inquisition of Carcassonne, says Dol
linger, Beitrage, vol. i, p. 225, n. i.