258 "^^^ in excess it was apt to prove fatal, and its power was such that whori partook of it could never thereafter abandon the sect^ Martino del Prete, the chief heresiarch, had a black cat as large ^tlamb which he declared to be the best friend he had on 11 We may safely set down the accounts of the sexual abom- n" L which'succeLd religious services in the convent.cles, when the lights were extinguished, as worthy of equal credence Contradictions in the repeated statements of the doctnnes taught show that Galosna's imagination served him better han h.s me,n- oryl his prolonged examinations. He was told that m jommg IZ ect he would secure salvation in glory with God the Father a^d yet he declares that the sect rejected immortahty, and held Lt the soul died with the body-and again, that there wa« no tiurlatory but only heaven and hell hereafter. They believed, ITove ,'in God the Father who created the heavens, but they worshippU the Great Dragon, the creator of the wor d who fought God and the angels, and was more powerful than he on earth. Christ was not the Son of God, but of Joseph, and was worthy of no special reverence. Altogether the account is Cllssly confused, but we can discern the dualism of a bastard Catharism and allusions are made to the consolmnentum and the satle^'of bread. Like Jacopo Bech, «alosna had a - ^^^^^^ iured in the hands of Fra Tommaso da Casacho. Loth ^^ele heie fore relapsed; there was no mercy for them, and on September o, 1388 they w re abandoned to the secular arm in Tunn and neces- sarily burned. Unfortunately the record ends here, and we have no deta^lTas to the rich harvest which Fra Antomo must have "aped torn the ample information obtained from his victims as in tVip scattered members of the sects.* NotShstanding these evidences of vitality, Catharism was ramdlv dying out. The latest definite reference to it, west of the aSc occurs in 1403, when San Vicente Ferrer, the gr- .S^^^^ ish revivalist, undertook a peaceful mission m the remote xal e.>s ■ which no Ca holic priest had dared to visit for thirty years, when he found and converted a number of Cathari dwelling among he WdTnses. He regarded as a form of Manich.ism the worship T ,• iQi^r 1^,, Qo nn 4-45 —G. Manuel cli S. Giovan-
- Archivio Storico Itahano, I860, No. 39, pp. 4-40. ^- ^
ni, Un Episodic della Storia del Piemonte, Torino, 1874, pp. 75 sqq.
