—No, I do not believe it.
—Do you renounce the veil, which the priest placed upon your head, after you were baptized?
—I do renounce it.[1]
Again the Bishop addressed "the Believer" to impress upon him the new duties involved in his receiving the Holy Spirit. Those who were present prayed God to pardon the candidate's sins, and then venerated "the Perfected" (the ceremony of the Parcia). After the Bishop's prayer, "May God bless thee, make thee a good Christian, and grant thee a good end," the candidate made a solemn promise faithfully to fulfill the duties he had learned during his probatio. The words of his promise are to be found in Sacconi: "I promise to devote my life to God and to the Gospel, never to lie or swear, never to touch a woman, never to kill an animal, never to eat meat, eggs or milk-food; never to eat anything but fish and vegetables, never to do anything without first saying the Lord's Prayer, never to eat, travel, or pass the night without a socius. If I fall into the hands of my enemies or happen to be separated from my socius, I promise to spend three days without food or drink. I will never take off my clothes on retiring, nor will I deny my faith even when threatened with death." The ceremony of the Parcia was then repeated.
[1] Sacconi, Summa de Catharis, in Martens and Durand, Thesaurus novus anecdotorum, vol. v, p. 1776.
Then, according to the ritual, "the Bishop takes the book (the New Testament), and places it upon the head of the candidate," while the other "good men" present impose hands upon him, saying: "Holy Father, accept this servant of yours in all righteousness, and send your grace and your Spirit upon him." The Holy Spirit was then supposed to descend, and the ceremony of the consolamentum was finished; "the Believer" had become one of "the Perfected."
However, before the assembly disposed, "the Perfected" proceeded to carry out two other ceremonies: the vesting and the kiss of peace.
"While their worship was tolerated," writes an historian, "they gave their new brother a black garment; but in times of persecution they did not wear it, for fear of betraying themselves to the officials of the Inquisition. In the thirteenth century, in southern France, they were known by the linen or flaxen belt, which the men wore over their shirts, and the women wore cordulam cinctam ad carnem nudam subtus mamillas. They resembled the cord or scapular that the Catholic tertiaries wore to represent the habit of the monastic order to which they belonged. They were therefore called hæretici vestiti, which became a common term for 'the Perfected.'"
[1] Jean Guiraud, Le consolamentum ou initiation cathare, loc. cit., p. 134.
The last ceremony was the kiss of peace, which "the Perfected" gave their new brother, by kissing him twice (on the mouth), bis in ore ex transverso. He in turn kissed the one nearest him, who passed on the pax to all present. If the recipient was a woman, the minister gave her the pax by touching her shoulder with the book of the gospels, and his elbow with hers. She transmitted this symbolic kiss in the same manner to the one next to her, if he was a man. After a last fraternal embrace, they all congratulated the new brother, and the assembly dispersed.