The Cathari believed that "the Believers," who asked for the consolamentum during sickness, would not keep the laws of their new faith, if they happened to get well. Therefore, to safeguard them against apostasy, they were strongly urged to make their salvation certain by the endura. A manuscript of the Register of the Inquisition of Carcassonne, for instance, tells us of a Catharan minister who compelled a sick woman to undergo the endura, after he had conferred upon her the Holy Spirit. He forbade any one "to give her the least nourishment"… and as a matter of fact no food or drink was given her that night or the following day, lest perchance she might be deprived of the benefit of the consolamentum.
One of "the Perfected," named Raymond Belhot, congratulated a mother whose daughter he had just "consoled," and ordered her not to give the sick girl anything to eat or drink until he returned, even though she requested it. "If she asks me for it," said the mother, "I will not have the heart to refuse her." "You must refuse her," said "the good man," "or else cause great injury to her soul." From that moment the girl neither ate nor drank; in fact she did not ask for any nourishment. She died the next Saturday.
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 endura. "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."
It sometimes happened that the parents of "the consoled" withstood more or less openly the cruelty of "the Perfected."
When this happened, some of "the Perfected" remained 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.
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 himself to death in seven weeks. A woman named Gentilis died of the endura in six or seven days. A woman of Coustaussa, who had separated from her husband, went to Saverdum to receive the consolamentum. She at once began the endura at Ax, and died after an absolute fast of about twelve weeks. A certain woman named Montaliva submitted to the endura; during it "she ate nothing whatever, but drank some water; she died in six weeks."[1] This case gives us some idea of this terrible practice; we see that they were sometimes allowed to drink water, which explains the extraordinary duration of some of these suicidal fasts.
[1] Ms. 609, of the library of Toulouse, fol. 28.
Some of the Cathari committed suicide in other ways. A woman of Toulouse named Guillemette first began to subject herself to the endura by frequent blood letting; then she tried to weaken herself more by taking long baths; finally she drank poison, and as death did not come quickly enough, she swallowed pounded glass to perforate her intestines.[1] Another woman opened her veins in the bath.2
[1] Ms. 609, of Toulouse, fol. 33.
[2] Ibid., fol. 70.