the rich harvest which Frà Antonio must have reaped from the ample information obtained from his victims as to the scattered members of the sects.[290] Notwithstanding these evidences of vitality, Catharism was rapidly dying out. The latest definite reference to it, west of the Adriatic, occurs in 1403, when San Vicente Ferrer, the great Spanish revivalist, undertook a peaceful mission in the remote valleys which no Catholic priest had dared to visit for thirty years, when he found and converted a number of Cathari dwelling among the Waldenses. He regarded as a form of Manichæism the worship of the rising sun which he found habitual among the peasants of the diocese of Lausanne, and some such survival of nature-worship was probably not infrequent, for a penitent of Frà Antonio Secco, in 1387, speaks of adoring the sun and moon on bended knees. Yet there would seem to be a remnant of Catharism lingering among the Waldenses of the Savoy valleys as late as 1451, when Filippo Regis was tried by the Inquisition.[291] * * * * * Italian Waldensianism continued to flourish in the mountain fastnesses of Piedmont, where the endless struggle with parsimonious nature fostered the hardier virtues. Thence, as we have seen, were emigrants and even colonies sent out, as persecution scattered the faithful or as population outgrew the narrow means of subsistence. The kindlier climate and less aggressive Inquisition of Naples finally rendered the southern colonies the headquarters of the sect, with which constant intercommunication was kept up. In 1387 we are told that the chief pontiff resided in Apulia and that the Waldensian community at Barge in Piedmont was presided over by two Apulians. A century later the mother communities in the Cottian Alps still looked to southern Italy as to the centre of their Church.[292]