The Lives of the Saints, Volume 03 (of 16): MarchBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
The Lives of the Saints, Volume 03 (of 16): March
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Christian saints
"This admission was believed to save the soul of the person admitted,
and was called spiritual baptism, the consolation, the reception, and
the good end; and it was believed that those sanctified by it were
bound from that moment to abstain from touching a person of another
sex, and from food, or the soul fell from its state of purification.
Thus we read of the trial of a woman whose father had been received
amongst the Albigenses, 'that she was forbidden by her father to touch
him, because after his reception no woman ought to touch him, and from
that time she never did touch him.' (Fol. 49.) And in another woman's
trial, 'that it was unlawful for her to touch Peter Sancii, and that
she heard that it was reported amongst them that they neither touch
a woman, nor suffer themselves to be touched by one.' (Fol. 68.) But
inasmuch as it was possible that the person received might return to
his former pollutions (says Limborch in his introduction to the Acts
of the Inquisition), his reception was delayed to his last sickness,
when there was no more hopes of recovery, that so he might not lose
the good he had received; for which reason some were not admitted,
though one of the Albigenses was present, because it was not believed
they would immediately die. Thus it is reported of Peter Sancii (fol.
68) that having called 'to hereticate a certain sick woman, she was
not then hereticated, because he did not think it proper, upon account
of her not being weak enough.' And afterwards, though the distemper
grew more violent, Peter Sancii did not hereticate her, because she
recovered. As for those who were received during their illness, they
were commanded to make use of the Endura, that is, fasting, and to
hasten death by opening a vein and bathing. Thus it is related of a
certain woman, that 'she persevered in the abstinence which they call
the Endura many days, and hastened her bodily death by losing her
blood, frequent bathing, and greedily taking a poisonous draught of the
juice of wild cucumbers, mixing it with broken glass, that, by tearing
her bowels, she might sooner die.' (Fol. 14-_b_.) Of another, it is
said, 'that she was forbidden by her mother-in-law to give her little
daughter, who had been hereticated by Peter Sancii, any milk to drink,
by which the child died.' (Fol. 46.) Another confesses, 'that she had
not seen her father since his heretication eating or drinking anything
but cold water.' (Fol. 49.) But one Hugo, who continued several days
in the Endura, did afterwards, by his mother's persuasion, eat and
recover. (Fol. 63.) The same year, Peter Sancii invited him 'to enter
into the Endura, and so to make a good end; but he would not agree to
it till he came to die.' The same Hugo saw 'that Sancii procured and
hastened his own death by bleeding, bathing, and cold.' Peter Auterii
is said to have received another woman, 'and after her reception to
have forbidden any meat being given to the said hereticated sick woman;
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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