One joined the Church by promising (the _Convenenza_) to renounce the Catholic faith, and to receive the Catharan initiation (the _consolamentum_), at least at the hour of death. This was the first step on the road to perfection. Those who agreed to make it were called "the Believers." Their obligations were few. They were not bound to observe the severe Catharan fasts, which we will mention later on. They could live in the world like other mortals, and were even allowed to eat meat and to marry. Their chief duty was "to venerate" "the Perfected," each time they entered their presence. They genuflected, and prostrated themselves three times, saying each time as they rose, "Give us your blessing;" the third time they added: "Good Christians, give us God's blessing and yours; pray God that He preserve us from an evil death, and bring us to a good end!" The Perfected replied: "Receive God's blessing and ours; may God bless you, preserve you from an evil death, and bring you to a good end." If these heretics were asked why they made others venerate them in this manner, they replied that the Holy Spirit dwelling within them gave them the right to such homage. The Believers were always required to pay this extraordinary mark of respect. In fact it was a _sine qua non_ of their being admitted to the _Convenenza._
The _Convenenza_ was not merely an external bond, uniting "the Believers" and "the Perfected," but it was also an earnest of eternal salvation. It assured the future destiny of "the Believers;" it gave them the right to receive the _consolamentum_ on their death-bed. This remitted all the sins of their life. Only one thing could deprive them of "this good end," viz., the absence of one of the Perfected, who alone could lay hands upon them.
Those who died without the Catharan _consolamentum_ were either eternally lost, or condemned to begin life anew with another chance of becoming one of "the good men." These transmigrations of the soul were rather numerous. The human soul did not always pass directly from the body of a man into the body of another man. It occasionally entered into the bodies of animals, like the ox and the ass. The Cathari were wont to tell the story of "a good Christian," one of "the Perfected," who remembered, in a previous existence as a horse, having lost his shoe in a certain place between two stones, as he was running swiftly under his master's spur. When he became a man he was curious enough to hunt for it, and he found it, in the self-same spot. Such humiliating transmigrations were undoubtedly rather rare. A woman named Sybil, "a Believer" and later on one of "the Perfected," remembered having been a queen in a prior existence.