Meanwhile advantage was taken of the access obtained to them to procure from them statements of the tortures which they had endured, and lists were made of the names of those whom they had been forced to accuse as heretics. These were circulated throughout the land and excited general alarm, the Franciscans being especially active in giving them publicity. On the other hand, the inquisitor Geoffroi d’Ablis was equal to the emergency. He cited Pequigny to appear and stand trial for impeding the Inquisition, and on his refusal excommunicated him, September 29; and as soon as word could be carried to Paris he was published as excommunicate by the Dominicans there. This audacious act brought all parties to a sense of the nature of the conflict which had sprung up between Church and State. The consuls and people of Albi addressed to the queen an earnest petition beseeching her to prevail upon the king not to abandon them by withdrawing the Reformers, who had already done so much good and on whom depended their last hope. A fruitless effort also was made to prevent the publication of the excommunication. At Castres, October 13, Jean Ricoles, stipendiary priest of the Church of St. Mary, published it from the pulpit, as he was bound to do, and was promptly arrested by the deputy of the royal viguier of Albi and carried to the Franciscan convent, where he was threatened and maltreated, and the friars used every effort to persuade him to withdraw it. This in itself was a grave violation of clerical immunity, and it was soon recognized that such proceedings were worse than useless. Pequigny’s authority was paralyzed until the excommunication should be removed, and this could only be done by the man who had uttered it, or by the pope himself.[92]
The prospect of relief was darkened by the election, October 21, of Benedict XI., himself a Dominican and necessarily pre-disposed in favor of the Inquisition. Special exertions evidently were required unless all that had been gained was to be lost, and, at the best, litigation in the Roman court was a costly business. Pequigny had appealed to the pope, and, October 29, he wrote from Paris to the cities of Languedoc asking for their aid in the persecution which he had brought upon himself in their cause. Bernard Délicieux promptly busied himself to obtain the required assistance. By his exertions the three cities of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes entered into an alliance and pledged themselves to furnish the sum of three thousand livres, one half by Carcassonne and the rest by the other two, and to continue in the same proportions as long as the affair should last. After Pequigny’s death they renewed their obligation to his oldest son Renaud; but as the matter was much protracted, they grew tired, and Bernard, who had raised some of the money on his own responsibility, was left with heavy obligations, of which he vainly sought restitution at the hands of the ungrateful cities.[93]
The quarrel was thus for a time transferred to Rome. Pequigny went to Italy with envoys from the king and from Carcassonne and Albi to plead his cause, and was opposed by Guillaume de Morières, the Inquisitor of Toulouse, sent thither to manage the case against him. Benedict was not slow in showing on which side his sympathies lay. At Perugia, while the pope was conducting the solemnities of Pentecost, May 17, 1304, Pequigny ventured to enter the church. Benedict saw him, and, pointing to him, said to his marshal, P. de Brayda, “Turn out that Patarin!” an order which the marshal zealously obeyed. The significance of the incident was not small, and after the death of both Benedict and Pequigny, Geoffroi d’Ablis caused a notarial instrument recounting it to be drawn up and duly authenticated as one of the documents of the process. The climate of Italy was very unhealthy for Transmontanes. Morières died at Perugia, and Pequigny followed him at Abruzzo, September 29, 1304, the anniversary of his excommunication. Having remained for a year under the ban for impeding the Inquisition, he was legally a heretic, and his burial in consecrated ground is only to be explained by the death of Benedict a short time before. Geoffroi d’Ablis demanded that his bones be exhumed and burned, while Pequigny’s sons carried on the appeal for the rehabilitation of his memory. The matter dragged on till Clement V. referred it to a commission of three cardinals. These gave a patient hearing to both sides, who argued the matter exhaustively, and submitted all the necessary documents and papers. At last, July 23, 1308, they rendered their decision to the effect that the sentence of excommunication had been unjust and iniquitous, and that its revocation should be published in all places where it had been announced. Geoffroi fruitlessly endeavored to appeal from this, which was the most complete justification possible of all that had been said and done against the Inquisition, emphasized by Clement’s cutting refusal to listen to his statements—“It is false: the land never wished to rebel, but was in evil case in consequence of the doings of the Inquisition,” while a cardinal told him that for fifty years the people had been goaded to resistance by the excesses of his predecessors, and that when a corrective was applied they only added evil to evil.[94]
Benedict XI. had given other proofs of partisanship. It is true that in answer to the complaints of the oppressed people he appointed a commission of cardinals to investigate the matter, but there is no trace of their labors, which were probably cut short by his death, July 7, 1304. No commissioners of his selection would have been likely to report adversely to the Inquisition, for he manifested his prejudgment by ordering the Minister of Aquitaine, under pain of forfeiture of office and future disability, to arrest Frère Bernard without warning and send him under sufficient guard to the papal court, as a fautor of heretics and presumably a heretic. The leading citizens of Albi, including G. de Pesenches the viguier and Gaillard Étienne the royal judge, who had sought to aid Pequigny, were also involved in the papal condemnation. The Minister of Aquitaine intrusted to Frère Jean Rigaud the execution of the arrest, which he duly performed, June, 1304, in the convent of Carcassonne, adding an excommunication when Bernard, encouraged by the active sympathy of the people, delayed in obeying the papal summons. He never went, and it is a curious illustration of Franciscan tendencies to see that the minister absolved him from the excommunication, and that the provincial chapter of his Order at Albi decided that he had done all that was requisite, though perhaps Benedict’s death in July had relieved them from fears as to the immediate consequences of their contumacy.[95]
Meanwhile Philippe le Bel had at last fulfilled his promise to visit in person his southern provinces and rectify on the spot the wrongs of which his subjects had so long complained. He was expecting a favorable termination to his negotiation with Benedict for the removal of the excommunications launched by Boniface VIII. against himself and his subjects and chief agents, a result which he obtained May 13, 1304, with exception of the censure inflicted on Guillaume de Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna. When, therefore, he reached Toulouse on Christmas Day, 1303, he was not disposed to excite unnecessarily Benedict’s prejudices. From Albi and Carcassonne multitudes flocked to him with cries for redress and protection, and Pequigny spoke eloquently in their behalf. The inquisitors were represented by Guillem Pierre, the Dominican provincial, while Bernard Délicieux was foremost in the debate. It was on this occasion that he made his celebrated assertion that St. Peter and St. Paul would be convicted of heresy if tried with inquisitorial methods, and when the scandalized Bishop of Auxerre tartly reproved him, he stoutly maintained the truth of what he had said. Friar Nicholas, the king’s Dominican confessor, was suspected of exercising undue influence in favor of the Inquisition, and Bernard endeavored to discredit him by accusing him of betraying to the Flemings all the secrets of the royal council. Geoffroi d’Ablis, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, moreover, was ingratiating himself with Philippe at the moment by skilful negotiations to bring about a reconciliation with Rome.[96]
Philippe patiently heard both sides, and recorded his conclusions in an edict of January 13, 1304, which was in the nature of a compromise. It recited that the king had come to Languedoc for the purpose of pacifying the country excited by the action of the Inquisition, and had had prolonged consultation on the subject with all who were entitled to express an opinion. The result thus reached was that the prisoners of the Inquisition should be visited by royal deputies in company with inquisitors; the prisons were to be safe, but not punitive. In the case of prisoners not yet sentenced the trials were to be carried to conclusion under the conjoined supervision of the bishops and inquisitors, and this co-operation was to be observed in the future, except at Albi, where the bishop, being suspected, was to be replaced by Arnaud Novelli, the Cistercian Abbot of Fontfroide. The royal officials were strictly ordered to aid in every way the inquisitors and episcopal ordinaries when called upon, and to protect from injury and violence the Dominicans, their churches and houses.[97]
At Albi the change had the wished-for effect. No more heretics were found and no further prosecutions were required. Yet the refusal of the king to entertain any project of reform other than his previous one of curbing the Inquisition with an illusory episcopal supervision was a grievous disappointment. Men naturally argued that if the Dominicans had done right they ought not to be insulted by the proposed episcopal co-operation; and if they had done wrong they ought to be replaced. If any change was called for, the projected one was insufficient. So many hopes had been built upon the royal presence in the land, that the result caused universal dismay, which was not relieved by Philippe’s subsequent action. When he visited Carcassonne he was urged to see the unfortunate captives whose persecution had been the prominent cause of the troubles, but he refused, and sent his brother Louis to look at them. Worse than all, the citizens had designed to propitiate him and demonstrate their loyalty by offering him some elaborate silver vessels. These were yet in the hands of the gold-smiths of Montpellier when the royal party came to Carcassonne, so they were sent after him to Béziers, where the presentation was made, a portion to him and the rest to the queen. She accepted the offering, but he not only rejected it, but, when he learned what the queen had done, forced her to return the present. This threw the consuls of Carcassonne into despair. Offerings of this kind from municipalities to the sovereign were so customary and their gracious acceptance so much a matter of course, that refusal in this instance seemed to argue some most unfavorable intentions on the part of the king, which was not unlikely, seeing that Elias Patrice, the leading citizen of Carcassonne, had plainly told him when there that if he did not render them speedy justice against the Inquisition they would be forced to seek another lord, and when Philippe ordered him from his presence the citizens obeyed Patrice’s command to remove the decorations from the streets. Imagining that he had been won over by the Dominicans and that his protection would be withdrawn, the prospect of being abandoned to the mercy of the Inquisition seemed so terrible that they wildly declared that if they could not find another lord to protect them they would burn the town and with the inhabitants seek some place of refuge. In consultation with Frère Bernard it was hastily determined to offer their allegiance to Ferrand, son of the King of Majorca.
The younger branch of the House of Aragon, which drew its title from the Balearic Isles, held the remnants of the old French possessions of the Catalans, including Montpellier and Perpignan. It had old claims to much of the land, and its rule might well be hailed by the people as much more welcome than the foreign domination to which they had been unwillingly subjected. Had the whole region agreed to transfer its allegiance, its reduction might have cost Philippe a doubtful struggle, embarrassed as he was with the chronic disaffection of the Flemings. When, however, the project was broached to the men of Albi, they refused peremptorily to embark in it, and there can be no stronger proof of the desperation of the Carcassais than their resolution to persist in it single-handed. Ferrand and his father were at Montpellier entertaining the French court, which they accompanied to Nîmes. He eagerly listened to the overtures, and asked Frère Bernard to come to him at Perpignan. Bernard went thither with a letter of credence from the consuls, which he prudently destroyed on the road. The King of Majorca, when he heard of the offer, chastened his son’s ambition by boxing his ears and pulling him around by the hair, and he ingratiated himself with his powerful neighbor by communicating the plot to Philippe.[98]
Although there could have been no real danger from so crazy a project, the relation of the southern provinces to the crown were too strained for the king not to exact a vengeance which should prove a warning. A court was assembled at Carcassonne which sat through the summer of 1305 and made free use of torture in its investigations. Albi, which had taken no part in the plot, escaped an investigation by a bribe of one thousand livres to the seneschal, Jean d’Alnet, but the damage inflicted on the Franciscan convent shows that the Dominicans were keen to make reprisals for what they had suffered. The town of Limoux had been concerned in the affair; it was fined and disfranchised, and forty of its citizens were hanged. As for Carcassonne, all of its eight consuls, with Elias Patrice at their head, and seven other citizens were hanged in their official robes, the city was deprived of self-government and subjected to the enormous fine of sixty thousand livres, a sentence from which it vainly appealed to the Parlement. As Bernard Gui observes with savage exultation, those who had croaked like ravens against the Dominicans were exposed to the ravens. Aimeric Castel, who had sought in this way to obtain redress for the wrong done to his father’s memory and estate, escaped by flight, but was captured and long lay a prisoner, finally making his peace with a heavy ransom, and a harvest of fines was gathered into the royal exchequer from all who could be accused of privity. As for Frère Bernard, he received early intelligence from Frère Durand, the queen’s confessor, of the discovery of the plot, when he boldly headed a delegation of citizens of Albi who went to Paris to protest their innocence. There Durand informed them that Albi was not implicated, when they returned, leaving Bernard. At the request of the king, Clement V. had him arrested and carried to Lyons, whence he was taken by the papal court to Bordeaux; and when it went to Poitiers he was confined in the convent of St. Junian of Limoges. In May, 1307, at the instance of Clement, Philippe issued letters of amnesty to all concerned, and remitted to Carcassonne the portion of its fine not yet paid, and in Lent, 1308, Bernard was allowed to come to Poitiers. On the king’s arrival there he boldly complained to him of his arrest and of the punishment which had involved the innocent with the guilty. As he still had no license to leave the papal court, he accompanied it to Avignon, and was at length discharged with the royal assent—the heavy bribes paid to three cardinals by his friends of Albi having perhaps something to do with his immunity. He returned to Toulouse, and we hear of no further activity on his part. His narrow escape probably sobered his restless enthusiasm, and as the reform of the Inquisition seemed to have been taken resolutely in hand by Clement V. he might well persuade himself that there was no further call for self-sacrifice.[99]
The death of Benedict XI., in July, 1304, had given fresh hopes to the sufferers from the Inquisition. There was an interregnum of nearly a year before the election of his successor, Clement V., June 5, 1305. During this period a petition to the College of Cardinals was presented by seventeen of the religious bodies of the Albigeois, including the canons of the cathedral of Albi, those of the church of St. Salvi, the convent of Gaillac, etc., imploring in the most pressing terms the Sacred College to intervene and avert the fearful dangers threatening the community. The land, they declare, is Catholic, the people are faithful, cherishing the religion of Rome in their hearts, and professing it with their lips. Yet so fierce are the dissensions between them and the inquisitors, that they are aroused to wrath and are eager to put to the sword those whom they have learned to regard as enemies. Doubtless the inquisitors had taken advantage of the revulsion consequent upon the fruitless treason of Carcassonne and of the altered attitude of the king. Philippe thenceforth interfered no further, save to urge his representatives to renewed vigilance in enforcing the laws against heretics and the disabilities inflicted upon their descendants. It was not only the treason of Carcassonne which indisposed him to interfere; from 1307 onward he needed the indispensable aid of the Inquisition to carry out his designs against the Templars, and he could afford neither to antagonize it nor to limit its powers.[100]