The progress of the Inquisition, however, was not destined to be uninterrupted. Count Raymond, apparently reckless of the numerous excommunications under which he lay, so far from sailing for Palestine in March, had seized Marseilles, which was in rebellion against its suzerain, the Count of Provence. This aroused anew the indignation of Gregory, not only because of its interference with the war against the Saracens in Spain and the Holy Land, but because of the immunity which heretics would enjoy during the quarrel of the Christian princes. He peremptorily ordered Raymond to desist from his enterprise on Marseilles, and to perform his Crusader’s vow. An appeal was made to King Louis and Queen Blanche, whose intervention procured for Raymond not only a postponement of the crusade for another year, but an order to the legate empowering him to grant the count’s request to take the Inquisition entirely out of the hands of the Dominicans, if, on investigation, he should find justification for Raymond’s assertion that they were actuated by hatred towards himself. Fresh troubles had arisen at Toulouse. July 24, 1237, the inquisitors had again excommunicated the viguier and consuls, because they had not arrested and burned Alaman de Roaix and some other heretics, condemned in absentia, and Raymond was resolved, if possible, to relieve himself and his subjects from the cruel oppression to which they were exposed.[28]

In this his efforts were crowned with most unlooked-for success. May 13, 1238, he obtained a suspension for three months of all inquisitorial proceedings, during which time his envoys sent to Gregory were to be heard. They seem to have used most persuasive arguments, for Gregory wrote to the Bishop of Toulouse to continue the suspension until the new legate, the Cardinal-bishop of Palestrina, should examine into the complaints against the Dominicans and consider the advisability of granting Raymond’s request that the business of persecution should be confined, as formerly, to the bishops. Raymond’s crusade was also reduced to three years, to be performed voluntarily, provided he would give to King Louis sufficient security that he would sail the following year: by performing this, and making amends for the wrongs inflicted on the Church, he was to earn absolution from his numerous excommunications.[29]

The temporary suspension was unexpectedly prolonged, for, owing to hostilities with Frederic II., the cardinal-legate’s departure was postponed for a year. When at least he came, in 1239, he brought special orders to the inquisitors to obey his commands. What investigation he made and what were his conclusions we have no means of knowing, but this at least is certain, that until late in 1241 the Inquisition was effectually muzzled. No traces remain of its activity during these years, and Catholic and Catharan alike could draw a freer breath, relieved of apprehension from its ever-present supervision and the seemingly superhuman energy of the friars.[30]

We can readily conjecture the reasons which impelled its reinstatement. Doubtless the bishops were as negligent as of old, and looked after their temporalities to the exclusion of their duties in preserving the purity of the faith. Doubtless, too, the heretics, encouraged by virtual toleration, grew bolder, and cherished hopes of a return to the good old times, when, secure under their native princes, they could safely defy distant Paris and yet more distant Rome. The condition of the country was, in fact, by no means reassuring, especially in the regions which had become domains of the crown. The land was full of knights and barons who were more or less openly heretics, and who knew not when the blow might fall on them; of seigneurs who had been proscribed for heresy; of enforced converts who secretly longed to avow their hidden faith, and to regain their confiscated lands; of penitents burning to throw off the crosses imposed on them, and to avenge the humiliations which they had endured. Refugees, faidits, and heretic teachers were wandering through the mountains, dwelling in caverns and in the recesses of the forests. Scarce a family but had some kinsman to avenge, who had fallen in the field or had perished at the stake. The lack of prisons and the parsimony of the prelates had prevented a general resort to imprisonment, and the burnings had not been numerous enough to notably reduce the numbers of those who were of necessity bitterly opposed to the existing order. Suddenly, in 1240, an insurrection appeared, headed by Trencavel, son of that Viscount of Béziers whom we have seen entrapped by Simon de Montfort and dying opportunely in his hands, not without suspicion of poison. He brought with him from Catalonia troops of proscribed knights and gentlemen, and was greeted enthusiastically by the vassals and subjects of his house. Count Raymond, his cousin, held aloof; but his ambiguous conduct showed plainly that he was prepared to act on either side as success or defeat might render advisable. At first the rising seemed to prosper. Trencavel laid siege to his ancestral town of Carcassonne, and the spirit of his followers was shown when, on the surrender of the suburb, they slaughtered in cold blood thirty ecclesiastics who had received solemn assurance of free egress to Narbonne.[31]

It required but a small force of royal troops under Jean de Beaumont to crush the insurrection as quickly as it had arisen, and to inflict a vengeance which virtually annihilated the petite noblesse of the region; but, nevertheless, the lesson which it taught was not to be neglected. The civil order, as now established in the south of France, evidently rested in the religious order, and the maintenance of this required hands more vigorous and watchful than those of the self-seeking prelates. A great assembly of the Cathari held in 1241, on the bank of the Larneta, under the presidency of Aymeri de Collet, heretic Bishop of Albi, showed how bold they had become, and how confidently they looked to the future. Church and State both could see now, if not before, that the Inquisition was a necessary factor in securing to both the advantages gained in the crusades.[32]

Gregory IX., the founder of the Inquisition, died August 22, 1241. It is probable that, before his death, he had put an end to the suspension of the Inquisition and slipped the hounds from the leash, for his immediate successor, Celestin IV., enjoyed a pontificate of but nineteen days—from September 20 to October 8—and then followed an interregnum until the election of Innocent IV., June 28, 1243, so that for nearly two years the papal throne was practically vacant. Raymond’s policy, for the moment, had leaned towards gratifying the papacy, for he desired from Gregory not only the removal of his four excommunications and forbearance in the matter of the crusade, but also a dispensation to enable him to carry out a contract of marriage into which he entered with Sanche, daughter and heiress of the Count of Provence, not foreseeing that Queen Blanche would juggle him in this, and, by securing the brilliant match for her son Charles, found the House of Anjou-Provence, and win for the royal family another large portion of the South. Full of these projects, which promised so well for the rehabilitation of his power, he signed, April 18, 1241, with Jayme I. of Aragon, a treaty of alliance for the defence of the Holy See and the Catholic faith, and against the heretics. Under such influences he was not likely to oppose the renewal of active persecution. Besides, he had been compromised in Trencavel’s insurrection; he had been summoned to answer for his conduct before King Louis, when, on March 14, he had been forced to take an oath to banish from his lands the faidits and enemies of the king, and to capture without delay the castle of Montségur, the last refuge of heresy.[33]

The case of the Seigneurs de Niort, powerful nobles of Fenouillèdes, who had taken part in Trencavel’s insurrection, is interesting from the light which it throws upon the connection between the religion and the politics of the time, the difficulties which the Inquisition experienced in dealing with stubborn heresy and patriotism, and the damage inflicted on the heretic cause by the abortive revolt. The three brothers—Guillem Guiraud, Bernard Otho, and Guiraud Bernard—with their mother, Esclarmonde, had long been a quarry which both the inquisitors and the royal seneschal of Carcassonne had been eager to capture. Guillem had earned the reputation of a valiant knight in the wars of the crusades, and the brothers had managed to hold their castles and their power through all the vicissitudes of the time. In the general inquisition made by Cardinal Romano in 1229 they were described as among the chief leaders of the heretics, and the Council of Toulouse, at the same time, denounced two of them as enemies of the faith, and declared them excommunicate if they did not submit within fifteen days. In 1233 we hear of their having, not long before, laid waste with fire and sword the territories of Pierre Amiel, Archbishop of Narbonne, and they had assailed and wounded him while on his way to the Holy See, an exploit which led Gregory IX. to order the archbishop, in conjunction with the Bishop of Toulouse, to proceed against them energetically, while at the same time he invoked the secular arm by a pressing command to Count Raymond. It was probably under this authority that Bishop Raymond du Fauga and the Provost of Toulouse held an inquest on them, in which was taken the testimony of Pierre Amiel and of one hundred and seven other witnesses. The evidence was conflicting. The archbishop swore at great length as to the misdeeds of his enemies. They were all heretics. At one time they kept in their Castle of Dourne no less than thirty perfected heretics, and they had procured the assassination of André Chaulet, Seneschal of Carcassonne, because he had endeavored to obtain evidence against them. Other witnesses were equally emphatic. Bernard Otho on one occasion had silenced a priest in his own church, and had replaced him in the pulpit with a heretic, who had preached to the congregation. On the other hand, there were not wanting witnesses who boldly defended them. The preceptor of the Hospital at Puységur swore to the orthodoxy of Bernard Otho, and declared that what he had done for the faith and for peace had caused the death of a thousand heretics. A priest swore to having seen him assist in capturing heretics, and an archdeacon declared that he would not have remained in the land but for the army which Bernard raised after the death of the late king, adding that he believed the prosecution arose rather from hate than from charity. Nothing came of this attempt, and in 1234 we meet with Bernard Otho as a witness to a transaction between the royal Seneschal of Carcassonne and the Monastery of Alet; but when the Inquisition was established it was promptly brought to bear on the nobles who persisted in maintaining their feudal independence in spite of the fact that their immediate suzerain was now the king. In 1235 Guillem Arnaud, the inquisitor, while in Carcassonne, with the Archdeacon of Carcassonne as assistant, cited the three brothers and their mother to answer before him. Bernard Otho and Guillem obeyed the summons, but would confess nothing. Then the seneschal seized them; under compulsion Guillem made confession ample to warrant the inquisitor in sentencing him to perpetual prison (March 2, 1236), while Bernard, remaining obdurate, was condemned as a contumacious heretic (February 13, 1236), and the seneschal made preparations to burn him. Guiraud and his mother, Esclarmonde, were further condemned, March 2, for contumacious absence. Guiraud, however, who had wisely kept at large, began to fortify his castles and make warlike demonstrations so formidable that the Frenchmen scattered through the land took alarm. The Maréchal de la Foi, Levis of Mirepoix, stood firm, but the rest so worked upon the seneschal that the brothers were released, and the inquisitors had only the barren satisfaction of condemning the whole family on paper—a disappointment alleviated, it is true, by gathering for the stake a rich harvest of less formidable heretics, both clerks and laymen. Equally vain was an effort made two years later by the inquisitors to compel Count Raymond to carry out their sentence by confiscating the lands of the contumacious nobles, but the failure of Trencavel’s revolt forced them to sue for peace. Bernard Otho was again brought before the Inquisition, and Guillem de Niort made submission for himself and brothers, surrendering their castles to the king on condition that he would procure their reconciliation with the Church, and that of their mother, nephews, and allies, and, failing to accomplish this by the next Pentecost, that he would restore their castles and grant them a month of truce to put themselves in defence. King Louis ratified the treaty in January, 1241, but refused, when the time came, to restore the castles, only agreeing to pay over the revenues on consideration that the brothers should reside outside of Fenouillèdes. Guillem died in 1256, when Louis kept both castles and revenues, under pretext that the treaty had been a personal one with Guillem. The new order of things by this time had become so firmly established that no further resistance was to be dreaded. The extinction of this powerful family is a typical example of the manner in which the independence of the local seigneurie was gradually broken down by means of the Inquisition, and the authority of crown and Church was extended over the land.[34]

Under the reaction consequent upon Trencavel’s failure, and emboldened by the ruin of the local protectors of the people, the inquisitors returned to their work with sharpened zeal and redoubled energy. Chance has preserved for us a record of sentences pronounced by Pierre Cella, during a circuit of a few months in Querci, from Advent, 1241, to Ascension, 1242, which affords us a singularly instructive insight into one phase of inquisitorial operations. We have seen that, when an inquisitor visited a town, he proclaimed a “time of grace,” during which those who voluntarily came forward and confessed were spared the harsher punishments of prison, confiscation, or the stake, and that the Inquisition found this expedient exceedingly fruitful, not only in the number of penitents which it brought in, but in the testimony which was gathered concerning the more contumacious. The record in question consists of cases of this kind, and its crowded calendar justifies the esteem in which the method was held.[35]

Summarized, the record shows—

In Gourdon219sentences pronounced in Advent, 1241.
In Montcucq84 " " " Lent, 1242.
In Sauveterre5.
In Belcayre7.
In Montauban254sentences pronounced in week before Ascension (May 21-28, 1242).
In Moissac99 " " " week of Ascension (May 28-June 5, 1242).
In Montpezat22 " " " Lent, 1242.
In Montaut23 " " " " "
In Castelnau11 " " " " "
Total724