A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume II

by Henry Charles Lea

Of these penitents four hundred and twenty-seven were ordered to make the distant pilgrimage to Compostella, in the northwestern corner of Spain—some four hundred or five hundred miles of mountainous roads. One hundred and eight were sent to Canterbury, this pilgrimage, in all but three or four cases, being superimposed on that to Compostella. Only two penitents were required to visit Rome, but seventy-nine were ordered to serve in the crusades for terms varying from one to eight years.

The first thing that impresses one in considering this record is the extraordinary speed with which the work was done. The whole was despatched in six months, and there is no evidence that the labor was continuous—in fact, it could not have been so, for the inquisitor had to move from place to place, to grant the necessary delays, and must have been frequently interrupted to gather in the results of testimony which implicated recusants. With what reckless lack of consideration the penances were imposed is shown by the two hundred and nineteen penitents of Gourdon, whose confessions were taken down and whose sentences were pronounced within the four weeks of Advent; and even this is outstripped by the two hundred and fifty-two of Montauban, despatched in the week before Ascension, at the rate of forty-two for each working-day. In several cases two culprits are included in the same sentence.

Even more significant than this, however, are the enormous numbers—two hundred and nineteen for a small town like Gourdon and eighty-four for Montcucq. The number of these who were really heretics, both Catharan and Waldensian, is large, and shows how thoroughly the population was interpenetrated with heresy. Even more, however, were good Catholics whose cases prove how amicably the various sects associated together, and how impossible it was for the most orthodox to avoid the association with heretics which rendered him liable to punishment. This friendly intercourse is peculiarly notable in the case of a priest who confessed to having gone to some heretics in a vineyard, where he read in their books and ate pears with them. He was rudely reminded of his indiscretion by being suspended from his functions, sent to Compostella and thence to Rome, with letters from the inquisitors which doubtless were not for his benefit, for apparently they felt unable to decide what ought to be done for an offence so enormous. Even the smallest derelictions of this sort were rigorously penanced. A citizen of Sauveterre had seen three heretics entering the house of a sick man, and heard that they had hereticated him, but knew nothing of his own knowledge, yet he was subjected to the disgrace of a penitential pilgrimage to Puy. Another, of Belcayre, had carried a message between two heretics, and was sent to Puy, St. Gilles, and Compostella. A physician of Montauban had bound up the arm of a heretic and was subjected to the same three pilgrimages, and the same penance was inflicted on a woman who had simply eaten at a table with heretics. The same was prescribed in several cases of boatmen who had ignorantly transported heretics, without recognizing them until the voyage was under way or finished. A woman who had eaten and drunk with another woman who she heard was a heretic was sentenced to the pilgrimages of Puy and St. Gilles, and the same penance was ordered for a man who had once seen heretics, and for a woman who had consulted a Waldensian about her sick son. The Waldenses had great reputation as skilful leeches, and two men who had called them in for their wives and children were penanced with the pilgrimages of Puy, St. Gilles, and Compostella. A man who had seen heretics two or three times, and had already purchased reconciliation by a gift to a monastery, was sent on a long series of pilgrimages, embracing both Compostella and Canterbury, besides wearing the yellow cross for a year. Another was sent to Compostella because he had once been thrown into company with heretics in a boat, although he had left them on hearing their heresies; and yet another because, when a boy, he had spent part of a day and night with heretics. One who had seen heretics when he was twelve years old was sent to Puy; while a woman who had seen them in her father’s house was obliged to go to Puy and St. Gilles. A man who had seen two heretics leaving a place which he had rented was sent to Compostella, and another who had allowed his Waldensian mother to visit him and had given her an ell of cloth was forced to expiate it with pilgrimages to Puy, St. Gilles, and Compostella.[36] The list might be prolonged almost indefinitely, but these cases will suffice to show the character of the offence and the nature of the grace proffered for voluntary confession. There is no pretence that any of these particular culprits themselves were not wholly orthodox, but the people were to be taught that the toleration which had existed for generations was at an end; that the neighborly intercourse which had established itself between Catholic and Catharan and Waldensian was in itself a sin; that the heretic was to be tracked and captured like a wild beast, or at least to be shunned like a leper.

When such was the measure meted out to spontaneous penitents within the time of grace, with harsher measures in reserve for those subsequently detected, we can easily imagine the feelings inspired by the Inquisition in the whole population, without distinction of creed, and the terror common to all when the rumor spread that the inquisitors were coming. Scarce any one but was conscious of some act—perhaps of neighborly charity—that rendered him a criminal to the awful fanaticism of Pierre Cella or Guillem Arnaud. The heretics themselves would look to be imprisoned for life, with confiscation, or to be burned, or sent to Constantinople to support the tottering Latin Empire; while the Catholics were likely to fare little better on the distant pilgrimages to which they were sentenced, even though they were spared the sterner punishments or the humiliation of the saffron cross. Such a visit would bring, even to the faithful, the desolation of a pestilence. The inquisitors would pass calmly on, leaving a neighborhood well-nigh depopulated—fathers and mothers despatched to distant shrines for months or years, leaving dependent families to starve, or harvests ungathered to be the prey of the first-comer, all the relations of a life, hard enough at the best, disturbed and broken up. Even such a record as that of Pierre Cella’s sentences rendered within the time of grace shows but a portion of the work. A year or two later we find the Council of Narbonne beseeching the inquisitors to delay rendering sentences of incarceration, because the numbers of those flocking in for reconciliation after the expiration of the term of grace were so great that it would be impossible to raise funds for their maintenance, or to find stones enough, even in that mountainous land, to build prisons to contain them.[37] That a whole vicinage, when it had timely notice, should bind itself in a league to defeat the purpose of the inquisitors, as at Castelnaudary, must have been a frequent experience; that, sooner or later, despair should bring about a catastrophe like that of Avignonet was inevitable.

Montségur for years had been the Mount Tabor of the Cathari—the place of refuge in which, as its name implies, they could feel secure when safety could be hoped for nowhere else. It had been destroyed, but early in the century Raymond de Péreille had rebuilt it, and for forty years he held it as an asylum for heretics, whom he defended to the utmost of his ability. In 1232 the Catharan bishops Tento of Agen and Guillabert de Castres of Toulouse, with a number of ministers, foreseeing, in the daily increasing pressure of persecution, the necessity of some stronghold which should serve as an asylum, arranged with Raymond that he should receive and shelter all fugitives of the sect and guard the common treasure to be deposited there. His castle, situated in the territories of the marshals of Mirepoix, had never opened its gates to the Frenchmen. Its almost inaccessible peak had been sedulously strengthened with all that military experience could suggest or earnest devotion could execute. Ever since the persecutions of the Inquisition commenced we hear of those who fled to Montségur when they found the inquisitor’s hand descending upon them. Dispossessed knights, faidits of all kinds, brought their swords to its defence; Catharan bishops and ministers sought it when hard pressed, or made it a resting-place in their arduous and dangerous mission-work. Raymond de Péreille himself sought its shelter when, compromised by the revelations of Raymond Gros, he fled from Toulouse, in 1237, with his wife Corba; the devotion of his race to heresy being further proved by the fate of his daughter Esclarmonde, who perished for her faith at the stake, and by the Catharan episcopate of his brother Arnaud Roger. Such a stronghold in the hands of desperate men, fired with the fiercest fanaticism, was a menace to the stability of the new order in the State; to the Church it was an accursed spot whence heresy might at any moment burst forth to overspread the land again. Its destruction had long been the desire of all good Catholics, and Raymond’s pledge to King Louis, March 14, 1241, to capture it had been one of the conditions on which his suspicious relations with Trencavel had been condoned. In fact, he made some show of besieging it during the same year, but success would have been most damaging to the plans which he was nursing, and his efforts can scarce have been more than a cover for military preparations destined to a far different object. The French army, after the suppression of the rising, also laid siege to Montségur, but were unable to effect its reduction.[38]

On Ascension night, 1242, while Pierre Cella was tranquilly winding up his work at Montauban, the world was startled with the news that a holocaust of the terrible inquisitors had been made at Avignonet, a little town about twelve leagues from Toulouse. The stern Guillem Arnaud and the courteous Étienne de Saint-Thibery were making, like their colleague Pierre Cella, a circuit through the district subjected to their mercy. Some of their sentences which have been preserved show that in November, 1241, they were laboring at Lavaur and at Saint-Paul de Caujoux, and in the spring of 1242 they came to Avignonet.[39] Raymond d’Alfaro was its bailli for the count, who was his uncle through his mother, Guillemetta, a natural daughter of Raymond VI. When he heard that the inquisitors and their assistants were coming he lost no time in preparing for their destruction. A swift messenger was despatched to the heretics of Montségur, and in answer to his summons Pierre Roger of Mirepoix, with a number of knights and their retainers, started at once. They halted in the forest of Gaiac, near Avignonet, where food was brought them, and they were joined by about thirty armed men of the vicinage, who waited with them till after nightfall. Had this plot failed, d’Alfaro had arranged another for an ambuscade on the road to Castelnaudary, and the fact that so extensive a conspiracy could be organized on the spot, without finding a traitor to betray it, shows how general was the hate that had been earned by the cruel work of the Inquisition. Not less significant is the fact that on their return to Montségur the murderers were hospitably entertained at the Château de Saint-Félix by a priest who was cognizant of their bloody deed.

The victims came unsuspectingly to the trap. There were eleven in all. The two inquisitors, with two Dominican friars, and one Franciscan, the Benedictine Prior of Avignonet, Raymond de Costiran, Archdeacon of Lezat, a former troubadour, of whose verses only a single obscene song remains, a clerk of the archdeacon, a notary, and two apparitors—in all a court fully furnished for the despatch of business. They were hospitably received and housed in the castle of the count, where on the morrow they were to open their dread tribunal for the trembling inhabitants. When darkness came a selected band of twelve, armed with axes, left the forest and stole cautiously to a postern of the castle, where they were met by Golairan, a comrade of d’Alfaro, who assured himself that all was right, and returned to see what the inquisitors were doing. Coming back, he reported that they were drinking; but a second visit, after an interval, brought the welcome news that they were going to bed. As though apprehensive of danger, they had remained together in the great hall, and had barricaded the door. The gate was opened, the men of Montségur were admitted and were joined by d’Alfaro, armed with a mace, and twenty-five men of Avignonet, and the fact that an esquire in the service of the inquisitors was with him indicates that there was treachery at work. The hall-door was quickly broken down, the wild band of assassins rushed in, and, after despatching their victims, there was a fierce chorus of gratified vengeance, each man boasting of his share in the bloody deed—d’Alfaro especially, who shouted “Va be, esta be,” and claimed that his mace had done its full duty in the murderous work. Its crushing of Guillem Arnaud’s skull had deprived Pierre Roger de Mirepoix, the second in command at Montségur, of the drinking-cup which he had demanded as his reward for the assistance furnished. The plunder of the victims was eagerly shared between the assassins—their horses, books, garments—even to their scapulars. When the news reached Rome, the College of Cardinals made haste to express their belief that the victims had become blessed martyrs of Jesus Christ, and one of the first acts of Innocent IV., after his installation in June, 1243, was to repeat this declaration; but they never were canonized, in spite of frequent requests to the Holy See, and of the numerous miracles which attested their sanctity in the popular cult, until, in 1866, Pius IX. gave them tardy recognition.[40]

Like the murder of the legate Pierre de Castelnau, in 1208, the massacre of Avignonet was a fatal error. Its violation of the traditional sanctity of the ecclesiastic sent a thrill of horror even among those who had small sympathy with the cruelty of the Inquisition, while the deliberateness of its planning and its unsparing ferocity gave color to the belief that heresy was only to be extirpated by force. Sympathy, indeed, for a time might well change sides, for the massacre was practically unavenged. Frère Ferrer, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, made due inquest into the affair, and after the capture of Montségur, in 1244, some of the participants confessed all the details, but the real culprits escaped. Count Raymond, it is true, when he had leisure from pressing business, hanged a few of the underlings, but we find Raymond d’Alfaro, in 1247, promoted to be Viguier of Toulouse, and representing his master in the proceedings with regard to the burial of the old count, and, finally, he was one of the nine witnesses to Raymond’s last will. Another ringleader, Guillem du Mas-Saintes-Puelles, is recorded as taking the oath of allegiance to Count Alfonse, in 1249, after the death of Raymond. Guillem’s participation in the murders has special interest, as showing the antagonism created by the violence of the Inquisition, for in 1233, as Bailli of Lavaur, he had dutifully seized a number of heretics and carried them to Toulouse, where they were promptly burned.[41]

The massacre of Avignonet came at a time peculiarly unfortunate for Count Raymond, who was nursing comprehensive and far-reaching plans, then ripe for execution, for the rehabilitation of his house and the independence of his land. He could not escape the responsibility for the catastrophe which public opinion everywhere attached to him. Although he had recently, on March 14, solemnly sworn to persecute heresy with his whole strength when, apparently sick unto death, he had sought absolution at the hands of the episcopal official of Agen, yet he was known to be hostile to the Dominicans as inquisitors, and had bitterly opposed the restoration of their functions. On May 1, just four weeks before the event, he had made a solemn declaration in the presence of numerous prelates and nobles to the effect that he had appealed to Rome against the commission of Dominican inquisitors by the provincial in his territories, and that he intended to prosecute that appeal. He protested that he earnestly desired the eradication of heresy, and urged the bishops to exercise energetically their ordinary power to that end, promising his full support to them and the execution of the law both as to confiscation and the death-penalty. He would even accept the friars as inquisitors provided they acted independently of their Orders, and not under the authority of their provincials. One of his baillis even threatened, in the church of Moissac, seizure of person and property for all who should submit to the penalties imposed by the inquisitors, as they were not authorized by the count to administer justice. Such being his position, it was inevitable that he should be regarded as an accomplice in the murders, and that the cause which he represented should suffer greatly in the revulsion of public feeling which it occasioned.[42]