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

by Henry Charles Lea

When St. Louis undertook his disastrous crusade to Damietta he was unwilling to leave behind him so dangerous a vassal as Raymond. The vow of service to Palestine had long since been remitted by Innocent IV., but the count was open to persuasion, and the bribes offered show at once the importance attached to his presence with the host and to his absence from home. The king promised him twenty thousand to thirty thousand livres for his expenses and the restitution of the duchy of Narbonne on his return. The pope agreed to pay him two thousand marks on his arrival beyond seas, and that he should have during his absence all the proceeds of the redemption of vows and all legacies bequeathed to the crusade. The prohibition of imposing penitential crusades on converted heretics was also suspended for his benefit, while the other long pilgrimages customarily employed as penances were not to be enjoined while he was in service. Stimulated by these dazzling rewards, he assumed the cross in earnest, and his ardor for the purity of the faith grew stronger. Even the tireless activity of Bernard de Caux was insufficient to satisfy him. While that incomparable persecutor was devoting all his energies to working up the results of his tremendous inquests, Raymond, early in 1248, complained to Innocent that the Inquisition was neglecting its duty; that heretics, both living and dead, remained uncondemned; that others from abroad were coming into his own and neighboring territories and spreading their pestilence, so that the land which had been well-nigh purified was again filled with heresy.[53]

Death spared Raymond the misfortunes of the ill-starred Egyptian crusade. When his preparations were almost complete he was seized with mortal illness and died, September 27, 1249, with his latest breath ordering his heirs to restore the sums which he had received for the expedition, and to send fifty knights to serve in Palestine for a year. That his death was generally regretted by his subjects we can readily believe. Not only was it the extinction of the great house which had bravely held its own from Carlovingian times, but the people felt that the last barrier between them and the hated Frenchmen was removed. The heiress Jeanne had been educated at the royal court, and was French in all but birth. Moreover, she seems to have been a nonentity whose influence is imperceptible, and the sceptre of the South passed into the hands of Alphonse of Poitiers, an avaricious and politic prince, whose zeal for orthodoxy was greatly stimulated by the profitable confiscations resulting from persecution. Raymond had required repeated urging to induce him to employ this dreaded penalty with the needful severity. No such watchfulness was necessary in the case of Alphonse. When the rich heritage fell in, he and his wife were with his brother, King Louis, in Egypt, but the vigilant regent, Queen Blanche, promptly took possession in their name, and on their return, in 1251, they personally received the homage of their subjects. By a legal subtlety Alphonse evaded the payment of the pious legacies of Raymond’s will, and compounded for it by leaving, on his departure for the North, a large sum to provide for the expenses of the Inquisition, and to furnish wood for the execution of its sentences. Not long afterwards we find him urging his bishops to render more efficient support to the labors of the inquisitors; in his chancery there was a regular formula of a commission for inquisitors, to be sent to Rome for the papal signature; and throughout his twenty years of reign he pursued the same policy without deviation. The urgency with which, in December, 1268, he wrote to Pons de Poyet and Étienne de Gátine, stimulating them to redoubled activity in clearing his dominions of heretics, was wholly superfluous, but it is characteristic of the line of action which he carried out consistently to the end.[54]

The fate of Languedoc was now irrevocably sealed. Hitherto there had been hopes that perhaps Raymond’s inconstancy might lead him to retrace the steps of the last few years. Moreover, his subjects had shared in the desire, manifested in his repeated marriage projects, that he should have an heir to inherit the lands not pledged in succession to his daughter. He was but in his fifty-first year, and the expectation was not unreasonable that his line might be perpetuated and the southern nationality be preserved. All this was now seen to be a delusion, and the most sanguine Catharan could look forward to nothing but a life of concealment ending in prison or fire. Yet the heretic Church stubbornly held its own, though with greatly diminished numbers. Many of its members fled to Lombardy, where, even after the death of Frederic II., the civic troubles and the policy of local despots, such as Ezzelin da Romano, afforded some shelter from the Inquisition. Yet many remained and pursued their wandering missions among the faithful, perpetually tracked by inquisitorial spies, but rarely betrayed. These humble and forgotten men, hopelessly braving hardship, toil, and peril in what they deemed the cause of God, were true martyrs, and their steadfast heroism shows how little relation the truth of a religion bears to the self-devotion of its followers. Rainerio Saccone, the converted Catharan, who had the best means of ascertaining the facts, computes, about this time, that there were in Lombardy one hundred and fifty “perfected” refugees from France, while the churches of Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Albi, including that of Agen, then nearly destroyed, numbered two hundred more. These figures would indicate that a very considerable congregation of believers still existed in spite of the systematic and ruthless proscription of the past twenty years. Their earnestness was kept alive, not only by the occasional and dearly-prized visits of the travelling ministers, but by the frequent intercourse which was maintained with Lombardy. Until the disappearance of the sect on this side of the Alps, there is, in the confessions of penitents, perpetual allusion to these pilgrimages back and forth, which kept up the relations between the refugees and those left at home. Thus, in 1254, Guillem Fournier, in an interrogatory before the Inquisition of Toulouse, relates that he started for Italy with five companions, including two women. His first resting-place was at Coni, where he met many heretics; then at Pavia, where he was hereticated by Raymond Mercier, former deacon of Toulouse. At Cremona he lived for a year with Vivien, the much-loved Bishop of Toulouse, with whom he found a number of noble refugees. At Pisa he stayed for eight months; at Piacenza he again met Vivien, and he finally returned to Languedoc with messages from the refugees to their friends at home. In 1300, at Albi, Étienne Mascot confesses that he had been sent to Lombardy by Master Raymond Calverie to bring back Raymond André, or some other perfected heretic. At Genoa he met Bertrand Fabri, who had been sent on the same errand by Guillem Golfier. They proceeded together and met other old acquaintances, now refugees, who conducted them to a spot where, in a wood, were several houses of refuge for heretics. The lord of the place gave them a Lombard, Guglielmo Pagani, who returned with them. In 1309 Guillem Falquet confessed at Toulouse to having been four times to Como, and even to Sicily, organizing the Church. He was caught while visiting a sick believer, and condemned to imprisonment in chains, but managed to escape in 1313. At the same time was sentenced Raymond de Verdun, who had likewise been four times to Lombardy.[55]

The proscribed heretics, thus nursing their faith in secret, gave the inquisitors ample occupation. As their ranks were thinned by persecution and flight, and as their skill in concealment increased with experience, there could no longer be the immense harvests of penitents reaped by Pierre Gella and Bernard de Caux, but there were enough to reward the energies of the friars and to tax the adroitness of their spies. The organization of the Inquisition, moreover, was gradually perfected. In 1254 the Council of Albi carefully revised the regulations concerning it. Fixed tribunals were established, and the limitations of the inquisitorial districts were strictly defined. For Provence and the territories east of the Rhone, Marseilles was the headquarters, eventually confided to the Franciscans. The rest of the infected regions were left to the Dominicans, with tribunals at Toulouse, Carcassonne, and Narbonne; and, from such fragmentary documents as have reached us, at this time the Inquisition at Carcassonne rivalled that of Toulouse in energy and effectiveness. For a while safety was sought by heretics in northern France, but the increasing vigor of the Inquisition established there drove the unfortunate refugees back, and in 1255 a bull of Alexander IV. authorized the Provincial of Paris and his inquisitors to pursue the fugitives in the territories of the Count of Toulouse. At the same time the special functions of the inquisitors were jealously guarded against all encroachments. We have seen how, in its early days, it was subjected to the control of papal legates, but now that it was firmly established and thoroughly organized it was held independent; and when the legate Zoen, Bishop of Avignon, in 1257, endeavored, in virtue of his legatine authority, which fourteen years before had been so absolute, to perform inquisitorial work, he was rudely reminded by Alexander IV. that he could do so if he pleased in his own diocese, but that outside of it he must not interfere with the Inquisition. To this period is also to be ascribed the complete subjection of all secular officials to the behests of the inquisitors. The piety of St. Louis and the greed of Alphonse of Poitiers and Charles of Anjou rivalled each other in placing all the powers of the State at the disposal of the Holy Office, and in providing for its expenses. It was virtually supreme in the land, and, as we have seen, it was a law unto itself.[56]

The last shadow of open resistance was dissipated in the year 1255. After the fall of Montségur the proscribed and disinherited knights, the faidits, and the heretics had sought to establish among the mountains some stronghold where they could feel safe for a moment. Driven from one retreat after another, they finally took possession of the castle of Quéribus, in the Pyrenees of Fenouillèdes. In the early spring of 1255 this last refuge was besieged by Pierre d’Auteuil, the royal Seneschal of Carcassonne. The defence was stubborn. May 5 the seneschal appealed to the bishops sitting in council at Béziers to give him assistance, as they had done so energetically at Montségur. The reply of the prelates was commendably cautious. They were not bound, they said, to render military service to the king, and when they had joined his armies it had been by command of a legate or of their primate, the Archbishop of Narbonne. Nevertheless, as common report described Quéribus as a receptacle of heretics, thieves, and robbers, and its reduction was a good work for the faith and for peace, they would each one, without derogating from his rights, furnish such assistance as seemed to him fitting. It may be assumed from this that the seneschal had to do the work unaided; in fact, he complained to the king that the prelates rather impeded than assisted him, but by August the place was in his hands, and nothing remained for the outlaws but the forest and the caverns. In that savage region the dense undergrowth afforded many a hiding-place, and an attempt was made to cut away the briers and thorns which served as shelter for ruined noble and hunted Catharan. The work was undertaken by a certain Bernard, who thence acquired the name of Espinasser or thorn-cutter. Popular hatred has preserved his remembrance, and expresses its sentiment in a myth which gibbets him in the moon.[57]

With the land at its feet, the Inquisition, in the plenitude of its power, had no hesitation in attacking the loftiest nobles, for all men were on a level in the eyes of the Most High, and the Holy Office was the avenger of God. The most powerful vassal of the houses of Toulouse and Aragon was the Count of Foix, whose extensive territories on both sides of the Pyrenees rendered him almost independent in his mountain fastnesses. Count Roger Bernard II., known as the Great, had been one of the bravest and most obstinate defenders of the land, and, after the pacification of 1229, Raymond had been obliged to threaten him with war to force him to submit. His memory was proudly treasured in the land as “Rogier Bernat lo pros et sens dengun reproche.” His family was deeply tinctured with heresy. His wife and one of his sisters were Waldenses, another sister was a Catharan, and the monk of Vaux-Cernay describes him as an enemy of God and a cruel persecutor of the Church. Yet, when he yielded in 1229, although he does not seem to have energetically fulfilled his oath to persecute heresy in his domains, for in 1233 we hear of his holding a personal conference at Aix with the heretic bishop Bertrand Martin, he was in other respects a loyal subject and faithful son of the Church. In 1237 he counselled his son, then Vizconde de Castelbo in Aragon, to allow the Inquisition in his lands, which resulted in the condemnation of many heretics, although Ponce, Bishop of Urgel, his personal enemy, had refused to relieve him of excommunication as a fautor of heresy until 1240, when he submitted to the conditions imposed, abjured heresy, and was reconciled. At his death, in 1241, he left liberal bequests to the Church, and especially to his ancestral Cistercian Abbey of Bolbonne, in which he died in monkish habit, after duly receiving the sacraments. His son, Roger IV., gave the coup de grâce to the rising of 1242, by placing himself under the immediate sovereignty of the crown, and defeating Raymond after the victories of St. Louis had driven back the English and Gascons. He had some troubles with the Inquisition, but a bull of Innocent IV., in 1248, eulogizes his devotion to the Holy See, and rewards him with the power to release from the saffron crosses six penitents of his choice; and in 1261 he issued an edict commanding the enforcement of the rule that no office within his domains should be held by any one condemned to wear crosses, any one suspected of heresy, or the son of any one similarly defamed.[58]

All this would seem to give ample guarantee of the orthodoxy and loyalty of the House of Foix, but the Inquisition could not condone its ancient patriotism and tolerance. Besides, if Roger Bernard the Great could be convicted of heresy, the confiscation of the broad inheritance would effect a great political object and afford ample spoils for all concerned. Twenty-two years after his death, therefore, in 1263, proceedings were commenced against his memory. A faithful servitor of the old count still survived, Raymond Bernard de Flascan, bailli of Mazères, who had attended his lord day and night during his last sickness. If he could be brought to swear that he had seen heretication performed on the death-bed, the desirable object would be attained. Frère Pons, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, came to Mazères, found the old man an unsatisfactory witness, and threw him into a dungeon. Suffering under a severe strangury, he was starved and tormented with all the cruel ingenuity of the Inquisition, and interrogated at intervals, without his resolution giving way. This was continued for thirty-two days, when Pons resolved to carry him back to Carcassonne, where possibly the appliances for bringing refractory witnesses to terms were more efficacious. Before the journey, which he expected to be his last, the faithful bailli was given a day’s respite at the Abbey of Bolbonne, which he utilized by executing a notarial instrument, November 26, 1263, attested by two abbots and a number of monks, in which he recited the trials already endured, solemnly declared that he had never seen the old count do anything contrary to the faith of Rome, but that he had died as a good Catholic, and that if, under the severe torture to which he expected to be subjected, human weakness should lead him to assert anything else, he would be a liar and a traitor, and no credence should be given to his words. It would be difficult to conceive of a more damning revelation of inquisitorial methods; yet fifty years later, when those methods had been perfected, all concerned in the preparation of the instrument, whether as notary or witnesses, would have been prosecuted as impeders of the Inquisition, to be severely punished as fautors of heresy.[59]

What became of the poor wretch does not appear. Doubtless he perished in the terrible Mura of Carcassonne under the combination of disease, torture, and starvation. His judicial murder, however, was gratuitous, for the old count’s memory remained uncondemned. Yet Roger Bernard III., despite the papal favor and the proofs he had given of adhesion to the new order of things, was a perpetual target for inquisitorial malice. When lying in mortal illness at Mazères, in December, 1264, he received from Étienne de Gâtine, then Inquisitor of Narbonne, an imperious order, with threats of prosecution in case of failure, to capture and deliver up his bailli of Foix, Pierre André, who was suspect of heresy and had fled on being cited to appear. The count dared only in reply to express surprise that no notice had been given him that his bailli was wanted, adding that he had issued orders for his arrest, and would have personally joined in the pursuit had not sickness rendered him incapable. At the same time he requested “Apostoli,” and appealed to the pope, to whom he retailed his grievances. The inquisitors, he said, had never ceased persecuting him; at the head of armed forces they were in the habit of devastating his lands under pretext of searching for heretics, and they would bring in their train and under their protection his special enemies, until his territories were nearly ruined and his jurisdiction set at naught. He, therefore, placed himself and his dominions under the protection of the Holy See. He probably escaped further personal troubles, for he died two months later, in February, 1265, like his father, in the Cistercian habit, and in the Abbey of Bolbonne; but in 1292 his memory was assailed before Bertrand de Clermont, Inquisitor of Carcassonne. The effort was fruitless, for in 1297 Bertrand gave to his son, Roger Bernard IV., a declaration that the accusation had been disproved, and that neither he nor his father should suffer in person or property in consequence of it.[60]

When such were the persecutions to which the greatest were exposed it is easy to understand the tyranny exercised over the whole land by the irresponsible power of the inquisitors. No one was so loftily placed as to be beyond their reach, no one so humble as to escape their spies. When once they had cause of enmity with a man there was no further peace for him. The only appeal from them was to the pope, and not only was Rome distant, but the avenue to it lay, as we have seen, in their own hands. Human wickedness and folly have erected, in the world’s history, more violent despotisms, but never one more cruel, more benumbing, or more all-pervading.

For the next twenty years there is little worthy of special note in the operations of the Inquisition of Languedoc. It pursued its work continuously with occasional outbursts of energy. Étienne de Gâtine, and Pons de Poyet, who presided over its tribunals for many years, were no sluggards, and the period from 1373 to 1375 rewarded their industry with an abundant harvest. Though heretics naturally grew scarcer with the unintermitting pursuit of so many years, there was still the exhaustless catalogue of the dead, whose exhumation furnished an impressive spectacle for the mob, while their confiscations were welcome to the pious princes, and contributed largely to the change of ownership of land which was a political consummation so desirable. Yet heresy with incredible stubbornness maintained itself, though its concealment grew ever more difficult, and Italy grew less safe as a refuge and less prolific as a source of inspiration.[61]