In the sentence, rendered December 8, he was acquitted of attempting the life of Benedict XI., while on the other charges his guilt was aggravated by no less than seventy perjuries committed under examination. After abjuration, he was duly absolved and condemned to degradation from holy orders and imprisonment for life, in chains and on bread and water, in the inquisitorial prison of Carcassonne. Considering the amnesty proclaimed in 1307 by Philippe le Bel, and the discharge of Frère Bernard in 1308, it seems strange that now the representatives of Philippe le Long at once protested against the sentence as too mild, and appealed to the pope. The judges themselves did not think so, for in delivering the prisoner to Jean de Beaune they humanely ordered that in view of his age and debility, and especially the weakness of his hands (doubtless crippled in the torture-chamber), the penance of chains and bread and water should be omitted. Jean de Beaune may be pardoned if he felt a fierce exultation when the ancient enemy of his office was thus placed in his hands to expiate the offence which had so harassed his predecessors; and that exultation was perhaps increased when, February 26, 1320, the relentlesspope, possibly to gratify the king, countermanded the pitying order of the bishops, and required the sentence to be executed in all its terrible rigor. Under these hardships the frail body which had been animated by so dauntless a spirit soon gave way, and in a few months merciful death released the only man who had dared to carry on a systematic warfare with the Inquisition.[111]
The progress of reaction had been rapid. In 1315 Louis Hutin had issued an edict in which were embodied most of the provisions of the laws of Frederic II. This piece of legislation, perfectly superfluous in view of the eighty years’’ career of the Inquisition in his dominions, is only of interest as showing the influence already obtained by the Dominicans during the papal interregnum. With the election of John XXII., notwithstanding his publication of the Clementines, all fear of interference disappeared, and the populations were surrendered again to the unchecked authority of the inquisitors. There was a significant notice to this effect in the withdrawal by the new pope, March 30, 1318, of the security given by Clement’s cardinals to Aimeric Castel and the other citizens of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes, who were deputed to carry on the case of those cities against the inquisitors, and the latter were directed to prosecute them diligently. The Inquisition recognized that its hour of triumph had come, and took in hand the survivors of those who had been conspicuous in the disturbances of fifteen years before. The unconvicted prisoners of 1299 and 1300, whom it had held in defiance of the reiterated orders of Clement—at least those who had not rotted to death in its dungeons—were brought forth and disposed of. A still more emphatic assertion of its renewed mastery was the subjection and “reconciliation” of the rebellious towns. Of what took place at Carcassonne we have no record, but it probably was the same as the ceremonies performed at Albi. There, March 11, 1319, the consuls and councillors and a great crowd of citizens were assembled in the cathedral cemetery, before Bishop Bernard and the inquisitor Jean de Beaune. There, with uplifted hands, they all professed repentance in the most humiliating terms, and swore to accept whatever penancemight be imposed upon them, and thereafter to obey implicitly the bishop and inquisitor. Then those present, together with the dead who had shown signs of penitence, were relieved from excommunication, the rest of the population being required to apply for absolution within a month. The announcement of the penances followed. The town was to make good all expenses and losses accruing to the episcopate and Inquisition by reason of the troubles; it was to build and complete within two years a chapel to the cathedral, and a portal to the Dominican church; to give fifty livres to the Carmelites to be expended on their church, and, finally, to construct marble tombs for Nicholas d’Abbeville, and Foulques de Saint-Georges at Lyons and Carcassonne, where those inquisitors had died in poverty and exile by reason of the rebellion of the inhabitants. Ten pilgrimages, moreover, were designated for the survivors of those who in 1301 had bound themselves to prosecute Bishop Bertrand and Nicholas d’Abbeville in the royal court, as well as for those who had served as consuls and councillors from 1302 to 1304. Jean de Beaune seems to have considered it a special grace when, in December, 1320, he postponed the performance of their pilgrimages during the year from Easter, 1321, to 1322. The town of Cordes, June 29, 1321, was “reconciled” with a similar humiliating ceremony and pledges of future obedience. Thus the Inquisition celebrated its triumph in the long struggle. It had won the victory, and its opponents could only save themselves by unconditional surrender.[112]
Whether the citizens of Albi whose arrest in 1299 gave rise to so many troubles were really heretics or not cannot now be determined. Their confessions were precise and detailed, but, as their defenders alleged, the Inquisition had ample means of extorting what it pleased from its victims, and the long delay in convicting them would seem to argue that the tribunal had good reason for not wishing its sentences to see the light while there was chance of their being subjected to scrutiny under Clement V. The inquisitors urged in justification a single case, that of Lambert deFoyssenx, who complained to Clement’s cardinals that he had been unjustly accused, but who subsequently asserted his heresy defiantly, refused to recant, and was burned in 1309. This is the only instance of the kind, for the wretched survivors who were led to abjure and recant in 1319 were broken by prison and torture, and their evidence is worthless.[113]
Yet Bernard Gui was undoubtedly correct when he asserted that the troubles and limitations imposed on the Inquisition under Philippe le Bel led to the recrudescence of a heresy which had been nearly extinguished. In the debate before the king at Toulouse, in 1304, Guillem Pierre, the Dominican provincial, asserted that there were then in Languedoc no heretics except some forty or fifty in Albi, Carcassonne, and Cordes, and for a few leagues around them. This was doubtless an exaggeration, but with improved prospects of immunity perfected missionaries were invited from Lombardy and Sicily, and the number of believers rapidly increased. Bernard Gui boasts that from 1301 to 1315 there were more than a thousand detected by the Inquisition, who confessed and were publicly punished.[114]
The registers of Geoffroi d’Ablis at Carcassonne in 1308-9 show great activity rewarded by abundant results, and one of the witnesses in the trial of Bernard Délicieux tells us that, when the Inquisition was able to resume its labors there, many heretics and believers were promptly discovered.[115]About the same period commence the sentences of the Inquisition of Toulouse published by Limborch. In 1306 Bernard Gui had been appointed inquisitor at Toulouse. His numerous works attest his wide range of learning and incessant mental activity, while his practical skill in affairs was animated with a profound conviction of the wickedness of heresy and of the duty of his Order to enforce, at every cost, submission to Rome. Two missions as papal legate, one to Italy and the other to France, and two bishoprics, those of Tuy and Lodève, attest the value set on his services by John XXII. With his appointment at Toulouse he promptly commenced the long campaignwhich resulted in the virtual extirpation of Catharism in Languedoc. Yet, though stern and unsparing when the occasion seemed to demand it, his record bears no trace of useless cruelty or abusive extortion.[116]
Catharism by this time had been forced back to the humbler class among whom it had found its first disciples. The nobles and gentlemen who had so long upheld it had perished or been impoverished by the remorseless confiscations of three quarters of a century. The rich burghers of the cities—merchants and professional men—had learned the temptations held out by their wealth and the impossibility of avoiding detection. The fascinations of martyrdom have their limits, and the martyrs among them had been gradually but surely weeded out. Yet the old beliefs were still rooted among the simple folk of country hamlets and especially in the wild valleys among the foothills of the eastern Pyrenees. The active intercourse with Lombardy, and even with Sicily, was still kept up, and there were not wanting earnest ministers who braved every danger to administer to believers the consolations of their religion and to spread the faith in the fastnesses which were its last refuge. Chief among these was Pierre Autier, formerly a notary of Ax (Pamiers). His early life had not been pure, for we hear of hisdruda, or mistress, and his natural children, but with advancing years he embraced all the asceticism of the sect, to which he devoted his life. Driven to Lombardy in 1295, he returned in 1298 to remain on his native soil to the end, and to endure a war to the knife from the Inquisition. His property was confiscated and his family dispersed and ruined. The region to which he belonged lay at the foot of the Pyrenees, rugged, with few roads and many caves and hiding-places, whence escape across the frontier to Aragon was comparatively facile; it was full of his kindred who were devoted to him, and here for eleven years he maintained himself, lurking in disguise and wandering from place to place with the emissaries of the Holy Office ever on his track. He had been ordained to the ministry at Como, and speedily acquired authority in the sect of which he became one of the most zealous, indefatigable, and intrepid missionaries. Already, in 1300, he wasso conspicuous that every effort was made for his apprehension. A certain Guillem Jean offered the Dominicans of Pamiers to betray him, but the treachery became known among the faithful, two of whom, Pierre d’Aère and Philippe de Larnat enticed Guillem to the bridge at Alliat by night, seized him, gagged him, carried him off to the mountains, and, after extorting a confession, cast him over a precipice. Worthy lieutenants of Pierre Autier were his brother Guillem and his son Jacques, Amiel de Perles, Pierre Sanche, and Sanche Mercadier, whose names occur everywhere throughout the confessions as active missionaries. Jacques Autier on one occasion had the boldness to preach at midnight to a gathering of heretic women in the Church of Sainte-Croix in Toulouse, the spot being selected as one in which they could best hold their meeting undisturbed.[117]
The work of Geoffroi d’Ablis in Carcassonne seems to be principally directed to determining the protectors and refuges of Pierre Autier. At Toulouse Bernard Gui was energetically employed in the same direction. The heretic was driven from place to place, but the wonderful fidelity of his disciples seemed to render all efforts vain, and finally Bernard was driven to the expedient of issuing, August 10, 1309, a special proclamation as an incitement for his capture.
“Friar Bernard Gui, Dominican, Inquisitor of Toulouse, to all worshippers of Christ, the reward and crown of eternal life. Gird yourselves, Sons of God; arise with me, Soldiers of Christ, against the enemies of his Cross, those corrupters of the truth and purity of Catholic faith, Pierre Autier, the heresiarch, and his coheretics and accomplices, Pierre Sanche and Sanche Mercadier. Hiding in concealment and walking in darkness, I order them by the virtue of God, to be tracked and seized wherever they may be found, promising eternal reward from God, and also a fitting temporal payment to those who will capture and produce them. Watch, therefore, O pastors, lest the wolves snatch away the sheep of your flock! Act manfully, faithful zealots, lest the adversaries of the faith fly and escape!”
“Friar Bernard Gui, Dominican, Inquisitor of Toulouse, to all worshippers of Christ, the reward and crown of eternal life. Gird yourselves, Sons of God; arise with me, Soldiers of Christ, against the enemies of his Cross, those corrupters of the truth and purity of Catholic faith, Pierre Autier, the heresiarch, and his coheretics and accomplices, Pierre Sanche and Sanche Mercadier. Hiding in concealment and walking in darkness, I order them by the virtue of God, to be tracked and seized wherever they may be found, promising eternal reward from God, and also a fitting temporal payment to those who will capture and produce them. Watch, therefore, O pastors, lest the wolves snatch away the sheep of your flock! Act manfully, faithful zealots, lest the adversaries of the faith fly and escape!”
This stirring exhortation was probably superfluous, for the prey was captured before it could have been published throughout the land. The arrest of nearly all his family and friends, in 1308-9, had driven Pierre Autier from his accustomed haunts.About St. John’s Day (June 24), 1309, he found refuge with Perrin Maurel of Belpech, near Castelnaudari, where he lay for five weeks or more. Thither came his daughter Guillelma, who remained with him a short time, and the two departed together. The next day he was captured. Perrin Maurel was likewise seized, and with customary fidelity stoutly denied everything until Pierre Autier, in prison, advised him in December to confess.[118]
This triumph was followed in October by the capture of Amiel de Perles, who forthwith placed himself inendura, refusing to eat or drink, and, as he was fast sinking, to prevent the stake from being robbed of its prey, a specialauto de féwas hurriedly arranged for his burning, October 23. While yet his strength lasted, however, Bernard Gui enjoyed the ghastly amusement of making the two heresiarchs in his presence perform the act of heretical “adoration.”[119]
Pierre Autier was not burned until the greatauto de féof April, 1310, when Geoffroi d’Ablis came from Carcassonne to share in the triumph. The heresiarch had not sought to conceal his faith, but had boldly declared his obnoxious tenets and had pronounced the Church of Rome the synagogue of Satan. That he was subjected to the extremity of torture, however, there can be no reasonable doubt—not to extract a confession, for this was superfluous, but to force him to betray his disciples and those who had given him refuge. His intimate acquaintance with all the heretics of the land was a source of information too important for Bernard Gui to shrink from any means of acquiring it; and the copious details thus obtained are alluded to in too many subsequent sentences for us to hesitate as to the methods by which the heresiarch was brought to place his friends and associates at the mercy of his tormentors.[120]
This may be said to close the bloody drama of Catharism in Languedoc. Armed with the revelations thus obtained, Bernard Gui and Geoffroi d’Ablis required but a few years more to convert or burn the remnant of Pierre Autier’s disciples who could be caught, and to drive into exile those who eluded their spies. No new and self-devoted missionaries arose to take his place, andafter 1315 the Patarin almost disappears from the records of the Inquisition in France. Some few scattering cases subsequently occur, but their offences are of old date and almost invariably revert to the missionary work of Pierre Autier and his associates. One of the latest of these is recorded in an undated sentence, probably of 1327 or 1328, in which Jean Duprat, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, condemns Guillelma Tornière. She had abjured and had been long confined in prison, where she was detected in making converts and praising Guillem Autier and Guillem Balibaste as good and saintly men. Under interrogation she refused to take an oath, and was accordingly burned. In 1328, Henri de Chamay of Carcassonne condemned to prison Guillem Amiel for Catharism, and in 1329 he sentenced two Cathari, Bartolomé Pays and Raymond Garric of Albi, whose offences had been committed respectively thirty-five and forty years before. In the same year he ordered four houses and a farm to be demolished because their owners had been hereticated in them, but these acts had doubtless been performed long previous. Confiscations still continued for ancestral offences, but Catharism as an existing belief may be said at this period to be virtually extinct in Languedoc, where it had a hundred and fifty years before had a reasonable prospect of becoming the dominant religion.[121]
In the same year, 1329, occurred a case which is not without interest as showing how an earnest but unstable brain pondering over the crime and misery of the world, wove some of the cruder elements of Catharism and Averrhoism into a fantastic theory.Limoux Noir, of Saint-Paul in the diocese of Alet, had already been tried by his bishop in 1326, but had been able to evade the unskilled officials of the episcopal tribunal. The Inquisition had surer methods and speedily brought him to confession. He had formed a philosophy of the Universe which superseded all religion. God had created the archangels, these the angels, and the latter the sun and moon. These heavenly bodies, as being unstable and corruptible, were females. Out of their urine the world was formed, and was necessarily corrupt, with all that sprang from it. Moses, Mahomet, and Christ were all sent by the sun and were teachers of equal authority. In the under world Christ and Mahomet are now disputing and seeking to gain followers. Baptism was of no more use than the circumcision of Israel or the blessing of Islam, for those who renounced evil in baptism grew up to be robbers and strumpets. The Eucharist was naught, for God would not let himself be handled by adulterers such as the priests. Matrimony was to be shunned, for from it sprang robbers and strumpets. Thus he explained away and rejected all the doctrines and practices of the Church. To see whether the Saviour’s fast of forty days was possible, he had fasted in a cabin ten days and nights, at the end of which this system of philosophy had been revealed to him by God. Again, in 1327, he had placed himself inendura, with the resolve to carry it to the end, but had been persuaded by his brother to take the Eucharist, to save his bones from being burned after his death. He was sixty years old, and his crazy doctrines had brought him a few disciples, but the sect was crushed at the outset. He declared to the inquisitor that he would rather be flayed alive than believe in transubstantiation, and he proved his resolute character by resisting all attempts to induce him to recant, so that there was no alternative but to abandon him to the secular arm, which was duly done and his belief perished with him.[122]
Thus the Inquisition triumphed, as force will generally do when it is sufficiently strong, skilfully applied, and systematically continued without interruption to the end. In the twelfth century the south of France had been the most civilized land of Europe.There commerce, industry, art, science, had been far in advance of the age. The cities had won virtual self-government, were proud of their wealth and strength, jealous of their liberties, and self-sacrificing in their patriotism. The nobles, for the most part, were cultivated men, poets themselves or patrons of poetry, who had learned that their prosperity depended on the prosperity of their subjects, and that municipal liberties were a safeguard, rather than a menace, to the wise ruler. The crusaders came, and their unfinished work was taken up and executed to the bitter end by the Inquisition. It left a ruined and impoverished country, with shattered industry and failing commerce. The native nobles were broken by confiscation and replaced by strangers, who occupied the soil, introducing the harsh customs of Northern feudalism, or the despotic principles of the Roman law, in the extensive domains acquired by the crown. A people of rare natural gifts had been tortured, decimated, humiliated, despoiled, for a century and more. The precocious civilization which had promised to lead Europe in the path of culture was gone, and to Italy was transferred the honor of the Renaissance. In return for this was unity of faith and a Church which had been hardened and vitiated and secularized in the strife. Such was the work and such the outcome of the Inquisition in the field which afforded it the widest scope for its activity, and the fullest opportunity for developing its powers.
Yet in the very triumph of the Inquisition was the assurance of its decline. Supported by the State, it had earned and repaid the royal favor by the endless stream of confiscations which it poured into the royal coffers. Perhaps nothing contributed more to the consolidation of the royal supremacy than the change of ownership which threw into new hands so large a portion of the lands of the South. In the territories of the great vassals the right to the confiscations for heresy became recognized as an important portion of thedroits seigneurioux. In the domains of the crown they were granted to favorites or sold at moderate prices to those who thus became interested in the new order of things. The royal officials grasped everything on which they could lay their hands, whether on the excuse of treason or of heresy, with little regard to any rights; and although the integrity of Louis IX. caused an inquest to be held in 1262 which restored a vast amountof property illegally held, this was but a small fraction of the whole. To assist his Parlement in settling the innumerable cases which arose, he ordered, in 1260, the charters and letters of greatest importance to be sent to Paris. Those of each of the six senechaussées filled a coffer, and the six coffers were deposited in the treasury of the Sainte-Chapelle. In this process of absorption the case of the extensive Viscounty of Fenouillèdes may be taken as an illustration of the zeal with which the Inquisition co-operated in securing the political results desired by the crown. Fenouillèdes had been seized during the crusades and given to Nuñez Sancho of Roussillon, from whom it passed, through the King of Aragon, into the hands of St. Louis. In 1264 Beatrix, widow of Hugues, son of the former Viscount Pierre, applied to the Parlement for her rights and dower and those of her children. Immediately the inquisitor, Pons de Poyet, commenced a prosecution against the memory of Pierre, who had died more than twenty years previously in the bosom of the Church, and had been buried with the Templars of Mas Deu, after assuming the religious habit and receiving the last sacraments. He was condemned for having held relations with heretics, his bones were dug up and burned, and the Parlement rejected the claim of the daughter-in-law and grandchildren. Pierre, the eldest of these, in 1300, made a claim for the ancestral estates, and Boniface VIII. espoused his quarrel with the object of giving trouble to Philippe le Bel; but, though the affair was pursued for some years, the inquisitorial sentence held good. It was not only the actual heretics and their descendants who were dispossessed. The land had been so deeply tinctured with heresy that there were few indeed whose ancestors could not be shown, by the records of the Inquisition, to have incurred the fatal taint of associating with them.[123]
The rich bourgeoisie of the cities were ruined in the same way. Some inventories have been preserved of the goods and chattels sequestrated when the arrests were made at Albi in 1299 and 1300, which show how thoroughly everything was swept into the maelstrom. That of Raymond Calverie, a notary, gives us every detail of the plenishing of a well-to-do burgher’s house—every pillow, sheet, and coverlet is enumerated, every article of kitchen gear, the salted provisions and grain, even his wife’s little trinkets. His farm or bastide was subjected to the same minuteness of seizure. Then we have a similar insight into the stock and goods of Jean Baudier, a rich merchant. Every fragment of stuff is duly measured—cloths of Ghent, Ypres, Amiens, Cambray, St. Omer, Rouen, Montcornet, etc., with their valuation—pieces of miniver, and other articles of trade. His town house and farm were inventoried with the same conscientious care. It is easy to see how prosperous cities were reduced to poverty, how industry languished, and how the independence of the municipalities was broken into subjection in the awful uncertainty which hung over the head of every man.[124]
In this respect the Inquisition was building better than it knew. In thus aiding to establish the royal power over the newly-acquired provinces, it was contributing to erect an authority which was destined in the end to reduce it to comparative insignificance. With the disappearance of Catharism, Languedoc became as much a part of the monarchy as l’Isle de France, and the career of its Inquisition merges into that of the rest of the kingdom. It need not, therefore, be pursued separately further.
ALTHOUGHCatharism never obtained in the North sufficient foothold to render it threatening to the Church, yet the crusades and the efforts which followed the pacification of 1229 must have driven many heretics to seek refuge in places where they might escape suspicion. In organizing persecution in the South, therefore, it was necessary to provide some supervision more watchful than episcopal negligence was likely to supply, over the regions whither heretics might fly when pursued at home, or the efforts made in Languedoc would only be scattering the infection. Vigilant guardians of the faith were consequently requisite in lands where heretics were few and hidden, as well as in those where they were numerous and enjoyed protection from noble and city. Under the pious king, St. Louis, who declared that the only argument a layman could use with a heretic was to thrust a sword into him up to the hilt, they were sure of ample support from the secular power.[125]
Accordingly when, in 1233, the experiment was tried of appointing Pierre Cella and Guillem Arnaud as inquisitors in Toulouse, a similar tentative effort was made in the northern part of the kingdom. Here also it was the Dominican Order which was called upon to furnish the necessary zealots. I have already alluded to the failure of the attempt to induce the Friars of Franche-Comté to undertake the work. In western Burgundy, however, the Church was more fortunate in finding a proper instrument. Like Rainerio Saccone, Frère Robert, known asle Bugre, had been a Patarin. The peculiar fitness thence derived for detecting the hidden heretic was rendered still more effective by the special gift which he is said to have claimed, of being able to recognizethem by their speech and carriage. In addition, he was fitted for the work by the ardent fanaticism of the convert, by his learning, his fiery eloquence, and his mercilessness. When, early in 1233, instructions to persecute heresy were sent to the Prior of Besançon, Robert was nominated to represent him and act as his substitute; and, eager to manifest his zeal, he lost no time in making a descent upon La Charité. It will be remembered that this place was notorious as a centre of heresy in the twelfth century, and that repeated efforts had been made to purify it. These had proved fruitless against the stubbornness of the misbelievers, and Frère Robert found Stephen, the Cluniac prior, vainly endeavoring to win or force them over. The new inquisitor seems to have been armed with no special powers, but his energy speedily made a profound impression, and heretics came forward and confessed their errors in crowds, husbands and wives, parents and children, accusing themselves and each other without reserve. He reported to Gregory IX. that the reality was far worse than had been rumored; that the whole town was a stinking nest of heretical wickedness, where the Catholic faith was almost wholly set aside and the people in their secret conventicles had thrown off its yoke. Under a specious appearance of piety they deceived the wisest, and their earnest missionary efforts, extending over the whole of France, were seducing souls from Flanders to Britanny. Uncertain as to his authority, he applied to Gregory for instructions and was told to act energetically in conjunction with the bishops, and, under the statutes recently issued by the Holy See, to extirpate heresy thoroughly from the whole region, invoking the aid of the secular arm, and coercing it if necessary with the censures of the Church.[126]
We have no means of knowing what measures Robert adopted, but there can be no doubt that under this stimulus, and clothed with this authority, he was active and unsparing. His crazy fanaticism probably exaggerated greatly the extent of the evil and confounded the innocent with the guilty. It was not long before the Archbishop of Sens, in whose province La Charité lay, expostulated with Gregory upon this interference with his jurisdiction, and in this he was joined by other prelates, alarmed at the authoritygiven to the Dominican Provincial of Paris to appoint inquisitors for all portions of the kingdom. They assured the pope that there was no heresy in their provinces and no necessity for these extraordinary measures. Gregory thereupon revoked all commissions early in February, 1234, and urged the prelates to be vigilant, recommending them to make use of Dominicans in all cases where action appeared desirable, as the friars were specially skilled in the refutation of heresy. Had Robert been an ordinary man this might have postponed for some time the extension of the Inquisition in France, but he was too ardent to be repressed. In June, 1234, we find St. Louis paying for the maintenance of heretics in prison at St. Pierre-le-Moutier, near Nevers, which would seem as though Frère Robert had succeeded in getting to work again on his old field of operations. Meanwhile he had not been idle elsewhere. King Louis furnished him with an armed guard to protect him from the enmities which he aroused, and, secure in the royal favor, he traversed the country carrying terror everywhere. At Péronne he burned five victims; at Elincourt, four, besides a pregnant woman who was spared for a time at the intercession of the queen. His methods were speedy, for before Lent was out we find him at Cambrai, where, with the assistance of the Archbishop of Reims and three bishops, he burned about twenty and condemned others to crosses and prison. Thence he hastened to Douai, where, in May, he had the satisfaction of burning ten more, and condemning numerous others to crosses and prison in the presence of the Count of Flanders, the Archbishop of Reims, sundry bishops and an immense multitude who crowded to the spectacle. Thence he hurried to Lille, where more executions followed. All this was sufficient to convince Gregory that he had been misinformed as to the absence of heresy. Undisturbed by the severe experience which he had just undergone with a similar apostle of persecution, Conrad of Marburg, we find him, in August, 1235, excitedly announcing to the Dominican provincial that God had revealed to him that the whole of France was boiling with the venom of heretical reptiles, and that the business of the Inquisition must be resumed with loosened rein. Frère Robert was to be commissioned again, with fitting colleagues to scour the whole kingdom, aided by the prelates, so that innocence should not suffer nor guilt escape. The Archbishop of Sens was strictly ordered to lend efficienthelp to Robert, whom God had gifted with especial grace in these matters, and Robert himself was honored with a special papal commission empowering him to act throughout the whole of France. The pope, moreover, spurred him on with exhortations to spare no labor in the work, and not to shrink from martyrdom if necessary for the salvation of souls.[127]
This was pouring oil upon the flames. Robert’s untempered fanaticism had required no stimulus, and now it raged beyond all bounds. The kingdom, by Gregory’s thoughtless zeal, was delivered up to one who was little better than a madman. Supported by the piety of St. Louis, the prelates were obliged to aid him and carry out his behests, and for several years he traversed the provinces of Flanders, Champagne, Burgundy, and France with none to curb or oppose him. The crazy ardor of such a man was not likely to be discriminating or to require much proof of guilt. Those whom he designated as heretics had the alternative of abjuration with perpetual imprisonment or of the stake—varied occasionally with burial alive. In one term of two or three months he is said to have thus despatched about fifty unfortunates of either sex, and the whole number of his victims during his unchecked career of several years must have been large. The terror spread by his arbitrary and pitiless proceedings rendered him formidable to high and low alike, until at length the evident confounding of the innocent with the guilty raised a clamor to which even Gregory IX. was forced to listen. An investigation was held in 1238 which exposed his misdeeds, though not before he had time, in 1239, to burn a number of heretics at Montmorillon in Vienne, and twenty-seven, or, according to other accounts, one hundred and eighty-three, at Mont-Wimer—the original seat of Catharism in the eleventh century—where, at this holocaust pleasing to God, there were present the King of Navarre with a crowd of prelates and nobles and a multitude wildly estimated at seven hundred thousand souls. Robert’s commission was withdrawn, and he expiated his insane cruelties in perpetual prison. The case ought to have proved, likethat of Conrad of Marburg, a wholesome warning. Unfortunately the spirit which he had aroused survived him, and for three or four years after his fall active persecution raged from the Rhine to the Loire, under the belief that the land was full of heretics.[128]
The unlucky termination of Robert’s career did not affect his colleagues, and thenceforth the Inquisition was permanently established throughout France in Dominican hands. The prelates at first were stimulated to some show of rivalry in the performance of their neglected duties. Thus the provincial council of Tours, in 1239, endeavored to revive the forgotten system of synodal witnesses. Every bishop was instructed to appoint in each parish three clerks—or, if such could not be had, three laymen worthy of trust—who were to be sworn to reveal to the officials all ecclesiastical offences, especially those concerning the faith. Such devices, however, were too cumbrous and obsolete to be of any avail against a crime so sedulously and so easily concealed as heresy, even if the prelates had been zealous and earnest persecutors. The Dominicans remained undisputed masters of the field, always on the alert, travelling from place to place, scrutinizing and questioning, searching the truth and dragging it from unwilling hearts. Yet scarce a trace of their strenuous labors has been left to us. Heretics throughout the North were comparatively few and scattered; the chroniclers of the period take no note of their discovery and punishment, nor even of the establishment of the Inquisition itself. That a few friars should be deputed to the duty of hunting heretics was too unimpressive a fact to be worthy of record. We know, however, that the pious King Louis welcomed them in his old hereditary dominions, as he did in the newly-acquired territories of Languedoc, and stimulated their zeal by defraying their expenses. In the accounts of the royal baillis for 1248 we find entriesof sums disbursed for them in Paris, Orleans, Issoudun, Senlis, Amiens, Tours, Yèvre-le-Chatel, Beaumont, St. Quentin, Laon, and Macon, showing that his liberality furnished them with means to do their work, not only in the domains of the crown, but in those of the great vassals; and these items further illustrate their activity in every corner of the land. That their sharp pursuit rendered heresy unsafe is seen in the permission already alluded to, in 1255, to pursue their quarry across the border into the territories of Alphonse of Toulouse, thus disregarding the limitations of inquisitorial districts.[129]
This shows us that already the Inquisition was becoming organized in a systematic manner. In Provence, where Pons de l’Esparre, the Dominican prior, had at first carried on a kind of volunteer chase after heretics, we see an inquisitor officially acting in 1245. This district, comprising the whole southeastern portion of modern France, with Savoy, was confided to the Franciscans. In 1266, when they were engaged in Marseilles in mortal strife with the Dominicans, the business of persecution would seem to have been neglected, for we find Clement IV. ordering the Benedictines of St. Victor to make provision for extirpating the numerous heretics of the valley of Rousset, where they had a dependency. The Inquisition of Provence was extended in 1288 over Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, whose governor was ordered to defray from the confiscations the moderate expenses of the inquisitors, Bertrand de Cigotier and Guillem de Saint-Marcel. In 1292 Dauphiné was likewise included, thus completing the organization in the territories east of the Rhone. The attention of the inquisitors was specially called to the superstition which led many Christians to frequent the Jewish synagogues with lighted candles, offering oblations and watching through the vigils of the Sabbath, when afflicted with sickness or other tribulations, anxious for friends at sea or for approaching childbirth. All such observances, even in Jews, were idolatry and heresy, and those who practised them were to be duly prosecuted.[130]
With this exception the whole of France was confided to the Dominicans. In 1253 a bull of Innocent IV. renders the Provincial of Paris supreme over the rest of the kingdom, including the territories of Alphonse of Toulouse. Numerous bulls follow during the next few years which speak of the growth of heresy requiring increased efforts for its suppression and of the solicitude of King Louis that the Inquisition should be effective. Elaborate instructions are sent for its management, and various changes are made and unmade in a manner to show that a watchful eye was kept on the institution in France, and that there was a constant effort to render it as efficient as possible. By a papal brief of 1255 we see that at that time the Inquisition of Languedoc was independent of the Paris provincial; in 1257 it is again under his authority; in 1261 it is once more removed, and in 1264 it is restored to him—a provision which became final, rendering him in some sort a grand-inquisitor for the whole of France. In 1255 the Franciscan provincial was adjoined to the Dominican, thus dividing the functions between the two Orders; but this arrangement, as might be expected, does not seem to have worked well, and in 1256 we find the power again concentrated in the hands of the Dominicans. The number of inquisitors to be appointed was always strictly limited by the popes, and it varied with the apparent exigencies of the times and also with the extent of territory. In 1256 only two are specified; in 1258 this is pronounced insufficient for so extensive a region, and the provincial is empowered to appoint four more. In 1261, when Languedoc was withdrawn, the number is reduced to two; in 1266 it is increased to four, exclusive of Languedoc and Provence, to whom in 1267 associates were adjoined, and in 1273 the number was made six, including Languedoc, but excluding Provence. This seems to have been the final organization, but it does not appear that the Northern kingdom was divided into districts, strictly delimitated as those of the South.[131]
The Inquisition at Besançon appears to have been at first independentof that of Paris. After the failure to establish it in 1233 it seems to have remained in abeyance until 1247, when Innocent IV. ordered the Prior of Besançon to send friars throughout Burgundy and Lorraine for the extirpation of heresy. The next year John Count of Burgundy urged greater activity, but his zeal does not seem to have been supplemented with liberality, and in 1255 the Dominicans asked to be relieved of the thankless task, which proved unsuccessful for lack of funds, and Alexander IV. acceded to their request. There are some evidences of an Inquisition being in operation there about 1283, and in 1290 Nicholas IV. ordered the Provincial of Paris to select three inquisitors to serve in the dioceses of Besançon, Geneva, Lausanne, Sion, Metz, Toul, and Verdun, thus placing Lorraine and the French Cantons of Switzerland, as well as Franche Comté, under the Inquisition of France, an arrangement which seems to have lasted for more than a century.[132]
Little remains to us of the organization thus perfected over the wide territory stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine. The laborers were vigorous, and labored according to the light which was in them, but the men and their acts are buried beneath the dust of the forgotten past. That they did their duty is visible in the fact that heresy makes so little figure in France, and that the slow but remorseless extermination of Catharism in Languedoc was not accompanied by its perpetuation in the North. We hear constantly of refugees from Toulouse and Carcassonne flying for safety to Lombardy and even to Sicily, but never to Touraine or Champagne, nor do we ever meet with cases in which the earnest missionaries of Catharism sought converts beyond the Cevennes. This may fairly be ascribed to the vigilance of the inquisitors, who were ever on the watch. Chance has preserved for us as models in a book of formulas some documents issued by Frère Simon Duval, in 1277 and 1278, which afford us a momentary glimpse at his proceedings and enable us to estimate the activity requisite for the functions of his office. He styles himself inquisitor “in regno Franciæ,” which indicates that his commission extended throughout the kingdom north of Languedoc, andhe speaks of himself as acting in virtue of the apostolical authority and royal power, showing that Philippe le Hardi had dutifully commissioned him to summon the whole forces of the State to his assistance when requisite. November 23, 1277, he gives public notice that two canons of Liège, Suger de Verbanque and Berner de Niville, had fled on being suspected of heresy, and he cites them to appear for trial at St. Quentin in Vermandois on the 23d of the ensuing January. This trial was apparently postponed, for on January 21, 1278, we find him summoning the people and clergy of Caen to attend his sermon on the 23d. Here he at least found an apostate Jewess who fled, and we have his proclamation calling upon every one to aid Copin, sergeant of the Bailli of Caen, who had been despatched in her pursuit. Frère Duval was apparently making an extended inquest, for July 5 he summons the people and clergy of Orleans to attend his sermon on the 7th. A fortnight later he is back in Normandy and has discovered a nest of heretics near Evreux, for on July 21 we have his citation of thirteen persons from a little village hard by to appear before him. These fragmentary and accidental remains show that his life was a busy one and that his labors were not unfruitful. A letter of the young Philippe le Bel, in February, 1285, to his officials in Champagne and Brie, ordering them to lend all aid to the inquisitor Frère Guillaume d’Auxerre, indicates that those provinces were about to undergo a searching examination.[133]
The inquisitors of France complained that their work was impeded by the universal right of asylum which gave protection to criminals who succeeded in entering a church. No officer of the law dared to follow and make an arrest within the sacred walls, for a violation of this privilege entailed excommunication, removable only after exemplary punishment. Heretics were not slow in availing themselves of the immunity thus mercifully afforded by the Church which they had wronged, and in the jealousy which existed between the secular clergy and the inquisitors there was apparently no effort made to restrict the abuse. Martin IV. was accordingly appealed to, and in 1281 he issued a bull addressed to all the prelates of France, declaring that such perversion of theright of asylum was no longer to be permitted; that in such cases the inquisitors were to have full opportunity to vindicate the faith, and that so far from being impeded in the performance of their duty, they were to be aided in every way. The special mention in this bull of apostate Jews along with other heretics indicates that this unfortunate class formed a notable portion of the objects of inquisitorial zeal. Several of them, in fact, were burned or otherwise penanced in Paris between 1307 and 1310.[134]
There was one class of offenders who would have afforded the Inquisition an ample field for its activity, had it been disposed to take cognizance of them. By the canons, any one who had endured excommunication for a year without submission and seeking absolution was pronounced suspect of heresy, and we have seen Boniface VIII., in 1297, directing the inquisitors of Carcassonne to prosecute the authorities of Béziers for this cause. The land was full of such excommunicates, for the shocking abuse of the anathema by priest and prelate for personal interests had indurated the people, and in a countless number of cases absolution was only to be procured by the sacrifice of rights which even faithful sons of the Church were not prepared to make. This growing disregard of the censure was aggravating to the last degree, but the inquisitors do not seem to have been disposed to come forward in aid of the secular clergy, nor did the latter call upon them for assistance. In 1301 the Council of Reims directed that proceedings should be commenced, when it next should meet, against all who had been under excommunication for two years, as being suspect of heresy; and in 1303 it called upon all such to come forward and purge themselves of the suspicion, but the court in which this was to be done was that of the bishops and not of the Inquisition. Mutual jealousy was seemingly too strong to admit of such co-operation.[135]
In 1308 we hear of a certain Étienne de Verberie of Soissons, accused before the inquisitor of blasphemous expressions concerning the body of Christ. He alleged drunkenness in excuse, and was mercifully treated. Shortly afterwards occurred the firstformalauto de féof which we have cognizance at Paris, on May 31, 1310. A renegade Jew was burned, but the principal victim was Marguerite de Hainault, or la Porete. She is described as a “béguine clergesse,” the first apostle in France of the German sect of Brethren of the Free Spirit, whom we shall consider more fully hereafter. Her chief error was the doctrine that the soul, absorbed in Divine love, could yield without sin or remorse to all the demands of the flesh, and she regarded with insufficient veneration the sacrifice of the altar. She had written a book to propagate these doctrines which had, before the year 1305, been condemned as heretical and burned by Gui II., Bishop of Cambrai. He had mercifully spared her, while forbidding her under pain of the stake from circulating it in future or disseminating its doctrines. In spite of this she had again been brought before Gui’s successor, Philippe de Marigny, and the Inquisitor of Lorraine, for spreading it among the simple folk called Begghards, and she had again escaped. Unwearied in her missionary work, she had even ventured to present the forbidden volume to Jean, Bishop of Chalons, without suffering the penalty due to her obstinacy. In 1308 she extended her propaganda to Paris and fell into the hands of Frère Guillaume de Paris, the inquisitor, before whom she persistently refused to take the preliminary oath requisite to her examination. He was probably too preoccupied with the affair of the Templars to give her prompt justice, and for eighteen months she lay in the inquisitorial dungeons under the consequent excommunication. This would alone have sufficed for her conviction as an impenitent heretic, but her previous career rendered her a relapsed heretic. Instead of calling an assembly of experts, as was customary in Languedoc, the inquisitor laid a written statement of the case before the canonists of the University, who unanimously decided, May 30, that if the facts as stated were true, she was a relapsed heretic, to be relaxed to the secular arm. Accordingly, on May 31, she was handed over, with the customary adjuration for mercy, to the prévôt of Paris, who duly burned her the next day, when her noble manifestation of devotion moved the people to tears of compassion. Another actor in the tragedy was a disciple of Marguerite, a clerk of the diocese of Beauvais named Guion de Cressonessart. He had endeavored to save Marguerite from the clutches of the Inquisition, and on being seized had, like her,refused to take the oath during eighteen months’’ imprisonment. His brain seems to have turned during his detention, for at length he astonished the inquisitor by proclaiming himself the Angel of Philadelphia and an envoy of God, who alone could save mankind. The inquisitor in vain pointed out that this was a function reserved solely for the pope, and as Guion would not withdraw his claims he was convicted as a heretic. For some reason, however, not specified in the sentence, he was only condemned to degradation from orders and to perpetual imprisonment.[136]
The next case of which we hear is that of the Sieur de Partenay, in 1323, to which allusion has already been made. Its importance to us lies in its revealing the enormous and almost irresponsible authority wielded by the Inquisition at this period. The most powerful noble of Poitou, when designated as a heretic by Frère Maurice, the Inquisitor of Paris, is at once thrown into the prison of the Temple by the king, and all his estates are sequestrated to await the result. Fortunately for Partenay he had a large circle of influential friends and kindred, among them the Bishop of Noyon, who labored strenuously in his behalf. He was able to appeal to the pope, alleging personal hatred on the part of Frère Maurice; he was sent under guard to Avignon, where his friends succeeded in inducing John XXII. to assign certain bishops as assessors to try the case with the inquisitor, and after infinite delays he was at length set free—probably not without the use of means which greatly diminished his wealth. When such a man could be so handled at the mere word of an angry friar, meaner victims stood little chance.[137]This case in the North and the close of Bernard Gui’s career in Toulouse, about the same time, mark the apogee of the Inquisition in France. Thenceforth we have to follow its decline.
Yet for some years longer there was a show of activity at Carcassonne, where Henri de Chamay was a worthy representative of the older inquisitors. January 16, 1329, in conjunction with Pierre Bruni he celebrated anauto de féat Pamiers, where thirty-five persons were permitted to lay aside crosses, and twelve were releasedfrom prison with crosses, six were pardoned, seven were condemned to perpetual imprisonment, together with four false witnesses, eight had arbitrary penances assigned them, four dead persons were sentenced, and a friar and a priest were degraded. As the see of Pamiers, to which thisautowas confined, was a small one, the number of sentences uttered indicates active work. December 12, of the same year, Henri de Chamay held another at Narbonne, where the fate of some forty delinquents was decided. Then, January 7, 1329, he held another at Pamiers; May 19, one at Béziers; September 8, one at Carcassonne, where six unfortunates were burned and twenty-one condemned to perpetual prison. Shortly afterwards he burned three at Albi, and towards the end of the year he held anotherautoat a place not named, where eight persons were sentenced to prison, three to prison in chains, and two were burned. Some collisions seem to have occurred about this time with the royal officials, for, in 1334, the inquisitors complained to Philippe de Valois that their functions were impeded, and Philippe issued orders to the seneschals of Nimes, Toulouse, and Carcassonne that the Inquisition must be maintained in the full enjoyment of its ancient privileges.[138]
Activity continued for some little time longer, but the records have perished which would supply the details. We happen to have the accounts of the Sénéchaussée of Toulouse, for 1337, which show that Pierre Bruni, the inquisitor, was by no means idle. The receiver of confiscations enumerates the estates of thirty heretics from which collections are in hand; there was anauto de fécelebrated and paid for; the number of prisoners in the inquisitorial jail is stated at eighty-two, but as their maintenance during eleven months amounted to the sum of three hundred and sixty-five livres fourteen sols, the average number at three deniers per diem must have been ninety. The terrible vicissitudes of the English war doubtless soon afterwards slackened the energy of the inquisitors, but we know that there wereautos de fécelebrated at Carcassonne in 1346, 1357, and 1383, and one at Toulouse in 1374. The office of inquisitor continued to be filled, but its functions diminished greatly in importance, as we may guess from the fact that it is related ofPierre de Mercalme, who was Provincial of Toulouse from 1350 to 1363, that during more than two years of this period he also served as inquisitor.[139]
In the North we hear little of the Inquisition during this period. The English wars, in fact, must have seriously interfered with its activity, but we have an evidence that it was not neglecting its duty in a complaint made by the Provincial of Paris to Clement VI., in 1351, that the practice of excepting the territories of Charles of Anjou from the commissions issued to inquisitors deprived the provinces of Touraine and Maine of the blessings of the institution and allowed heresy to flourish there, whereupon the pope promptly extended the authority of Frère Guillaume Chevalier and of all future inquisitors to those regions.[140]
With the return of peace under Charles le Sage the Inquisition had freer scope. The Begghards, or Brethren of the Free Spirit, undeterred by the martyrdom of Marguerite la Porete, had continued to exist in secret. In September, 1365, Urban V. notified the prelates and inquisitors throughout France that they were actively at work propagating their doctrines, and he sent detailed information as to their tenets and the places where they were to be found to the Bishop of Paris, with orders to communicate it to his fellow-prelates and the Inquisition. If any immediate response to this was made, the result has not reached us, but in 1372 we find Frère Jacques de More, “inquisiteur des Bougres,” busy in eradicating them. They called themselves the Company of Poverty, and were popularly known by the name of Turelupins; as in Germany, they were distinguished by their peculiar vestments, and they propagated their doctrines largely by their devotional writings in the vernacular. Charles V. rewarded the labors of the inquisitor with a donation of fifty francs, and received the thanks of Gregory XI. for his zeal. The outcome of the affair was the burning of the books and garments of the heretics in the swine-market beyond the Porte Saint-Honoré, together with the female leader of the sect, Jeanne Daubenton. Her male colleague escaped by death in prison, but his body was preserved in quicklime for fifteendays, in order that he might accompany his partner in guilt in the flames. That such a spectacle was sufficiently infrequent to render it a matter of importance is shown by its being recorded in the doggerel of a contemporary chronicler—