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,faiditsof 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 hadbeen 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 wereeleven 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 opinioneverywhere 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]
Raymond had been busy in effecting a widespread alliance which should wring from the House of Capet its conquests of the last quarter of a century. He had been joined by the Kings of England, Castile, and Aragon, and the Count de la Marche, and everything bid fair for his reconquest of his old domains. The massacre of Avignonet was a most untoward precursor of the revolt which burst forth immediately afterwards. It shook the fidelity of some of his vassals, who withdrew their support; and, to counteract its impression, he felt obliged to convert his sham siege of Montségur into an active one, thus employing troops which he could ill spare. Yet the rising, for a while, promised success, and Raymond even reassumed his old title of Duke ofNarbonne. King Louis, however, was equal to the occasion, and allowed the allies no time to concentrate their forces. His victories over the English and Gascons at Taillebourg and Saintes, July 19 and 23, deprived Raymond of all hope of assistance from that quarter. Pestilence forced the withdrawal of the main army of Louis, but a force under the veteran Imbert de Beaujeu operated actively against Raymond, who, without help from his allies and deserted by many of his vassals, was obliged to lay down his arms, December 22. When suing for peace he pledged himself to extirpate heresy and to punish the assassins of Avignonet with an effusiveness which shows the importance attached to these conditions. The sagacity and moderation of King Louis granted him easy terms, but one of the stipulations of settlement was that every male inhabitant over the age of fifteen should take an oath to assist the Church against heresy, and the king against Raymond, in case of another revolt. Thus the purity of the faith and the supremacy of the foreign domination were once again recognized as inseparably allied.[43]
The triumph of both had been secured. This ended the last serious effort of the South to recover its independence. Henceforth, under the treaty of Paris, it was to pass irrevocably into the hands of the stranger, and the Inquisition was to have unrestricted opportunity to enforce conformity in religion. It was in vain that Raymond again, at the Council of Béziers, April 20, 1243, summoned the bishops of his dominions—those of Toulouse, Agen, Cahors, Albi, and Rodez—urging them personally or through proper deputies, whether Cistercians, Dominicans, or Franciscans, to make diligent inquisition after heresy, and pledged the assistance of the secular arm for its extirpation. It was equally in vain that, immediately on the accession of Innocent IV., in June, a deputation of Dominicans, frightened by the warning of Avignonet, earnestly alleged many reasons why the dangerous burden should be lifted from their shoulders. The pope peremptorily refused, and ordered them to continue their holy labors, even at the risk of martyrdom.[44]
Despite this single exhibition of hesitation and weakness, the Order was not lacking in men whose eager fanaticism rendered them fully prepared to accept the perilous post. The peril, indeed, was apparent rather than real—it had passed away in the revulsion which followed the useless bloodshed of Avignonet and the failure of Raymond’s rebellion. There was a rising tide in favor of orthodoxy. A confraternity organized in October, 1243, by Durand, Bishop of Albi, is probably only the expression of what was going on in many places. Organized under the protection of St. Cecilia, the members of the association pledged themselves not only to mutual protection, but to aid the bishop to execute justice on heretics, Vaudois and their fautors, and to defend inquisitors as they would their own bodies. Any member suspected of heresy was to be incontinently ejected, and a reward of a silver mark was offered for every heretic captured and delivered to the association. The new pope had, moreover, spoken in no uncertain tone. His refusal to relieve the Dominicans was accompanied with a peremptory command to all the prelates of the region to extend favor, assistance, and protection to the inquisitors in their toils and tribulations. Any slackness in this was freely threatened with the papal vengeance, while favor was significantly promised as the reward of zeal. The Dominicans were urged to fresh exertion to overcome the threatened recrudescence of heresy. A new legate, Zoen, Bishop-elect of Avignon, was also despatched to Languedoc, with instructions to act vigorously. His predecessor had been complained of by the inquisitors for having, in spite of their remonstrances, released many of their prisoners and remitted penances indiscriminately. All such acts of misplaced mercy were pronounced void, and Zoen was ordered to reimpose all such penalties without appeal.[45]
Still more menacing to the heretic cause was the reconciliation at last effected between Raymond and the papacy. In September, 1243, the count visited Italy, where he had an interview with Frederic II. in Apulia, and with Innocent in Rome. For ten yearshe had been under excommunication, and had carried on an unavailing struggle. He could no longer cherish illusions, and was doubtless ready to give whatever assurances might be required of him. On the other hand, the new pope was free from the predispositions which the long strife had engendered in Gregory IX. There seems to have been little difficulty in reaching an understanding, to which the good offices of Louis IX. powerfully contributed. December 2, Raymond was released from his various excommunications; January 1, 1244, the absolution was announced to King Louis and the prelates of the kingdom, who were ordered to publish it in all the churches, and January 7 the Legate Zoen was instructed to treat him with fatherly affection and not permit him to be molested. In all this absolution had only been givenad cautelam, or provisionally, for a special excommunication had been decreed against him as a fautor of heretics, after the massacre of Avignonet, by the inquisitors Ferrer and Guillem Raymond. Against this he had made a special appeal to the Holy See in April, 1243, and a special bull of May 16, 1244, was required for its abrogation. No conditions seem to have been imposed respecting the long-deferred crusade, and thenceforth Raymond lived in perfect harmony with the Holy See. Indeed, he was the recipient of many favors. A bull of March 18, 1244, granted him the privilege that for five years he should not be forced by apostolic letters to answer in judgment outside of his own dominions; another of April 27, 1245, took him, his family, and lands under the special protection of St. Peter and the papacy; and yet another of May 12, 1245, provided that no delegate of the Apostolic See should have power to utter excommunication or any other sentence against him without a special mandate. Besides this, one of April 21, 1245, imposed some limitations on the power of inquisitors, limitations which they seem never to have observed. Raymond was fairly won over. He had evidently resolved to accommodate himself to the necessities of the time, and the heretic had nothing further to hope or the inquisitor to fear from him. The preparation for increased and systematic vigor of operations is seen in the elaborate provisions, so often referred to above, of the Council of Narbonne, held at this period.[46]
Yet so long as heresy retained the stronghold of Montségur as a refuge and rallying-point its secret and powerful organization could not be broken. The capture of that den of outlaws was a necessity of the first order, and as soon as the confusion of the rebellion of 1242 had subsided it was undertaken as a crusade, not by Raymond, but by the Archbishop of Narbonne, the Bishop of Albi, the Seneschal of Carcassonne, and some nobles, either led by zeal or by the hope of salvation. The heretics, on their side, were not idle. Some baillis of Count Raymond sent them Bertrand de la Bacalairia, a skilful maker of military engines, to aid them in the defence, who made no scruple in affirming that he came with the assent of the count, and from every side money, provisions, arms, and munitions of war were poured into the stronghold. In the spring of 1243 the siege began, prosecuted with indefatigable ardor by the besiegers, and resisted with desperate resolution by the besieged. As in the old combats at Toulouse, the women assisted their warriors, and the venerable Catharan bishop, Bertrand Martin, animated their devoted courage with promises of eternal bliss. It is significant of the public temper that sympathizers in the besiegers’’ camp permitted tolerably free communication between the besieged and their friends, and gave them warning of the plans of attack. Even the treasure which had been stored up in Montségur was conveyed away safely through the investing lines, about Christmas, 1243, to Pons Arnaud de Châteauverdun in the Savartès. Secret relations were maintained with Count Raymond, and the besieged were buoyed up with promises that if they would hold out until Easter, 1244, he would march to their relief with forces supplied by the Emperor Frederic II. It was all in vain. The siege dragged on its weary length for nearly a year, till, on the night of March 1, 1244, guided by some shepherds who betrayed their fellow-countrymen, by almost inaccessible paths among the cliffs, the crusaders surprised and carried one of the outworks. The castle was no longer tenable. A brief parley ensued, and the garrison agreed to surrender at dawn, delivering up to the archbishop all the perfected heretics among them,on condition that the lives of the rest should be spared. Although a few were let down from the walls with ropes and thus escaped, the capitulation was carried out, and the archbishop’s shrift was short. At the foot of the mountain-peak an enclosure of stakes was formed, piled high with wood, and set on fire. The Perfect were asked to renounce their faith, and on their refusal were cast into the flames. Thus perished two hundred and five men and women. The conquerors might well write exultingly to the pope, “We have crushed the head of the dragon!”[47]
Although the lives of the rest of the captives were guaranteed, they were utilized to the utmost. For months the inquisitors Ferrer and P. Durant devoted themselves to the examinations to secure evidence against heretics far and near, dead and alive. From the aged Raymond de Péreille to a child ten years of age, they were forced, under repeated interrogatories, to recall every case of adoration and heretication that they could remember, and page after page was covered with interminable lists of names of those present at sermons andconsolamentathrough a period extending back to thirty or forty years before, and embracing the whole land as far as Catalonia. Even those who had brought victual to Montségur and sold it were carefully looked after and set down. It can readily be conceived what an accession was made to the terrible records of the Inquisition, and how valuable was the insight obtained into the ramifications of heresy throughout the land during more than a generation—what digging up of bones would follow with confiscation of estates, and with what unerring certainty the inquisitors would be able to seize their victims and confound their denials. We can only guess at the means by which this information was extracted from the prisoners. Torture had not yet been introduced; life had been promised, and perpetual imprisonment was inevitable for such pronounced heretics; and when we see Raymond de Péreille himself, who had endured unflinchingly the vicissitudes of the crusades, and had bravely held out to the last, ransacking his memory to betray all whom he had ever seen adore a minister, we can imagine the horrors of the twomonths’’ preliminary captivity which had so broken his spirit as to bring him to this depth of degradation. Even a perfected heretic, Arnaud de Bretos, captured while flying to Lombardy, was induced to reveal the names of all who had given him shelter and attended his ministrations during his missionary wanderings.[48]
Henceforth the Cathari could hope only in God. All chance of resistance was over. One by one their supports had broken, and there was only left the passive resistance of martyrdom. The Inquisition could track and seize its victims at leisure, and king and count could follow with decrees of confiscation which were gradually to transfer the lands of the South to orthodox and loyal subjects. The strongest testimony that can be given to the living earnestness of the Catharan faith is to be found in the prolongation of this struggle yet through three hopeless generations. It is no wonder, however, if the immediate effect of these crowding events was to fill the heretics with despair. In the poem of Isarn de Villemur, written about this period, the heretic, Sicard de Figueras is represented as saying that their best and most trusted friends are turning against them and betraying them. How many believers at this juncture abandoned their religion, even at the cost of lifelong imprisonment, we have no means of accurately estimating, but the number must have been enormous, to judge from the request, already alluded to, of the Council of Narbonne about this time to the inquisitors to postpone their sentences in view of the impossibility of building prisons sufficient to contain the crowds who hurried in to accuse themselves and seek reconciliation, after the expiration of the time of grace, which Innocent IV., in December, 1243, had ordered to be designated afresh.[49]
Yet, in a population so thoroughly leavened with heresy, these thousands of voluntary penitents still left an ample field of activity for the zeal of the inquisitors. Each one who confessed was bound to give the names of all whom he had seen engaged in heretical acts, and of all who had been hereticated on the death-bed. Innumerable clews were thus obtained to bring to trial those who failed to accuse themselves, and to exhume and burn the bones of those who were beyond the ability to recant. For the next fewyears the life of the inquisitors was a busy one. The stunned populations no longer offered resistance, and grew used to the despair of the penitents sentenced to perpetual prison, the dragging of decomposed corpses through the streets, and the horror of the Tophets where the victims passed through temporal to eternal flame. Still there is a slight indication that the service was not wholly without danger from the goadings of vengeance or the courage of despair, when the Council of Béziers, in 1246, ordering travelling inquests, makes exception in the cases when it may not be safe for the inquisitors to personally visit the places where the inquisition should be held; and Innocent IV., in 1247, authorizes the inquisitors to cite the accused to come to them, in view of the perils arising from the ambushes of heretics.[50]
The fearless and indefatigable men who now performed the functions of inquisitor in Languedoc can rarely have taken advantage of this concession to weakness. Bernard de Caux, who so well earned the title of the hammer of heretics, was at this time the leading spirit of the Inquisition of Toulouse, after a term of service in Montpellier and Agen, and he had for colleague a kindred spirit in Jean de Saint-Pierre. Together they made a thorough inquest over the whole province, passing the population through a sieve with a completeness which must have left few guilty consciences unexamined. There is extant a fragmentary record of this inquest, covering the years 1245 and 1246, during which no less than six hundred places were investigated, embracing about one half of Languedoc. The magnitude of the work thus undertaken, and the incredible energy with which it was pushed, is seen in the enormous number of interrogatories recorded in petty towns. Thus at Avignonet there are two hundred and thirty; at Fanjoux, one hundred; at Mas-Saintes-Puelles, four hundred and twenty. M. Molinier, to whom we are indebted for an account of this interesting document, has not made an accurate count of the whole number of cases, but estimates that the total cannot fall far short of eight thousand to ten thousand. When we consider what all this involved in the duty of examination and comparison we may well feel wonder at the superhuman energy of these founders of the Inquisition; but we may also assume, aswith the sentences of Pierre Cella, that the fate of the victims who were sifted out of this mass of testimony must have been passed upon with no proper or conscientious scrutiny. At least, however, they must have escaped the long and torturing delays customary in the later and more leisurely stages of the Inquisition. With such a record before us it is not easy to understand the complaint of the bishops of Languedoc, in 1245, that the Inquisition was too merciful, that heresy was increasing, and that the inquisitors ought to be urged to greater exertions. It was possibly in consequence of the lack of harmony thus revealed between the episcopate and the Inquisition that Innocent, in April of the same year, ordered the Inquisitors of Languedoc to proceed as usual in cases of manifest heresy, and in those involving slight punishment, while he directed them to suspend proceedings in matters requiring imprisonment, crosses, long pilgrimages, and confiscation until definite rules should be laid down in the Council of Lyons, which he was about to open. These questions, however, were settled in that of Béziers, which met in 1246, and issued a new code of procedure.[51]
In all this Count Raymond, now thoroughly fitted in the Catholic groove, was an earnest participant. As his stormy life drew to its close, harmony with the Church was too great an element of comfort and prosperity for him to hesitate in purchasing it with the blood of a few of his subjects, whom, indeed, he could scarce have saved had he so willed. He gave conspicuous evidence of his hatred of heresy. In 1247 he ordered his officials to compel the attendance of the inhabitants at the sermons of the friars in all towns and villages through which they passed, and in 1249, at Berlaiges, near Agen, he coldly ordered the burning of eighty believers who had confessed their errors in his presence—a piece of cruelty far transcending that habitual with the inquisitors. About the same time King Jayme of Aragon effected a change in the Inquisition in the territories of Narbonne. Possibly this may have had some connection with the murder by the citizens of twoofficials of the Inquisition and the destruction of its records, giving endless trouble in the effort to reconstruct the lists of sentences and the invaluable accumulation of evidence against suspects. Be this as it may, Innocent IV., at the request of the king, forbade the archbishop and inquisitors from further proceedings against heresy, and then empowered the Dominican Provincial of Spain and Raymond of Pennaforte to appoint new ones for the French possessions of Aragon.[52]
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 hewas 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. Hithertothere 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 RaymondMercier, 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 taxthe 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 disinheritedknights, thefaidits, 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 andmost 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 thecoup de grâceto 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 notcondone 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 violentdespotisms, 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]
In 1271 Alphonse and Jeanne, who had accompanied St. Louis in his unlucky crusade to Tunis, died without issue, during the homeward journey. The line of Raymond was thus extinct, and the land passed irrevocably to the crown. Philippe le Hardi took possession even of the territories which Jeanne had endeavored, as was her right, to alienate by will, and though he surrendered the Agenois to Henry III., he succeeded in retaining Querci. No opposition was made to the change of masters. When, October 8, 1271, Guillaume de Cobardon, royal Seneschal of Carcassonne, issued his orders regulating the newrégime, one of the first things thought of was the confiscations. All castles and villages which had been forfeited for heresy were taken into the king’s hand, without prejudice to the right of those to whom they might belong, thus throwing the burden of proof upon all claimants, and cutting out assigns under alienations. In 1272 Philippe paid a visit to his new territories; it was designed to be peaceful, but some violences committed by Roger Bernard IV. of Foix caused him to come at the head of an army, with which he easily overcame the resistance of the count, occupied his lands, and threw him into a dungeon. Released in 1273, the count in 1276 rendered such assistance in theinvasion of Navarre that Philippe took him into favor and restored his castles, on his renouncing all allegiance to Aragon. Thus the last show of independence in the South was broken down, and the monarchy was securely planted on its ruins.[62]
This consolidation of the south of France under the kings of Paris was not without compensating advantages. The monarch was rapidly acquiring a centralized power, which was very different from the overlordship of a feudal suzerain. The study of the Roman law was beginning to bear fruit in the State as well as in the Church, and the imperial theories of absolutism as inherent in kingship were gradually altering all the old relations. The king’s court was expanding into the Parlement, and was training a school of subtle and resolute civil lawyers who lost no opportunity of extending the royal jurisdiction, and of legislating for the whole land in the guise of rendering judgments. In the appeals which came ever more thickly crowding into the Parlement from every quarter, the mailed baron found himself hopelessly entangled in the legal intricacies which were robbing him of his seignorial rights almost without his knowledge; and the Ordonnances, or general laws, which emanated from the throne, were constantly encroaching on old privileges, weakening local jurisdictions, and giving to the whole country a body of jurisprudence in which the crown combined both the legislative and the executive functions. If it thus was enabled to oppress, it was likewise stronger to defend, while the immense extension of the royal domains since the beginning of the century gave it the physical ability to enforce its growing prerogatives.
It was impossible that this metamorphosis in the national institutions could be effected without greatly modifying the relations between Church and State. Thus even the saintliness of Louis IX. did not prevent him from defending himself and his subjects from ecclesiastical domination in a spirit very different from that which any French monarch had ventured to exhibit since the days of Charlemagne. The change became still more manifest under his grandson, Philippe le Bel. Though but seventeen years of age when he succeeded to the throne in 1286, his rare ability and vigoroustemper soon led him to assert the royal power in incisive fashion. He recognized, within the boundaries of his kingdom, no superior, secular or spiritual. Had he entertained any scruples of conscience, his legal counsellors could easily remove them. To such men as Pierre Flotte and Guillaume de Nogaret the true position of the Church was that of subjection to the State, as it had been under the successors of Constantine, and in their eyes Boniface VIII. was to their master scarce more than Pope Vigilius had been to Justinian. Few among the revenges of time are more satisfying than the catastrophe of Anagni, in 1303, when Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna laid hands on the vicegerent of God, and Boniface passionately replied to Nogaret’s reproaches, “I can patiently endure to be condemned and deposed by a Patarin”—for Nogaret was born at St. Felix de Caraman, and his ancestors were said to have been burned as Cathari. If this be true he must have been more than human if he did not feel special gratification when, at command of his master, he appeared before Clement V. with a formal accusation of heresy against Boniface, and demanded that the dead pope’s bones be dug up and burned. The citizens of Toulouse recognized him as an avenger of their wrongs when they placed his bust in the gallery of their illustrious men in the Hôtel-de-ville.[63]
It was to the royal power, thus rising to supremacy, that the people instinctively turned for relief from the inquisitorial tyranny which was becoming insupportable. The authority lodged in the hands of the inquisitor was so arbitrary and irresponsible that even with the purest intentions it could not but be unpopular, while to the unworthy it afforded unlimited opportunity for oppression and the gratification of the basest passions. Dangerous as was any manifestation of discontent, the people of Albi and Carcassonne, reduced to despair by the cruelty of the inquisitors, Jean Galande and Jean Vigoureux, mustered courage, and in 1280 presented their complaints to Philippe le Hardi. It was difficult tosustain their charges with specific proofs, and after a brief investigation their reiterated requests for relief were dismissed as frivolous. In the agitation against the Inquisition thus commenced, it must be borne in mind that heretics had little to do. By this time they were completely cowed and were quite satisfied if they could enjoy their faith in secret. The opposition arose from good Catholics, the magistrates of cities and substantial burghers, who saw the prosperity of the land withering under the deadly grasp of the Holy Office, and who felt that no man was safe whose wealth might arouse cupidity or whose independence might provoke revenge. The introduction of the use of torture impressed the popular imagination with special horror, and it was widely believed that confessions were habitually extorted by insufferable torment from rich men whose faith was unblemished. The cruel provisions which brought confiscation on the descendants of heretics, moreover, were peculiarly hard to endure, for ruin impended over every one against whom the inquisitor might see fit to produce from his records evidence of ancestral heresy. It was against these records that the next attempt was directed. Foiled in their appeal to the throne, the consuls of Carcassonne and some of its prominent ecclesiastics, in 1283 or 1284, formed a conspiracy to destroy the books of the Inquisition containing the confessions and depositions. How far this was organized it would be difficult now to say. The statements of the witnesses conflict so hopelessly on material points, even as to dates, that there is little dependence to be placed on them. They were evidently extracted under torture, and if they are credible the consuls of the city and the archdeacon, Sanche Morlana, the episcopal Ordinary, Guillem Brunet, other episcopal officials and many of the secular clergy were not only implicated in the plot, but were heretics in full affiliation with the Cathari. Whether true or false they show that there was the sharpest antagonism between the Inquisition and the local Church. The whole has an air of unreality which renders one doubtful about accepting any portion, but there must have been some foundation for the story. According to the evidence Bernard Garric, who had been a perfected heretic and afilius major, but had been converted and was now a familiar of the Inquisition, was selected as the instrument. He was approached, and after some bargaining he agreed to deliver thebooks for two hundred livres Tournois, for the payment of which the consuls went security. How the attempt failed and how it was discovered does not appear, but probably Bernard at the first overtures confided the plot to his superiors and led on the conspirators to their ruin.[64]
The whole community was now at the mercy of the Inquisition, and it was not disposed to be lenient in its triumph. While the trials were yet going on, the citizens made a fresh appeal to Pierre Chalus, the royal chancellor, who was passing through Toulouse on a mission from the court of Paris to that of Aragon. This was easily disposed of, for on September 13, 1285, the inquisitors triumphantly brought before him Bernard Garric to repeat the confession made a week previous. He had thoroughly learned his lesson, and the only conclusion which the royal representative could reach was that Carcassonne was a hopeless nest of heretics, deserving the severest measures of repression. As a last resort recourse was had to Honorius IV., but the only result was a brief from him to the inquisitors expressing his grief that the people of Carcassonne should be impeding the Inquisition with all their strength, and ordering the punishment of the recalcitrants irrespective of their station, order, or condition, an expression which shows that the opposition had not arisen from heretics.[65]
In reply to these complaints the inquisitors could urge with some truth that heresy, though hidden, was still busy. Although heretic seigneurs and nobles had been by this time well-nigh destroyed and their lands had passed to others, there was still infection among the bourgeoisie of the cities and the peasantry. It is one of the noteworthy features of Catharism, moreover, that atno time during its existence were lacking earnest and devoted ministers, who took their lives in their hands and wandered around in secret among the faithful, administering spiritual comfort and instruction, making converts where they could, exhorting the young and hereticating the old. In toil and hardship and peril they pursued their work, gliding by night from one place of concealment to another, and their self-devotion was rivalled by that of their disciples. Few more touching narratives can be conceived than those which could be constructed from the artless confessions extorted from the peasant-folk who fell into the hands of the inquisitors—the humble alms which they gave, pieces of bread, fish, scraps of cloth, or small coins, the hiding-places which they constructed in their cabins, the guidance given by night through places of danger, and, more than all, the steadfast fidelity which refused to betray their pastors when the inquisitor suddenly appeared and offered the alternative of free pardon or the dungeon and confiscation. The self-devotion of the minister was well matched with the quiet heroism of the believer. To this fidelity and the complete network of secret organization which extended over the land may be attributed the marvellously long exemption which many of these ministers enjoyed in their proselyting missions. Two of the most prominent of them at this period, Raymond Delboc and Raymond Godayl, or Didier, had already, in 1276, been condemned by the Inquisition of Carcassonne as perfected heretics and fugitives, but they kept at their work until the explosion of 1300, incessantly active, with the inquisitors always in pursuit but unable to overtake them. Guillem Pagès is another whose name constantly recurs in the confessions of heretications during an almost equally long period. The inquisitors might well urge that their utmost efforts were needed, but their methods were such that even the best intentions would not have saved the innocent from suffering with the guilty.[66]
The secretly guilty were quite sufficiently influential, and the innocent sufficiently apprehensive, to keep up the agitation which had been commenced, and at last it began to bear fruit. A new inquisitor of Carcassonne, Nicholas d’Abbeville, was quite as crueland arbitrary as his predecessors, and when the people prepared an appeal to the king he promptly threw into jail the notary who drew up the paper. In their desperation they disregarded this warning; a deputation was sent to the court, and this time they were listened to. May 13, 1291, Philippe addressed a letter to his Seneschal of Carcassonne reciting the injuries inflicted by the Inquisition on the innocent through the newly-invented system of torture, by means of which the living and the dead were fraudulently convicted and the whole land scandalized and rendered desolate. The royal officials were therefore ordered no longer to obey the commands of the inquisitors in making arrests, unless the accused be a confessed heretic or persons worthy of faith vouch for his being publicly defamed for heresy. A month later he reiterated these orders even more precisely, and announced his intention of sending deputies to Languedoc armed with full authority to make permanent provision in the matter. It is impossible to exaggerate the importance of these manifestoes as marking a new era in the relations between the temporal and spiritual authorities. For far less than this all the chivalry and scum of Europe had been promised salvation if they would drive Raymond of Toulouse from his inheritance.[67]
It was probably to break in some degree the force of this unheard-of interference with inquisitorial supremacy that in September, 1292, Guillem de Saint-Seine, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, ordered all the parish priests in his district for three weeks onSundays and feast-days to denounce as excommunicate all who should impede the business of the Inquisition and all notaries who should wickedly draw up revocations of confessions for heretics. This could not effect much, nor was anything accomplished by a Parlement held April 14, 1293, at Montpellier, by the royal chamberlain, Alphonse de Ronceyrac, of all the royal officials and inquisitors of Toulouse and Carcassonne to reform the abuses of all jurisdictions.[68]
Shortly after this, in September, 1293, Philippe went a step further and threw his ægis over the unfortunate Jew. Although Jews as a class were not liable to persecution by the Inquisition, still, if after being once converted they reverted to Judaism, or if they proselyted among Christians to obtain converts, or if they were themselves converts from Christianity, they were heretics in the eyes of the Church, they fell under inquisitorial jurisdiction, and were liable to be abandoned to the secular arm. All these classes were a source of endless trouble to the Church, especially the “neophytes” or converted Jews, for feigned conversions were frequent, either for worldly advantage or to escape the incessant persecution visited upon the unlucky children of Israel.[69]The bullTurbato corde, ordering the inquisitors to be active and vigilant in prosecuting all who were guilty of these offences, issued in 1268 by Clement IV., was reissued by successive popes with a pertinacity showing the importance attached to it, and when we see Frère Bertrand de la Roche, in 1274, officially described as inquisitor in Provence against heretics and wicked Christians whoembrace Judaism, and Frère Guillaume d’Auxerre, in 1285, qualified as “Inquisitor of Heretics and Apostate Jews in France,” it is evident that these cases formed a large portion of inquisitorial business. As the Jews were peculiarly defenceless, this jurisdiction gave wide opportunity for abuse and extortion which was doubtless turned fully to account. Philippe owed them protection, for in 1291 he had deprived them of their own judges and ordered them to plead in the royal courts, and now he proceeded to protect them in the most emphatic manner. To Simon Brisetête, Seneschal of Carcassonne, he sent a copy of the bullTurbato corde, with instructions that while this was to be implicitly obeyed, no Jew was to be arrested for any cause not specified therein, and, if there was any doubt, the matter was to be referred to the royal council. He further enclosed an Ordonnance directing that no Jew in France was to be arrested on the requisition of any person or friar of any Order, no matter what his office might be, without notifying the seneschal or bailli, who was to decide whether the case was sufficiently clear to be acted upon without reference to the royal council. Simon Brisetête thereupon ordered all officials to defend the Jews, not to allow any exactions to be imposed on them whereby their ability to pay their taxes might be impaired, and not to arrest them at the mandate of any one without informing him of the cause. It would not have been easy to limit more skilfully the inquisitorial power to oppress a despised class.[70]
Philippe had thus intervened in the most decided manner, and the oppressed populations of Languedoc might reasonably hope for permanent relief, but his subsequent policy belied their hopes. It vacillated in a manner which is only partially explicable by theshifting political exigencies of the times so far as we can penetrate them. In this same year, 1293, the Seneschal of Carcassonne is found instructing Aimeric, the Viscount of Narbonne, to execute royal letters ordering aid to be rendered to the inquisitors there. This may have been a mere local matter, and Philippe, for a while at least, adhered to his position. Towards the end of 1295 there was issued an Ordonnance of the royal court, applicable to the whole kingdom, forbidding the arrest of any one on the demand of a friar of any Order, no matter what his position might be, unless the seneschal or bailli of the jurisdiction was satisfied that the arrest should be made, and the person asking it showed a commission from the pope. This was sent to all the royal officials with strict injunctions to obey it, although, if the accused were likely to fly, he might be detained, but not surrendered until the decision of the court could be had. Moreover, if any persons were then in durance contrary to the provisions of the Ordonnance, they were to be set at liberty. Even this did not effect its object sufficiently, and a few months later, in 1296, Philippe complained to his Seneschal of Carcassonne of the numbers who were arrested by the royal officers, and confined in the royal prisons on insufficient grounds, causing scandal and the heavy infliction of infamy on the innocent. To prevent this arrests were forbidden except in cases of such violent presumption of heresy that they could not be postponed, and the officials were instructed, when called upon by the inquisitors, to make such excuses as they could. These orders were obeyed, for when, about this time, Foulques de Saint-Georges, Vice-inquisitor of Carcassonne, ordered the arrest of sundry suspects by Adam de Marolles, the deputy seneschal, the latter referred the matter to his principal, Henri de Elisia, who, after consultation with Robert d’Artois, lieutenant of the king in Languedoc and Gascony, refused the demand.[71]
No previous sovereign had ventured thus to trammel the Inquisition. These regulations, in fact, rendered it virtually powerless, for it had no organization of its own; even its prisons were the king’s and might be withdrawn at any time, and it dependedwholly upon the secular arm for physical force. In some places, as at Albi, it might rely upon episcopal assistance, but elsewhere it could do nothing of itself. Philippe had, moreover, been careful not to excite the ill-will of his bishops, for his Ordonnances and instructions alluded simply to the friars, thus excluding the Inquisition from royal aid without specifically naming it. His quarrel with Boniface VIII. was now beginning. Between January, 1296, and February, 1297, appeared the celebrated bullsClericis laicos,Ineffabilis amoris,Excitat nos, andExiit a te, whose arrogant encroachments on the secular power aroused him to resistance, and this doubtless gave a sharper zest to his desire to diminish in his dominions the authority of so purely papal an institution as the Inquisition. So shrewd a prince could readily see its effectiveness as an instrument of papal aggression, for the Church could make what definition it pleased of heresy; and Boniface did not hesitate to give him fair warning, when, in October, 1297, he ordered the Inquisitor of Carcassonne to proceed against certain officials of Béziers who had rendered themselves in the papal eyes suspect of heresy because they remained under excommunication, incurred for imposing taxes on the clergy, boasting that food had not lost its savor to them nor sleep its sweetness, and who, moreover, dared with polluted lips to revile the Holy See itself. Under such an extension of jurisdiction Philippe himself might not be safe, and it is no wonder that tentative efforts made in 1296 and 1297 to find some method of reconciling the recent royal Ordonnances with the time-honored absolutism of the Inquisition proved failures.[72]
Meanwhile, the exigencies of Italian politics caused Boniface suddenly to retrace his steps. His quarrel with the Cardinals Giacomo and Pietro Colonna rendered it advisable to propitiate Philippe. In May, 1297, he assented to a tithe conceded to the king by his bishops, and in the bullNoveritis(July, 1297) he exempted France from the operation of theClericis laicos, while inLicet per speciales(July, 1298) he withdrew his arrogant pretension imperatively to prolong the armistice between France andEngland. A truce was thus patched up with Philippe, who hastened to manifest his good-will to the Holy See by abandoning his subjects again to the inquisitors. In the Liber Sextus of the Decretals, published by Boniface March 3, 1298, the pope included, with customary imperiousness, a canon commanding the absolute obedience of all secular officials to the orders of inquisitors under penalty of excommunication, which if endured for a year carried with it condemnation for heresy. This was his answer to the French monarch’s insubordinate legislation, and Philippe at the moment was not inclined to contest the matter. In September he meekly enclosed the canon to his officials with instructions to obey it in every point, arresting and imprisoning all whom inquisitors or bishops might designate, and punishing all whom they might condemn. A letter of Frère Arnaud Jean, Inquisitor of Pamiers, dated March 2, of the same year, assuring the Jews that they need dread no novel measures of severity, would seem to indicate that the royal protection had been previously withdrawn from them. The good understanding between king and pope lasted until 1300, when the quarrel broke out afresh with greater acrimony than ever. In December of that year the provisions ofClericis laicoswere renewed by the bullNuper ex rationalibus, followed by the short one, of which the authenticity is disputed,Scire te volumus, asserting Philippe’s subjection in temporal affairs and calling forth his celebrated rejoinder,Sciat tua maxima fatuitas. The strife continued with increasing violence till the seizure of Boniface at Anagni, September 8, 1303, and his death in the following month.[73]