Chapter I: Languedoc (2)

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

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

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

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

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

Summarized, the record shows--

In Gourdon 219 sentences pronounced in Advent, 1241.
In Montcucq 84 " " " Lent, 1242.
In Sauveterre 5.
In Belcayre 7.
In Montauban 254 sentences pronounced in week before Ascension
(May 21-28, 1242).
In Moissac 99 " " " week of Ascension
(May 28-June 5, 1242).
In Montpezat 22 " " " Lent, 1242.
In Montaut 23 " " " " "
In Castelnau 11 " " " " "
---
Total 724

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

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

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

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

* * * * *

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

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

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

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

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

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