The Friar of Carcassonne (28 page)

The inquisition in the two decades to follow was unstoppable. Succeeding and surpassing the work of Gui and d'Ablis, Bishop Jacques Fournier brought a methodical, almost sociological approach to interrogation out of what was obviously a passion for prosecution. The bishop, a corpulent man of the south with boundless energy, seems to have been more interested in getting convictions than in handing down sentences, given his occasional leniency toward those found guilty. Nonetheless, his see, Pamiers, once notorious for sedition under Bernard Saisset, became even more notorious as the center of a rapacious dragnet that no one could escape. The inhabitants of the mountain village of Montaillou had successfully pulled the wool over D'Ablis' eyes about the extent of their heretical leanings; not so with Fournier, who revived the investigation to reveal that the entire town was Cathar, even the curé. That proceeding has come down to us because the transcripts of Fournier's activities survived in the archives of the Vatican—the brilliant, ruthless bishop eventually became an Avignon pope, Benedict XII.

Thanks to Fournier's remarkable industry, the remaining network of Cathar sympathizers was painstakingly dismantled, as informants and spies thrived under the bishop's generous stewardship. Even those who were orthodox yet refused to turn in their heretical neighbors fell afoul of his tribunal. “I did nothing to denounce them,” one Catholic protested to Fournier, “because they did no harm to me.” The man was jailed. And the last Good Man of Languedoc was lured across the Pyrenees from his safe house far to the south, beyond Tarragona, by a sleeper Fournier operative who had lived among the émigré Cathar faithful there for more than a year. The Good Man was burned in 1321.
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After Fournier shut down his machine five years later, there were no further convictions for heresy in the diocese of Pamiers. This can be ascribed either to the complete extermination of Cathar belief or to his successors' willingness to leave well enough alone. If the experience of Albi is any indication, where Bishop de Castanet's last frenetic inquisition of 1300 was succeeded by a judicial flatline toward heresy, we can assume that the blessings of peace to descend on Pamiers had less to do with the disappearance of residual spiritual disagreement than with the departure of a driven prosecutor.

On the coast, events moved inexorably to a conclusion through the departures of the great, rather than by the burning conviction of a few gifted inquisitors. The pivotal moment came on April 20, 1314, when Pope Clement V passed away. As if to explain how the disease-ridden old man had managed to hang on for so long, a debunked but still tantalizing historical legend attributes his death to a curse that Jacques de Molay, the last Templar Grand Master, had shouted out six weeks earlier as the fire roared beneath his feet on an island in the Seine—within the year, the expiring Knight howled, those responsible for this murder most foul would themselves be dead. Clement promptly obliged, as did Philip the Fair, on November 29, 1314, following a stroke while out hunting in Picardy. The last great Capetian monarch left a country soon to be visited by war, disease, and famine as the disastrous fourteenth century progressed. Jacques de Molay's greatest nemesis, Guillaume de Nogaret, had died in the year preceding the apocryphal curse, carried off by some revolting illness that resulted in a death rictus unusual for the way the tongue of the deceased was found sticking far out of his mouth. Whether supernatural in character or not, the disappearance of these three figures ushered in a time of great peril for the Spirituals, and in particular for Bernard Délicieux, who had lost support in court and curia.

The jockeying to choose Clement's successor lasted twenty-seven months, an indecorous pageant of riotous assembly and sordid deal making. The man who at last emerged from the fray was Jacques Duèse, who secured election as John XXII by promising skittish Italian cardinals to move the papacy back to Rome and assuring the conclave as a whole that, as pope, he would defer to their decisions. Of course he had no intention of keeping these promises. A man of Cahors, a town that in medieval times was synonymous with wealth and banking, John immediately took a hard look at Church accounts to ensure sufficient revenues for his person and entourage. Although able, learned, and active as leader, the second Avignon pope embodied the entire episode of the curia's exile to the Rhône by embracing splendor throughout his pontificate, even to the very end. Inaugurating a new style for papal sarcophagi, John's costly mausoleum stands as a mini-cathedral of Gothic daring—its stone forest of spires and towers later to be likened by Renaissance critics to “quills upon a fretful porcupine.”

The new pope, above all else, wanted to put his house in order. Unlike Clement, whose adopted papal name befitted a man capable of compromise and forgiveness, John was impatient with division and disagreement—a trait of character that ensured him a rocky tenure riven with dissension. At the outset of his pontificate, no doubt exasperated by the clamor in the convents, he sought to bring the Spirituals to heel. A quiet phrase in a letter of 1317 summed up his view of the Franciscan imbroglio with deadly simplicity: “For poverty is good, and chastity is greater, but obedience is greatest of all.”

At the end of April 1317, the dread summons came. The friars of Béziers and Narbonne were to come to Avignon to explain themselves. The pope had heard distressing reports of disobedience from the head of the Franciscan order, a Conventual with no love for his the friar of carcassonne | 185 Spiritual brethren. During the vacancy of the Holy See, attempts to install Conventual abbots in the convents of Béziers and Narbonne had been met with assault and injury. The pope demanded to know what had happened.

The friars assembled for their journey, no doubt worried about the pope's intentions. Wisely, given his gifts, they chose Brother Bernard to be their spokesman. For his part, Bernard entrusted his few belongings to a notary of Béziers, in the event his sojourn in Avignon turned out to be protracted. He knew he was taking an enormous risk.

Fifty-four brothers traveled through Montpellier, Nîmes, and Arles en route to Avignon. At last they arrived at the famous bridge spanning one arm of the Rhône, late on Pentecost Sunday, 1317. The magnificent Palais des Papes that can be seen today was then still a twinkle in the eye of a venal curia, so the Languedoc Franciscans headed toward the door of the episcopal residence, where the pope had his headquarters. They were not admitted.

It was a warm night and the friars were in a state of nervous excitement. They decided to sleep out in the square before the bishop's palace. The following day, May 23, the men of Béziers and Narbonne were ushered into the pope's presence. The audience chamber was packed with great prelates and cardinals as Brother Bernard stepped forward to speak.

Two eyewitnesses left accounts of what happened next. The hostile witness, a Conventual, claimed that the famous Franciscan launched into an unreasonable and offensive tirade. The friendly witness, Angelo Clareno, a Spiritual, characterized Bernard's opening remarks as the sweet sound of reason and humility.

Which version of the event is correct matters not. Where the two men agree wholeheartedly is far more important. Both state that Bernard, early on, was interrupted. Many of his listeners stood up to hurl accusations and abuse at him. There was a storm of indignation, a collective shriek of protest. His past deeds were shouted out in anger; the pope was begged not to listen to the man. The audience turned tumultuous, out of control.

John XXII signaled his guards. He had a choice: calm the exercised or remove the source of their displeasure. The pope ordered his men to seize Brother Bernard Délicieux. He was to be escorted down to the dungeon, where chains and manacles awaited.

It had been a setup, a trap. As Bernard left the room, he may have turned back, in his very last instant as a free man, to see the triumphant smiles on the faces of his many enemies. The crows had come home to roost.

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There were other, competing traditions that divided history into a different number of ages.

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In the spring of 1304, Bernard predicted the death of Pope Benedict XI, which occurred in the summer of that year. In 1319, while being brought to Carcassonne for his trial, he predicted the early demise of Pope John XXII, who lived another dozen years. For the latter prediction he described to his captors a book of prophecy circulating among Spirituals.

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At about the same time as these upheavals in Christianity, the Jews of Languedoc, especially on the littoral north and south of Béziers, were engaged in developing the Kabbalah.

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The story exemplifies the poison spread by inquisition. The operative, Arnaud Sicre, agreed to undertake the treachery if Fournier would restore to him the property confiscated from his heretical mother, Sébélia Peyre, who was burned at the stake.

CHAPTER TWENTY

THE TRIAL

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LONE IN A DANK
, dark cell in the dungeons of Avignon, Brother Bernard was beyond the reach of the network of friendships and alliances deployed to protect him in the past. So many were dead and gone. Queen Joan and Jean de Picquigny had vanished long before. More recently, Pope Clement V, King Philip the Fair, and Guillaume de Nogaret had passed. Bernard's ally and Picquigny's colleague in reforming Languedoc, Richard Leveneu, was gone as well, his last miserable days spent as a leper in a lazaretto of Béziers—a fate that the reliably unpleasant Bernard Gui celebrated in his memoir. The allies remaining to the Franciscan, the prelates of the Fré-dol family of Béziers, no longer had a voice in the affairs of the Church, as Pope John XXII viewed their complaisance toward Bernard's Spiritual brethren as a badge of infamy. The leader of the Spirituals, Angelo Clareno, had fled to the relative safety of Italy. As for Bernard's two brilliant friends, Arnaud de Vilanova had drowned in a shipwreck off Genoa in 1311 and the ever mysterious Ramon Llull died two or three years later, in either Palma de Majorca or Tunis.

Though Bernard's enemies now had him under lock and key, the challenge lay in what to do with him, and who should do it. The friar had angered so many in the course of his career that any number of people were eager to rough him up. The Franciscans got to the head of the queue. One of the leaders of the Conventuals, Bonagratia de Bergamo, questioned and tortured Bernard throughout late 1317 on his relation to the Spirituals, over whom the cloud of heresy had now permanently settled. In 1318, while still an agonized captive in Avignon, Bernard heard that four of his companions who made the trip with him from Languedoc had been burned at the stake in Marseille. The inquisitor was Franciscan, his victims Franciscans.

Among the common people and, especially, the Beguins, news of the gruesome deed caused dismay. Burning a Cathar was one thing; killing a holy friar was quite another. Talk of martyrdom arose, of men who had embraced death rather than renounce their faith, like the saints of old who had sacrificed themselves before the brutish power of pagan Rome. No fool, the pope realized that he had to proceed more carefully from then on, and particularly in the case of Bernard Délicieux. Initial gloating over having landed such a big fish gave way to disquiet, for holding a prisoner of his stature came fraught with danger. Bernard's web of protection may have been shredded, but his reputation remained intact—and his name was known throughout the entire Midi and beyond, among people of all stations in life. All knew that were he to be burned on pettifogging charges of Franciscan misbehavior unlikely to be understood outside the overheated confines of the convent, Bernard Délicieux would remain as much a threat to authority in death as he ever had been in life.

Plans were made to snuff him out quietly—and in such a manner that no one could describe the process as a judicial murder or see its outcome as a martyrdom. Bernard's Conventual tormentor, Brother Bonagratia, was permitted to continue his cruel games with his captive, but the serious business of engineering the elimination of the prisoner was carried out elsewhere. The first step was taken by Bernard de Castanet, no longer the bishop of Albi but by then a respected member of the curia. During the last months of Cardinal de Castanet's life in 1317, he drew up the initial list of forty charges against his Franciscan foe. Subsequently, over a period that stretched for months, depositions and evidence were sought from different parties throughout Languedoc by roving papal investigators. A second, more comprehensive list of sixty-four charges was then compiled—by, it is believed, Bernard Gui. An expert in prosecution and a champion of vindictiveness, Gui crafted his charges carefully. By the spring of 1318, the dossiers were ready and the judges, called commissioners in the transcripts, had been chosen. A haggard Bernard was haled before a court in Avignon to answer to the charges on Gui's masterful list.

The Avignon investigation, unlike the subsequent and more thorough 1319 trial in Carcassonne, is not rich in documentation. We know some of its activities—particularly the reading into the record of Castanet's and Gui's lists of charges—because portions of the proceedings were folded into the larger transcripts of the later and final trial. What can be determined with certainty from the fragments is that the three commissioners—all middle-level clerics with careers to further—had mixed success with the defendant. His enemies seem to have forgotten that, among other things, he was a master tactician. Taking the measure of the monstrous machination that had been building against him during his year of harsh confinement, Bernard refused on numerous occasions to answer to the charges.