The Friar of Carcassonne (37 page)

*
it was clear whose show this was:
The argument of Christine Caldwell Ames'
Righteous Persecution
counters the defenders of the inquisitors in this matter. The
sermo
was the finale, the sacerdotal blessing given to the sacramental function of the entire
inquisitio
. The devout Dominican inquisitor would have absolutely no reason to assume the role of second fiddle at a burning. The whole point of the exercise was to show the workings of divine justice in saving souls—and in restoring integrity to the Christian community.

*
The relapsed heretic was a finger in the inquisitor's eye:
Bernard Gui's manual is particularly useful for its detailing of the form to follow in a
sermo
. The question of relapsed heretics also covered those Jews who had converted to Christianity but subsequently returned to Judaism. For them, Gui provided a standardized text to be used by other inquisitors in getting a Jew to denounce his reversion and return to Christianity. It was entitled: “Form of adjuration for those who renounced the treachery of the Jews for the faith of baptism and then returned to the vomit of Judaism.” Gui,
Inquisitor's Guide
, p. 164.

4. T
HE
U
NHOLY
R
ESISTANCE

*
“The development of [the] inquisitorial mentality”:
Ames,
Righteous
Persecution
, p. 4.

*
The inquisitor was dependent on the secular authorities:
Jean-Louis Biget,
Hérésie et inquisition dans le Midi de la France
, Paris, 2007, p. 194.

*
the inquisition in Languedoc lay in tatters:
The pontifical inquisition there was suspended entirely from 1248 to 1255.

*
a pope who needed the backing of Christendom's great lords, including
the count of Toulouse:
Indeed, the inquisition was suspended in Toulouse from about 1238 to 1241 as well. Yves Dossat,
Les crises de
l'Inquisition toulousaine au XIIIe siècle
, Bordeaux, 1959, pp. 137–145.

*
A shady demimonde:
Among the petty officers of the inquisition, instances of corruption and blackmail were not rare. All our historians attest to this, but to my mind the most eloquent testimony is that of the letter of the men of Carcassonne about the Wall quoted further on in this chapter.

*
developing medieval institutions:
Given takes pains to stress the imperfections of these institutions, which is a particularly useful observation, given the natural tendency to believe that whatever is found in a document faithfully reflects the reality on the ground. In
Inquisition
and Medieval Society
, Given notes: “Efforts to manipulate governing institutions like the inquisition were unique neither to the inquisition nor to Languedoc. Wherever the records allow us to examine the workings of medieval governing institutions, which were under construction in this period, we discover people busily at work influencing and exploiting them for their own ends. Manipulation of these organizations for purposes other than those for which they had been created was perhaps more the rule than the exception” (p. 163).

*
the warden . . . was found to be spectacularly corrupt:
Friedlander,
The Hammer
, pp. 20–21.

*
Raymond Gros:
On April 2, 1240, Gros appeared at the inquisition headquarters in Toulouse and announced that he was ready to talk. The inquisitors, conducting an investigation in Montauban, rushed back to Toulouse on hearing the news. His testimony implicated a great many, dead or alive, including his own son and father. Jörg Feuchter, “L'Inquisition de Toulouse: Perre Sellan (1234–1242), un vieillard expérimenté,” in Laurent Albaret, ed.,
Les Inquisiteurs: Portraits de défenseurs de la foi en
Languedoc (XIIIe––XIVe siècles)
, Toulouse, 2001, p. 51.

*
eventually eviscerate the remnants of heresy in that city:
J. H. Mundy,
The Repression of Catharism at Toulouse: The Royal Diploma of 1279
, Toronto, 1985, pp. 45–50.

*
Arnaud Cathala escaped within an inch of his life:
The story is graphically told by the Dominican chronicler Guillaume Pelhisson. Cathala was intent on disinterring a dead woman named Boyssene; Albi's royal magistrate, fearing a riot, refused to cooperate. So the headstrong Cathala went to the graveyard himself and set to work. The magistrate had been right: a mob of Albigeois attacked the inquisitor and another priest—a few of their more orthodox brethren then rescued the clergymen in a running street fight. One of the cries recorded by Pelhisson went more or less like this: “Let's cut off their heads, stuff 'em in a bag and toss it in the Tarn!” Cathala, once back in the safety of a church, promptly excommunicated everybody in sight. Guillaume Pelhisson,
Chronique (1229–1244) suivie du récit des
troubles à Albi
, ed. and trans. Jean Duvernoy, Paris, 1994, pp. 112–122. In English, Wakefield,
Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition
, pp. 226–228.

*
an old woman on her deathbed:
Apparently she was the mother-in-law of a Good Man, Peytavi Boursier. The Dominican bishop of Toulouse was Raymond de Fauga. Pelhisson,
Chronique
, pp. 59–65; Wakefield,
Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition
, pp. 215–16. I flesh out the appalling incident in O'Shea,
Perfect Heresy
, pp. 191–193.

*
hounds of the Lord had themselves been hounded out of town:
On the details of their humiliations, Pelhisson,
Chronique
, pp. 70–88. For a full treatment on all their tribulations, see Dossat,
Les crises.

*
Avignonet:
The massacre at Avignonet came as a major trauma to the party of the inquisition. In May 1244, two years after the event, a survivor of the fall of Montségur, Imbert de Salles, gave the most detailed account of the incident to the inquisitor Ferrer. It is well presented in Michel Roquebert,
Mourir à Montségur
, Toulouse, 1989, pp. 327–330. It's a corker of a story, with the leader of the commando seeking an inquisitor's skull as a drinking vessel, so it appears prominently in O'Shea,
Perfect Heresy
, pp. 207–210. The Dominicans, less impressed by the drama than by the martyrdom, have vainly tried to get these murdered inquisitors made saints over the centuries: Yves Dossat, “Le massacre d'Avignonet,”
Cahiers de Fanjeaux
, 6, 1971, pp. 356–358.

*
Etienne was to be the good cop:
On the belief that the Franciscans were the more humane of the two main orders of mendicants: Jean Duvernoy, ed. and trans.,
Guillaume de Puylaurens. Chronique; Chronica
magistri Guillelmi de Podio Laurentii
, Toulouse, 1996, p. 152.

*
three lawyers of Carcassonne:
Guilhem Garric, Guilhem Brunet, Raimond Costa. All three were prominent men; all may have had ties to heresy. It seems that Garric also had ties with Peire Autier, before the latter left for Italy to become a Good Man; see testimony of Sébelia Peyre and Arnaut Bédeilhac to the inquisitor/bishop Jacques Fournier, cited in Anne Brenon,
Pèire Autier, le dernier des cathares (1245–1310)
, Toulouse, 2006, p. 274. Both Garric and Brunet eventually ended up in the Wall for a decade or two, being able to buy themselves out of it (they were wealthy, well-connected men) toward the end of their lives. Raimond Costa, as noted in the main narrative, escaped all prosecution by taking up the position of bishop of Elne, in the neighboring Kingdom of Majorca. He allowed the enemies of the inquisition to use his townhouse as a sort of headquarters. On these men, see Friedlander,
The Hammer
, pp. 13–16.

*
The first two appeals:
The best description of the events in Carcassonne in the 1280s and 1290s is in Friedlander,
The Hammer
, pp. 13, 21, 25, 30. On the various riots, Dossat,
Les crises
, pp. 137–145.

*
“We feel aggrieved”:
Cited in full in Given,
Inquisition and Medieval
Society
, pp. 64–65, and Jean-Marie Vidal,
Un Inquisiteur jugé par ses
“victimes”: Jean Galand et les Carcassonnais (1285–1286)
, Paris, 1903, pp. 40–41.

*
Opinion is divided over whether this actually happened:
All the germane sources feel compelled to mention this plot. The biggest doubter is Vidal,
Un Inquisiteur jugé
, pp. 26–30.

*
a witness would claim under oath years later:
The person impugning the integrity of Pope Boniface VIII was Bernard Délicieux. Testimony of Délicieux, in Duvernoy (ed. and trans.),
Le procès
, p. 105. Brother Bernard specifies that the withheld bribe was in the amount of 10,000 florins.

5. T
HE
A
MBUSH AT
C
ARCASSONNE

*
Some weeks after the signing of the accord:
There is some confusion about the year of the ambush. Some place it as early as 1296. I have accepted Alan Friedlander's chronology, as he has relied on Joseph Strayer,
Les gens de justice du Languedoc sous Philippe le Bel
, Toulouse, 1970, p. 61, to build a convincing argument for 1299 or early 1300: the royal judge accompanying Foulques de Saint Georges, Estève Auriol of Capestang, held office in Carcassonne only from September 1298 to August 1300. See Friedlander,
The Hammer
, p. 38.

*
The party arrived at the outer portal of the convent:
Details of the ambush were provided during the 1319 trial. Duvernoy,
Le procès
: testimony of Bernard Audiguier (p. 175) and Pierre Camelin (pp. 178–179).

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the names of those he sought:
Guilhem André and Arnaud Vilaudégut.

*
Franciscans in Bernard's mold:
The major biographers of Délicieux have stressed his Franciscan identity. Indeed, Dmitrewski, a Polish Franciscan, was ideally placed to understand it. Yet it was his latest biographer, Friedlander, who has the most clearly underlined Bernard's identity as a Spiritual Franciscan. Part of this emphasis was enabled by a fourteenth-century Dominican memoir unearthed in 1965, in which its author, Raymond Barrau, called Bernard the leader of the Spirituals in Béziers. Friedlander's great contribution has been in stressing this underlying belief as a way of understanding the entirety of the Francisan's career. Alan Friedlander, “Bernard Délicieux, le ‘Marteau des Inquisiteurs,' ”
Hérésis
, 34, 2001, pp. 9–34, and Friedlander, “Jean XXII et les Spirituels: le cas de Bernard Délicieux,”
Cahiers de Fanjeaux
, 26, 1991, pp. 221–236.

*
“He did not consider the Cathars as diabolical enemies”:
Biget, “Autour de Bernard Délicieux,” p. 90. In this passage Biget used the historic present tense, a common device in French prose to avoid the overly literary
passé simple
, but I saw fit to change all the verbs to the preterite to avoid confusion.

6. T
HE
B
ISHOP OF
A
LBI

*
The man behind the monument was a theocrat:
Principal sources for Castanet's career are Julien Théry, “L'évêque d'Albi Bernard de Castanet (v. 1240–1317), une politique de la terreur,” in Albaret, ed.,
Les
Inquisiteurs
, p. 71–87; Jean-Louis Biget, “Un procès d'Inquisition à Albi,”
Cahiers de Fanjeaux
, 6, pp. 273–341; and Louis de Lacger, “Bernard de Castanet, évêque d'Albi (1276–1308),”
Bulletin de littérature
ecclésiastique
, 1954, pp. 193–220.

*
one historian has drily termed his approach as “terrorist”:
Julien Théry, “L'évêque d'Albi,” in Albaret, ed.,
Les Inquisiteurs
, p. 78.

*
ejaculation must occur in the vagina of one's wife:
The commission of 1307–8 charged by Pope Clement V to investigate the inquisition-received testimony that Castanet had specified that the action was forbidden
nisi in instrumento debito
(outside the proper receptacle). Théry, “L'évêque d'Albi,” in Albaret,
Les inquisiteurs
, p. 79. Jean-Louis Biget, in “Un procès d'Inquisition,” p. 85, argues that Castanet was concerned with coitus interruptus, the sin of Onan in the Bible (Genesis 38:6–10), which the medieval French rabbi Rashi (RAbbi SHlomo Itzhaki) memorably defined as “threshing within, winnowing without.”

*
the Albi inquisition kept up a breakneck tempo:
Aside from Biget's “Un procès d'Inquisition,” the other major source for this episode is Georgene Webber Davis,
The Inquisition at Albi 1299–1300
, New York, 1948. She delivered a measured judgment on the actions of Castanet: “We shall, perhaps, come closest to the truth in concluding that the defendants of this particular process were to a greater or lesser degree adherents of Catharism, as charged, but that their practices were occasional, hardly flagrant, and possibly not much out of line with those of many of their neighbors. Their transgression might have escaped detection and prosecution had it not been that the man in whose power it stood to bring them to justice happened to be avid for money and not very scrupulous, so long as he kept within the law, as to the means he used to satisfy the need” (p. 90).

7. T
HE
D
EAD
M
AN OF
C
ARCASSONNE

*
Fabre had been the royal seneschal's treasurer in Carcassonne:
His predecessor, the first royal treasurer, had been a rich Jewish merchant, Astruguetus of Béziers; his successors, a series of Lombard bankers. Friedlander,
The Hammer
, p. 42.

*
his son Aimeri was a prominent trader:
Aimeri was an ally of Bernard's in the revolt. He did not, however, approve of Hélie Patrice, perhaps out of class resentment, and took no part in the plot to secede from France. The inquisition eventually caught up with him and imprisoned him in the Wall in 1318. His mother's bones were dug up and burned a decade after his father's remains had received the same indignity in 1319.