The Friar of Carcassonne

by Stephen O'Shea

  The humiliating cavalcade continued, toward Montpellier and Nîmes. Hélie Patrice, Arnaud Garsie, Peire Pros, Bernard Délicieux, and their frustrated allies tagged along, vases clanging in their luggage, hoping against hope. Bernard was not permitted to address a single word to the king.

  Guillaume de Nogaret finally took the Franciscan aside. Clearly the king’s minister must have had a good deal of respect and compassion for his fellow southerner, and perhaps he was tickled that the friar had so successfully indulged in Nogaret’s specialty—giving the Church grief. His customary behavior would certainly not have included divulging the thinking of the king’s inner circle, yet with the Franciscan he opened up. Guillaume may actually have liked Bernard.

  It’s over, he told the friar. The king would not be moved, and he could not be persuaded to defy the Dominican pope. The struggle with Boniface had brought the king to the brink of disaster—as Noga-ret, of all people, knew—and now was not the time to pick another fight. The moment called for reconciliation. Wait, he advised Bernard, until circumstances became more favorable.

  What had been understood implicitly was conveyed explicitly to Bernard by the most powerful man in France, aside from the king himself. The men of Carcassonne and Albi made their farewells and rode home through the barren landscape, disheartened, dejected, but pensive.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  INTRIGUE IN THE ROUSSILLON

  ONE DAY SHORTLY AFTER EASTER IN 1304, two robed figures on horseback picked their way southward alongside the Mediterranean Sea. Once past the border town of Salses, they had left the kingdom of France and come within sight of their destination, Perpignan, home to their Catalan cousins and capital of the Kingdom of Majorca. The red city slumbered in the warm spring sunshine. Beyond its church spires and russet warren of brick dwellings, in the distance, the sculpted line of the Pyrenees stretched into the clouds. The tallest peak, the Canigou, still had the snows of winter on its majestic summit. At its foot lay the well-watered plain of the Roussillon, its fertile bounty a source of amazement for visitors from arid Languedoc.

  Within the travelers’ pack was a letter bearing the seal of the consuls of Carcassonne. It was addressed to a prince of Majorca. The consuls were asking him to place their city under his protection. If the prince showed himself willing to be their lord, they would gladly slip the traces of Capetian France. Secession was its goal.

  Bernard Délicieux was the letter’s bearer and author. He and a fellow friar sought the third of four sons sired by King Jaume II of Majorca, Prince Ferran, a man renowned for his warrior prowess and possessed of an ambition thwarted by his status as a younger brother. Brother Bernard was offering him the kingdom he craved. In so doing, he was also committing high treason.

  The events of the winter had pushed Bernard and his allies to this extremity. Following the disastrous disputation in Toulouse, the humiliation of the calvacade, the insult of the silver vases, and, in the end, the explicit advice delivered by Guillaume de Nogaret, the men of Languedoc desirous of lifting the yoke of the Dominican inquisition knew that they could no longer look to their king for help. Philip the Fair was determined to preserve a situation and an institution they could not abide. The corruption, the corvine pecking at the body of an agonized Languedoc, had to be halted another way.

  The scheme seems to have been first mooted a month earlier, during King Philip’s visit to Montpellier. The great university city was, at the time, a part of the kingdom of Majorca, surrounded by Capetian holdings, so its suzerain, King Jaume II, journeyed north from the Roussillon to extend his hospitality to the French monarch. Philip was the Majorcan king’s ally in keeping the armies of Jaume’s cousin, the mighty king of Aragon, safely south of the Pyrenees, away from the kingdom of Majorca—thus France’s friendship mattered greatly to the Catalan monarch. From Perpignan, Jaume had traveled to Montpellier amid the requisite pomp to welcome his distinguished visitors, accompanied by his court and his family, including Prince Ferran.

  Testimony at Bernard’s trial—the source of the scarce information concerning the nebulous plot—states that the Franciscan was seen twice conferring with the thirty-year-old prince during Philip’s visit to Languedoc. On the second occasion, at Nîmes, in the company of Hélie Patrice this time, the parties appeared deep in conversation, saying “sinister words.” By then, presumably, the spurned silver vases were being rerouted south, to Perpignan, and not north to Paris.

  In Carcassonne, a few of the consuls reacted with horror when informed of their allies’ intentions to secede from France. They refused to go along with the scheme. The same reaction, only stronger, occurred in Albi, to which Arnaud Garsie had returned to rally support, albeit unsuccessfully. The Albigeois knew their detested bishop was still in trouble with his hierarchy and that his expulsion from their midst would be only a matter of time (it occurred in 1307). With Bishop de Castanet defanged and the Dominicans of Albi demoralized, no inquisition troubled the city on the Tarn. Other towns they approached, such as Limoux and Cordes, had turned them down, too. Thus the Carcassonnais were on their own in this new adventure.

  When Bernard rode into Perpignan on that spring day, he found the Palace of the Kings of Majorca—a stunningly beautiful Mediterranean fortress-residence that still stands—to be empty of its royal occupants. They had decamped to their country quarters, at Saint-Jean-Pla-de-Corts (in Catalan, Sant Joan de Pladecorts), in the shadow of the Pyrenees. Bernard would have to travel there, a half day’s ride, to meet with the prince. He and his companion, whose identity is uncertain, set out again, riding south, in all likelihood past the town of Elne. There is no record of Bernard stopping to see Bishop Raimond Costa, to thank him for the use of his Carcassonne townhouse as the breeding ground for so many anti-inquisitorial initiatives. Equally absent is a record of Bernard’s confiding the strategy underpinning this audacious plot to any like-minded cleric. That can only be conjectured.

  The idea must have been not to raise an army—there were so few in on the plot—but to spark an insurrection. Like medieval Bolsheviks, Ferran and his handful of conspirators were to somehow seize an important choke point, and from that action a chain reaction of rebellion would begin, its end result the ejection of the French from the lands of Languedoc. That happy outcome would not be easy to accomplish, but an attempt had to be made to reverse the return to the wretched status quo: the inquisitor working hand in hand with the royal seneschal. Historians have judged the plan “silly” and “hopeless,” but the mere fact of entertaining such a scheme—and then acting on it—speaks volumes about the desperation of the men of Languedoc at the mercy of the inquisitors.

  Bernard knew just how deep resentments ran toward the French and the inquisitors; he had toured Languedoc more thoroughly than any foreign royal functionary. From that knowledge he must have concluded that the seditious enterprise could work. The French had struggled mightily to subdue Languedoc during the Albigensian Crusade eighty years earlier, having done this with reinforcements from all over Europe. Subsequent armed repressions in the region during the thirteenth century had been effected through the use of local Languedoc muscle, paid in the king’s coin. Turn these men, he no doubt thought, and the French presence in Languedoc would be exposed as a paper tiger.

  In the spring of 1304, the Flemish rebels still stood defiant on the battlements of their cities. Even if the revolt in Languedoc did not succeed as decisively as its forerunner in Flanders, a king made desperate by two rebellions might be more inclined to negotiate—or rather accede to the anti-inquisitorial demands of the south. For Bernard, there was also the distinct probability that the long arm of a Dominican pope might soon reach out to snatch him, with Philip’s consent. He surely thought that to act boldly was more sensible than to submit meekly. However much he took risks, Bernard would not have courted death—as he did by riding to meet Prince Ferran—had he thought himself engaged in an enterprise automatically doomed to failure.

  Saint-Jean-Pla-de-Corts sits on a smal
l rise overlooking the rushing river Tech, now the southernmost watercourse in mainland France. Just beyond the stream rises the green wall of the Albères, the last range of the Pyrenees on their march to sudden, almost operatic conclusion as rocky cliffs plunging into the bright blue sea. When Bernard glanced up at the Albères, he would have known that less than ten years earlier the negotiations to end the latest war between Majorca and Aragon had opened in a chapel at the mountain range’s Perthus Pass. They were concluded in Italy with the signing of the Treaty of Anagni.

  Of King Jaume’s summer palace, little remains in the present day: a few roofless enclosures, their ancient wooden beams once supporting elegant upper stories; a solid royal chapel turned art gallery; and tawny medieval fortifications into which villagers have burrowed all manner of dwellings over the centuries. The hamlet is quiet, the motes of dust drifting lazily through the air illumined by the stark sunlight. Visitors are remarked, as they would have been seven centuries ago, especially if they were Franciscans speaking the langue d’oc and venturing into the royal precinct of the Catalans.* These friars would have been recognized as men of learning, only heightening curiosity as to the purpose of their visit.

  Bernard and his companion called in at a local church and found lodging. The prince and his father the king were out hunting wild boar, still one of the principal inducements behind leaving the cramped streets of Perpignan for the verdant woods of Saint-Jean. On their return, Ferran slipped down to the Franciscan’s hostelry for a meeting. Bernard, fifteen years later at his trial, claimed that he then tried to dissuade the hotheaded prince from going through with the scheme. He also claimed to have destroyed the consuls’ letter before reaching Saint-Jean-Pla-de-Corts by tearing up the document, digging a hole, stuffing the parchment fragments into it, covering up the hole with dirt, and then peeing on the spot. Why he would go to such absurd lengths to destroy the letter, if indeed he had had a change of heart, must remain a mystery. Or he is simply not to be believed. His recollection of this visit to Saint-Jean-Pla- de-Corts changed over the course of his trial, subject as he was to the attentions of aggressive interrogators.

  Two Catalans who testified at Bernard’s trial stated that King Jaume had got wind of the plot by the time the friars arrived. How this happened is unknown: perhaps, on receiving reports that the famed Bernard Délicieux had been sighted in Perpignan and had met secretly with his impetuous son, Jaume astutely put two and two together. More likely he had been tipped off. One of the many consuls of Carcassonne or Albi horrified by the proposed revolt—and by what would be the fearful, bloodthirsty roar of the vengeful French monarch—probably got word to the Catalan king of the dangerous game his son was playing.

  Whatever the source, the king knew. The next afternoon, after having ridden out on the hunt with the prince once again, Jaume forsook his habitual siesta and instead called for Ferran to attend him in his royal apartments. The prince arrived as summoned. His father then proceeded to beat the living daylights out of him. Whether Ferran admitted or denied the Carcassonne scheme is unknown; regardless, the king went berserk. Sounds of his rage echoed down the stone corridors. A footman rushed in and restrained the king from clubbing his son senseless. The royal chamberlain, late to the scene, saw a flushed and battered Ferran stagger down a hallway, clumps of hair his father had just torn out falling from his shoulders. The king had administered a brutal lesson on just how vital to the kingdom of Majorca was its alliance with France.

  Bernard, waiting at his inn for a feast of wildfowl promised to him by his princely host, was accosted by a man sent by the king. The newcomer informed him that His Majesty was mightily displeased with the Franciscan for speaking to his son without first presenting himself to the king and making a formal request for such a meeting. Bernard hotly replied that he had met with sons of far more important kings and hadn’t needed anyone’s permission.

  The king’s emissary told Bernard that he and his companion had to leave Saint-Jean-Pla-de-Corts immediately. The king did not care about the late hour. And the next day, he insisted, they were to leave the kingdom altogether. Despite the order to quit the kingdom as quickly as possible, the Franciscans should have been thankful that King Jaume did not have them both thrown in a dungeon. Their status as clergymen may have stayed his hand, but so too would the reputation of his family have weighed on the king’s mind.

  His last hope crushed, Bernard obediently left Saint-Jean as commanded and found shelter in the neighboring town of Le Boulou. The years of revolt had come to an end. The following day he rode north, and within the week had returned to Carcassonne with the bad news for the conspirators. If word of this debacle spread north to Paris, Bernard and his confederates knew, they were dead men.

  At about the same time, on April 16, 1304, His Holiness Benedict XI had, from his residence in Viterbo, sent a bull entitled Ea nobis to the head of the Franciscans in Languedoc. It read, in part:

  We have heard reports about Fr. Bernard Délicieux of your Order, saying such things as we must not and shall not allow to go unpunished . . . [wherefore] we order you, under pain of excommunication, deprivation of your office and of the right to hold any future office should you fail to execute this mandate, to arrest, to place under close guard, and to bring personally into our presence Fr. Bernard Délicieux.

  * The French Catalans of the Roussillon refer to the “foreigners” north of the Corbières—i.e., Languedoc—as gavatx (pronounced “ga-batch”), meaning “rustic oafs.”

  Part III

  The Time of Repression

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  SURVIVAL

  IN THE SUMMER OF 1305, Geoffroy d’Ablis received an unexpected visitor. His secretary announced that Guilhem Peyre-Cavaillé, from the town of Limoux just a few leagues south of Carcassonne, was at the door of the inquisitor’s headquarters in the Cité. The name was familiar: Peyre-Cavaillé had been picked up on suspicion of heretical leanings in late 1304 and held in the Wall until the following spring, then released. Proof of guilt needed to be ironclad for a new proceeding to take place, given the probity embraced by the inquisition in the wake of the disastrous rage carcassonnaise of recent years.

  Peyre-Cavaillé surprised the inquisitor by claiming that there were indeed heretics abroad in Languedoc, but not of the kind the Dominicans had been picking off in Carcassonne and Albi, wealthy townsmen with sentimental ties to the faith of their fathers. The heretics of whom he spoke formed an established Church, run by a dozen or so well-trained and much beloved Good Men, who in the past five years had rekindled the flame of old. They had followers by the hundreds, in the meadows, villages, and mountains, men and women, noble and peasant, who had conscientiously supported and concealed them as they went about their missionary task. Peyre-Cavaillé knew this for a fact because he had managed their affairs and organized their travels—a refusal to pay him back all of his expenses motivated him to talk to the inquisitor.* The people broke bread with these Good Men, housed them in their attics and hayricks, gathered for their sermons, and, when the end came, entrusted them their souls. The creed of the Cathars, alive and well, had spread its message of hope and love far and wide.

  The inquisitor, like other Dominicans on learning the news, recalled the bitter fight with Bernard Délicieux. The Franciscan had been the focus of their fear and fury, to the exclusion of all else. In their view, while they had been occupied beating Brother Bernard back, the servants of Lucifer had gone about their diabolical business, unmolested by the justice of the Lord. This was what the actions of the foolish Franciscan had sown: a harvest of heresy, hardy and perennial in the ever-fertile fields of error that blanketed this corner of Christendom.

  The Cathars’ leader was Peire Autier, formerly a prosperous notary in the mountain town of Ax, in the county of Foix, south of Toulouse. Some time in the 1290s Autier grew dissatisfied with his comfortable life, in much the same way as Francis of Assisi had tired of his. Autier then traveled to Italy with his similarly disillusioned broth
er to find salvation. In corners of Lombardy and the Piedmont, where the fervid stew of politics surrounding partisans of emperor, pope, guild, and merchant militated against a sustained effort at religious repression, the Cathar Church had survived and still clung to a semblance of structure, its hidden hierarchs instructing and confirming Good Men and Good Women as in the days long gone. The Autier brothers from Languedoc, men in their fifties, yearned to stage a rebirth of the faith in their homeland before the embers of belief had gone cold. They stayed and studied in their Italian retreats for two to three years before being conferred the consolamentum, the sacrament making them Good Men and the spiritual equivalent of Jesus’ apostles.

  These highly literate and educated holy men, disguised as unlettered knife merchants, then headed homeward. They chose their time carefully, the winter of 1299–1300, when roads were overrun with pilgrims buoyed at the prospect of the Jubilee. Boniface VIII surveyed with satisfaction his flock surging across the Tiber, but his direst enemies, lost in the flow of the crowds, had soon forded the Rhône, the Aude, and the Garonne to meet with their followers. What transpired in the years to follow, Peyre-Cavaillé told the aghast Geoffroy d’Ablis, was a sturdy flowering of the faith, first in the mountains near Ax and Foix, where ties of kinship linked the Good Men to their followers, then in the downlands to the south and west of Carcassonne, respectively the Razès and the Lauragais, and then in important towns such as Limoux and Pamiers, and finally in the workingmen’s neighborhoods at the gates of Toulouse itself. Peire Autier presided over a church, a growing number of people who had achieved the entendensa del Be, the understanding of the Good. And there was no secret to the flip side of this understanding. As Autier preached: “There are two Churches, one which flees and forgives, the other which fetters and flays. The Church which flees and forgives takes the right path of the Apostles. It neither lies nor deceives. And the Church which fetters and flays is the Roman Church.”