* “foxes in the vineyards”: Song of Songs, 2:15.
* most convents had a jail: Ames, Righteous Persecution, p. 157.
* descend on a village they had targeted: Peters, Inquisition, pp. 58ff. on the techniques of the early inquisition. The early inquisitor’s manuals also give a fairly detailed account of how to proceed.
* wolves in sheep’s clothing: This is an expression we will come across frequently. It was a favorite of ecclesiastical heretic hunters and is taken from scripture: Matthew 7:15.
* counterfeit holiness: On this notion and the Achilles’ heel of the Dominicans—the overt holiness of the Cathar clergy—see Ames, Righteous Persecution, pp. 42–45.
* mala fama: On the old Roman notion of infamy, Edward Peters, Torture, Philadelphia, 1985, pp. 30–31. On the legal and cultural revolution of the twelfth century, see Robert L. Benson and Giles Constable, eds., Renaissance and Renewal in the Twelfth Century, Cambridge, MA, 1982.
* the registers were systematically organized: For a very clear explanation of the paperwork of the inquisition, see James B. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc, Ithaca, 1997, pp. 25–51.
* the Tarragona checklist: This is so odd (and informative) that it is quoted in almost all books on the inquisition. Here we go:
Heretics are those who remain obstinate in error.
Believers are those who put faith in the errors of heretics and are assimilated to them.
Those suspect of heresy are those who are present at the preaching of heretics and participate, however little, in their ceremonies.
Those simply suspected have done such things only once.
Those vehemently suspected have done this often.
Those most vehemently suspected have done this frequently.
Concealers are those who know heretics but do not denounce them.
Hiders are those who have agreed to prevent heretics being discovered.
Receivers are those who have twice received heretics on their property.
Defenders are those who knowingly defend heretics so as to prevent the Church from extirpating heretical depravity.
Favorers are all of the above to a greater or lesser degree.
Relapsed are those who return to their former heretical errors after having formally renounced them.
* The first was written in Carcassonne in 1248: Translated into English and analyzed in Walter Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100–1250, Berkeley, 1974. An excerpt of the most famous of the inquisitor’s manuals, that of Bernard Gui, was recently published as a trade book in 2006: Bernard Gui, The Inquisitor’s Guide: A Medieval Manual on Heretics, trans. Janet Shirley, London, 2006. This is not the first time I have found her work abundantly useful. Fifteen years ago, Dr. Shirley produced a splendid translation of the Cansó de la crozada entitled The Song of the Cathar Wars, A History of the Albigensian Crusade, by William of Tudela and an Anonymous Successor, Aldershot, 1996. One can only hope that perhaps one day she will render the entirety of Bernard Délicieux’s trial transcripts into her elegant English.
* “The third way of evading a question”: Cited in Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society, pp. 93–95.
* There were heretical Christians, particularly the Waldenses, who believed that capital punishment was prohibited: Peter Biller, “Medieval Waldensian Abhorrence of Killing Pre-1400,” in W. J. Sheils, ed., The Church and War, Oxford, 1983.
* Dominic, came to be seen above all else as an inquisitor . . . [through] layers of successive biographies: The first life, by Jordan of Saxony (1233), makes no mention of Dominic as an inquisitor. The second (Pedro Ferrando, 1235–39), the third (Constantine of Orvieto, 1236) and especially the fourth and official life (Humbert of Romans, 1260) gradually “inquisitorialized” Dominic, until by Bernard Gui’s day the saint had been transformed into a holy persecutor. Ames, Righteous Persecution, pp. 103–104. The Prado in Madrid displays a famous tableau demonstrating Dominic’s posthumous transformation into inquisitor, Pedro Berruguete’s “St. Dominic Presiding at an Auto-da-fé.” The painting dates from the late fifteenth century. It also, curiously enough, was used as the cover art for Michel Roquebert’s Histoire des Cathares: Hérésie, Croisade, Inquisition du XIe au XIVe siècle, Paris 1999, his summation of his five-volume masterwork, L’ épopée cathare, Toulouse, 1970–98.
* he would be far more useful to the brothers dead than alive: His first biographer, Jordan of Saxony, makes this clear. Jordan of Saxony, A New Life of Saint Dominic, Founder of the Dominican Order, ed. and trans. Louis Getino and Edmond McEniry, Columbus, 1926, p. 155.
* the document that refused to burn was in all probability an inquisition register: Ames, Righteous Persecution, p. 103
* preferring the conversation of younger women to that of older ones: Cited in George Bernanos, Les prédestinés, ed. Jean-Loup Bernanos, Paris, 1983, p. 77.
* Much use was made of the many violent, vengeful passages in the Old Testament, with their far fewer counterparts in the Christian scriptures also deployed for full homiletic effect: Old Testament: Exodus 22:18, Exodus 32:25–29, Joshua 7:20–26, Judges 15:15–17, Leviticus 20:27, Leviticus 24:16, I Maccabees 2:24–26, Numbers 25:6–1. New Testament: Acts 5:1–11, Acts 12:23, Acts 13:8–11, John 8:3–11. Ames, Righteous Persecution, pp. 190–99. To see the ingenious punitive mind at work, consider Moneta of Cremona’s exegesis of the last passage cited above, John 8:3–11, which seems to argue against inflicting capital punishment. Professor Ames deserves to be quoted at length:
A dramatic instance is Moneta’s exegesis of the woman seized for adultery (John 8:3–11). Moneta’s imagined opponents had pointed out that when the scribes and Pharisees asked Jesus whether she should be executed by public stoning, the penalty prescribed by Mosaic law, he had responded that the one without sin should cast the first stone. This, they argued, was an obvious expression of disapproval for her execution and thus condemned any death penalty. Moneta countered that for several reasons, Jesus’ statement could not be interpreted either as a denial of her licit execution or as a universal, transhistorical ban of killing malefactors: although he spared her, it does not follow from this that she could not be justly killed. Jesus’ words were rather applicable only to this particular case, which failed to meet the requirements of right jurisdiction, authority, and procedure. Jesus knew that he was not a legitimate judge over her and should not determine her punishment; her accusers had fled, crippling a fair trial. He should not judge by himself, but rather through appropriate ministers. The Jews who seized the woman were of equal or greater sin. Moneta responded tantalizingly to his opponents’ riposte that Jesus knew very well that no human was “without sin,” and thus prevented anyone—ever— from casting a stone in execution, with a blunt “prove it.” After all, I John (1:7) referred to Christians as “cleansed of sin.” Finally, Moneta argued that Jesus’ invitation that the one without sin cast the first stone should be read with striking literalism, its tone stripped of the challenging irony that other readers might supply: “as the lord permits he who is without sin to stone her, it proves that it was not evil.” On the contrary, Jesus wished the “minister of secular judgments” to perform the “good office” of execution (p. 196).
* God does not sin, God kills, therefore killing is not a sin: Ames, Righteous Persecution, p. 199.
* Bernard of Clairvaux: In In Praise of the New Knighthood, his influential letter extolling the warrior monks of the Temple in crusader Outremer, Bernard claimed that killing an infidel was killing evil, not a man—–malecide, not homicide. The relevant passage, from Bernard of Clairvaux (trans. Conradia Greenia), The Cistercian Fathers Series, XIX, The Works of Bernard of Clairvaux, 7, 3, Kalamazoo, 1977: “The knight of Christ, I say, may strike with confidence and die yet more confidently, for he serves Christ when he strikes, and serves himself when he falls. Neither does he bear his sword in vain, for he is God’s minister, for the punishment of evildoers a
nd for the praise of the good. If he kills an evildoer, he is not a mankiller, but, if I may so put it, a killer of evil.” An extraordinarily bloodthirsty epistle even for the mores of the day, In Praise of the New Knighthood undoubtedly makes Bernard of Clairvaux the patron saint of the armchair chickenhawks who afflict us still.
* Grand Inquisitor: The brilliant passage from The Brothers Karamazov contains the memorable admonition from the Inquisitor to Jesus: “Know that I fear You not. Know that I too have been in the wilderness, I too have lived on roots and locusts, I too blessed the freedom with which You had blessed men, and I too was striving to stand among Your elect, among the strong and powerful, thirsting ‘to make up the number.’ But I awakened and would not serve madness. I turned back and joined the ranks of those who have corrected Your work. I left the proud and went back to the humble, for the happiness of the humble. What I say to You will come to pass, and our dominion will be built up. I repeat, tomorrow You will see that obedient flock who at the first sign from me will hasten to heap up the hot cinders about the pile on which I will burn You for coming to hinder us. For if anyone has ever deserved our fires, it is You. Tomorrow I will burn You. Dixi.” Fyodor Dostoevsky, Notes from Underground and The Grand Inquisitor, trans. Ralph E. Matlaw, New York, 1960, p. 143.
* the use of torture had been papally approved: Innocent IV, Ad extir-panda, 1252. This bull specified that members of the clergy were not allowed to torture, being obligated to work through surrogates. That tiresome inconvenience was eliminated in Pope Alexander IV’s Ut negotium in 1256.
* the focus of inquisition gradually came to center on obtaining a confession: My brief discussion of torture and confession and proof, and the changing legal culture surrounding those matters, draws on Peters, Torture, pp. 40–73, and Peters, Inquisition, pp. 58–67.
* “The house, however, in which a heretic had been received”: Innocent III, Cum ex oficii nostri, 1207. Cited in Peters, Inquisition, pp. 49–50.
* “What the inquisitors had done”: Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society, p. 65.
* the appropriate type of punishment: A masterful discussion of this in Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society, pp. 66–90. I rely on Given for the discussion of the sentencing. As for the wearing of crosses, it inspired the title of a superb book of Cathar microhistory, René Weis, The Yellow Cross: The Story of the Last Cathars 1290–1329, London, 2000.
* 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. THE UNHOLY RESISTANCE
* “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.
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