The Collected Prose, page 17
Montfort18
es mort
es mort
es mort
viva Toloza
ciotat gloriosa
et poderosa
tornan lo paratge et l’onor!
This cry of joy could be heard from the Alps to the Ocean.
Simon’s son Amaury is but a shadow of his talented father. Twice defeated, he delivers the conquered lands to the King of France. The old order returns to Languedoc. On January 15, 1224, Amaury de Montfort leaves Carcassonne forever, with his father’s huge body sewn into a bull’s hide.
After this first act of the drama came the expedition of Louis VIII, the work of his ambitious wife, Blanche de Castile, who tried by any means to prevent an agreement between Raymond VI and the Pope. Despite the heroic defense of Avignon, the new war was a military walk-over; but the crusaders’ army was tormented by plague, and King Louis VIII died on his way back. A new royal governor-general in Carcassonne, Humbert de Beaujeu, energetically continued the work of Montfort, reclaiming the lost castles and introducing a new weapon against the recalcitrant country. “In the morning, after hearing mass and eating breakfast,” says the historian Guillaume de Puylaurens, “the crusaders set off preceded by archers…and started to destroy the vineyards situated closest to the city, while its inhabitants slept; later they retreated to the nearby fields, destroying everything as they went.” The environs of unconquered Toulouse and other cities were turned into a desert. The war of castles continued.
In his History of the Albigensians, Napoleon Peyrat estimates the losses of the South during the fifteen years of war to be one million dead. Other scholars consider this figure excessive, yet all admit a tremendous loss of blood. The chronicles, as always, describe the deaths of knights and heroes, but true to Homeric tradition they are indifferent to the mounds of anonymous victims.
Only deadly exhaustion and the prospect of his country’s complete ruin can explain why Raymond VII, the conqueror of Montfort, who defied the King of France, signed a treaty in Meaux in 1229, agreeing to conditions of the kind usually imposed on a thoroughly defeated enemy. The sovereign of Languedoc pledged not only loyalty to the Church and the King of France, but also committed himself to fighting against the heresy. Especially drastic was the obligation to pay two silver marks to anyone denouncing a heretic. It was also declared that the fortifications of Toulouse and thirty other castles would be demolished, and the majority of fortresses handed over to the King of France. New borders were drawn; of the old territory only a third remained. Raymond VII gave his daughter in marriage to the brother of Louis IX, Alphonse de Poitiers, and since the Count of Toulouse had no son, this move sealed the fate of Languedoc.
The ceremonial signing of the treaty was held in the newly-built cathedral of Notre-Dame on Maundy Thursday 1229. With their victory over the German Emperor at Bouvines, the Capetians started to believe in their mission. The ceremony was clearly aimed at humiliating Montfort’s conqueror, and took place in the presence of the young King Louis IX, the Queen, prelates, and the citizens of Paris. Raymond VII, dressed only in a shirt and with a rope round his neck, was led by the legates of Poland and England to the altar, where a cardinal-legate awaited him with a rod. “It was a pity to see this great Duke,” writes Guillaume de Puylaurens, “who had resisted the power of so many nations for so long, being led barefoot, in a simple shirt and trousers, to the steps of the altar.” Tradition holds that kneeling in front of the prelate, the Duke burst into mad laughter. Perhaps he thought then of how his father had been scourged and brought to the altar at Saint-Gilles twenty years before. When he returned to Toulouse, the commissars of the Church and the King were already at work, governing the land that he had never lost in battle. Troubadour Sicard de Marvejols19 wails:
Ai Toloza et Provensa
e la terra d’Argensa
Bezers et Carcassey
Quo vos vi quo vos vei.
THE NEW PAPAL LEGATE, Cardinal Romanus of St. Angelo, a councilor and one of the instigators of the Treaty of Meaux, convened a synod in Toulouse to outline the methods of battle against the Albigensians. Forty-five articles for tracking down, examining, and punishing heretics were established. Thus the Inquisition was born, which proved to be a more effective weapon than the crusaders’ swords; its development and influence on future institutions vastly exceeded the events described in this essay.
The “Capitula” established by the synod in Toulouse are worth quoting, at least in part:
“In each parish bishops will appoint one priest and three laymen of impeccable reputation—more, if necessary—who will swear to search for heretics in their parish with perseverance and faith. They will meticulously search all suspicious houses, rooms and cellars, and even the most secret corners. Upon finding heretics, or people giving them support, shelter or aid, they should take appropriate measures to prevent their escape, and also notify the bishop, the lord or his representative as soon as possible.
“The lords should search carefully for the heretics in towns, houses and forests where they meet and destroy their shelters.
“Whosoever lets a heretic remain on his land—for money or for any other reason—will lose his land in perpetuity, and will be punished by the lord according to the level of his guilt.
“Also he on whose land heretics frequently meet will be punished, even if it were without his knowledge, but through his neglect.
“A house in which a heretic is found will be destroyed, and the land confiscated.
“A lord’s deputy who does not search the places suspected of being heretical meeting-places with sufficient zeal, will lose his position without redress.
“Everybody has the right to search for heretics on his neighbor’s land…Also the King can chase them on the land of the Duke of Toulouse, and vice versa.
“Hereticus vestitus, he who renounces his heresy spontaneously, may not remain in the place of habitation if the area is considered to be tainted by heresy. He will be moved to a town known to be Catholic. The converted will wear two crosses on their clothes—one on the right, one on the left side—of a different color from their clothes. They will not be able to hold public office, or perform legal acts until their rehabilitation is confirmed by the Pope or his legate, after an appropriate punishment.
“A heretic who seeks to return to the Catholic community not out of conviction, but out of fear of death or any other reason, will be placed in prison by the bishop to serve his sentence there (with all precautions against his spreading his heresy to others).
“All adult Catholics will take an oath in front of their bishop to preserve their creed, and to track down heretics with all the means at their disposal. This oath is to be renewed every two years.
“He who is suspected of heresy cannot be a doctor. If a sick person receives the Holy Communion from his vicar, he should be watched carefully, so that no heretic or person suspected of heresy gains access to him, as such visits have unfortunate consequences.”
At first the Inquisition was the domain of bishops and local clergy, but the clergy proved too slow in putting the cruel machinery into motion. In 1233 Pope Gregory IX gave the Dominicans inquisitorial powers. From that time onward they were responsible only to the Pope; their sentences could be quashed only by him, which was a change of fundamental significance making the Inquisition an autonomous force with immense prerogatives.
The legal acts that followed made the synod’s decisions in Toulouse even stricter. Among other things the articles of the synod of Arles, for example, provide for the bodies of dead heretics to be exhumed and burned at the stake. A wave of false conversions forces the inquisitors to use increasingly severe preventive measures. Prisons are built to house for life all those who simulate conversion. In 1243 a meeting convened in Narbonne rules that no one can be released from prison because of family obligations, age, or poor health. The ruling to keep the names of prosecution witnesses secret from the accused is an obvious violation of Roman Law. The testimony of criminals, the infamous, and criminal conspirators is approved in cases of heresy. Even the testimony of persons openly hostile to a defendant, or whose only motive is vindictive, is not over-ruled as evidence.
History preserves the names of the first two inquisitors: brother Pierre Seila, son of a rich burgher of Toulouse and one of the first Dominicans, and Guillaume Arnaud, from Montpellier. Both were determined to dispatch their duties with great energy; soon after their nomination they imprisoned and executed Vigoros de la Bacone, the alleged leader of the heretics in Toulouse. Guillaume Arnaud traveled the provinces carrying out measures that terrified the people and alarmed the count. Raymond complained to the Pope about the inquisitors’ lawless procedures: examining witnesses behind closed doors, refusing defendants legal assistance, putting the dead on trial, and spreading such fear that terrified citizens denounced the innocent. “They upset the country, and because of their abuses the population is turning against the monasteries and clergy.”
It may be thought that the inquisitors commanded great resources. In fact the two Dominicans had neither means nor people of their own, and had to depend entirely on the assistance of the clergy and lay authorities. Only later did they receive permission for armed guards, tribunal assistants, notaries, and assessors, though the number of personnel could not exceed eighty to each inquisitor. Thus the development of the institution can be explained only by immense energy, a sense of mission, and the temptation of martyrdom.
Among the many works of art devoted to the struggle of the Dominicans against heresy, one of the most striking is the fresco by Andrea da Firenze20 in the Spanish Chapel in Santa Maria Novella in Florence. Preaching brothers convert the heretics, who in shame tear up their godless books. But this is a euphemistic version of history. The truth is depicted at the bottom of the painting, disguised in animal symbolism: dogs (Domini canes) tearing up wolves (heretics).
The general state of mind at that time is well illustrated by the affair of Jean Textor. He lived on the outskirts of Toulouse, and was most probably a Catholic. He went around the town streets, addressing people in words that betray his terror: “Gentlemen, listen to me! I am not a heretic, for I have a wife and I sleep with her, I have sons, I eat meat, and I lie and swear at times, and I am a faithful Christian. So don’t let them say these things about me, for I truly believe in God. They can accuse you as well as me, for these wicked men want to ruin honest men and to steal the town of our Lord.” Despite the indignation of the people of Toulouse, Textor was imprisoned and quickly burned at the stake.
The number of suspects was so great that Arnaud and Seila were not able to examine all those they had arrested. Those sentenced to carrying a cross, to a fine, or a go on a pilgrimage, lived in uncertainty, because the only definitive sentence is that of death. But even the dead could not rest in peace. Cemeteries were full of open graves from which bodies were exhumed to be purified by fire. The cruelty of the Dominicans was so extreme that it evoked the indignation of other orders. The monks of Belleperche gave shelter to heretics in their monastery, which was certainly not an isolated case.
In his Chronicon21, Guillaume Pelhisson tells a story which would seem the tale of a madman full of sound and fury, were it not that the chronicler was an eyewitness, and as the inquisitors’ assistant cannot be suspected of denigrating his masters. On August 4, 1234, after celebrating mass, Raymond de Miramont, the Bishop of Toulouse, was informed that in a nearby home a dying old woman had received the consolamentum. The Bishop, accompanied by priests, went to the home of the expiring lady who, unaware of the situation and convinced that her visitor was a Cathar bishop, proclaimed her beliefs. Called to convert to Catholicism, she refused, upon which she was transported on her bed to a hastily built stake and burned. Having fulfilled their task, the Bishop and his train returned to the refectory, “where, giving thanks to God and the Blessed Dominic, they ate with rejoicing what had been prepared for them.”
Such practices provoked riots in the city, which reached their height when the inquisitors indicted two city councilors accused of supporting heretics; in fact the lay authorities did all they could to save sentenced citizens, or to allow their escape. As the result of an open confrontation, the Dominicans were expelled and Bishop Raymond left Toulouse. But after an exchange of vehement letters between the Duke and the Pope, they returned, and it started all over again. One of the “perfected,” a convert to Catholicism, denounced a number of important people, which resulted in a series of posthumous trials. Cemeteries were ploughed up, and mortal remains were nailed to fences amidst cries of “Qui atal fara, atal pendra22.”
In 1233 the first inquisitor to be martyred fell under the assault of a mob in Cordes; from then on, acts of resistance multiplied. In addition, fights between groups of Catholics and heretics broke out in once peaceful towns.
It would be unfair to claim that all those caught in the brothers’ net went to the stake. Documents record that a considerable number were pardoned. In 1241 during one week, two hundred and forty-one people received canonical absolution. The protocols of interrogations, however, formed the basis of very detailed files, and of the terrifying view that “they know everything.” History—not only in the Middle Ages—teaches that a nation subjected to police measures is demoralized, crumbles from within and loses its ability to resist. Even the most ruthless hand-to-hand combat is less disastrous than whispers, surveillance, fear of one’s neighbor, and a scent of betrayal in the air.
It is worth comparing the criminal procedure of the period with the procedure of the Inquisition. The Code of Justinian, on which criminal law was based, gave the defendant several rights, burdened the prosecution with the task of collecting proof, excluded witnesses whose impartiality was doubtful, and also required that the denouncer confront the accused. In a country which had lived through twenty years of war and persecutions, people learned to change their skin according to circumstances, and it was not easy to track down heretics by legal methods. To carry out their persecution more effectively, the range of acceptable witnesses had to be broadened. A defense attorney was theoretically admissible, but whoever took upon himself the task of defending a heretic automatically became a suspect, so his aid had little effect. A novelty in relation to normal court procedure, was the examining of witnesses behind closed doors, which became the basis for the Inquisition’s success, as it managed to break the solidarity of even the most tightly-knit groups.
Preceded by the gossip of a hundred tongues, a sizeable train of people would enter a city: men with pens—notaries, secretaries, scribes; and men with iron—soldiers, servants, prison guards, who gathered round an inquisitor. The newcomers established themselves in the bishop’s palace or in a monastery and would proclaim a “time of mercy,” usually lasting one week. Those who reported of their own free will could not be punished by death, prison, or loss of property. But in return they had to provide information, from which the net of suspicion was woven.
People coming to the inquisitors at this stage usually accused themselves of petty or imaginary crimes, like the miller in Belcaire who confessed that he had doubted the help of St. Martin during the construction of his mill. But such a babbler, in a sweat-drenched shirt, would usually know much more, and for example could tell who had greeted one of the “perfected” in the street twenty years ago. The names of the informers were kept secret; two anonymous testimonies sufficed to begin an investigation. An inquisitor combined powers usually separated in a normal trial: he was investigating magistrate, prosecutor, and sentencing judge. Even other representatives of the clergy participating in trials had no voice. The conscience of one person decided as to guilt or innocence.
The suspect received a summons to appear in front of the inquisitorial tribunal. During the examination he did not know the nature of his indictment, which was of great advantage to the tribunal: the accused often confessed more than was expected. After cross-examination, he was placed in prison or released under “guarded freedom.” Prisons—a type of architecture that developed enormously at this period—were grim, as we can see in the jails of Carcassonne and Toulouse: dark, abysmal pits in which one could neither lie nor stand upright. Hunger, thirst, and irons broke even the strongest.
If the suspect proved to be unexpectedly tough, torture was used. This form of obtaining testimonies was widely practiced in lay jurisdiction in connection with serious crimes; it had been rather avoided by canonical courts. As a principle it was assumed in any case that torture should cause neither permanent injury or bloodshed. The system of flogging had long been in use, and it was practiced with skill and knowledge of human pain—there were respected experts in this field. Pope Innocent IV’s bull of May 15, 1252, finally legalized torture.
The defendant’s confession was a formality, since the testimony of two informers was sufficient ground for sentencing. Informers had by no means an easy life. The denunciator of seven of the “perfected” was slaughtered in his own bed, and for a similar deed, a sergeant Doumenage was hanged from a dead branch. Informers preferred to give names of the dead, or of those who could hide in inaccessible castles, like Montségur or Queribus23.
Admittedly the stake was reserved for the “perfected,” or for stubborn adherents of the Cathar Church. The rest received canonical sentences, which did have a serious impact on their lives. Carrying the cross, assigned to those who made their confessions spontaneously, resulted in the boycott of the converts in societies where heresy was dominant, and bred accusations of spying for the Inquisition. Pilgrimage to remote localities was used as a penance which was a severe financial burden for the entire family; it could last from a couple of months to five years, as was the case with knights sent to the Holy Land or to Constantinople. Such punishment could befall a person who exchanged a few words with a heretic during a sea journey, or as an eleven-year-old greeted at his parents’ behest one of the “perfected” in the street.
