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Authors: Stephen O’Shea
Tags: HIS013000
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Given these dangerous ties of kinship and the kingâs explicit ordinance, there must have been little incentive to go the extra mile for the inquisitors. When, in 1295, Philip renewed his injunction, the inquisitorial enterprise stuttered further.
Soon events spun out of control. Few details exist, and those that do come largely from an important figure and prolific writer, Bernard Gui, future inquisitor at Toulouse, who was present at Carcassonne in these years, residing as an ordinary friar in the Dominican convent in the Bourg. * Gui coined the term rabies Carcassonensis to describe the tumult of recrimination that characterized these shadowy years. The people of the Bourg must have scented blood and moved in to shut the infernal inquisition down. In 1297, as a riposte, the inquisitor Nicolas dâAbbeville excommunicated the entire town, thereby rendering it an outcast in Christendom, to be shunned by trader and wayfarer. One can imagine the consternation at court in the north at this costly upheaval. Philip relented a little; in the following year, he issued an ordinance urging more cooperation with the inquisitors. The Carcassonnais took their case to Rome, to the imperious Boniface VIII. He refused to countenance their complaintsâperhaps because the huge bribe promised His Holiness by the townsmen had been withheld, a witness would claim under oath years later.
By 1299, exhaustion had set in and the two sides engaged in protracted negotiations that lasted months. The townspeople wanted the excommunication lifted, their transgressions forgiven. The inquisitor wanted to haul in the more notorious heretical sympathizers who had eluded him for years. Two of the lawyers behind the appeals of the 1280s were eventually handed over, and other prominent burghers were to be arrested once an agreement was reached. The deal was signed on October 5, 1299; its details were kept secret from the people of the town. They were informed only that by the terms of the agreement their sins of the previous few years had been forgiven and that they had been restored to the embrace of the Church. Another proviso obliged them to build a new chapel in the Dominican convent. The inquisitor Nicolas dâAbbeville, they were told, was being generous.
What the inquisitor obtained in return, from the consuls signatory to the document, was a secret list of twelve names, all of them important citizens, who were to be exempt from the amnesty. After years of tribulation and frustration, the inquisitor was ready to make a move against them. He had the accord to back him up. He could now get on with his job.
* Perpignan was the capital of the ephemeral Kingdom of Majorca, a Catalan entity that remained independent from 1276 to 1349 and included the Balearic islands, the Roussillon, some regions of the eastern Pyrenees, the city of Montpellier, and a part of the Auvergne.
* Gui is also the villain in Umberto Ecoâs The Name of the Rose .
CHAPTER FIVE
THE AMBUSH AT CARCASSONNE
S OME WEEKS AFTER THE SIGNING of the accord, probably at the same time as the first of the Jubilee crowds headed for its rendezvous on the Ponte St. Angelo, the inquisitorâs Dominican deputy, Brother Foulques de Saint-Georges, accompanied by a representative of the king and two dozen of his sergeants at arms, marched out of the inquisition headquarters in the Cité and through a western gate. Below them was the Bourg.
In all probability they took the Trivalle down the slope, with the Wall and the Kingâs Mill rising up on their left. They crossed the Aude and walked smartly through the narrow, congested streets toward the gate of the lower townâs fortifications. People would have snatched children out of their way; eyes followed them from open windows, watching, waiting. The armed contingentâs destination was the tabula rasa of today, then the Franciscan convent at Carcassonne. Within its walls, the Dominican Brothers Nicolas
Soon events spun out of control. Few details exist, and those that do come largely from an important figure and prolific writer, Bernard Gui, future inquisitor at Toulouse, who was present at Carcassonne in these years, residing as an ordinary friar in the Dominican convent in the Bourg. * Gui coined the term rabies Carcassonensis to describe the tumult of recrimination that characterized these shadowy years. The people of the Bourg must have scented blood and moved in to shut the infernal inquisition down. In 1297, as a riposte, the inquisitor Nicolas dâAbbeville excommunicated the entire town, thereby rendering it an outcast in Christendom, to be shunned by trader and wayfarer. One can imagine the consternation at court in the north at this costly upheaval. Philip relented a little; in the following year, he issued an ordinance urging more cooperation with the inquisitors. The Carcassonnais took their case to Rome, to the imperious Boniface VIII. He refused to countenance their complaintsâperhaps because the huge bribe promised His Holiness by the townsmen had been withheld, a witness would claim under oath years later.
By 1299, exhaustion had set in and the two sides engaged in protracted negotiations that lasted months. The townspeople wanted the excommunication lifted, their transgressions forgiven. The inquisitor wanted to haul in the more notorious heretical sympathizers who had eluded him for years. Two of the lawyers behind the appeals of the 1280s were eventually handed over, and other prominent burghers were to be arrested once an agreement was reached. The deal was signed on October 5, 1299; its details were kept secret from the people of the town. They were informed only that by the terms of the agreement their sins of the previous few years had been forgiven and that they had been restored to the embrace of the Church. Another proviso obliged them to build a new chapel in the Dominican convent. The inquisitor Nicolas dâAbbeville, they were told, was being generous.
What the inquisitor obtained in return, from the consuls signatory to the document, was a secret list of twelve names, all of them important citizens, who were to be exempt from the amnesty. After years of tribulation and frustration, the inquisitor was ready to make a move against them. He had the accord to back him up. He could now get on with his job.
* Perpignan was the capital of the ephemeral Kingdom of Majorca, a Catalan entity that remained independent from 1276 to 1349 and included the Balearic islands, the Roussillon, some regions of the eastern Pyrenees, the city of Montpellier, and a part of the Auvergne.
* Gui is also the villain in Umberto Ecoâs The Name of the Rose .
CHAPTER FIVE
THE AMBUSH AT CARCASSONNE
S OME WEEKS AFTER THE SIGNING of the accord, probably at the same time as the first of the Jubilee crowds headed for its rendezvous on the Ponte St. Angelo, the inquisitorâs Dominican deputy, Brother Foulques de Saint-Georges, accompanied by a representative of the king and two dozen of his sergeants at arms, marched out of the inquisition headquarters in the Cité and through a western gate. Below them was the Bourg.
In all probability they took the Trivalle down the slope, with the Wall and the Kingâs Mill rising up on their left. They crossed the Aude and walked smartly through the narrow, congested streets toward the gate of the lower townâs fortifications. People would have snatched children out of their way; eyes followed them from open windows, watching, waiting. The armed contingentâs destination was the tabula rasa of today, then the Franciscan convent at Carcassonne. Within its walls, the Dominican Brothers Nicolas
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