The Friar of Carcassonne (40 page)

*
As one witness recalled at Bernard's trial:
“[Picquigny] had found the whole country to be in a very bad state”: Testimony of Arnaud Garsie, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 78.

*
Unexpectedly, the Dominican superior then veered back to the case
of Foulques de Saint-Georges:
Testimony of Arnaud Garsie, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 201.

*
The head of the Dominicans in Languedoc had admitted there could
be no more than forty or fifty heretics in all of the country around
Carcassonne and Albi:
Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 117.

*
“I said that if Saint Peter and Saint Paul”:
Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 118.

*
The inquisitors, Aycelin continued, would still be under the control
of their local bishops:
Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 118.

*
“should be congratulated in many ways, honored like golden candelabras
of the church, to the sound of trumpets”:
Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 118.

*
It was a wonder, he exclaimed, that the people of Languedoc did not
rise up against the French who ruled them and shout as one: “Get
out!”:
Testimony of Peire Pros, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 195.

*
Arnaud had it on good authority that Brother Nicolas was in the pay
of the Flemish rebels:
Testimony of Arnaud Garsie, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 201.

*
Bernard Délicieux, who had in turn heard it from a high-placed
cardinal in Paris the year before:
He had been told this inflammatory gossip by Cardinal Jean Lemoine, Boniface's ambassador to the French court. Lemoine stayed on in Paris, founding a famous college there. His name still graces a street and a Métro stop in the Latin Quarter.

*
One witness claimed Patrice said to the king, “My lord, you must do
us justice quickly”:
Testimony of Arnaud Marsend, in Duvernoy,
Le
procès
, p. 172.

*
“Lord! Lord! Have pity on your wretched city which suffers so!”:
Testimony of Bernard Audiguier, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 176.

*
“Throw them out of here!”:
Testimony of Bernard Audiguier, in Du-vernoy,
Le procès
, p. 176.

*
Patrice ordered them to rip down the garlands and banners:
Testimony of Bernard Audiguier, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 176.

*
Witnesses at Bernard's trial tell a strange tale of two large silver vases:
Duvernoy,
Le procès
: testimony of Arnaud Garsie (p. 79), Bernard Délicieux (p. 96), Guillaume Fransa (p. 185).

*
The men of Carcassonne now looked, as one historian notes, “ridiculous”:
Favier,
Roi de marbre
, p. 308.

*
Guillaume de Nogaret finally took the Franciscan aside:
Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 101.

*
Wait, he advised Bernard, until circumstances became more favorable:
Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 101.

17. I
NTRIGUE IN THE
R
OUSSILLON

*
Once past the border town of Salses, they had left the kingdom of
France:
Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 93. Bernard gave details of his itinerary to the court: he left Carcassonne, passed by Roubia, Fontfroide, and Salses, and then on to Perpignan.

*
its fertile bounty a source of amazement for visitors from arid
Languedoc:
Once past Salses, the modern-day visitor immediately comes across the famous vineyards that produce Muscat de Rivesaltes, a sweet wine that was first produced in the Roussillon by none other than Arnaud de Vilanova.

*
Testimony at Bernard's trial . . . states that the Franciscan was seen
twice conferring with the thirty-year-old
prince:
Duvernoy,
Le procès
: testimony of Arnaud Garsie (p. 79).

*
“sinister words”:
Testimony of Arnaud Garsie, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 80.

*
The same reaction, only stronger, occurred in Albi:
Testimony of Arnaud Garsie, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 81.

*
Other towns they approached, such as Limoux and Cordes, had turned
them down, too:
Duvernoy,
Le procès
: for Cordes, testimony of Bernard Délicieux (p. 100); for Limoux, Gui Sicre (p. 164), Pierre Gaytou (p. 213), Jean Laures (p. 214), Pierre Raimond Salavert (pp. 214–215), Michel Sartre (p. 215), Isarn Servel (p. 216), Raimond de Niort (p. 217). Gaytou, Laures, and Sartre stated that when the consuls of Limoux turned down Bernard's offer, he called them swine.

*
the town of Elne:
Although it has no bearing whatsoever on this story, Elne provides a golden nugget of useless knowledge from the French language's always interesting trove of
gentilés
, that is, the names given to inhabitants of particular localities. Taking its derivation from the old Iberian name for the town, the word for a man of Elne is an
Illibérien
; a woman, an
Illibérienne.

*
judged the plan “silly” and “hopeless”:
Strayer,
Reign
, p. 14.

*
Perthus Pass:
At 290 meters, one of the lowest passes of the Pyrenees. Standing on the Franco-Spanish border (the Roussillon became French in 1659 with the signing of the Treaty of the Pyrenees), it has witnessed much drama, particularly in 1939, when the defeated Republicans fled Catalonia via Perthus at the close of the Spanish Civil War.

*
Bernard and his companion called in at a local church and found
lodging:
Most of the information about this visit, including the prevarications over matter of fact, come from the same source, the testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, pp. 87, 93–94, 97 (the urination story), 100, 103 (full confession).

*
Two Catalans who testified at Bernard's trial:
Duvernoy,
Le procès
: Bérenger d'Oms (p. 155) and Raimond Guilhem of Perpignan, who was King Jaume's chancellor (p. 157). They provided the colorful details of the beating of Ferran.

*
Bernard hotly replied that he had met with sons of far more important
kings:
Testimony of Raimond Guilhem, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 158.

*
“We have heard reports about Fr. Bernard Délicieux”:
Original letter in Hauréau,
Bernard Délicieux
, pp. 190–191. Translated in Friedlander,
The Hammer
, p. 219.

18. S
URVIVAL

*
Peyre-Cavaillé had been picked up on suspicion of heretical leanings
in late 1304:
Brenon,
Pèire Autier
, pp. 276–278. The information on this interview and on the subsequent raid at Limoux comes from the depositions made at the inquisition of Jacques Fournier a decade and a half later. The inquisition register has been translated in its entirety into French: Jean Duvernoy, ed.,
Le Régistre d'Inquisition de Jacques Fournier,
évêque de Pamiers
, 3 vols., Paris, 1978.

*
an established Church, run by a dozen or so well-trained and much
beloved Good Men:
Details of the revival come from Brenon,
Pèire
Autier
, and Weis,
Yellow Cross
.

*
“There are two Churches”:
Testimony of shepherd Pierre (Peire) Maury in Duvernoy,
Le Régistre
, p. 925. In Weis,
Yellow Cross
, p. xxviii. Brenon, who uses Duvernoy's French translation, speculates (
Pèire Autier
, p. 262) that Autier's description of the Roman Church that “
possède et
écorche
” is directed at shepherds who, when shearing their sheep, must take care not to skin (
écorcher
) them. Thus a less elegant translation might be the Church “that owns and skins/scorches.”

*
“As Bernard Gui observes with savage exultation”:
Henry Charles Lea,
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages
, vol. 2, New York, 1887, p. 106. Lea's masterly three-volume work has been mostly superseded by subsequent scholarship, his full-throated indignation at the crimes of inquisition toned down by subsequent revisionists and less passionate, more detached specialists. However unfashionable Lea's humanity, the work remains a wonderful read, with passages of stirring prose. On the risks run by the peasantry sheltering the Good Men of the Autier revival: “Few more touching narratives can be conceived than those which could be constructed from the artless confessions extorted from the peasant-folk who fell into the hands of the inquisitors—the humble alms which they gave, pieces of bread, fish, scraps of cloth, or small coins, the hiding-places which they constructed in their cabins, the guidance given by night through places of danger and, more than all, the steadfast fidelity which refused to betray their pastors when the inquisitor suddenly appeared and offered the alternative of free pardon or the dungeon and confiscation” (vol. 2, p. 61).

*
When, at last, on July 6, 1304, the vicar of the Franciscan provincial of
Aquitaine arrived in Carcassonne to arrest him:
Duvernoy,
Le procès
: charge #49 of the sixty-item accusation drawn up by Gui (p. 45), testimony of Bernard Délicieux (p. 86).

*
the sheer number of people aware of the plot:
Among those at the trial, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, to have heard of the treasonous plot, aside from Délicieux himself: Arnaud Garsie, who believed King Jaume told Philip of the failed plot (p. 80), Pierre Vital (p. 154), Bernard Amat (p. 154), Jean Marsend (p. 159), Raimond Delpech (p. 161), Albert de Lavalette (p. 167), Philippe Perry (p. 169), Drouin de Montchevrel (p. 170), Arnaud Marsend, who believed Nicolas de Fréauville told Philip of the plot (p. 171), Guillaume Fransa (pp. 185–189), Bernard Trèves (pp. 203–204), Raimond Arnaud-Terré (pp. 209–210).

*
they somewhat impudently requested that she elicit some pillow talk
from her husband:
Duvernoy,
Le procès
: testimony of Arnaud Garsie (p. 83) and Guillaume Fransa (p. 186).

*
they, innocent or guilty, would later have to pay a huge bribe to Jean
d'Aunay:
Duvernoy,
Le procès
: testimony of Arnaud Garsie (p. 81) and Bernard Fenasse (p. 183).

*
The great Arnaud de Vilanova, whose advice Philip is known to have
solicited in other matters:
Dmitrewski, “Fr. Bernard Délicieux, O.F.M.,” 17, p. 206.

*
But a more plausible conjecture is the queen:
Friedlander, in
The Hammer
(pp. 223–224), is of the same opinion.

*
Testimony at Bernard's trial demonstrates that the seneschal Jean
d'Aunay came across the plot independently of any royal instructions:
The seneschal's interrogations have not survived. But witnesses at Bernard's trial revealed that Jean d'Aunay stumbled across the plot when Guillaume Brunel, a Carcassonnais called to testify about Bernard's revolt, became so nervous and agitated that the shrewd seneschal offered him immunity if he would reveal the reason for his unease. Duvernoy,
Le procès
: Testimony of Albert de Lavalette (p. 167) and Bernard Trèves (p. 204).

*
a new grasping boomtown rose on the banks of the Rhône:
The poet Petrarch, writing from the city at the height of the Avignon papacy in midcentury, famously confided his disgust to a friend: “Now I am living in France, in the Babylon of the West . . . Instead of holy solitude we find a criminal host and crowds of the most infamous satellites; instead of soberness, licentious banquets; instead of pious pilgrimages, preternatural and foul sloth; instead of the bare feet of the apostles, the snowy coursers of brigands fly past us, the horses decked in gold and fed on gold, soon to be shod with gold, if the Lord does not check this slavish luxury. In short, we seem to be among the kings of the Persians or Parthians, before whom we must fall down and worship, and who cannot be approached except presents be offered.”

*
He dispatched envoys to investigate the newly invigorated inquisition:
This investigation of 1307–8 was conducted by two prelates favorable to Bernard's cause: Bérenger de Frédol, his longtime protector from Béziers, and, interestingly, Pierre de la Chapelle-Taillefer, the former bishop of Toulouse so scathingly criticized by Bernard Saisset for being a Parisian. It seems that the northern bishop sided with the south in the matter of the inquisition and had perhaps gone native. This was also the investigation that uncovered Bishop Castanet's anti-onanistic legislation.

*
Three powerful cardinals, friends and protectors of his, eventually felt
compelled to take Bernard aside:
Bérenger de Frédol, who would shelter Bernard in Béziers, Pietro da Colonna, of the family that had raided Anagni alongside Guillaume de Nogaret, and a cardinal of Bruges, Etienne de Suisy. Testimony of Bernard Délicieux, in Duvernoy,
Le procès
, p. 89.

*
Pope Clement had forgiven him all, as had King Philip:
The king pardoned Bernard at Chartres in 1310, according to Dmitrewski, “Fr. Bernard Délicieux, O.F.M.,” 17, p. 463.

19. C
ATHARS AND
S
PIRITUALS
, I
NQUISITORS AND
C
ONVENTUALS