Albigensian Crusade - Inquisition

Inquisition

The Languedoc now was firmly under the control of the King of France. The Inquisition was established in Toulouse in November 1229, and the surviving elements of Catharism were eliminated from the region, largely due to the infamous inquisitor Bernard Gui and his order of Dominicans. Under Pope Gregory IX from 1233 the Dominican Inquisition was given great power to suppress the heresy. The Inquisition proceeded by investigation, always seeking to implicate further heretics by identifying sources. Medieval judicial procedures were developed. The accused, whose guilt was assumed, had no right to see the evidence against them, or their accuser or even know their names. They were not always told what the charges were against them. They had no right to legal counsel, and if exceptionally they were allowed a legal representative then the representative risked being arrested for heresy as well. This does not amount to providing a defence in any sense we would understand the term today. Although the majority found guilty of heresy were given lighter penalties, these were not the die hard Cathars as the latter would not swear fidelity to the Catholic Church holding it as an apostate institution. Eleven percent of offenders faced prison on a first offence of heresy but death on a second offence. Even the incarceration though included being immured in the infamous wall of Carcassonne, the conditions of which were barbaric and often led to death or as some described it a living death. A letter from the Consuls of Carcassonne in 1285 to Jean Galand, an Inquisitor describes it thus:

"Life for them is an agony, and death a relief. Under these constraints they affirm as true what is false, preferring to die once than to be thus tortured multiple times ... they accuse not only themselves but also others who are innocent, in order to escape their suffering in any way ... those who so confess reveal afterwards that what they have said to the Brother Inquisitors is not true, but false, and that they have confessed out of fear of the peril of the moment. To some of those that you cite you promise immunity so that they will more freely denounce others without fear".

However, since most Cathar parfait (male) or parfaites (female) refused to recant and embrace orthodox Catholic doctrine they were burnt to death as a matter of course. And this was specifically as a result of their religious beliefs as judged heretical by the Dominican Inquisition - not due to revolt against the temporal order. The latter resulted in thousands more being butchered as at the siege of Béziers in 1209 - 7000 in total amounting to the entire population. Arnaud Amoury, the Cistercian abbot-commander wrote to the Pope:

"Today your Holiness, twenty thousand citizens were put to the sword, regardless of rank, age, or sex."

Any recanting Cathars,(first offenders only) were required to wear two yellow crosses on their clothing for the rest of their lives. Half of a 'guilty' person's property was seized by the Church. This included the property of the deceased whom the Dominican Inquisition would exhume, try and then burn posthumously for heresy which allowed them to seize assets and property from their heirs. Many still resisted, taking refuge in fortresses at Fenouillèdes and Montségur, or inciting small uprisings. In 1235, the Inquisition was forced out of Albi, Narbonne, and Toulouse. Raymond-Roger de Trencavel led a military campaign in 1240, but was defeated at Carcassonne in October, then besieged at Montréal. He soon surrendered and was exiled to Aragon. In 1242, Raymond of Toulouse attempted to mount a revolt in conjunction with an English invasion, but the English were quickly repulsed and his support evaporated. He was subsequently pardoned by the king.

Cathar strongholds fell one by one. Montségur withstood a nine-month siege before being taken in March 1244. The final hold-out, a small, isolated, overlooked fort at Quéribus, quickly fell in August 1255. The last known burning of a person who professed Cathar beliefs occurred in Corbières, in 1321.