The Lives of the Saints, Volume III (of 16): March. Baring-Gould Sabine
it.' 'Do you believe that water can work your salvation?' He answers, 'I do not believe it.' 'You must renounce that veil which the priest placed on your head when you were baptized.' He must answer, 'I renounce it.' Thus he receives the baptism of the heretics, and denies the baptism of the Church. Then they all place their hands upon him, and kiss him, and clothe him with a black garment, and from that hour he is as one of themselves."
The ceremony of consolation, or heretication, was only performed at the point of death; but if the sick person should show signs of recovery, he or she was required to abstain from food, or to open a vein, so as to prevent convalescence and precipitate death. I may as well give a few instances which came under the notice of the inquisitors of Toulouse, from Limborch: —
"This admission was believed to save the soul of the person admitted, and was called spiritual baptism, the consolation, the reception, and the good end; and it was believed that those sanctified by it were bound from that moment to abstain from touching a person of another sex, and from food, or the soul fell from its state of purification. Thus we read of the trial of a woman whose father had been received amongst the Albigenses, 'that she was forbidden by her father to touch him, because after his reception no woman ought to touch him, and from that time she never did touch him.' (Fol. 49.) And in another woman's trial, 'that it was unlawful for her to touch Peter Sancii, and that she heard that it was reported amongst them that they neither touch a woman, nor suffer themselves to be touched by one.' (Fol. 68.) But inasmuch as it was possible that the person received might return to his former pollutions (says Limborch in his introduction to the Acts of the Inquisition), his reception was delayed to his last sickness, when there was no more hopes of recovery, that so he might not lose the good he had received; for which reason some were not admitted, though one of the Albigenses was present, because it was not believed they would immediately die. Thus it is reported of Peter Sancii (fol. 68) that having called 'to hereticate a certain sick woman, she was not then hereticated, because he did not think it proper, upon account of her not being weak enough.' And afterwards, though the distemper grew more violent, Peter Sancii did not hereticate her, because she recovered. As for those who were received during their illness, they were commanded to make use of the Endura, that is, fasting, and to hasten death by opening a vein and bathing. Thus it is related of a certain woman, that 'she persevered in the abstinence which they call the Endura many days, and hastened her bodily death by losing her blood, frequent bathing, and greedily taking a poisonous draught of the juice of wild cucumbers, mixing it with broken glass, that, by tearing her bowels, she might sooner die.' (Fol. 14-b.) Of another, it is said, 'that she was forbidden by her mother-in-law to give her little daughter, who had been hereticated by Peter Sancii, any milk to drink, by which the child died.' (Fol. 46.) Another confesses, 'that she had not seen her father since his heretication eating or drinking anything but cold water.' (Fol. 49.) But one Hugo, who continued several days in the Endura, did afterwards, by his mother's persuasion, eat and recover. (Fol. 63.) The same year, Peter Sancii invited him 'to enter into the Endura, and so to make a good end; but he would not agree to it till he came to die.' The same Hugo saw 'that Sancii procured and hastened his own death by bleeding, bathing, and cold.' Peter Auterii is said to have received another woman, 'and after her reception to have forbidden any meat being given to the said hereticated sick woman; and that there were two women who attended her, and watched that there should be neither meat nor drink given her the whole night, nor the following day, lest she should lose the good she had received, and contradict the order of Peter Auterii; although the said sick woman begged them to give her some food. But the third day after she did eat and grew well.' (Fol. 65-b.) In the sentence of Peter Raymund and of the Hugos, we read these things concerning the Endura: 'You voluntarily shorten your own corporal life, and inflict death upon yourself; because you put yourself in that abstinence, which the heretics call Endura, in which Endura you have now remained six days without meat or drink, and would not eat, nor will, though often invited to do so.' (Fol. 82-b.) However, all would not subject themselves to so severe a law. For we read of a certain woman 'that she suffered not her sick daughter, though near death, to be received; because then her said daughter must be put in the Endura.' (Fol. 71.) There is also an instance of a woman, who, for fear she should be taken up by the Inquisitors, put herself in the Endura; and sending for a surgeon, ordered him to open one of her veins in a bath, and after the surgeon was gone, she unbound her arm in the bath, that so the blood running out more freely, she might sooner die. After this she bought poison in order to destroy herself. Afterwards she produced a cobbler's awl, which in that barbarous age they called alzena, intending to run it into her side; but the women disputing among themselves, whether the heart was on the right side or the left, she at last drank up the poison, and died the day after. (Fol. 30-b)."22
Now a great deal of abuse has been poured on the Inquisition, and its crimes have been vastly exaggerated. Gieseler speaks of the bloodthirsty Inquisition as a "monster raging with most frightful fury in Southern France," – strong language for so calm an historian. But we ask, was it not necessary that such a system, destructive of life, should be put down? That the fautors of this atrocious self-murdering should be summarily dealt with, when they persuaded mothers to let their children perish on their sick-beds, men to pine themselves to death, and women to swallow broken glass, to tear their bowels, when their health began to amend? We have got the Acts of the Inquisition at Toulouse during sixteen years that it "raged with frightful fury," i. e., between 1307 and 1323. The whole number of cases reported is 932; but it is obvious that the same individual might, and in fact did, often reappear before the Inquisition more than once in the course of sixteen years. Having confessed some connection with heresy, he was sentenced to wear a little cross, or tongue of red cloth, let into the garments, or simply to wear a cross round the neck, or to make a pilgrimage to a certain church, or to use certain prayers; of such sentences 174 are recorded. If the person condemned to do this disobeyed, he was put in prison for a while; there were 218 such cases. If he escaped from prison, or ran away from the country, he was condemned as a fugitive; there were 38 of these. Some of the leaders of the heresy who had caused the death of many persons, and incorrigible heretics who had broken out of prison, were condemned to death; there were 40 fautors of heresy sentenced – twenty-nine Albigenses, seven Waldenses, and four Beghards; thirty-two of these were men, and eight were women. Among the sentences recorded are 113 remissions of penances, 139 discharges from prison, and 90 sentences of heresy pronounced against persons deceased.23
Now when we consider what these Albigensian "perfect" men were, and how dangerous they were to the well-being of society, by their influence over superstitious and ignorant peasants, urging them to self-murder, and thus causing the death of very many persons, we do not think that the Inquisition at Toulouse deserves all the odium that has been cast upon it. Many of those whom it condemned to death would probably have received a sentence of transportation for life in England at the present day; and though the execution of from two to three persons a year is certainly to be deplored, it is not just to denounce the Inquisition as bloodthirsty, when it sentenced to death those who had caused many innocent and ignorant persons to immolate themselves. We do not for a moment pretend to justify the Albigensian war; but we can understand the alarm caused to the Pope and to Christian France by the heathen reaction in Provence, Narbonne, and Toulouse. Nor were the Albigenses free from blame in other particulars. They exhibited their contempt for Christian churches and sacraments in a peculiarly offensive manner, likely to exasperate Catholics to the uttermost. One instance shall suffice, and that is so gross that it must be given in Latin: —
"Erat quidam pessimus hæreticus apud Tolosam, Hugo Faber nomine, qui quondam lapsus est in dementiam, quod juxta altare cujusdam ecclesiæ purgavit ventrem, et in contemptum Dei, cum palla altaris tersit posteriora sua … quæ omnia cum vir venerabilis abbas Cistercii… Comiti retulisset, et eum moneret ut puniret qui tantum faciens perpetrarat, respondit comes quod nullo modo propter hoc puniret in aliquo cives suos."
Peter of Castelnau, of whom we have now to speak, sprang from an illustrious family in the diocese of Montpellier, and was archdeacon of Maguelonne, when he was appointed by the Pope to be one of his legates in the southern provinces infected with heresy. But the desire of a higher perfection led Peter to renounce the honours of the world, and in 1200, to receive the Cistercian habit in the abbey of Fontfroide.
In
Historia Inquisitionis, Amst. 1692, c. 8.
A large number of the sentences – all the most important – are translated and published in Maitland's Tracts and Documents, together with many of the letters, bulls, edicts, and controversial writings on the Albigenses.