A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume IILea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume II
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- History
About the same period there is a curious case of a priest named Jean
Philibert, who was sent from Burgundy into Gascony to track a fugitive
Waldensian. He followed his quarry as far as Ausch, where he found a
numerous community of the sectaries, holding regular assemblies and
preaching and performing their rites, although they attended the parish
churches to avert suspicion. Their evangelical piety so won upon him
that, after going home, he returned to Ausch and formally joined them.
He wandered back to Burgundy, where he fell under suspicion, and in 1298
he was brought before Gui de Reims, the Inquisitor of Besançon, when he
refused to take an oath and was consigned to prison. Here he abjured,
and on being liberated returned to the Waldenses of Gascony, was again
arrested, and brought before Bernard Gui in 1311, who finally burned him
in 1319 as a relapsed. In 1302 we hear of two Waldensian ministers
haunting the region near Castres, in the Albigeois, wandering around by
night and zealously propagating their doctrines. Still, in spite of
these evidences of activity, little effort at repression is visible at
this period. The Inquisition was crippled for a while by its contest
with Philippe le Bel and Clement V., and when it resumed unrestricted
operations, Pierre Autier and his Catharan disciples absorbed its
energies. Although the sentences of Bernard Gui at Toulouse commence in
1308, it is not until the _auto de fé_ of 1316 that any Waldenses appear
among its victims, when one was condemned to perpetual imprisonment and
one was burned as an unrepentant heretic. The _auto_ of 1319 appears to
have been a jail-delivery, for poor wretches appear in it whose
confessions date back to 1309, 1311, 1312, and 1315. On this occasion
eighteen Waldenses were condemned to pilgrimages with or without
crosses, twenty-six to perpetual prison, and three were burned. In the
_auto_ of 1321 a man and his wife who obstinately refused to abjure were
burned. In that of 1322 eight were sentenced to pilgrimages, of whom
five had crosses, two to prison, six dead bodies were exhumed and
burned, and there is an allusion to the brother of one of the prisoners
who had been burned at Avignon. This comprises the whole work of Bernard
Gui from 1308 to 1323, and does not indicate any very active
persecution. It is perhaps noteworthy that all of those punished in 1319
were from Ausch, while the popular name of “Burgundians,” by which the
Waldenses were known, indicates that the headquarters of the sect were
still in Franche Comté. In fact, an allusion to a certain Jean de
Lorraine as a successful missionary indicates that region as busy in
proselyting efforts, and there are not wanting facts to prove that the
Inquisition of Besançon was active during this period. In the _auto_ of
1322 many of the sufferers were refugees from Burgundy, and we learn
that they had a provincial named Girard, showing that the Waldensian
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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