It is significant of the position which Guillem Arnaud’s steadfastness had already won for his office that to him was conceded the vindication of this series of outrages on the immunity of the Church. Bishop Raymond had joined him in Carcassonne without anathematizing the authors of his exile, but now the anathema promptly went forth, November 10, 1235, uttered by the inquisitor with the names of the Bishops of Toulouse and Carcassonne appended as assenting witnesses. It was confined to the consuls, but Count Raymond was not allowed to escape the responsibility. The excommunication was sent to the Franciscans of Toulouse for publication, and when they obeyed they too were expelled, in no gentle fashion, and the rebellious city was virtually left without ecclesiastics. Further excommunications followed, now including the count, and Prior Pons de Saint-Gilles hastened to Italy to pour the story of his woes into the sympathizing ears of the pope and the sacred college. Gregory assailed the count as the chief offender. A minatory brief of April 28, 1236, addressed to him, is couched in the severest language. He is held responsible for the audacious acts of the consuls; he is significantly reminded of the unperformed vow of the crusade; not only has he failed to extirpate heresy according to his pledges, but he is a manifest fautor and protector of heretics; his favorites and officers are suspect of heresy; he protects those who have been condemned; his lands are a place of refuge for those flying from persecution elsewhere, so that heresy is daily spreading and conversions from Catholicism are frequent, while zealous churchmen seeking to restrain them are slain and abused with impunity. All this he is peremptorily ordered to correct and to sail with his knights to the Holy Land in the “general passage” of the following March. It scarcely needed the reminder, which the pope did not spare him, of the labors which the Church and its Crusaders had undergone to purge his lands of heresy. He had too keen a recollection of the abyss from which he had escaped to risk another plunge. He had gone as far as he dared in the effort to protect his subjects, and it were manifest folly to draw upon his head and theirs another inroad of the marauders whom the pope with a word could let loose upon him to earn salvation with the sword.[22]