Meanwhile advantage was taken of the access obtained to them to procure from them statements of the tortures which they had endured, and lists were made of the names of those whom they had been forced to accuse as heretics. These were circulated throughout the land and excited general alarm, the Franciscans being especially active in giving them publicity. On the other hand, the inquisitor Geoffroi d’Ablis was equal to the emergency. He cited Pequigny to appear and stand trial for impeding the Inquisition, and on his refusal excommunicated him, September 29; and as soon as word could be carried to Paris he was published as excommunicate by the Dominicans there. This audacious act brought all parties to a sense of the nature of the conflict which had sprung up between Church and State. The consuls and people of Albi addressed to the queen an earnest petition beseeching her to prevail upon the king not to abandon them by withdrawing the Reformers, who had already done so much good and on whom depended their last hope. A fruitless effort also was made to prevent the publication of the excommunication. At Castres, October 13, Jean Ricoles, stipendiary priest of the Church of St. Mary, published it from the pulpit, as he was bound to do, and was promptly arrested by the deputy of the royal viguier of Albi and carried to the Franciscan convent, where he was threatened and maltreated, and the friars used every effort to persuade him to withdraw it. This in itself was a grave violation of clerical immunity, and it was soon recognized that such proceedings were worse than useless. Pequigny’s authority was paralyzed until the excommunication should be removed, and this could only be done by the man who had uttered it, or by the pope himself.[92] The prospect of relief was darkened by the election, October 21, of Benedict XI., himself a Dominican and necessarily pre-disposed in favor of the Inquisition. Special exertions evidently were required unless all that had been gained was to be lost, and, at the best, litigation in the Roman court was a costly business. Pequigny had appealed to the pope, and, October 29, he wrote from Paris to the cities of Languedoc asking for their aid in the persecution which he had brought upon himself in their cause. Bernard Délicieux promptly busied himself to obtain the required assistance. By his exertions the three cities of Carcassonne, Albi, and Cordes entered into an alliance and pledged themselves to furnish the sum of three thousand livres, one half by Carcassonne and the rest by the other two, and to continue in the same proportions as long as the affair should last. After Pequigny’s death they renewed their obligation to his oldest son Renaud; but as the matter was much protracted, they grew tired, and Bernard, who had raised some of the money on his own responsibility, was left with heavy obligations, of which he vainly sought restitution at the hands of the ungrateful cities.[93]