The Friar of Carcassonne by Stephen O’Shea Read Free Book Online

own petard—only a full confession constituted grounds for absolute certainty. For this reason, it was termed the regina probationum , or “queen of proofs.”
    No longer was establishing guilt on the basis of two or more credible accusations satisfactory. These would kick off the proceedings, but the prisoner had to be forced—tortured—into admitting his errors. If he was smart, he could then recant them and beg forgiveness. For those unable to be tortured—the dead—ghoulish ingenuity came into play: their bodies were dug up, carted through the streets, and burned in the public square. If the corpse had been a heretic, or simply a sometime host of a heretic, his or her dwelling would then be demolished and the resulting vacant lot transformed into a dung pit. As early as 1207, Pope Innocent III had decreed: “The house, however, in which a heretic had been received shall be altogether destroyed, nor shall anyone presume to rebuild it; but let that which was a den of iniquity become a receptacle of filth.” For good measure, all of the deceased’s worldly goods and wealth were confiscated from his or her heirs, leaving them destitute.
    The inquisitor rarely tarried in the locales he was investigating. When he repaired to his headquarters in Carcassonne or Toulouse, more police work was done, summons issued, testimonies compared, conclusions drawn. Those villagers who had given unsatisfactory accounts of their beliefs and activities would accompany the inquisitor back to the city to be thrown in prison. Incarceration was a technique used to focus minds, and it usually did. The Wall in Carcassonne had two types of prisoners: those subjected to the murus strictus , or harsh confinement, shackled and manacled in solitary confinement, with little food, light, and air, and those confined in the murus largus , a more relaxed imprisonment, perhaps in an expansive collective holding room, or in cells surrounding a courtyard, with rights to roam the grounds and receive visitors. In both instances, prisoners had to pay room and board to the warden. Although that last detail might seem strange, one historian points out that the entire strategy of incarceration was novel: “What the inquisitors had done, and they may have been the first in medieval Europe to have done so, was to create a socially delimited space, in which they could isolate individuals from the outer world and subject them without interruption to an enforced and forcible persuasion. Such a planned and active use of imprisonment for behavior modification was possibly without parallel in medieval Europe.”
    When, after several months of diligent investigation, the inquisitor had readied his sentences, he would return to the village to mete out punishment. The people were assembled to watch their fellows pay for their spiritual impertinence. The inquisitor took the opportunity to deliver a stern sermo generalis , a public homily and sentencing, in which he would attempt to edify the common folk on the nature of divine justice and the perils of straying from the right path, the ceremony serving as a spectacle to nudge the people toward salvation. The sermo was the culmination of the entire inquisitorial enterprise: the tares would be separated from the wheat, the wolves from the sheep, the depraved from the decent. It was also the only public moment of the entire proceeding, the trials and questioning having been conducted in secrecy. Thus its importance to the inquisitor’s redemptive mission can hardly be overstated.
    The inquisitor had considerable leeway in determining the appropriate type of punishment. The most benign was a command to go on a pilgrimage. Those who had admitted and abjured minor heretical activity could be given two large yellow crosses made of cloth, to be sewn on the front and back of their tunics and to be worn at all times for a period that stretched from months to years. However harmless that