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

sounds, it was in fact a badge of obloquy, guaranteeing a substantial loss of livelihood and standing. The cross wearer was henceforth a pariah, or at the very least a dangerous person to be seen with. To sharpen the sting, the convicted individual had to appear in this apparel every Sunday at mass, bearing with him some strong rods, so that the priest could flog him in front of the congregation. The same shameful humiliation awaited him on every important feast day, of which there were many in the medieval calendar, during which he was energetically flogged in religious processions.
    A painfully similar fate was assigned to those found guilty of giving false testimony to the inquisition. To their clothes would be attached a red cloth in the shape of a tongue, and frequent public whippings constituted a further penance. Penance had to be public and ongoing, as a continual reminder to the faithful about who was in charge of their relationship with God. Those who had been convicted earlier but had not kept up with their penitential obligations—those who had taken off the crosses or avoided the floggings, for example—were given a more severe punishment this time: imprisonment and confiscation of all material goods.
    The Wall at Carcassonne and a similar establishment in Toulouse also housed those deemed unsuitable for further social intercourse with the faithful. The length and harshness of their sentences depended on the temperament of the inquisitor. Many died incarcerated, their disinherited and wholly innocent sons and daughters reduced to begging in the streets or selling themselves in the alehouses. Ruining lives was of no concern to the inquisitor, this collateral damage of heresy’s being, in fact, yet another instructive lesson for the Christian to take to heart. The spiritual infraction occasioning the ruin of a family might seem, to less zealous eyes, fairly trivial. Many in the Wall were held because of actions taken decades earlier, when Catharism was out in the open. A common crime was to have performed the melioramentum , a ritual show of respect performed when passing a Good Man or Good Woman in the street. It involved a brief genuflection and an utterance asking to be guaranteed of a “good end” to life. In the long-gone Languedoc of coexisting Christianities, this homage was a fairly common courtesy, akin to tipping your fedora in the presence of a lady. To the inquisition, however, it constituted “adoring” a heretic and was punishable by imprisonment and dispossession.
    The most serious condemnation the inquisitor could hand down was death, by burning at the stake. It was the marquee attraction of the sermo generalis , and little insight is required to imagine the mixed feelings of the onlookers, whether despair at seeing a loved one perish or delight at seeing an enemy or rival get his comeuppance. All, however, bore witness to the blunt power of the Church.
    Technically, the inquisition did not do the burning. The prisoner was, as the phrase had it, “relaxed to the secular arm,” handed over to the civil authorities to be executed. To claim, as some defensive Catholics have done over the centuries, that this eleventh-hour switch somehow means that the Church had no blood on its hands must be called out for what it is: a lie. To the crowd assembled around the stake, it was clear whose show this was. The inquisitor, delivering his sermon in the company of his chanting fellows, may not have lowered the burning brand to the straw, but all aspects of the ghastly public ceremony had been carefully orchestrated by him, after months of secret interrogation and torture. If an adept of Moneta of Cremona, he would have realized that this killing made him not only an instrument but also an imitation of God. Sincere in his persecutorial and prosecutorial conduct, the good inquisitor might permit himself a flush of pride if high-profile heretics were among those perishing in the