Read The Friar of Carcassonne for Free Online

in what amounted to convincing people not to believe what they could see with their own eyes. He had to establish the idea of a counterfeit holiness, condemning all who tolerated it to the fire and brimstone that often came as the stem-winding finale of his initial sermon.
    The villagers were informed that they enjoyed a grace period of a few days before a formal summons to appear before the inquisitor might be served upon them. If, before that time, they came of their own accord and owned up to their depravity, a certain measure of clemency would be shown. They had to tell the inquisitor if they or any of their neighbors, kinsmen, or other acquaintances had ever given material or spiritual support of any kind whatsoever to the Good Men and Women. It was a crime to withhold any information germane to the eradication of heresy. And if they, or any people they knew, were Cathar believers, they had to recant their heresy and endure a penance before being welcomed back in the bosom of the Church. Depositions were taken confidentially—no one but the inquisitor ever knew who said what about whom. Further, should the inquisitor receive at least two credible depositions about someone believing in, supporting, or giving comfort to the Good Men and Women, charges could be laid. That created the mala fama , the infamy necessary for investigation. Derived from old Rome, the notion held that a person’s own reputation ( fama ) functioned as his accuser, exempting him from normal legal protection. A powerful and pliable tool of coercion, inquisitors came to use just general public notoriety, rather than denunciations or confessions, to start a proceeding against someone. In all cases, the accused never knew who his accusers were.
    One can imagine how the sermon’s listeners felt on returning home for whispered discussions over whether to cooperate. Would they be denounced, and by whom? By one of their enemies, with whom they had had a land or livestock dispute years back? If innocent, would they be falsely accused? Should they settle old scores by accusing someone falsely before he accused them? Did they really have to squeal on heretical neighbors and kin whom they liked? The inquisitor’s sermon, in short, contained a recipe for tearing village life apart, the customary friction of antipathy and affinity within a living community giving way to a deadening, dread-filled atmosphere of revenge and betrayal. This indeed was a Christianity of fear, in practice as well as in theory.
    The inquisitor, for his part, gauged if the town was going to be a tough nut to crack. The first collaborators might arrive quickly, perhaps under cover of night to avoid neighborly scrutiny; or they might not—some brave villages observed an omertà that took years to grind down. Further on in the thirteenth century, the inquisitor was able to examine records of past inquisitions held in the locality. These were carefully guarded in bound registers, containing scores of transcripts of interrogations and sentences handed down. Fairly uncharacteristically for document-keeping practices of the era, the registers were systematically organized, cross-referencing individuals and allowing archival retrieval of damning detail that might otherwise have been lost or forgotten. They were, in essence, a collective database designed for a sole user—many a time an inquisitor confounded individuals with contradictory testimony they had given years earlier. Not unsurprisingly, an inquisition register first brought la rage carcassonnaise to a boil.
    Further reading for the visiting Dominican investigator were materials concerning heresy itself. At the Council of Tarragona in 1242, the assembled prelates spelled out an entire taxonomy of dissent, yet another testament to psychology, this time to the mind’s capability to create neat hierarchical mountains out of complex human molehills. One can almost see the lips of the novice inquisitor mouthing