against them, adroitly eluded it by exhibiting a combined list of all the witnesses, so that the culprits were forced to submit without defence. He then held another council at Orange, and sent to Foulques the sentences, which were duly communicated to the accused assembled for the purpose in the church of St. Jacques. All the papers of the inquisition were carried to Rome by the legate for fear that if they should fall into the hands of the evil-minded they would be the cause of many murders — and, in fact, a number of the witnesses were slain on simple suspicion.[1]
All this shows how crude and cumbrous an implement was the episcopal and legatine Inquisition even in the most energetic hands, and how formless and tentative was its procedure. A few instances of the use of synodal witnesses are subsequently to be found, as in the Council of Aries, in 1234, that of Tours, in 1239, that of Beziers, in 1246, of Albi, in 1254, and in a letter of Alphonse of Poitiers in 1257, urging his bishops to appoint them as required by the Council of Toulouse. An occasional example of the legatine Inquisition may also be met with. In 1237 the inquisitors of Toulouse were acting under legatine powers, as sub- delegates to the Legate Jean de Vienne ; and in the same year, when the people of Montpellier asked the pope for assistance to suppress the growth of heresy, their bishop apparently being supine, he sent Jean de Vienne there with instructions to act vigorously. The episcopal office was similarly disregarded in 1239, when Gregory IX. sent orders to the inquisitors of Toulouse to obey the instructions of his legate. Yet this legatine function in time passed so completely out of remembrance that in 1351 the Signiory of Florence asked the papal legate to desist from a charge of heresy on which he had cited the Camaldulensian abbot, because the republic had never permitted its citizens to be judged for such an offence except by the inquisitors ; and as early as 1257, when the inquisitors of Languedoc complained of the zeal of the Legate Zoen, Bishop of Avignon, in carrying on inquisitorial work, Alexander IV. promptly tiecided that he had no such power outside of his own diocese.[2]
- ↑ Potthast No. 7260.— Concil. Tolosan. ann. 1329 c. 1, 2.— Guill. de Pod. Laur. c. 40,— Guill. Pelisso Chron. Ed. Molinier, p. 18.
- ↑ Concil. Arelatens. ann. 1234 c. 5. — Concil. Turonens. ann. 1239 c. 1. — Concil. Biterrens. ann. 1246 c. 1. — Concil. Albicns. ann. 1254 c. 1. — Archives de I'lnq. de Carcassonne (Coll. Boat, XXX. 250).— Vaissette, III. Pr. pp. 385-6.— Raynald An-
