effort made in 1248 by the heretics of Narbonne. On the occasion of an assembly of bishops in that city a clerk and a messenger bearing records with the names of heretics were slain and the books burned, giving rise to a good many troublesome questions with regard to existing and future prosecutions. About 1285, at Carcassonne, a plot was entered into by the consuls of the town and several of its leading ecclesiastics to destroy the inquisitorial records. They bribed one of the familiars, Bernard Garric, to burn them, but the conspiracy was discovered and its authors punished. One of these, a lawyer named Guillem Garric, languished in prison for about thirty years before his final sentence in 1321.[1]
Not the least important among the functionaries of the Inquisition were the lowest class — the apparitors, messengers, spies, and bravos, known generally by the name of familiars, which came to have so ill-omened a significance in the popular ear. The service was not without risk, and it had few attractions for the honest and peaceable, but it was full of promise for the reckless and evil-minded. Not only did they enjoy the immunity from secular jurisdiction attaching to all in the service of the Church, but the special authority granted by Innocent lY., in 1245, to the inquisitors to absolve their familiars for acts of violence rendered them independent even of the ecclesiastical tribunals. Besides, as any molestation of the servants of the Inquisition was qualified as impeding its operations and thus savoring of heresy, any one who dared to resist aggression rendered himself liable to prosecution before the tribunal of the aggressor. Thus panoplied, they could tyrannize at will over the defenceless population, and it is easy to imagine the amount of extortion which they could practise with virtual impunity by threatening arrest or accusation at a time when falling into the hands of the Inquisition was about the heaviest misfortune which could befall any man, whether orthodox or heretic.[2]
- ↑ Arch, cle I'lnq. de Carcass. (Boat, XXXIV. 123).— Ripoll 1. 356, 396.— Vaissette, III. 406; Pr. 467.— Coll. Boat, XXXI. 105, 149.— Molinier, p. 35.— Bern. Guidon. Hist. Conv. Carcass. (D. Bouquet, XXI. 743).— Lib. Sententt. Inquis. Tolos. p. 282.
- ↑ Paramo dc Orig. Offic. S. Inquis. p. 102.— Pegnae Comment, in Eymeric. p. 584.— Arch, de I'lnq. de Carcassonne (Boat, XXXI. 70; XXXII. 143).
