THE CORRUPTION OF ANGELS This page intentionally left blank THE CORRUPTION OF ANGELS THE GREAT INQUISITION OF 1245–1246 Mark Gregory Pegg PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PRINCETON AND OXFORD COPYRIGHT 2001 BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS PUBLISHED BY PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 41 WILLIAM STREET, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY 08540 IN THE UNITED KINGDOM: PRINCETON UNIVERSITY PRESS, 3 MARKET PLACE, WOODSTOCK, OXFORDSHIRE OX20 1SY ALL RIGHTS RESERVED LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA PEGG, MARK GREGORY, 1963– THE CORRUPTION OF ANGELS : THE GREAT INQUISITION OF 1245–1246 / MARK GREGORY PEGG. P. CM. INCLUDES BIBLIOGRAPHICAL REFERENCES AND INDEX. ISBN 0-691-00656-3 (ALK. PAPER) 1. ALBIGENSES. 2. LAURAGAIS (FRANCE)—CHURCH HISTORY. 3. INQUISITION—FRANCE—LAURAGAIS. 4. FRANCE—CHURCH HISTORY—987–1515. I. TITLE. DC83.3.P44 2001 272′.2′0944736—DC21 00-057462 THIS BOOK HAS BEEN COMPOSED IN BASKERVILLE TYPEFACE PRINTED ON ACID-FREE PAPER. ∞ WWW.PUP.PRINCETON.EDU PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA 13579108642 To My Mother This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ix 1 Two Hundred and One Days 3 2 The Death of One Cistercian 4 3 Wedged between Catha and Cathay 15 4 Paper and Parchment 20 5 Splitting Heads and Tearing Skin 28 6 Summoned to Saint-Sernin 35 7 Questions about Questions 45 8 Four Eavesdropping Friars 52 9 The Memory of What Was Heard 57 10 Lies 63 11 Now Are You Willing to Put That in Writing? 74 12 Before the Crusaders Came 83 13 Words and Nods 92 14 Not Quite Dead 104 viii CONTENTS 15 One Full Dish of Chestnuts 114 16 Two Yellow Crosses 126 17 Life around a Leaf 131 NOTES 133 BIBLIOGRAPHY OF WORKS CITED 199 INDEX 219 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS HE STAFF, librarians, and archivists of Olin Library at Washing- ton University in St. Louis, Firestone Library at Princeton Univer- Tsity, Speer Library at Princeton Theological Seminary, Rare Books at Columbia University in New York, the Bibliothe`que nationale in Paris, the departmental archives of the Tarn-et-Garonne in Montau- ban, the departmental archives of the Haute-Garonne, the Bibliothe`que me´ridionale of the Institute d’e´tudes me´ridionales, and the Biblio- the`que municipale, these last three all in Toulouse, were invaluable throughout the writing of this book. Almost all of the research was un- dertaken with fellowships, grants, and funds from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the History Department at Princeton University, the Center for Human Values at Princeton University, The Group for the Study of Late Antiquity at Princeton University, the School of Historical Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, and the History De- partment at Washington University in St. Louis. Also, vital to the life of this book were the participants of the seminars and lectures where chapters, often quite shaggy and unshaven, were heard and discussed: the University Center for Human Values at Princeton University, the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, the Centre for Medieval Stud- ies at the University of Sydney, the Quodlibet Conference at the Centre for Medieval Studies at the University of York, and the History Depart- ment of Washington University in St. Louis. More personally, my thanks (occasionally belated) go to Beatrice Case`au, Ivona Percec, Elspeth Carruthers, Emily Rose, Barbara Kraut- hamer, Christopher Brest (for his excellent map), Mark Spencer, John Mundy, William Stoneman, Michael Stoller, David d’Avray, John Ward, Teo´filo Ruiz, James Given, Susan Reynolds, Robert Moore, Jacques Le Goff, George Kateb, Pierre Bonnaisse, Maurice Berthe, Claire Pe´quignot, Claire Vernon, Alison MacDonald, Sunjoo Moon, Anja Belz, Peter Biller, John Arnold, Caterina Bruschi, Sean McWilliams, Sara Lloyd, Bette Marbs, Sheryl Peltz, Amanda Hingst, Henry Berger, Joseph Schraibman, David Konig, Hillel Kieval, Le´opold Delisle, Elora Shehabudin, Victor Bolden, Roy Seckold, Graham Knowles, Andrew Knowles, and Victoria Knowles. This study, in a number of past guises, was read with great intel- ligence, care, and friendship by Peter Brown, Edward Peters, Malcolm Barber, John Pryor, David Nirenberg, Derek Hirst, Giles Constable, and Anthony Grafton. My editor Brigitta van Rheinberg was, when things looked a bit bleak, forever hopeful, always encouraging, and extremely patient. Lauren Lepow improved my writing (and so my ideas) with won- x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS derful skill and insight. William Jordan, my remarkable adviser at Prince- ton, knows how much I owe to him, and I can only say, along with some rather cute little iron goats . well, he knows. Ussama Makdisi is a great friend and scholar; my work now, and in the future, will always be the richer thanks to him. Anthony Peck, a mate all too similar to myself, has helped my research, and me, in ways he does not even realize. Nicole Jacobs, in her concern that I finally finish this book, will always be my friend. Jennifer Baszile, more than anyone else, has given my scholar- ship, and life, a clarity when I frequently felt lost—I could not have fin- ished this study without her. This book is a small gift to five women. First, my late grandmother Lillian Pegg. Second, Mary Douglas. Third, the late Dianne Lim for all her remembered faith in me. Fourth, my sister, Trescha Knowles, without whom my life would be incomplete. Finally, above all others, my mother, Veronica Seckold, who, in so many moments of wisdom and forgiveness, understanding and worry, humor and love—whether in Woy Woy, or on the telephone to Princeton and St. Louis, or even to a lonely, chilly te´le´- phone box at the foot of the Pyre´ne´es—never doubted that I would finish this book, this thing I had to do, now lovingly dedicated to her. THE CORRUPTION OF ANGELS The Lauragais in the Thirteenth Century 1 TWO HUNDRED AND ONE DAYS N two hundred and one days, between the first of May 1245 and the first of August 1246, five thousand four hundred and seventy-one I men and women from the Lauragais were questioned in Toulouse about the heresies of the “good men,” the “good women,” and the Wal- densians. Nobles and diviners, butchers and monks, concubines and phy- sicians, blacksmiths and pregnant girls, the leprous and the cruel, the literate and the drunk, the deceitful and the aged—in short, all men over fourteen and all women over twelve were summoned (through their parish priests) by the Dominican inquisitors Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. They traveled from their villages in the fertile corridor between the Arie`ge and Agout rivers to the Romanesque cloister of the Abbey of Saint-Sernin. There, before scribes and witnesses, sworn to the truth, individuals (sometimes almost two hundred in a day) confessed whether they, or anyone else, had ever seen, heard, helped, or sought salvation through the heretics. Some of the confessions were long and rambling; most were short and sharp—all, without exception, were translated into Latin, then attested. Memories, as old as half a century or as young as the week before last, recalled the mundane and the wonderful: two cobblers knew that all visible things were made by the Devil; widows spoke of houses for here- tics; a sum of twelve shillings passed through thirteen hands; notaries read the Gospel of John in roman; a monk whined about a crezen pissing on his head; a bon ome healed a sick child; a faidit had a leper for a concu- bine; an old woman was stuffed in a wine barrel; three knights venerated two holy boys; bonas femnas refused to eat meat; cowherds wanted to be scholars; friar-inquisitors were murdered; angels fell to earth; and very few (only forty-one) had ever seen a Waldensian. This inquisiton into heretical depravity in the Lauragais was, without a doubt, the single largest investigation, in the shortest possible time, in the entire European Middle Ages. One can, through reading the surviv- ing manuscript of the Lauragais interrogations, in that twist of fate whereby the luck of the historian rests upon the efficiency of persecutors, grasp, however tentatively, something of the vibrant rhythms by which thousands of medieval men and women lived their lives. All that follows, from angels to adoration, from parchment to paper, from crusades to chestnuts, derives its inspiration from this extraordinary manuscript, whose leaves allow for the passionate evocation of the Lauragais in the years before, as well as during, the great inquisition of Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. 2 THE DEATH OF ONE CISTERCIAN HIRTY-SEVEN years before the inquisition of Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre a papal legate was murdered in the cool Thaze of a Provenc¸al dawn. The murder happened on Monday, 14 January 1208, just where the Rhoˆne divides (into le petit and le grand) before it enters the Mediterranean. The Cistercian Peire de Castelnau, legate of Pope Innocent III and a virulent denouncer of heresy in Lan- guedoc, was about to cross the Rhoˆne (from the right bank to the left) when an anonymous “evil-hearted” squire galloped up behind him and punctured his ribs with a swiftly thrown lance.1 Peire de Castelnau fell from his pacing mule, briefly raised his arms to heaven, forgave his mur- derer, and died just as the sun finished rising. The unknown assassin comfortably escaped on a fast horse to nearby Beaucaire.2 The abrupt killing of Peire de Castelnau was the immediate cause of twenty-one years of sporadic warfare, indiscriminate butchery, and bloody conquest known as the Albigensian Crusade.3 It took only two months for Innocent III to accuse Raimon VI, the count of Toulouse, in a belligerent (and rhetorically