1 THE PRE-INQUISITORIAL CAREER OF BERNARD GUI Ryan Kingman Low UCL Submitted for the degree of MPhil in History 2018 I, Ryan Kingman Low, Confirm that the work presented in this thesis is my own. Where information has been derived from other sources, I confirm that this has been indicated in the thesis. 2 Abstract I have tried to provide an acCount of Bernard Gui's early career, from his birth in 1261 to his appointment as inquisitor of Toulouse in 1307. Biographical acCounts of Bernard are few and far between: a short obituary by his nephew in the early 1330s, entries in early-twentieth-Century Catalogues such as the Histoire littéraire de la France and Dictionnaire d'histoire et de géographie ecclésiastiques, and the sixteenth volume of the Cahiers de Fajeaux in 1981. This dearth belies the essential space Bernard's texts oCCupy in the modern study of medieval religious orders, the inquisition, and southern France. Bernard himself deserves a study. The worlds around him were changing quickly. Friars who had known Dominic personally were growing old and dying. Burgeoning royal power came into increasingly dramatic conflict with both religious and secular establishments. Southern France was still recovering (financially, politically, and psyChologically) from the Albigensian Crusade and its inquisitions. The texts Bernard chose to produce responded to administrative, political, and soCial realities in dynamic ways. His written record tells modern historians much about contemporary anxieties and the man who faced them. This thesis utilizes Bernard's history of the Dominican Order to learn more about Bernard himself. The boy who will become inquisitor of Toulouse came of age infatuated with the Dominican Order and its attendant personalities, values, and network. The preservation of the order's institutional values and administrative organization animated his first noteworthy historical work. When the friars and their inquisition came under attack in the years immediately preceding his tenure as inquisitor, Bernard suppressed his sense of betrayal to preserve the order's most important relationships. I hope that through this thesis, readers may encounter Bernard and feel more confident in desCribing his values, anxieties, and personality. 3 Impact Statement The research undertaken in this thesis provides new perspectives on an essential character in the history of European thought and soCial practice, the inquisitor of Toulouse, Bernard Gui. Generations of historians from John LoCke to the present have used Gui's numerous inquisitorial records to explore themes of religious toleration, the structure of power, and the inner psyChe of those tasked with a proCess as cruel as the inquisition. Almost all of this research, however, has passed over the question of Bernard's life before he was appointed inquisitor of Toulouse. This thesis attempts to correct that by analyzing the histories of the Dominican Order that Bernard wrote in the years immediately before his appointment. Such a shift in chronological perspective has opened new vistas for potential research, especially in the field of the administration of medieval religious orders, while complicating the portrait of Bernard in the imagination of current historians of the high middle ages. Methodologically, this project relies on many of the same sources that previous historians have had at their disposal: the administrative histories of the Dominican Order. I have tried to diverge from earlier historians by using these doCuments to reconstruct Bernard's world and to extract his argument for how the order around him ought to be. As a prominent friar tasked with diplomatic, administrative, and intellectual responsibilities, Bernard took an active role in his institution's formation, and his administrative histories furnish historians with many clues as to what exactly he thought that institution ought to do. Beyond the field of medieval history, this thesis primarily offers an explanation for how an individual can shape and be shaped by the institution within which he or she operates. Readers with experience working for any institution -- a university, a museum, a Corporation, a news outlet, or any other organization -- will hopefully be able to extrapolate something useful about the ways in which individual leaders, like Bernard Gui in the Dominican Order, faced the challenge of balancing immediate operational needs and timeless questions of principle. 4 Acknowledgments I would like to thank the Marshall Aid Commemoration Commission for supporting my research at University College London for the past two years. In addition, UCL's history department and all its affiliates, including other postgraduate students, professors, staff, and especially the undergraduate students I have taught, have been immensely supportive, and I thank them for their contributions both tangible and emotional. In particular, I extend my heartfelt gratitude to my supervisor, David d'Avray, for his patience, kindness, and advice throughout the proCess of writing this thesis. The generous amount of time he devoted to reviewing drafts, disCussing arguments, and helping me tighten my writing has greatly improved both the thesis and my own thinking. I would also like to thank my second supervisor, John Sabapathy, for his extremely helpful comments. There are a number of people and institutions without whom this thesis would not have been possible. I would like to thank the history department at the University of Exeter for inviting me to give a work-in- progress talk early on in this proCess. In addition, I owe much to Gert Melville and his team at the ForsChungsstelle für Vergleichende OrdensgesChichte in Dresden for hosting me in April 2018 and offering brilliant resources and disCussions to enhance my own research. Finally, I would like to thank Alex Lee and Eric Nemarich for reading earlier drafts of chapters and Will Neaverson for essential help formatting. I dedicate this work to my friends in London, who have so patiently tolerated Bernard and me. 5 Contents Introduction ............................................................................................................... 6 Chapter 1: Urban Violence in the Limoges of Bernard's Youth ....................... 34 Chapter 2: The Dominicans of Limoges ............................................................... 48 Chapter 3: Bernard's Classmates ........................................................................... 69 Chapter 4: Bernard the Prior ................................................................................ 103 Chapter 5: Dominican Diplomacy ...................................................................... 122 Chapter 6: Bernard and the Uprisings in Carcassonne and Albi ................... 150 Chapter 7: Unrest through Bernard's Words .................................................... 170 Epilogue .................................................................................................................. 197 Appendix 1: Bernard's Timeline ......................................................................... 213 Appendix 2: Students at Limoges ....................................................................... 223 Appendix 3: Students at Montpellier ................................................................. 227 Bibliography ........................................................................................................... 233 6 Introduction Bernard Gui’s inquisitorial career and writings have rightly attracted much sCholarly attention, but they have overshadowed his pre-inquisitorial Career which is worth studying in its own right, for the light it casts on the religious, institutional and soCial life of his time, especially in Southern France. Bernard's Dominican career took him across southern France travelling between Convents, meeting friars with various backgrounds and interests, and advancing through the order's ranks, like Joseph Knecht in Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. This thesis recounts Bernard's professional journey. In his times as a novice, he learned Dominican ideals at the feet of friars renowned for their administrative and diplomatic abilities. These lessons inspired Bernard to Collect doCuments related to the order's administration from across southern France. Even in the most prosaic administrative manual lies an argument. He Claimed that the order's survival and expansion demanded the maintenance of support networks that included members of the nobility, secular clergy, and loCal bourgeoisie. In the years before his tenure as inquisitor, Bernard bore witness to the collapse of these very networks when popular rebellions ostensibly targeting the inquisition in Carcassonne and Albi decimated Dominican institutions. I rely on the administrative doCuments that Bernard himself collated from across the convents of Provence and Toulouse -- acts of 7 the provincial chapters, catalogues of the provincial chapters, and histories of the various convents -- to reconstruct the Dominican institution that Bernard hoped to preserve. Methodologically, the thesis takes the reader back to the generations of friars before Bernard's time to events, principles, and administrative techniques that he himself desCribed and shaped him. Working from administrative doCuments, as opposed to presCriptive and normative texts, I hope to portray the order from a perspective distinct from those of M. Michèle Mulchahey, Leonard Boyle, and William HinnebusCh and the sChools and approaches