PIERRE AUTIER. 205 which resulted in the virtual extirpation of Catharism in Lan- guedoc. Yet, though stern and unsparing when the occasion seemed to demand it, his record bears no trace of useless cruelty or abusive extortion.* Catharism by this time had been forced back to the humbler class among whom it had found its first disciples. The nobles and gentlemen who had so long upheld it had perished or been im- poverished by the remorseless confiscations of three quarters of a century. The rich burghers of the cities— merchants and profes- sional men— had learned the temptations held out by their wealth and the impossibility of avoiding detection. The fascinations of martyrdom have their limits, and the martyrs among them had been graduaUy but surely weeded out. Yet the old beliefs were still rooted among the simple folk of country hamlets and especial- ly m the wild valleys among the foothiUs of the eastern Pyrenees. The active intercourse with Lombardy, and even with Sicily, was still kept up, and there were not wanting earnest ministers' who braved every danger to administer to believers the consolations of their religion and to spread the faith in the fastnesses which were Its last refuge. Chief among these was Pierre Autier, formerly a notary of Ax (Pamiers). His early hfe had not beon pure, for we hear of his druda, or mistress, and his natural children, but with advancing years he embraced all the asceticism of the sect to which he devoted his life. Driven to Lombardy in 1295, he' re- turned in 1298 to remain on his native soil to the end, and to en dure a war to the knife from the Inquisition. His property was confiscated and his family dispersed and ruined. The region to which he belonged lay at the foot of the Pyrenees, rugged, with few roads and many caves and hiding-places, whence escape Icross the frontier to Aragon was comparatively facile ; it was full of his kindred who were devoted to him, and here for eleven years he maintained himself, lurking in disguise and wandering from place to place with the emissaries of the Holy Office ever on his track He had been ordained to the ministry at Como, and speedily acquired au hority m the sect of which he became one of the most zealous mdetatigable, and intrepid missionaries. Already, in 1300, he was
- Bern Guidon. Hist. Conv. Pr^dic. (Martene Ampl. Coll. VI. 469).^Touron
Homines illustres de I'Ordre de S. Dominique, 11. 94. ^
