a living death far worse than the short agony of the stake. In these abodes of despair they were completely at the mercy of the jailers and their servants. Complaints were not listened to; if a prisoner alleged violence pr ill-treatment his oath was contemptuously refused, while that of the prison officials was received. A glimpse into the discipline of these establishments is afforded by the instructions given, in 1282, by Frere Jean Galande, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, to the jailer Raoul and his wife Bertrande, whose management had been rather lax. Under pain of irrevocable dismissal he is prohibited in future from keeping scriveners or horses in the prison; from borrowing money or accepting gifts from the prisoners; from retaining the money or effects of those who die; from releasing prisoners or allowing them to go beyond the first door, or to eat with him ; from employing the servants on any other work or sending them anywhere, or gambling with them, or permitting them to gamble with each other. [1]
Evidently a prisoner who had money could obtain illicit favors from the honest Raoul ; but these injunctions make no allusion to one of the most crying abuses which disgraced the establishments — the retention by the jailers of the moneys and provisions placed in their hands by the friends of the imprisoned. Frauds of all kinds naturally grew up among all who were concerned in dealing with these helpless creatures. In 1304 Hugolin de Polignac, the custodian of the royal prison at Carcassonne, was tried on charges of embezzling a part of the king's allowance, of carrying the names of prisoners on the rolls for years after their death, and of retaining the moneys contributed for them by their friends; but the evidence was insufficient to convict him. The cardinals whom Clement V. commissioned soon after to investigate the abuses of the Inquisition of Languedoc intimate broadly the nature of the frauds habitually practised, when they required the new jailers whom they appointed to swear to deliver to each captive without diminution the provisions supplied by the king, as well as those furnished by friends — an intimation confirmed by the decretals of Clement V. Their report shows that they were horror-struck with what they saw. At Carcassonne they took the control of
- ↑ Practica super Inquisit. (MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 14930, fol. 222).— Molinier, op. cit. p. 449. — Arch, de l’Inq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXXII. 125; XXXVII. 83).
