possessions that offered no temptation for confiscation, and persecuting energy was more profitable and more usefully directed against the richer Cathari. We hear, indeed, that from 1271 to 1274 the zeal of Guillaume de Cobardon, Seneschal of Carcas- sonne, urged the inquisitors to active work against the Waldenses, resulting in numerous convictions, but among the far more popu- lous communities near the Rhone the Inquisition was not intro- duced into the Comtat Venaissin until 1288, nor into Dauphiné until 1292, and in both cases we are told that it was caused by the alarming spread of heresy. In 1288 the same increase is al- luded to in the provinces of Arles, Aix, and Embrun, when Nich- olas IV. sent to the nobles and magistrates there the laws of Frederic II., with orders for their enforcement, and to the inquis- itors a code of instructions for procedure.[1]
About the same period there is a curious case of a priest named Jean Philibert, who was sent from Burgundy into Gascony to track a fugitive Waldensian. He followed his quarry as far as Ausch, where he found a numerous community of the sectaries, holding regular assemblies and preaching and performing their rites, although they attended the parish churches to avert suspi- cion. Their evangelical piety so won upon him that, after going home, he returned to Ausch and formally joined them. He wan- dered back to Burgundy, where he fell under suspicion, and in 1298 he was brought before Gui de Reims, the Inquisitor of Be- sançon, when he refused to take an oath and was consigned to prison. Here he abjured, and on being liberated returned to the Waldenses of Gascony, was again arrested, and brought before Bernard Gui in 1311, who finally burned him in 1319 as a re- lapsed. In 1302 we hear of two Waldensian ministers haunting the region near Castres, in the Albigeois, wandering around by night and zealously propagating their doctrines. Still, in spite of these evidences of activity, little effort at repression is visible at
- ↑ Statut. Synod. Odonis Tullensis ann. 1192, c. ix., x. (Martene Thesaur. IV. 1180). Ripoll I. 183.-Douais, Les sources de l'histoire de l'Inq. (Revue des Questions Historiques, Oct. 1881, p. 434). - Peyrat, Les Alb. et l'Inquis. III. 74. -Chabrand, Vaudois et Protestants des Alpes, Grenoble, 1886, p. 34. - Havet, L'heresie et le bras seculier (Bib. de l'École des Chartes, 1880, p. 585). - Vaissette, IV. 17. A. Molinier (Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VI. 819).- Wadding. ann. 1288, No. 14-15; 1292, No. 3.-Raynald. ann. 1288, No. 27–8.
