Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/54

og LANGUEDOC. everywhere attached to him. Although he had recently, on March 14 solemnly sworn to persecute heresy with his whole strength when, apparently sick unto death, he had sought absolution at the hands of the episcopal official of Agen, yet he was known to be hostile to the Dominicans as inquisitors, and had bitterly opposed the restoration of their functions. On May 1, just four weeks be- fore the event, he had made a solemn declaration in the presence of numerous prelates and nobles to the effect that he had appealed to Eome against the commission of Dominican inquisitors by the provincial in his territories, and that he intended to prosecute that appeal. He protested that he earnestly desired the eradication of heresy, and urged the bishops to exercise energetically their ordi- nary power to that end, promising his full support to them and the execution of the law both as to confiscation and the death- penalty He would even accept the friars as inquisitors pro^ded they acted independently of their Orders, and not under the au- thority of their provincials. One of his baillis even threatened, m the church of Moissac, seizure of person and property for all who should submit to the penalties imposed by the inquisitors, as they were not authorized by the count to administer justice. Such being his position, it was inevitable that he should be regarded as an accom- plice in the murders, and that the cause which he represented should suffer greatly in the revulsion of public feeling which it occasioned. Eaymond had been busy in effecting a widespread alliance which should wring from the House of Capet its conquests of the last quarter of a century. He had been joined by the Kings of England, Castile, and Aragon, and the Count de la Marche, and everything bid fair for his reconquest of his old domains. The massacre of Avignonet was a most untoward precursor of the re- volt which burst forth immediately afterwards. It shook the fidelity of some of his vassals, who withdrew their support ; and, to counteract its impression, he felt obliged to convert his sham siege of Montsegur into an active, one, thus employing troops which he could ill spare. Yet the rising, for a while, promised success, and Raymond even reassumed his old title of Duke of • Teulet, Layettes, II. 466. -Maj. Chron. Lemovicens. ann. 1243 (Bouquet, XXI. 765).-Vaissette, III. Pr. 410.-GuiU. Pod. Laur. c. *5-Sf ""f "^^^f *" res I. 320.-Bern. Guidon. Vit. C»lestin. PP. IV. (Muraton S. R. I. III. 589).