Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/66

50 LANGUEDOC. Mercier, former deacon of Toulouse. At Cremona he lived for a year with Vivien, the much-loved Bishop of Toulouse, with whom he found a number of noble refugees. At Pisa he stayed for eight months ; at Piacenza he again met Vivien, and he finally returned to Languedoc with messages from the refugees to their friends at home. In 1300, at Albi, Etienne Mascot confesses that he had been sent to Lombardy by Master Kaymond Calverie to brmg back Eaymond Andre, or some other perfected heretic. At Genoa he met Bertrand Fabri, who had been sent on the same errand by Guillem Golfier. They proceeded together and met other old ac- quaintances, now refugees, who conducted them to a spot where, in a wood, were several houses of refuge for heretics. The lord of the place gave them a Lombard, Guglielmo Pagani, who returned with them. In 1309 Guillem Falquet confessed at Toulouse to having been four times to Como, and even to Sicily, organizing the Church. He was caught while visiting a sick behever, and con- demned to imprisonment in chains, but managed to escape in 1313. At the same time was sentenced Kapnond de Verdun, who had likewise been four times to Lombardy.* The proscribed heretics, thus nursing their faith in secret, gave the inquisitors ample occupation. As their ranks were thinned by persecution and flight, and as their skill in concealment increased with experience, there could no longer be the immense harvests of penitents reaped by Pierre CeUa and Bernard de Caux, but there were enough to reward the energies of the friars and to tax - Rainer. gumma (Mart. Thesaur. V. 1768).— Molinier, L'Inquis. dans le midi de la Fiance, pp. 254-55. -MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds latin, No. 11847. -Lib. Sen- tentt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 13, 14. —See also the curious accQunt of Ivo of Narbonne in Matt. Paris, ann. 1243, p. 412-13 (Ed. 1644). The Abbg Douais, in his analysis of the fragments of the "Registre de I'ln- quisition de Toulouse" of 1254 and 1256, tells us that it contains the names of six hundred and thirteen accused belonging to the departments of Aude, Ari^ge, Gers, Aveyron, and Tarne-et-Garonne, the greater part of whom were Perfects. That this is evidently an error is shown by the statistics of Rainerio Saccone, quoted in the text. At this time, in fact, the whole Catharan Church, from Con- stantinople to Aragon, contained only four thousand Perfects. Still the number of accused shows the continued existence of heresy as a formidable social factor and the successful activity of the Inquisition in tracking it. In this register eight witnesses contribute one hundred and seven names to the list of accused (Sources de i'hist. de ITuquisition, loc. cit. pp. 432-33).