76 THE SPIRITUAL FRANCISCANS. when he was condemned in an auto defe as a convicted heretic. Then a purse was raised among the faithful to send him to the East. After an absence of some years he returned and was as active as ever, wandering in disguise throughout the south of France and assiduously guarded by the devotees. What was his end does not appear, but he probably perished at length at the stake as a relapsed heretic, for in 1327 we find him and his daugh- ter Andree in the pitiless hands of Michel of Marseilles. Jean du Prat, then Inquisitor of Carcassonne, wanted them, in order to extort from them the names of their disciples and of those who had sheltered them. Apparently Michel refused to surrender them, and a peremptory order from John XXII. was requisite to obtain their transfer. In 1325 Bernard Castillon of Montpellier confesses to harboring a number of Beguines in his house, and then to buying a dwelling for them in which he visited them. Another culprit acknowledges to receiving many fugitives in his house at Montpellier. There was ample sympathy for them and ample occasion for it.* The burning of the four martyrs of Marseilles was the signal for active inquisitorial work. Throughout all the infected region the Holy Office bent its energies to the suppression of the new heresy ; and as previously there had been no necessity for conceal- ing opinions, the suspects were readily laid hold of. There was
- Guill. Nangiac. Contin. ann. 1317.— Coll. Doat, XXVII. 7 sqq., 170 ; XXXV.
18.— Lib. Sententt. Inq. Tolos. pp. 301. 312, 381. The case of Raymond Jean illustrates the life of the persecuted Spirituals. As early as 1312 he had commenced to denounce the Church as the Whore of Babylon, and to prophesy his own fate. In 1317 he was one of the appellants who were summoned to Avignon, where he submitted. Remitted to the obedi- ence of his Order, he was sent by his superior to the convent of Anduse, where he remained until he heard the fate of his stancher companions at Marseilles, when l.e fled with a comrade. Reaching Beziers, they found refuge in a house where, in company with some female apostates from the Order, they lay hid for three years. After this Raymond led a wandering life, associating for a while with Pierre Trencavel. At one time he went beyond seas ; then returning, he adopted the habit of a secular priest and assumed the cure of souls, sometimes in Gascony and again in Rodez or east of the Rhone. Captured at last in 1325 and brought before the Inquisition of Carcassonne, after considerable pressure he was induced to recant. His sentence is not given, but doubtless it was perpetual imprison- ment.— Doat, XXVII. 7 sqq.
