Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/136

 220 FRANCE. dependent of that of Paris. After the failure to establish it in 1233 it seems to have remained in abeyance until 1247, when Inno- cent lY. ordered the Prior of Besancon to send friars throughout Burgundy and Lorraine for the extirpation of heresy. The next year John Count of Burgundy urged greater activity, but his zeal does not seem to have been supplemented with liberahty, and in 1255 the Dominicans asked to be reUeved of the thankless task, which proved unsuccessful for lack of funds, and Alexander TV. acceded to their request. There are some evidences of an Inquisi- tion being in operation there about 1283, and in 1290 Nicholas lY. ordered the Provincial of Paris to select three inquisitors to serve in the dioceses of Besan§on, Geneva, Lausanne, Sion, Metz, Toul, and Yerdun, thus placing Lorraine and the French Cantons of Switzerland, as well as Franche Comte, under the Inquisition of France, an arrangement which seems to have lasted for more than fii centurv." Little remains to us of the organization thus perfected over the wide territory stretching from the Bay of Biscay to the Rhine. The laborers were vigorous, and labored according to the light which was in them, but the men and their acts are buried beneath the dust of the forgotten past. That they did their duty is visible in the fact that heresy makes so little figure in France, and that the slow but remorseless extermination of Catharism in Langue- doc was not accompanied by its perpetuation in the North. We hear constantly of refugees from Toulouse and Carcassonne flymg for safety to Lombardy and even to Sicily, but never to Tourame or Champagne, nor do we ever meet with cases in which the earnest missionaries of Catharism sought converts beyond the Cevennes. This may fairly be ascribed to the vigilance of the inquisitors, who were ever on the watch. Chance has preserved for us as models in a book of formulas some documents issued by Frere Simon Duval, in 1277 and 1278, which afford us a momen- tary glimpse af his proceedings and enable us to estimate the activ- ity requisite for the functions of his office. He styles himself inquisitor ''in regno FrancicB;' which indicates that his commis- sion extended throughout the kingdom north of Languedoc, and pp. 252-4.
 * Ripoll I. 179, 183; 11. 39.-Potthast No. 15995.-Lib. Sentt. Inq. Tolos.