Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/149

Rh ance throughout the kingdom, and how the jurisdiction of the royal court of the Parlement was accepted as supreme in spiritual matters. In 1385 there arose a dispute between the magistrates of the city and the archbishop as to jurisdiction over blasphemy, which was claimed by both. This was settled by an agreement recognizing it as belonging to the archbishop, but twenty years later the quarrel broke out afresh over the case of Drouet Largèle, who was guilty of blasphemy savoring of heresy as to the Passion and the Virgin. The matter was appealed to the Parlement, which decided in favor of the archbishop, and no allusion throughout the whole affair occurs as to any claim that the Inquisition might have to interpose, showing that at this time it was practically disregarded. Yet we chance to know that Reims was the seat of an Inquisition, for in 1419 Pierre Florée was inquisitor there, and preached, October 13, the funeral sermon at the obsequies of Jean sans Peur of Burgundy, giving great offence by urging Philippe le Bon not to avenge the murder of his father. We see also the scruples of the Inquisition on the subject of blasphemy in 1423 at Toulouse, where it had become the custom to submit to the inquisitor the names of all successful candidates in municipal elections in order to ascertain whether they were in any way suspect of heresy. Among the capitouls elected in 1423 was a certain Fran- çois Albert, who was objected to by the acting inquisitor, Frère Bartolomé Guiscard, on account of habitual use of the expletives Tête-Dieu and Ventre-Dieu, whereupon the citizens substituted Pierre de Sarlat. Albert appealed to the Parlement, which ap- proved of the action of the inquisitor.

Still more emphatic as to the supreme authority of the Parle- ment was the case of Marie du Canech of Cambrai, to which I have already had occasion to refer. For maintaining that when under oath she was not bound to tell the truth to the prejudice of her honor, she was prosecuted for heresy by the Bishop of Cam- brai and Frère Nicholas de Péronne, styling himself deputy of the inquisitor-general or Provincial of Paris. Being severely mulcted, she appealed to the Archbishop of Reims, as the metropolitan,