Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/163

 THE WALDENSES. 147 unfavorable eye than the Cathari, and the penances imposed on them were habitually lighter.* From Lyons the Waldensian belief had spread to the North and East, as well as to the South and West. It is a curious fact that while the Cathari never succeeded in establishing themselves to any extent beyond the Romance territories, the Waldenses were already, in 1192, so numerous in Lorraine that Eudes, Bishop of Toul, in ordering them to be captured and brought to him in chains for judgment, not only promises remission of sins as a re- ward, but feels obliged to add that if, for rendering this service, the faithful are driven away from their homes, he will find them in food and clothing. In Franche Comté, John, Count of Bur- gundy, bears emphatic testimony to their numbers in 1248, when he solicited of Innocent IV. the introduction of the Inquisition in his dominions, and its discontinuance in 1257 doubtless left them to multiply in peace. In 1251 we find the Archbishop of Narbonne condemning some female Waldenses to perpetual im- prisonment. It was, however, in the mountains of Auvergne and the Alpine and sub - Alpine regions stretching between Geneva and the Mediterranean that they found the surest refuge. While Pierre Cella was penancing those of Querci, the Archbishop of Embrun was busy with their brethren of Freyssinières, Argen- tière, and Val-Pute, which so long continued to be their strong- holds. In 1251, when Alphonse and Jeanne, on their accession, guar- anteed at Beaucaire the liberties of Avignon and the Comtat Ve- naissin, the Bishop-legate Zoen earnestly urged them to destroy the Waldenses there. There were ample laws on the municipal statute-books of Avignon and Arles for the extermination of "heretics and Waldenses," but the local magistracy was slack in their enforcement and was obliged to swear to extirpate the sec- taries. The Waldenses were mostly simple mountain folk, with


 * r1 Coll. Doat, XXI. 197, 203, 208, 223, 225, 232, 233, 234, 236, 238, 241, 244, 250, 252, 254, 261–2, 263, 264, 265, 266, 267, 269, 270, 271, 275, 276, 281, 282, 289, 296.It is perhaps worthy of note that Raymond de Péreille, the Castellan of Montségur, and his companions, when on trial, while freely giving evidence about innumerable Cathari, declared that they knew nothing whatever about Waldenses, which would seem to indicate that there was little communication between the sects (Doat, XXII. 217; XXIII. 344; XXIV. 8).