Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/165

Rh THE WALDENSES. 149 this period. The Inquisition was crippled for a while by its con- test with Philippe le Bel and Clement V., and when it resumed unrestricted operations, Pierre Autier and his Catharan disciples absorbed its energies. Although the sentences of Bernard Gui at Toulouse commence in 1308, it is not until the auto de fé of 1316 that any Waldenses appear among its victims, when one was con- demned to perpetual imprisonment and one was burned as an un- repentant heretic. The auto of 1319 appears to have been a jail- delivery, for poor wretches appear in it whose confessions date back to 1309, 1311, 1312, and 1315. On this occasion eighteen Waldenses were condemned to pilgrimages with or without cross- es, twenty-six to perpetual prison, and three were burned. In the auto of 1321 a man and his wife who obstinately refused to ab- jure were burned. In that of 1322 eight were sentenced to pil- grimages, of whom five had crosses, two to prison, six dead bodies were exhumed and burned, and there is an allusion to the brother of one of the prisoners who had been burned at Avignon. This comprises the whole work of Bernard Gui from 1308 to 1323, and does not indicate any very active persecution. It is perhaps note- worthy that all of those punished in 1319 were from Ausch, while the popular name of "Burgundians," by which the Waldenses were known, indicates that the headquarters of the sect were still in Franche Comté. In fact, an allusion to a certain Jean de Lor- raine as a successful missionary indicates that region as busy in proselyting efforts, and there are not wanting facts to prove that the Inquisition of Besançon was active during this period. In the auto of 1322 many of the sufferers were refugees from Burgundy, and we learn that they had a provincial named Girard, showing that the Waldensian Church of that region had a regular organi- zation and hierarchy.

In his "Practica" Bernard Gui gives a clear and detailed statement of the Waldensian belief as it existed at this time, the chief points of which may be worth enumerating as affording us a definite view of the development of the faith in its original seat after a century and a half of persecution. There was no longer any self-deceit as to connection with the Roman Church. Perse-