Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/18

2 heretic. The Inquisition was the symbol of a hated foreign domination which could look for no cordial support from any of these classes. It was welcomed, indeed, by such Frenchmen as had succeeded in planting themselves in the land, but they were scattered, and were themselves the objects of detestation to their neighbors. The popular feehng is voiced by the Troubadours, who delight in expressing contempt for the French and hostihty to the friars and their methods. As Guillem de Montanagout says: "Now have the clerks become inquisitors and condemn men at their pleasure. I have naught against the inquests if they would but condemn errors with soft words, lead the wanderers back to the faith without wrath, and allow the penitent to find mercy." The bolder Pierre Cardinal describes the Dominicans as disputing after dinner over the quahty of their wines: "They have created a court of judgment, and whoever attacks them they declare to be a Waldensian; they seek to penetrate into the secrets of all men, so as to render themselves dreaded."

The lands which Raymond had succeeded in retaining were, moreover, drained by the enormous sums exacted of him in the pacification. To enable him to meet these demands he was authorized to levy taxes on the subjects of the Church, in spite of their immunities, and this and the other expedients requisite for the discharge of his engagements could not fail to excite widespread discontent with the settlement and hostihty to all that represented it. That it was hard to extort these payments from a population exhausted by twenty years of war is manifest when, in 1231, two years after the treaty, the Abbey of Citeaux had not as yet received any part of the two thousand marks which were its share of the plunder, and it was forced to agree to a settlement under which Eaymond promised to pay in annual instalments of two hundred marks, giving as security his revenues from the manor of Marmande.

The Inquisition, it is true, was at first warmly greeted by the Church, but the Church had grown so discredited during the