Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/32

 16 LANGUEDOC. interview with Gregory and succeeded in effecting it. His recon- ciliation with the papacy appeared to be complete. His military reputation stood high, and Gregory made use of his visit to confide to him the leadership of the papal troops in a campaign against the rebellious citizens of Rome, who had expelled the head of the Church from their city. Though he did not succeed in restoring the pope, they parted on the best of terms, and he returned to Toulouse as a favored son of the Church, ready on all points to obey her behests.* There he found matters rapidly approaching a crisis which tested to the utmost his skill in temporizing. Passions on both sides were rising to an uncontrollable point. At Easter, 1235, the promise of grace for voluntary confession brought forward such crowds of penitent heretics that the Dominicans were insufficient to take their testimony, and were obhged to call in the aid of the Franciscans and of aU the parish priests of the city. Encouraged by this, the prior. Pons de Saint-Gilles, commenced to seize those who had not come forward spontaneously. Among these was a certain Arnaud Dominique, who, to save his hf e, promised to betray eleven heretics residing in a house at Cassers. This he fulfilled, though four of them escaped through the aid of the neighboring peasants, and he was set at hberty. The long-suffering of the heretics, however, was at last exhausted, and shortly afterwards he was murdered in his bed at Aigref euille by the friends of those whom he had thus sacrificed. Still more significant of the dan- gerous tension of popular feeling was a mob which, under the guidance of two leading citizens, forcibly rescued Pierre-GuiUem Delort from the hands of the ^aguier and of the Abbot of Saint- Sernin, who had arrested him and were conveying him to prison. The situation was becoming unbearable, and soon the ceremony of dragging through the streets and burning the bodies of some dead heretics aroused an agitation so general and so menacing that Count Raymond was sent for in hopes that his interposition - Bern. Guidon. Vit. Gregor. PP. IX. (Muratori, S. R. L III. 573) -Archives Nat. de France J. 430, No. 17, 18.-Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 42.— Peyrat, Hist, des Al- bigeois,! 287.— Harduiu. Concil.VII. 203-8.-D'Achery Spicileg. III. 606.— Pot- thast No. 9771.-Epistt. Sseculi XIII. T. I. No. 577 (Mon. Germ. Hist.).-Matt. Paris ann. 1234, p. 280.-Vaissette, III. 399-400, 406.-Hist. Diplom. Frid. n. T. lY. pp. 485, 799-802.