Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/43

 THE SEIGNEURS DE NIORT. 27 was practically vacant. Eaymond's policy, for the moment, had leaned towards gratifying the papacy, for he desired from Gregory not only the removal of his four excommunications and forbear- ance in the matter of the crusade, but also a dispensation to enable him to carry out a contract of marriage into which he entered with Sanche, daughter and heiress of the Count of Provence, not foreseeing that Queen Blanche would juggle him in this, and, by securing the brilliant match for her son Charles, found the House of Anjou -Provence, and win for the royal family another large portion of the South. Full of these projects, which promised so well for the rehabilitation of his power, he sighed, April 18, 1241, with Jayme I. of Aragon, a treaty of alliance for the defence of the Holy See and the Catholic faith, and against the heretics. Under such influences he was not likely to oppose the renewal of active persecution. Besides, he had been compromised in Trenca- vel's insurrection ; he had been summoned to answer for his con- duct before King Louis, when, on March 14, he had been forced to take an oath to banish from his lands the faidits and enemies of the king, and to capture without delay the castle of Montse- gur, the last refuge of heresy.* The case of the Seigneurs de Niort, powerful nobles of Fenouil- ledes, who had taken part in Trencavel's insurrection, is interest- ing from the light which it throws upon the connection between the religion and the politics of the time, the difficulties which the Inquisition experienced in dealing with stubborn heresy and patri- otism, and the damage inflicted on the heretic cause by the abor- tive revolt. The three brothers — Guillem Guiraud, Bernard Otho, and Guiraud Bernard — with their mother, Esclarmonde, had long- been a quarry which both the inquisitors and the royal seneschal of Carcassonne had been eager to capture. Guillem had earned the reputation of a valiant knight in the wars of the crusades, and the brothers had managed to hold their castles and their power through all the vicissitudes of the time. In the general inquisition made by Cardinal Romano in 1229 they were described as among the chief leaders of the heretics, and the Council of Toulouse, at the same time, denounced two of them as enemies of the faith, and declared them excommunicate if they did not submit within D'Achery Spicileg. III. 621.— Vaissette, III. 424; Pr. 400.