Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/49

 POPULAR TERROR. 33 show the character of the offence and the nature of the grace proffered for voluntary confession. There is no pretence that any of these particular culprits themselves were not wholly orthodox, but the people were to be taught that the toleration which had existed for generations was at an end ; that the neighborly inter- course which had estabhshed itself between Catholic and Catharan and Waldensian was in itself a sin ; that the heretic was to be tracked and captured like a wild beast, or at least to be shunned like a leper. When such was the measure meted out to spontaneous peni- tents within the time of grace, with harsher measures in reserve for those subsequently detected, we can easily imagine the f eeHngs inspired by the Inquisition in the whole population, without dis- tinction of creed, and the terror common to all when the rumor spread that the inquisitors were coming. Scarce any one but was conscious of some act — perhaps of neighborly charity that ren- dered him a criminal to the awful fanaticism of Pierre Cella or Guillem Arnaud. The heretics themselves would look to be im- prisoned for life, with confiscation, or to be burned, or sent to Constantinople to support the tottering Latin Empire ; while the Catholics were hkely to fare httle better on the distant pilgrim- ages to which they were sentenced, even though they were spared the sterner punishments or the humiliation of the saffron cross. Such a visit would bring, even to the faithful, the desolation of a pestilence. The inquisitors would pass cahnly on, leaving a neigh- borhood well-nigh depopulated — fathers and mothers despatched to distant shrines for months or years, leaving dependent families to starve, or harvests ungathered to be the prey of the first-comer, aU the relations of a life, hard enough at the best, disturbed and broken up. Even such a record as that of Pierre Cellars sentences rendered within the time of grace shows but a portion of the work. A year or two later we find the Council of E'arbonne beseeching the inquisitors to delay rendering sentences of incarceration, be- cause the numbers of those flocking in for reconcihation after the expiration of the term of grace were so great that it would be impos- sible to raise funds for their maintenance, or to find stones enough, even in that mountainous land, to build prisons to contain them.* II.— 3
 * Concil. Narbonn. ann. 1244 c. 19.