Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/60

 ^. LANGUEDOC. months' preliminary captivity which had so broken his spirit as to bring him to this depth of degradation. Even a perfected heretic, Arnaud de Bretos, captured while flying to Lombardy, was m- duced to reveal the names of all who had given him shelter and attended his ministrations during his missionary wanderings * Henceforth the Cathari could hope only in God. AU chance of resistance was over. One by one their supports had broken, and there was only left the passive resistance of martyrdom. The Inquisition could track and seize its victims at leisure, and kmg and count could follow with decrees of confiscation which were gradually to transfer the lands of the South to orthodox and loyal subiects The strongest testimony that can be given to the livmg earnestness of the Catharan faith is to be found in the prolonga- tion of this struggle yet through three hopeless generations. It is no wonder, however, if the immediate effect of these crowding events was to fill the heretics with despair. In the poem of Isarn de Villemur, written about this period, the heretic, Sicard de Yi- gueras is represented as saying that their best and most trusted friends are turning against them and betraying them. How many behevers at this juncture abandoned their religion, even at the cost of hfelong imprisonment, we have no means of accurately es- timating, but the number must have been enormous, to judge from the request, already alluded to, of the Council of Narbonne about this time to the inquisitors to postpone their sentences in view of the impossibility of building prisons sufficient to contam the crowds who hurried in to accuse themselves and seek reconciha- tion after the expiration of the time of grace, which Innocent IV., in December, 1243, had ordered to be designated afresh.f Yet in a population so thoroughly leavened with heresy, these thousands of voluntary penitents stiU left an ample field of activ- ity for the zeal of the inquisitors. Each one who confessed was bound to give the names of all whom he had seen engaged in he- retical acts, and of aU who had been hereticated on the death-bed. Innumerable clews were thus obtained to bring to trial those who . failed to accuse themselves, and to exhume and burn the bones of those who were beyomUh^abiht^to recant. For the next few . Collection Doat, XXII. 202, 214, 237; XXIV. 68,160, 182 198. t MiUot, Troubadours, II. 77.-Berger, Registres d'Innocent IV. No. 37.