Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/64

 48 LANGUEDOC. was seized with mortal illness and died, September 27, 1249, with his latest breath ordering his heirs to restore the sums which he had received for the expedition, and to send fifty knights to serve in Palestine for a year. That his death was generaUy regretted by his subjects we can readily beheve. Not only was it the ex- tinction of the great house w^hich had bravely held its own from Carlovingian times, but the people felt that the last barrier be- tween them and the hated Frenchmen was removed. The heiress Jeanne had been educated at the royal court, and was French in all but birth. Moreover, she seems to have been a nonentity whose influence is imperceptible, and the sceptre of the South passed into the hands of Alphonse of Poitiers, an avaricious and politic prince, whose zeal for orthodoxy was greatly stimulated by the profitable confiscations resulting from persecution. Ray- mond had required repeated urging to induce him to employ this dreaded penalty with the needful severity. No such watchfulness was necessary in the case of Alphonse. When the rich heritage fell in, he and his wife w^ere with his brother, King Louis, in Egypt, but the vigilant regent. Queen Blanche, promptly took possession in their name, and on their return, in 1251, they personally received the homage of their subjects. By a legal subtlety Alphonse evaded the payment of the pious legacies of Raymond's will, and compound- ed for it by leaving, on his departure for the North, a large sum to provide for the expenses of the Inquisition, and to furnish wood for the execution of its sentences. Not long afterwards we find him urging his bishops to render more efiicient support to the labors of the inquisitors ; in his chancery there was a regular formula of a commission for inquisitors, to be sent to Rome for the papal sig- nature ; and throughout his twenty years of reign he pursued the same pohcy without deviation. The urgency with which, in De- cember, 1268, he wrote to Pons de Poyet and Etienne de Gatine, stimulating them to redoubled activity in clearing his dominions of heretics, w^as whoUy superfluous, biit it is characteristic of the line of action which he carried out consistently to the end.^ The fate of Languedoc was now irrevocably sealed. Hitherto 1255, 1292, 1383, 1583.— Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 48.— Mary-Lafon, Hist, du midi de la France, III. 33, 49.— Arch, de I'lnq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXXI. 250).
 * Martene Thesaur. 1. 1044,— Vaissette, III. 465.— Vaissette, £d. Privat,VIII.