Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/69

 ROGER BERNARD OF FOIX. 53 most obstinate defenders of the land, and, after the pacification of 1229, Raymond had been obliged to threaten him with war to force him to submit. His memory was proudly treasured in the land as '^ Bogier Bernat lo pros et sens dengun reprocher His family was deepl}^ tinctured with heresy. His wife and one of his sisters were Waldenses, another sister was a Catharan, and the monk of Yaux-Cernay describes him as an enemy of God and a cruel persecutor of the Church. Yet, when he yielded in 1229, al- though he does not seem to have energetically fulfilled his oath to persecute heresy in his domains, for in 1233 we hear of his hold- ing a personal conference at Aix with the heretic bishop Bertrand Martin, he was in other respects a loyal subject and faithful son of the Church. In 1237 he counselled his son, then Yizconde de Castelbo in Aragon, to allow the Inquisition in his lands, which resulted in the condemnation of many heretics, although Ponce, Bishop of Urgel, his personal enemy, had refused to relieve him of excommunication as a fautor of heresy until 1240, when he sub- mitted to the conditions imposed, abjured heresy, and was recon- ciled. At his death, in 1241, he left liberal bequests to the Church, and especially to his ancestral Cistercian Abbey of Bolbonne, in which he died in monkish habit, after duly receiving the sacra- ments. His son, Roger lY., gave the coup de grace to the rising of 1242, by placing himself under the immediate sovereignty of the crown, and defeating Raymond after the victories of St. Louis had driven back the English and Gascons. He had some troubles with the Inquisition, but a bull of Innocent lY., in 1248, eulogizes his devotion to the Holy See, and rewards him with the power to re- lease from the saffron crosses six penitents of his choice ; and in 1261 he issued an edict commanding the enforcement of the rule that no office within his domains should be held by any one con- demned to wear crosses, any one suspected of heresy, or the son of any one similarly defamed.* All this would seem to give ample guarantee of the orthodoxy and loyalty of the House of Foix, but the Inquisition could not — Guill. Pod. Laur. c. 8.— Schmidt, Cathares, I. 299.— Vaissette, III. 426, 503 ; Pr. 383-5, 392-3.— Teulet, Layettes, II. 490.— Bern. Guidon. Vit. Ccelestin. PP. IV. <Muratori, S. R. I. III. 589).— Berger, Registres dlnnocent IV. No. 3530.
 * Miguel del Verms, Chronique Bearnaise. — P. Sarnaii Hist. Albigens. c. 6.