Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/70

 54 LANGUEDOC. condone its ancient patriotism and tolerance. Besides, if Roger Bernard the Great could be convicted of heresy, the confiscation of the broad inheritance would effect a great pohtical object and afford ample spoils for all concerned. Twenty-two years after his death, therefore, in 1263, proceedings were commenced against his memory. A faithful servitor of the old count still survived, Ray- mond Bernard de Flascan, bailh of Mazeres, who had attended his lord day and night during his last sickness. If he could be brought to swear that he had seen heretication performed on the death-bed, the desirable object would be attained. Frere Pons, the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, came to Mazeres, found the old man an unsatisfac- tory witness, and threw him into a dungeon. Suffering under a se- vere strangury, he was starved and tormented with all the cruel in- genuity of the Inquisition, and interrogated at intervals, without his resolution giving way. This was continued for thirty-two days, when Pons resolved to carry him back to Carcassonne, where possi- bly the appliances for bringing refractory witnesses to terms were more efficacious. Before the journey, which he expected to be his last, the faithful baiUi was given a day's respite at the Abbey of Bolbonne, which he utilized by executing a notarial instrument, November 26, 1263, attested by two abbots and a number of monks, in which he recited the trials already endured, solemnly declared that he had never seen the old count do anything contrary to the faith of Rome, but that he had died as a good Catholic, and that if, under the severe torture to which he expected to be subjected, human weakness should lead him to assert anything else, he would be a liar and a traitor, and no credence should be given to hi& words. It would be difficult to conceive of a more damning reve- lation of inquisitorial methods ; yet fifty years later, when those methods had been perfected, all concerned in the preparation of the instrument, whether as notary or witnesses, would have been prosecuted as impeders of the Inquisition, to be severely punished as fautors of heresy."^' What became of the poor wretch does not appear. Doubtless he perished in the terrible Mura of Carcassonne under the combi- nation of disease, torture, and starvation. His judicial murder, however, was gratuitous, for the old count's memory remained un-
 * Vaissette, III. Pr. 551-3.