Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/71

 ROGER BERNARD III. 55 condemned. Yet Eoger Bernard III., despite the papal favor and the proofs he had given of adhesion to the new order of thino-s, was a perpetual target for inquisitorial malice. When lying in mortal illness at Mazeres, in December, 1264, he received from Etienne de Gatine, then Inquisitor of J^arbonne, an imperious or- der, with threats of prosecution in case of failure, to capture and dehver up his baiUi of Foix, Pierre Andre, who was suspect of heresy and had fled on being cited to appear. The count dared only in reply to express surprise that no notice had been given him that his bailli was wanted, adding that he had issued orders for his arrest, and would have personally joined in the pursuit had not sickness rendered him incapable. At the same time he requested " Apostoh," and appealed to the pope, to whom he retailed his grievances. The inquisitors, he said, had never ceased persecuting him ; at the head of armed forces they were in the habit of de- vastating his lands under pretext of searching for heretics, and they would bring in their train and under their protection his special enemies, until his territories were nearly ruined and his jurisdiction set at naught. He, therefore, placed himself and his dominions under the protection of the Holy See. He probably escaped further personal troubles, for he died two months later, in February, 1265, like his father, in the Cistercian habit, and in the Abbey of Bolbonne ; but in 1292 his memory was assailed before Bertrand de Clermont, Inquisitor of Carcassonne. The effort was fruitless, for in 1297 Bertrand gave to his son, Roger Bernard lY., a declaration that the accusation had been disproved, and that neither he nor his father should suffer in person or property in consequence of it.* When such were the persecutions to which the greatest were exposed it is easy to understand the tyranny exercised over the whole land by the irresponsible power of the inquisitors, ^o one was so loftily placed as to be beyond their reach, no one so hum- ble as to escape their spies. When once they had cause of enmitv with a man there was no further peace for him. The only appeal from them was to the pope, and not only was Rome distant, but the avenue to it lay, as we have seen, in their own hands. Human wickedness and foUy have erected, in the world's history, more vio-
 * Vaissette, III. Pr. 575-77 ; IV. Pr. 109.