Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/74

 58 LANGUEDOC. ous temper soon led him to assert the royal power in incisive fash- ion. He recognized, within the boundaries of his kingdom, no su- perior, secular or spiritual. Had he entertained any scruples of conscience, his legal counsellors could easily remove them. To such men as Pierre Flotte and Guillaume de ^ogaret the true po- sition of the Church was that of subjection to the State, as it had been under the successors of Constantine, and in their eyes Boni- face YIII. was to their master scarce more than Pope Yigilius had been to Justinian. Few among the revenges of time are more satisfying than the catastrophe of Anagni, in 1303, when Nogaret and Sciarra Colonna laid hands on the vicegerent of God, and Boniface passionately repHed to ;N'ogaret's reproaches, " I can pa- tiently endure to be condemned and deposed by a Patarin " — for l^ogaret was born at St. Felix de Caraman, and his ancestors were said to have been burned as Cathari. If this be true he must have been more than human if he did not feel special gratification when, at command of his master, he appeared before Clement Y. with a formal accusation of heresy against Boniface, and demanded that the dead pope's bones be dug up and burned. The citizens of Tou- louse recognized him as an avenger of their wrongs when they placed his bust in the gallery of their illustrious men in the Hotel- de-ville.^ It was to the royal power, thus rising to supremacy, that the people instinctively turned for relief from the inquisitorial tyranny vrhich was becoming insupportable. The authority lodged in the hands of the inquisitor was so arbitrary and irresponsible that even with the purest intentions it could not but be unpopular, while to the unworthy it afforded unlimited opportunity for oppression and the gratification of the basest passions. Dangerous as was any manifestation of discontent, the people of Albi and Carcas- sonne, reduced to despair by the cruelty of the inquisitors, Jean Galande and Jean Yigoureux, mustered courage, and in 1280 pre- sented their complaints to Philippe le Hardi. It was diflacult to .ann. 1303, 1309, 1310.— Nich. Trivetti Chron. ann. 1306.— La Faille, Annales de Toulouse I. 284. The irresistible encroachment of the royal jurisdiction, in spite of perpetual opposition, is most effectively illustrated in the series of royal letters recently printed by M. Ad. Baudouin (Lettres ingdites de Philippe le Bel, Paris, 1886).
 * Raynald. ann. 1303, No. 41.— Vaissette, IV. Note xi.— Guill. Nangiac. Contin.