Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/77

 PERSISTENCE OF CATHARISM. 61 no time during its existence were lacking earnest and devoted min- isters, who took their hves in their hands and wandered around in secret among the faithful, administering spiritual comfort and instruction, making converts where they could, exhorting the young and hereticating the old. In toil and hardship and peril they pursued their work, gliding by night from one place of con- cealment to another, and their self-devotion was rivalled by that of their disciples. Few more touching narratives can be conceived than those which could be constructed from the artless confes- sions extorted from the peasant-folk who fell into the hands of the inquisitors — the humble alms which they gave, pieces of bread, fish, scraps of cloth, or small coins, the hiding-places which they constructed in their cabins, the guidance given by night through places of danger, and, more than all, the steadfast fidel- ity which refused to betray their pastors when the inquisitor sud- denly appeared and offered the alternative of free pardon or the dungeon and confiscation. The self-devotion of the minister was well matched with the quiet heroism of the believer. To this fidelity and the complete network of secret organization which extended over the land may be attributed the marvellously long exemption which many of these ministers enjoyed in their prose- lyting missions. Two of the most prominent of them at this period, Eaymond Delboc and Kaymond Godayl, or Didier, had already, in 1276, been condemned by the Inquisition of Carcas- sonne as perfected heretics and fugitives, but they kept at their work until the explosion of 1300, incessantly active, with the inquisitors always in pursuit but unable to overtake them. Guil- lem Pages is another whose name constantly recurs in the confes- sions of heretications during an almost equally long period. The inquisitors might well urge that their utmost efforts were needed, but their methods were such that even the best intentions would not have saved the innocent from suffering with the guilty.* The secretly guilty were quite sufficiently influential, and the innocent sufficiently apprehensive, to keep up the agitation which had been commenced, and at last it began to bear fruit. A* new inquisitor of Carcassonne, Mcholas d' Abbeville, was quite as cruel Inq. Tolos. pp. 54, 109, 111, 130, 137, 138, 139, 143, 144, 146, 147.
 * MSS. Bib. ]Srat.,fonds latin, No. 11847.— Doat, XXVI. 197.— Lib. Sententt.