Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 2.djvu/99

 CONFLICT BETWEEN CHURCH AND STATE. 83 when he resolved upon it he anticipated resistance so confidently that with his privity Bernard assembled fourscore men, with skilled mechanics, in the Franciscan convent, ready to break open the jails in case of necessity. Their services were not needed. Geoffroi d'Ablis yielded, and in August, 1303, Pequigny removed the prisoners of Albi. He did not discharge them, however, but merely transferred them to the royal prisons, and refused to carry them to the king as Bernard advised. Possibly their treatment for a while may have been gentler, but they derived no perma- nent advantage from the movement. The grasp of the Inquisi- tion was unrelaxing. It obtained possession of them again, and we shall see that it held them to the last.* Meanwhile advantage was taken of the access obtained to them to procure from them statements of the tortures which they had endured, and fists were made of the names of those whom they had been forced to accuse as heretics. These were circulated throughout the land and excited general alarm, the Franciscans being especially active in giving them publicity. On the other hand, the inquisitor Geoffroi d'Abfis was equal to the emergency. He cited Pequigny to appear and stand trial for impeding the In- quisition, and on his refusal excommunicated him, September 29 ; and as soon as word could be carried to Paris he was published as excommunicate by the Dominicans there. This audacious act brought afi parties to a sense of the nature of the conflict which had sprung up between Church and State. The consuls and people of Albi addressed to the queen an earnest petition beseeching her to prevail upon the king not to abandon them by withdrawino- the Kef ormers, who had already done so much good and on whom depended their last hope. A fruitless effort also was made to pre- vent the publication of the excommunication. At Castres, Oc- tober 13, Jean Eicoles, stipendiary priest of the Church of St Mary, pubfished it from the pulpit, as he was bound to do and was promptly arrested by the deputy of the royal viguier of Albi and carried to the Franciscan convent, where he was threatened 900* ^xf^' ^'^'^'*-' ^""'"^" ^'^^^' ^^^^' ^^^- ^' l^' l^' 20, 32, 44, 49, 58, 156, 163 229.-Pequigny is also said to have arrested some of the friars connected with the Inquisition (La Faille, Annales de Toulouse L 34), but I think this impos-