Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/549

 POPULAR INCREDULITY. 533 magistrates to be burned, and though at the first auto a death- sentence was pronounced by the eschevins, at the second even this formality was omitted, and the victims were dragged directly from the place of sentence to that of execution.* One specially notable feature of the whole affair was the utter incredulity everywhere excited. Just as the crimes imputed to the Templars found credence nowhere out of France, so, outside of Arras, we are told not one person in a thousand believed in the truth of the charges. This was fortunate, for the victims naturally included in their lists of associates many residents of other places, and the conflagration might readily have spread over the whole country, had it found agents like Pierre le Brousart, who carried the spark from Langres to Arras. On the strength of revelations in the confessions several persons were arrested in Amiens, but the bishop, who was a learned clerk and had long resided in Rome, promptly released them and declared that he Avould dismiss all brought before him, for he did not believe in the possibility of such offences. At Tournay others were seized, and the matter was warmly debated, with the result that they were set free, al- though Jean Taincture, a most notable clerk, wrote an elaborate treatise to prove their guilt. It was the same with the accused who managed to fly. Martin Cornille was caught in Burgundy and brought before the Archbishop of Besancon, who acquitted him on the strength of informations made in Arras. Willaume le Febvre surrendered himself to the Bishop of Paris ; the Inquisitor of Paris came to Arras to get the evidence concerning him, and the vicars furnished the confessions of those who had implicated him. The result was that the tribunal, consisting of the Archbishop of Reims, the Bishop of Paris, the Inquisitor of France, and sundry doctors of theology, not only acquitted him, but authorized him to prosecute the vicars for reparation of his honor, and for expenses and damages.f Evidently up to this time the excitement con- t Du Clercq, Liv. iv. ch. 6, 11, 14, 28. — A copy of Jean Taincture's tract is in the Bib. Roy. de Bruxelles, MSS. No. 2296. — About this time Jeannin, a peasant of Inchy, was executed at Cambrai, and at Lille Catharine Patee was condemned as a witch, but escaped with banishment, and the same was the case with Mar- guerite d'Escornay at Nivelles. One unfortunate, Noel Ferri ot Amiens, became insane on the subject, and after wandering over the land, accused himself at
 * Du Clercq, Li v. iv. ch. 4, 8.