Page:A history of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, volume 3.djvu/99

 CHARACTERISTICS OF THE SECT. 33 the Inquisitor of Carcassonne, in 1325. Sincere in the belief of her divine mission, she spontaneously and fearlessly related her history and stated her faith, and in her replies to her examiners she was remarkably quick and intelligent. When her confession was read over to her she confirmed it, and to all exhortations to retract she quietly answered that she would live and die in it as the truth. She was accordingly handed over to the secular arm and sealed her convictions with her blood.* Extravagances of belief such as this were not accompanied with extravagance of conduct. Even Bernard Gui has no fault to find with the heretics' mode of life, except that the school of Satan imitated the school of Christ, as laymen imitate like monkeys the pastors of the Church. They all vowed poverty and led a life of self-denial, some of them laboring with their hands and others beg- ging by the wayside. In the towns and villages they had little dwellings which they called Houses of Poverty, and where they dwelt together. On Sundays and feast-days their friends would assemble and all would listen to readings from the precepts and articles of faith, the lives of the saints, and their own religious books in the vulgar tongue — mostly the writings of Olivi, which they regarded as revelations from God, and the " Transitus Sancti Patris" which was a legendary account of his death. The only external signs by which Bernard says they were to be recognized were that on meeting one another, or entering a house, they would say, " Blessed be Jesus Christ," or " Blessed be the name of the Lord Jesus Christ." When praying in church or elsewhere they sat with hooded heads and faces turned to the wall, not standing or kneeling, or striking their hands, as was customary with the orthodox. At dinner, after asking a blessing, one of them would kneel and recite Gloria in excelsis, and after supper, Salve Regina. This was all inoffensive enough, but they had one peculiarity to which Bernard as an inquisitor took strong exceptions. When on trial they were ready enough to confess their own faith, but noth- ing would induce them to betray their associates. In their sim- plicity they held that this would be a violation of Christian charity to which they could not lawfully be compelled, and the inquisitor wasted infinite pains in the endeavor to show that it is charity to
 * Coll. Doat, XXVII. 7 sqq., 95.