Ferrer (Inquisitor)

Ferrer ( French Ferrier ; * in the 12th century in Perpignan , † in the 13th century ) was a Dominican and in the 13th century one of the first inquisitors of after the end of the Albigensian Crusade in southern France ( Languedoc furnished) Inquisition jurisdiction .

Life

In several letters from April 1233, Pope Gregory IX. called on the provincial prior of the Dominicans in the archdiocese of Auch , Bordeaux , Bourges and Narbonne to take over the leadership of the Inquisition for the persecution and trial of the followers of heresy , the so-called Cathars . The Inquisition had already been established after the Albigensian Crusade in 1229, but was initially integrated into the conventional episcopal jurisdiction, which, however, had proven inadequate in the persecution of the Cathars. In the Dominican order of preachers, on the other hand, the Pope had recognized the intellectual challenge par excellence of heresy, to whom the leadership of the fight against it was now to be entrusted permanently. With this, the institutional inquisition jurisdiction was introduced in France in the strict sense. In the same year the Provincial Priors of the Order had presented the papal legate Jean de Bernin with their lists of the names of the first friars who were to be entrusted with the management of the investigative procedure (Latin inquisitio ). Together with Pierre d'Alès , Ferrer was nominated for the Diocese of Carcassonne . For Toulouse and Cahors it was Guillaume Arnaud and Pierre Seilan and for Albi it was Arnaud Cathala and Guillaume Pelhisson . All of them were confirmed by the legate at the beginning of 1234.

Ferrer was a native of Catalonia and came from the Perpignan area . He probably belonged to the first generation of the Dominican Order canonized in 1217 , completed his master's degree in theology at the University of Paris and was then appointed prior of the Dominican convent of Narbonne . Even before his official appointment as inquisitor, he had distinguished himself as a persecutor of heresy when he arrested a Cathar in the spring of 1234 and had him extradited to Archbishop Pierre Amiel . This had provoked the outbreak of civil war-like unrest in Narbonne, which had forced the archbishop to flee to Carcassonne and which could not be calmed until 1237 after intervention by the royal authorities.

As inquisitor, Ferrer had pronounced the excommunication of Count Raimund VII of Toulouse on June 6, 1242 , when he had risen up against the French crown and the ecclesiastical authorities. The spell was only shortly afterwards renewed by Archbishop Pierre Amiel, who had to flee again to Carcassonne, whereby the count now also participates in the murder of the Inquisitors of Toulouse, Guillaume Arnaud and Étienne de Saint-Thibéry , on May 28th had been charged in Avignonet . Ferrer had been entrusted with the judicial investigation of the assassination and for the time being had also taken over the post of judge in Toulouse on behalf of the murder victims. At the Council of Béziers in April 1243 he was sharply attacked by Count Raimund VII for his alleged abuses of office. At the council the decision was probably taken to campaign against the Montségur , where the Avignonet assassins had their refuge. After the fall of Montségur on March 16, 1244, Ferrer subjected eighteen of the surviving defenders, including the former lord of the castle Raymond de Péreille , to an interrogation, whose record-keeping statements have all been preserved, making them the most important source of the events on Montségur before his End.

Ferrer then led the Inquisition in Carcassonne, Toulouse and the southern Albigeois until 1245, when he put at least a dozen convicted heretics on the stake. According to his brother Guillaume Pelhisson , the population had suffered badly from his actions and several years later Bernard Gui spoke of him in a play on words with his name as a virga ferrea ("iron scepter"). Ferrer had been extremely diligent in the conduct of his office, and the numerous documents he has received, even beyond the events of Montségur, are among the most informative sources on the activity of the Inquisition in southern France in the 13th century.

literature

• The interrogations of the Montségur survivors were edited and translated into French by Jean Duvernoy: Le Dossier Montségur. Toulouse: Le Pérégrinateur, 1998 (translation); Carcassonne: Center de valorisation du patrimoine médiéval (Latin text).
• Michel Roquebert: The History of the Cathars, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Languedoc. German translation by Ursula Blank-Sangmeister, Philipp Reclam jun. GmbH & Co. KG, Stuttgart 2012. (French first edition, Histoire des Cathares. Hérésie, Croisade, Inquisition du XIe au XIVe siècle. Éditions Perrin, Paris 1999).