Guillaume Arnaud

Guillaume Arnaud ( German Wilhelm Arnold , Occitan Guilhem Arnaut , † 28 / 29. May 1242 in Avignonet-Lauragais ) was a Dominican and 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 set up after the Albigensian Crusade in 1229, but was initially integrated into the conventional episcopal jurisdiction, which, however, had proven to be 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 ). Guillaume Arnaud, who came from Montpellier and apparently had legal training, was nominated for the dioceses of Toulouse and Cahors together with Pierre Seilan . For Albi it was Arnaud Cathala and Guillaume Pelhisson and for Carcassonne it was Ferrer and Pierre d'Alès . All of them were confirmed by the legate at the beginning of 1234.

Guillaume Arnaud had started his work with his colleague in Cahors , where he first had the corpses of well-known Cathars exhumed from church cemeteries and cremated, since according to the law heretics were not allowed to be buried in consecrated earth. Then he summoned the first heresy suspects to question before his tribunal in the Quercy , who, however, did not obey the summons and instead went underground. Exhumations, summonses, denunciations and the first executions at the stake had poisoned the general climate in Languedoc within a very short time and angered the local population against the inquisitors and their helpers, who were often violently attacked during their work or confronted with passive resistance. The situation escalated in 1235 when Guillaume Arnaud summoned twelve city notables for questioning in Toulouse , who then, however, allegedly chased him out of the city on October 10 with the support of Count Raymond VII . A few days later all Dominicans were driven out of Toulouse, who were chased over the Garonne bridges by the city militia and citizens. In return, Guillaume Arnaud pronounced the excommunication of ten consuls of the city from Carcassonne on November 10, 1235, which was confirmed by the prelates of Narbonne, Toulouse and Carcassonne. The document he drew for this is the oldest document issued by the Inquisition in France, which has survived to this day, even if only as a copy from the 17th century. Shortly afterwards he also pronounced the excommunication over the Count of Toulouse. Only after a sharp intervention by the Pope could the Dominicans and with them the Inquisitors move back into their convent in Toulouse on September 4th, 1236 and start their work. However, under pressure from the Count, Pierre Seilan had to limit his activities to Cahors, which is why Guillaume Arnaud needed a new colleague in Toulouse. He was now joined by the Franciscan Étienne de Saint-Thibéry , whose order was generally considered to be more moderate.

In the autumn of 1236, Guillaume Arnaud and Étienne de Saint-Thibéry set out on an inspection tour of the Lauragais , probably also to calm the situation in Toulouse. Until 1238 they worked in Puylaurens , Avignonet , Laurac , Fanjeaux and Castelnaudary , among others . Between February and March 1237, Guillaume Arnaud was involved in the trial of Bernard-Othon de Niort and his brother in Carcassonne as a subdelegate judge of the legate Jean de Bernin , who were sentenced to life imprisonment. On April 2, 1239, in Toulouse, he ordered the acceptance of the confession of Perfecti Raymond Gros, who had denounced several Cathars. He then sentenced the influential Tolosan citizen Alaman de Rouaix to life imprisonment, which, however, never began and was able to continue to live undisturbed in Toulouse, protected by the citizens. For this purpose, Guillaume Arnaud excommunicated several consuls of the city, who apparently protected their Cathar relatives.

On May 13, 1238 Pope Gregory IX. the suspension of the Inquisition for the whole of Languedoc ordered initially for three, then six months. The reason for this was the complaints made by Count Raimunds VII of Toulouse against the inquisitors, combined with an international intrigue between Toulouse, Rome and Emperor Frederick II , which had the aim of withdrawing inquisition jurisdiction from the Dominican order and placing it under episcopal jurisdiction. Ultimately, the Count of Toulouse failed and in May 1241 the inquisitors were able to resume their work. On October 17, 1241, Guillaume Arnaud and Étienne de Saint-Thibéry in Saint-Paul-Cap-de-Joux had the three faydits Guillaume de Lahille , Bernard de Saint-Martin and Guillaume de Balaguier in their absence with “final judgment” as heretics condemns what would have been connected with their transfer to the secular arm and thus the stake. These are the only death sentences on record that Guillaume Arnaud and his counterpart had ever pronounced, but not all of his issued sentences have been preserved for posterity. Then they went on their second round trip through the Lauragais. In mid-May 1242 they were in Sorèze , from there to Avignonet , where they met the local prior of the Dominicans and intended to stay a few days in the palace of the Count of Toulouse.

On the night of May 28th to 29th, 1242, the night of the Ascension of Christ , a troop of Faydits who had come from Montségur had penetrated into the apartments of the inquisitors, who were butchered with axes while they were asleep. In addition to Guillaume Arnaud and Étienne de Saint-Thibéry, the Dominican prior, two other Dominicans and a Franciscan, the archdeacon of Lézat, his clerk, a notary and two public servants were killed. The assassins, which included the three Faydits whom Guillaume Arnaud had condemned at the stake a few months earlier, stole the trial files carried by the victims, among other things, which is why the official activities of Guillaume Arnaud can only be tracked incompletely today. The murder of him and his colleague the following year triggered the siege of Montségur .

literature

• Malcolm Barber: The Cathars. Heretic of the Middle Ages. Artemis & Winkler Verlag, Düsseldorf and Zurich 2003. (English first edition: The Cathars. Dualist heretics in Languedoc in the High Middle Ages. Pearson Education Limited, Harlow 2000).
• 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).