4 - Anges and Huguette: Two Believers

Summary

There were three ways of bringing a person in for questioning by the Inquisition. The first of these was the least frightening. The Inquisitor regularly sermonized the parish about the true faith and against heresy, on which occasions he would also threaten with excommunication anyone who attempted to disrupt the work of the Inquisition by means of bribery, by contradicting honest testimony or withdrawing one's own honest testimony, or even by refusing to aid the Inquisition with the ‘help and advice’. At the same time, he would announce a period of grace of a ‘general summons’ (citatio universalis), during which anyone who had become involved with any kind of heresy could come and confess as well as inform on others, with the promise of no greater penalty than a minor act of penance. (Informers were asked what motivated them to testify – was it hatred, fear, love, or hope of financial reward, and they were supposed to reply that all they wished to do was tell the truth.) The second way was to send the suspect a personal summons, generally as a result of a denunciation, to come to the court for questioning. The Inquisitorial summons (citatio) was given to the parish priest and signed with his seal, and sometimes notarized. The priest would take the summons to the house of the man or woman in question and deliver it in the presence of witnesses, after which he had to announce the summons publicly in church every Sunday for three weeks. If the person summoned appeared in court as required, he or she was often allowed to go home between interrogations, and was free to move about the diocese. Whoever failed to appear, and did not send a representative, was labelled disobedient and temporarily excommunicated. At the end of a year from the set date, if the person had still failed to appear, he or she was fully excommunicated and anyone who knew their whereabouts had to report it, on pain of excommunication. Once the whereabouts were known, soldiers of the secular authority were sent to seize him or her. The third way was immediate imprisonment. A representative of the secular authority (in Pamiers it was the bailiff of the count of Foix) was ordered to dispatch soldiers directly to fetch the suspect to the prison of the Inquisition.