Heretics and inquisitors: The case of Auriac and Cambiac

Confessions to inquisitors in 1243–1246 revealed incidents which had troubled rural areas of Languedoc in immediately preceding years. Such was the case in two small villages, Auriac and Cambiac. Although the depositions are often wanting in detail, they do disclose the capture of some heretical women in Auriac, one group seized with the connivance of their host, also the frustration of an attempt by a captive to dispose of property she had left behind. When a heretical deacon was captured, funds to bribe the count's bailiff and his assistant were raised throughout the region. In Cambiac, a woman who intensely disliked the Cathars cooperated with a priest in foiling attempts to aid them. When she threatened to expose her neighbors' heretical sympathies she was cowed into silence but the priest's statement to the inquisitors led to a special investigation which forced several persons to retract the lies they had formerly told. Such events, not unusual at the time, disclose the turmoil and tension produced by the vigorous pursuit of heretics just before the middle of the thirteenth century.