The Hammer of the Inquisitors: Brother Bernard Delicieux and the Struggle Against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-Century France (review)

On Monday, September 3, 1319, the trial of an elderly Franciscan, Bernard Délicieux, formally opened in Castelnaudary (following the papal mandate Etsi cunctorum six weeks earlier) with a reading of 104 articles, in two series of indictments, that accused the friar of obstructing the officium inquisitionis, of treason against the king of France, and of murdering Pope Benedict XI. The inquest, after these initial proceedings, recessed and reconvened nine days later in the great hall of the episcopal palace in the City of Carcassonne. Another adjournment of twelve days occurred after this second session but, when the tribunal reformed, the trial proceeded with few delays for the next eleven weeks in Carcassonne. The judges in this extraordinary trial were Jacques Fournier, bishop of Pamiers, and Raimond de Mostuéjouls, bishop of St-Papoul. (Jean-Raimond de Comminges, archbishop of Toulouse, withdrew from the inquiry after the first session in Castelnaudary.) During the inquest numerous testimonies were heard of the guilt and innocence of the Franciscan. Bernard Délicieux testified calmly and lucidly (even after torture) on the truth of the articles against him. Finally, on Saturday, December 8, the Franciscan was degraded from his clerical status and imprisoned for life in the Wall of Carcassonne. He died a few months later. Alan Friedlander—following his exemplary edition of the Processus Bernardi Delitiosi: The Trial of Fr. Bernard Délicieux, 3 September-8 December 1319—places Bernard Délicieux's trial "under the lens of scientific scrutiny" in a scholarly and sympathetic effort at grasping the "true face" of the Franciscan.

A great many of the articles against Bernard Délicieux concentrated upon his obstruction of the Dominican inquisition in Carcassonne. The Franciscan acknowledged he thought the inquisitors unjust and corrupt; indeed, he even argued that there were no more heretics in the Carcassès and so all those imprisoned by the inquisition must be innocent. "Even babies in their cradles," a trial witness recalled him preaching sixteen years earlier, would falsely suffer under the yoke of the inquisitors. Bernard Délicieux further admitted being present when the men and women of the Burg of Carcassonne assaulted the Wall of Carcassonne in August, 1303, and released all the prisoners of the inquisition. Nevertheless, he confessed, it was never his intention "to do anything against the office of the inquisition"; rather he desired to "always promote the honor of the said office." Friedlander, extrapolating from this statement of Bernard Délicieux, and arguing against Richard Kieckhefer's contention that there was no "institutionized" medieval inquisition, observes that the officium inquisitionis, while standing for "the routine functions of the job," was clearly invested with an "abstract meaning" and "a life of its own" by the early fourteenth century. The "office" of the inquisition possessed "an ideal essense, not a material being, but it stood nonetheless as a tangible reality" that "deserves to be called more truly an Inquisition." Friedlander thinks that the Franciscan and his judges obviously conceived of the "office of the Inquisition" in 1319. Unfortunately, the life and trial of Bernard Délicieux do not support such an argument. What does support Friedlander's thesis is the curious blend of rhetorical commonsense and vibrant utopian romanticism that permeates his book—so that if the Franciscan had "lived a few centuries later he might have appeared as a type of Lenin and Rasputin combined in one"—and which necessitates that what the "failed revolutionary" of Carcassonne raged against was the essential "Inquisition" of modern political treatises and novels. This romantic essentialism, though sincere and openly acknowledged, all too often lessens the interpretative depth and historical insight of the book. Yet Friedlander's passion for Bernard Délicieux, vividly present throughout the book, always makes the Franciscan seem vital and important to understanding the...