History of the Crusades

the Crusades Episode 179, the Crusade against the Cathars, the Royal Visit.

Hello again.

Last week in a major victory for the Franciscan friar Bernard Delicier, we saw the hated prison in Carcasson,

the wall, overrun by the King's representative Jean de Pekinier who stormed the building

and removed all the prisoners from the custody of the Dominicans into the

Dominicans into the custody of the French crown.

This was, of course, a blow to both the Inquisition and the Dominican Order,

but it was far from being a knockout punch.

For Bernard Delicia, it was a small victory in his one-man war against the Inquisition.

However, the Inquisition itself was still in full swing, and the closure of a single

prison in one city was not really going to change things to any great extent.

The Storming of the Wall did, however, have two outcomes.

Its former prisoners, men and women who would likely have died before being able to tell their

tails, were now able to relate in full and graphic detail the horrors to which they had been subjected during their detention.

And Bernard Delicier, taking a leaf out of the Dominicans' book, questioned each prisoner

at length about just exactly what went on behind the prison walls

and he recorded all their answers in a document which unfortunately no longer exists.

In addition to providing evidence of the torture and other practices used by the

Dominicans, the storming of the wall resulted in the excommunication of the man who had

spearheaded the assault on the Dominican prison, Jean de Piccignier.

On September the 7th, 1303, the chief Inquisitor of Carcasson, Jeffrey Dablie, took the momentous

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