WOMEN IN A MEDIEVAL HERETICAL SECT AGNES AND HUGUETTE THE WALDENSIANS WOMEN IN A MEDIEVAL HERETICAL SECT AGNES AND HUGUETTE THE WALDENSIANS SHULAMITH SHAHAR Translated by YAEL LOTAN THE BOYDELL PRESS © Shulamith Shahar 2001 All Rights Reserved.Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner First published 2001 Published by The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. PO Box 41026, Rochester, NY 14604–4126, USA website: www.boydell.co.uk ISBN 0 85115 815 3 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Shahar, Shulamith. Women in a medieval heretical sect : Agnes and Huguette the Waldensians / Shulamith Shahar ; translated by Yael Lotan. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0–85115–815–3 (alk. paper) 1. Waldenses. 2. Franco, Agnes, d. 1320. 3. La Cote, Huguette de, d. 1321. 4. Women in Christianity – France, Southern – History – Middle Ages, 600–1500. I. Title. BX4881.3.S53 2001 272'.3'0922 – dc21 00–051861 This publication is printed on acid-free paper Printed in Great Britain by St Edmundsbury Press Ltd, Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk Contents Introduction vii 1. The Poor of Lyons 1 2. Women in the Early Days of the Poor of Lyons 26 3. The Sisters 46 4. Anges and Huguette: Two Believers 66 5. The Female Believers: A Deviation from the Gender Culture of the Age 94 6. Martyrdom 112 Appendix: Translation of the Interrogations of Agnes and Huguette 131 Bibliography 157 Index 169 ‘. . . if one asks, with whom the adherents of historicism actually empathize, the answer is inevitable: with the victor.Andallrulersaretheheirsofthosewhoconquered before them. Hence, empathy with the victor invariably benefits the rulers . . . According to traditional practice, the spoils are carried along in the procession. They are called ‘‘cultural treasures’’ . . .’ Walter Benjamin, ‘Theses on the Philosophy of History’, VII ‘Happy are they who sow and do not reap for they shall wonder far afield.’ Avraham ben Yitzhak, ‘Happy are They’ INTRODUCTION Introduction In August 1319, during Bishop Jacques Fournier’s first year as Inquisitor in Pamiers, in the County of Foix,1 four of The Poor of Lyons (also known as Waldensians)2 were arrested and jailed – twomenandtwowomen.SouthernFrancehadbeensincethelast decades of the twelfth century one of the central locations of the expansionofThePoorofLyons,butsincetheirpersecutionbythe Inquisition during the latter half of the thirteenth century their numbers in the region had been dwindling. Those who were not executedorimprisonedhadmigratedtootherparts.In1319they were a mere smattering in the County of Foix, and not many in 1 The Papal Inquisition began to function in this region in the early 1240s, but not until Jacques Fournier’s appointment as bishop did bishops act as Inquisitors. Following the Bull published by Pope Clement V (Multorum querela, 1312), which permitted bishops to act asInquisitors,JacquesFournierbegantofunctionasone,incoopera- tion with one or more representatives of the Inquisition court of Carcassonne. The court he established in Pamiers continued to func- tion after he left, following his appointment as bishop of Mirepoix. But its activity became lukewarm. Pamiers was the centre of the diocese and the seat of the bishop. Some of the interrogations of the Inquisition during Jacques Fournier’s tenure took place at the bishop’spalaceatPamiers,whichalsocontainedajailforshortdeten- tions. 2 ThenameWaldensians(Vaudois,Valdenses)wasgivenbytheCatho- lics, after the founder of the sect Valdés, or Vaudés, who began his activityinLyons.ThemembersofthesectcalledthemselvesthePoor ofLyons(PauperesdeLugduno),orthePoorofChrist(PauperesChristi). TheCatholicsalsodubbedthemthe‘sandalledones’(Insabbatatorum, Sandaliati, Ensates), because their spiritual leaders in the thirteenth centuryworesandals.Latertheyworeshoeswhoseupperswerecutin theshapeofsandals,orweremarkedwithasignlikeashield.Astheir persecution intensified they avoided external marks. Hereafter the terms Waldensians and Poor of Lyons will be used interchangeably. vii INTRODUCTION thesouthofFranceasawhole.Thetwomenandtwowomenwho were arrested that year belonged to a tiny group, consisting of about a dozen men and women who gathered in Pamiers.3 Jacques Fournier did not send many condemned people to the stake.Intheoneextantvolumeofhisregister,fiveindividualsare recorded as burnt at the stake. Like other Inquisitors, he sentenced people to prison; some of these were condemned to a ‘narrow cell’, a kind of cubicle in which the prisoner’s legs were fettered and sometimes chained to the wall; others were given a ‘wide cell’, in which the prisoner could move about.4 He ordered sometowearayellowcrosssewnontotheirgarment(‘ordinary’– sewn on the back only, or ‘double’ – both front and back),5 and many others were ordered to atone for their sins with fasts, prayers, pilgrimages to the shrines of saints, or alms to churches, monasteries and the poor.6 Four of the people he condemned to 3 WaldensiansreturnedtoFoixin1344,whentheywereforcedtoflee from Toulouse. They scattered through Foix, Bearn and Aragon. 4 Examples of the imposition of this penalty by Jacques Fournier may befoundinLibersententiaruminquisitionisTholosanae,inHistoriainqui- sitionis, ed. Ph. Van Limborch, Amsterdam, 1962, p. 287 (145b). 5 Foradescriptionoftheyellowcrosses:ibid.,p.286(145).Awomanof Narbonnesentencedtoweartheyellowcrosswasforbiddentoweara dress of that color: Quellen zur Geschichte der Waldenser, eds A. Pat- schovsky and K.V. Selge, Göttingen, 1973, p. 64. 6 Jacques Fournier’s register held three volumes, of which only one remains extant. Of the eighty-nine condemned mentioned in this volume,fivewereburntatthestake,fourteenweresentencedtolife imprisonment, thirty-two spent one to five years in prison, after which their sentence was commuted to the obligation to wear the yellow cross; seven were ordered to wear it directly. The remainder were ordered to atone with pilgrimages, prayers and the like. A similarratiobetweenthenumberofthosehandedovertothe‘secular arm’–i.e.sentencedtobeburntatthestake–andthosegivenother punishments, is typical of the sentences meted out by most of the other Inquisitors in the South of France. Being a Church court, the Inquisition was not empowered to sentence people to death. There- forewhenacondemnedpersonwasturnedovertothe‘seculararm’, a formal appeal was attached to spare his life and limbs that the Inquisitorswereconstrainedbycanonlawtoinclude.Allotherpenal- ties, including life imprisonment, were considered not punishments viii INTRODUCTION the stake were the Waldensians arrested in 1319.7 Two of them, RaymonddelaCôteandAgnesFranco,wereburntatthestakeon May 1, 1320, after some nine months of imprisonment and inter- rogation. The other two, Huguette de la Côte and her husband Jean of Vienne, were burnt at the stake after two years of impris- onment and interrogation, on August 2, 1321. The reaction to the burning of Raymond and Agnes may be deduced from the records of Jacques Fournier’s court, where two people were tried for things they said following the execution. The event was a subject of talk at the inn in Pamiers and under the elm tree in the square at Ornolac. Witnesses reported that a customer at the inn related that when Raymond was at the stake and the ropes binding his arms had burned away, he folded his hands together, raised them to heaven as if in prayer and entrusted his soul to God. According to the witness, when the accusedheardthishesaidthatitwasnotpossiblethatamanwho called on God and the Holy Virgin and prayed while being burnt at the stake could be a heretic. If he entrusted his soul to God, but ways of atonement, with this distinction, that it was imposed by judicial sanction. Dossat’s research has shown that in the region of Lauragais seven percent of 306 individuals on trial were sent to the stake, two percent lapsed and were also burnt, the remainder were sentenced to imprisonment or other forms of atonement: Y. Dossat, Les crises de l’inquisition toulousaine au XIIIe siècle (1233–1273), Bordaux, 1959, pp. 265–267. Bernard Gui sent to the stake, between 1308 and 1323, forty-two out of 930 condemned. Three more were supposed to be burnt but managed to escape: Heresies of the High MiddleAges,ed.andtrans.W.L.WakefieldandA.P.Evans,NewYork, 1969,p.374andnote3;A.PalesGobillard,‘BernardGui,inquisiteur et auteur de la Practica’, in Bernard Gui et son monde. Cahiers de Fanjeaux 16 (1981), pp. 262–263. Some of those sentenced to be imprisoned, mainly to the ‘narrow cell’, died while incarcerated, but manyhadtheirtermshortened,anotherformofatonementimposed, andgenerallyhadsomeoftheconfiscatedpropertyrestoredtothem: B. Hamilton,The Medieval Inquisition, London, 1981, p. 57. 7 The fifth was a Cathar from Montaillou who recanted, but relapsed and was then burnt at the stake: Le registre de l’inquisition de Jacques Fournier, évêque de Pamiers (1318–1325), ed. J. Duvernoy, Toulouse, 1965, Vol. I, pp. 442–454, hereafter Le registre; Liber sententiarum, pp. 289–291 (146b–147b). ix