High Middle Ages · Europe · Religion
1252
Inquisition in Languedoc intensifies under Dominicans
1252
Dominican inquisitors in Toulouse and Carcassonne conducted systematic house-to-house interrogations, maintaining meticulous registers of testimony that would serve as templates for later inquisitorial procedure. Neighbors informed on neighbors; the fear of denunciation became as effective as the pyre itself in crushing Cathar sympathies. The records they kept, preserved in archives at Toulouse, are now invaluable sources for understanding daily life in medieval southern France.