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.