Chronicle
A short Latin chronicle by a Dominican friar of Toulouse, describing from the inside the first years of the papal inquisition in the dioceses of Toulouse, Albi and Cahors in the 1230s.
William Pelhisson was a friar of the Dominican convent at Toulouse and writes in the first person of what the brothers there went through; a later Dominican historian, Bernard Gui, noted of him that he “saw and was present”. His chronicle tells of the first inquisitors appointed in the region, the trials and burnings they brought about, the anger of the townspeople, and the expulsion of the friars from Toulouse in November 1235 and their return the next year. It was written some years after the events: it looks ahead to the burning of two hundred and ten heretics at Montségur.
He is a partisan. More than once he blesses God and Saint Dominic for a victory over the heretics, and he calls an accused man “accursed”. That is the value of the text: it shows, without embarrassment and from the inquisitors’ side, how the procedure worked and how it was received.
Cited in
- 1231, firm date