The Friar of Carcassonne Read Free Page B

in Carcassonne just before the turn of the century. His interests were varied, from politics to apocalyptic speculations, and his circle of friendship impressive. He knew some of the great minds of his time. Ramon Llull, the polyglot Majorcan poet, philosopher, and tireless champion of the conversion of the Muslims, counted Bernard as one of his friends. An independent scholar whose prodigious output and fearless travels to the lands of Islam make him something of a patron saint of intrepid freelancers, Llull seems to have respected Délicieux, having given the Franciscan one of his volumes as a gift. Llull is also credited with publishing the first major works in the Catalan language, in which the friar would have been versed. Holding Bernard in similarly high esteem was another Catalan, Arnaud de Vilanova, physician to popes, astrologer to kings, and prominent alchemist. This friendship extended into a shared interest in necromancy and the dark arts, a mark of Bernard’s restless intellect. Another admirer, just as unconventional as Llull and Vilanova, was Angelo Clareno, an Italian leader of an exalted faction of the Franciscan brotherhood, who saw in Délicieux a champion of the virtues of poverty and simplicity.
    These acquaintances suggest a man of curiosity and, perhaps, inwardness, satisfied with the life of an interesting mind. Yet those facets of his personality did not earn him his place in history. He was also a man of the world, adept at the behind-the-scenes maneuvering necessary to further schemes and scuttle opponents. To the circle of friendship that counted individuals of uncommon genius must be added noblemen and cardinals, who would protect him in his time of need, as well as the Franciscan confessor to the queen of France—and indeed the queen herself. He was no stranger to the society of the great, as comfortable in a palace of the powerful as in a cell of a poor friar.
    Délicieux’s complex nature has been the subject of scholarly debate. In addition to a raft of articles written by specialists of the period, his three major biographers—Jean-Barthélemy Hauréau in the nineteenth century, Michel de Dmitrewski in the twentieth, Alan Friedlander in the twenty-first—have all held the man up to close scrutiny, in an attempt to divine his motivations. What emerges from these studies is a composite picture of a firebrand, imbued with profound spirituality and possessed of exceptional intelligence, at odds with the persecuting reflex of his time and the cruelty and spiritual corruption of inquisition.
    In essence, Bernard believed there are some things that a society must not do. He believed that the two guides in the conduct of his life, Francis of Assisi and Jesus of Nazareth, would have condemned many of the activities and certainties of the Church of his day. In condoning the rack and the stake, the Church had betrayed its origins, its principles. This was an extraordinarily brave position in an era when the use of terror and torture had become the norm in dealing with dissidence. In a larger sense, Bernard’s true confraternity is the community of courageous men and women throughout history who have resisted the slide into barbarism. Faced as he was by inquisition, Délicieux’s struggle concerned secret proceedings, unlawful detention, and the abuse of power. To him inhumane incarceration and judicial violence were not consonant with civilization.
    That he acted on this belief attests to his courage; that he was able to do so, to the particular historical moment in which he lived. If the twelfth century was the one in which the books were opened and the cathedrals begun, the thirteenth may be said to be the one where the books were catalogued and the prisons built. Experimentation gave way to codification. Not only the Church was engaged in this—other, competing structures of power and control had emerged to undertake the same task.
    Délicieux, who lived