Toulouse, Bibliothèque municipale, ms. 609

Manuscript 609 of the Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse (MS609) contains the records of the largest known single inquisition of the Middle Ages: confessions of heresy by over 5400 deponents, taken by the Dominican inquisitors Bernart de Caux and Johan de Saint-Pierre in the abbey of Saint-Sernin at Toulouse in the years 1245 and 1246. Modern historiography often calls it the “great inquisition”.

Codicology and History of ms. 609

In the possession of the Dominican archives at Toulouse until the revolution, ms. 609 of the Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse bore the stenciled catalogue number “58” on its spine by the time of the transfer of the holdings to the state after 1790. In 1819 it was indexed by the librarian Charles Dauzat under “n° 619” (Toulouse, BM, ms. 1176: 494) who took on the job of organizing the “chaotic” post-revolution library holdings. Sometime between then and 1883, the manuscript received the revised shelfmark “I, 155” or “155, 1ère série”, likely from the librarian Henri Pont (1857-1883). In 1883, Auguste Molinier reorganized the manuscript holdings into its modern order and assigned it the current shelfmark “ms. 609” in a published catalogue (A. Molinier, 1883: 380). Ms. 609 underwent extensive restoration efforts in 1952 (see below). The manuscript is now managed by the BM Toulouse's Bibliothèque d'étude et du patrimoine, catalogued under the title Registre de l'inquisition toulousaine contenant les dépositions recueillies par Bernard de Caux et Jean de Saint-Pierre en 1245, 1246 et de façon très partielle en 1247. Activité du tribunal en 1251 et 1258.

Physical composition
The codex was restored by the library workshop in 1952 (BM de Toulouse, Rapport de restauration, 1950-1952, p. 531-536), with the following constituting the modern codex (compare with Yves Dossat's pre-restoration codicological survey in Dossat, 1959, pages 56-86):

  • New leather binding on 4 double cords; new headbands in white and blue silk; front and back cover have hollows in which are glued the previous laminated leather front and back covers
  • New frontcover pastedown endpaper;
  • New free flyleaf on stitched tab;
  • Medieval bifolio flyleaf;
  • 19th-century bifolio insert;
  • Original paper quires:

    • 18 quires of 6 bifoliated sheets (the right side of quire 5, sheet 4 was excised before composition of text), some covered with silk netting;
    • 1 quire of 5 bifoliated sheets, some covered with silk netting;
    • 3 quires of 6 bifoliated sheets (the right side of quire 22, sheet 1 was excised before composition of text), some covered with silk netting;
    • New free flyleaf on stitched tab;
    • New backcover pastedown endpaper.

Download the visualizations of the codex structure and codex foliation.

Script
Original text is highly abbreviated cursiva libraria between 2-5 mm in height, set between wide ruled margins on all 4 sides; no ruled lines, no decoration; marginal and interlinear annotations contemporary to original. Ms. 609 contains two other sets of occasional margin annotations from the seventeenth and eighteenth century.

Remarks on condition
The manuscript underwent restoration in 1952 (BM de Toulouse, Rapport de restauration, 1950-1952, p. 531-536), resulting in a solid, stable codex that is easy to handle. During restoration the old covers were removed and the medieval text block was rebound in leather on four double cords. The bifolio index of places, inserted by Auguste-Adolphe Baudouin, archivist at the Archives departementales de l'Haute Garonne in the nineteenth century, was retained. New pastedowns and flyleaves were added in restoration. The original textblock is composed of 260 folios of paper, all in bifoliated quires of 6 sheets save quire 19, composed of 5 sheets. Quire 5 and 22 each had a folio clipped before the scribe commenced their copying. Numerous edges and corners were rebuilt by restorers, providing a uniform dimension across the paper text block. No known scientific or comparative study has been made of the composition or origin of the medieval paper, it is presumably linen, cotton, or a mix of the two, likely coming from Valencian mills. The paper is laid, polished and has in large part resisted the corrosive effects of ferrogallic ink. However a number of folios have succumbed in part to the oxidation of the medieval ink, with the result that of a number of folios have small to large holes eaten through them in the text area. A number of folios have also deeply darkened within the limits of the text (another well-known effect of ferrogallic ink) creating an impression that the ink has bloomed across and through the pages. The restorer addressed the corrosion by gluing translucent silk netting to the surfaces most affected by the problem. As a consequence those folios how have an unreal stiffness and rough texture to them, but worse the glue has reacted to the ink over the decades, causing the small, fine script to blur in many folios. The current condition can be compared to microfilms taken just before the restoration (BM Toulouse, Microfilme 69 - Complement MS 609, folio 26-61, 74-81, 87-110). Water damage is minimal, generally limited to corners, edges, and gutters, with virtually no impact on readability. The water infiltration was likely a product of the original binding style: according to the restorer's notes, the original covers extended only to the edges of the text block, such that any water accumulating near the codex would be directly soaked up by the very porous paper. Nonetheless, all folios are readable, many still very crisp and bright, with only a few of the “restored” folios posing challenges to decyphering.

Content
A copy of two volumes of inquisitorial registers held at the Toulouse convent of the Dominicans with acts dating between 1245 and 1258, principally the registry of the inquisition conducted by the Dominicans Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre between 1246 and 1246. This copy was made for the inquisitors Guilhem Bernart and Reginald de Chartes at Toulouse, per the inscriptions on the original flyleaves, Confessiones de V° libro Laurag~ fratris Bernardi de Caucio transcripte in hoc libro usque ad CLXXIII folium. Item et deinceps de quarto libro followed on another page by [...] per fratres Guillelmum Bernardi et Reginaldum de Carnoto inquisitores. This copy contains 5,784 entries, of which 5,689 depositions (confessiones), 93 acknowledgements of testimony (recognitiones), and two reports of fama concerning 5,482 deponents. Almost all the deponents came from over 100 villages or parishes across the Lauragais between Toulouse and Carcassonne, with some deponents from the lower Albigeois and one from the border of Quercy (Montauban). The documents are collected by parish, ranged under running headers and margin notes of village names at the top of folios; some villages appear multiple times across the volume. In the nineteenth century, Auguste-Adolphe Baudouin of the Archives departementales de l’Haute Garonne attempted an index of places, inserted as a bifoliated sheet after the medieval front flypapers.

Editions
The first public notice (with extract) was in Dom. de Vic, Dom. Vaissete, and Alexandre du Mège, eds., Histoire Générale de Languedoc, vol. 6 (Toulouse: J.B. Paya, 1843), Additions et notes du Liv. XXV, pages 5-6. A short introduction accompanied by transcription of first 11 folios was published decades later in Bruno Dusan, “De Manso Sanctarum Puellarum,” Revue archéologique du Midi de la France, 1868-69, introduction at page 100 and transcription in appendix (with separate numbering) pages 1-12. Célestin Douais claimed to be working on an edition in “Lettre de Mgr C. Douais,” Revue Historique 09-12 (1902), pages 326–27, but it never saw publication. Annette Pales-Gobilliard stated that she and Yves Dossat were working on an edition in “Conférence de Mme Annette Pales-Gobilliard”, Annuaires de l’École pratique des hautes études 100, nᵒ 96 (1987), page 343, but it did not see publication either. A translation of extracts from the manuscript were published in John H. Arnold and Peter Biller, eds., Heresy and Inquisition in France, 1200-1300 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), pages 380-439. Two unpublished transcriptions have circulated among scholars. The draft manuscript of Austin Evans' ms. 609 transcription project in the 1930s at Columbia University, New York, can be found in the university's Butler Library under shelfmark BX4890.B47 1255g, however at some point in the past transcriptions of folios 200v to 225r were lost. It has been digitized by the Hathi Trust. Two copies of this transcription, with same folios missing, are found in the John H. Mundy archives at the Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies in Toronto. A second transcription was done by Jean Duvernoy for personal use in the 1970s, available in the 1990s at the Centre d’Études Cathares de Carcassonne, now stored at the Archives departementales de l'Aude, shelfmark 179 J. Duvernoy made PDF scans of his transcription available on his website as of 2002.

Studies Focused on ms. 609

Albaret, Laurent. 2006. “L’Inquisition médiévale dans le Midi de la France et ses sources : l’exemple du manuscrit 609 de Toulouse”. Les Cahiers du Centre d’Etudes du Saulchoir, 14: 25‑33.

Albaret, Laurent. 2007. “Le Témoignage dans les procès d’Inquisition en France méridionale au XIIIe siècle: l’exemple du manuscrit 609 de Toulouse.” In Quête de Soi, Quête de Vérité. Du Moyen Âge à l’époque Moderne, edited by Lucien Faggion and Laure Verdon, 27–43. Aix-en-Provence: Publications de l’Université de Provence.

Albaret, Laurent. 2008. “Les Enquêtes inquisitoriales au XIIIe siècle dans le Midi de la France ou la pratique de l’enquête sur le grand nombre.” In L’enquête Au Moyen Âge, edited by Claude Gauvard, 185–210. Rome: l’Ecole Française de Rome.

Albaret, Laurent. 2014. “Secrétaires et Notaires de l’Inquisition de Toulouse et de Carcassonne. La Mémoire organisée des tribunaux d’Inquisition aux Xllle et XIVe siècles.” In La Part de l’ombre. Artisans Du Pouvoir et Arbitres Des Rapports Sociaux, edited by Jacques Péricard, pp. 103–24. Limoges: Pulim.

Albaret, Laurent. 2020. « Le manuscrit 609 de Toulouse. Un exceptionnel témoin de l'Inquisition dominicaine du XIIIe siècle dans le Midi de la France ». In La bibliothèque des Dominicains de Toulouse, edited by Emilie Nadal and Magali Vène, pp. 59-67. Toulouse: Presses universitaires du Midi.

Dossat, Yves. 1959. Les Crises de l’Inquisition toulousaine au XIIIe siècle (1233-1273). Bordeaux: Imprimerie Bière.

Douais, Célestin. 1891. “Les Hérétiques du comté de Toulouse dans la première moitié du XIIIe siècle.” In Compte rendu du congrès scientifique international des catholiques tenu à Paris du 1er au 6 avril 1891, pp. 148–62. Paris: A. Picard.

Dusan, Bruno. 1868. “De Manso Sanctarum Puellarum.” Revue Archéologique du Midi de la France, p. 100 + appendix pp. 1-12.

Molinier, Auguste. 1883. Manuscrits de la bibliothèque de Toulouse. Paris: Imprimerie nationale.

Molinier, Charles. 1880. L’Inquisition dans le Midi de la France au XIIIe et au XIVe Siècle: Étude sur les sources de son histoire. Toulouse: Privat.

Pegg, Mark Gregory. 2001. The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245-1246. Princeton: Princeton University Press.

Rehr, Jean-Paul. 2019. “Re-mapping the ‘Great Inquisition’ of 1245-46: The Case of Mas-Saintes-Puelles and Saint-Martin-Lalande”, Open Library of Humanities 5, nᵒ 1, pp. 1‑53.

Rehr, Jean-Paul. 2020. “Le catharisme et le manuscrit 609 de la Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse.” In Cahiers de Fanjeaux 55 (Le ‘catharism’ en questions), pp. 373-???.

Rehr, Jean-Paul. 2023. “Heresy, Politics, and Inquisition in the County of Toulouse. Edition and Study of Bibliothèque municipale de Toulouse, ms. 609: The Register of the ‘Great Inquisition’ at Toulouse, 1245-46”, PhD Dissertation, Université Lumière Lyon II.

Wakefield, Walter. 1983. “Heretics and Inquisitors: The Case of Le Mas-Saintes-Puelles.” The Catholic Historical Review 69, no. 2 (1983): 209–26.

Wakefield, Walter. 1986. “Heretics and Inquisitors: The Case of Auriac and Cambiac.” Journal of Medieval History 12 (1986): 225–37.

Wakefield, Walter. 1993. “Inquisitors’ Assistants: Witness to Confessions in Manuscript 609.” Heresis, no. 20: 57–65.

Sources Related to ms. 609
Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, Ms. Latin 9992: sentences following the inquisition in 1245-46 of Bernart de Caux and Jean de Saint-Pierre. Paris, Archives nationales, Trésor des chartes, J324, J326: rolls of confiscations (incursus) in the Lauragais resulting from this inquisition, enacted by Alphonse de Poitiers (count of Toulouse as of 1249).

Catalogue Links

Online Manuscript Galleries of ms. 609

Data © Jean-Paul Rehr
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