In a continuation of DISSINET's corpus work, we have published a transcription of the papal inquest contained in Doat 32, a unique dossier from the Bibliothèque nationale de France that records an enquiry into the reliability of an inquisitorial register and procedural standards in trials against heresy. This compilation includes episcopal letters, papal bulls, and depositions from the Carcassonne region, offering rare insight into legal debates on posthumous condemnations and the evidentiary basis for prosecuting dissident practices. Alongside this major source, three additional transcriptions from other Doat volumes are now available, featuring sentences and depositions that illuminate the workings of the medieval inquisition and the persistence of Cathar beliefs in Languedoc.
The records contained in vol. 32 of the Doat collection in Bibliothèque nationale de France originate from an enquiry conducted by an anonymous canonist, appointed by papal authority to evaluate the reliability of a disputed inquisitorial register and to provide formal advice on procedural uncertainties and complaints. Caterina Bruschi has provided a comprehensive study of this material, offering a detailed analysis of the compilation’s structure, purpose, and historical context (Caterina Bruschi, ‘The “Register in the Register”: Reflections on the Doat 32 Dossier’, in Texts and the Repression of Medieval Heresy, ed. Caterina Bruschi and Peter Biller, York Studies in Medieval Theology 4 (York: York Medieval Press, 2003), 209–20).
The inquiry appears to have arisen from structural concerns surrounding the legitimacy of posthumous condemnations of deceased people, possibly prompted by protests from their relatives. While the original register is lost, Doat 32 survives as a key selection of its contents. The compilation incorporates a series of episcopal letters and papal bulls dated 1272–1297, which supply official responses to procedural queries and outline methods of interrogation. Of particular significance is the second part of the volume, which contains depositions dating from 1284–1290, recorded during inquisitorial proceedings in the Carcassonne region, as well as a selection from later interrogations held in 1309 and 1320. These concern fourteen individuals “deceased in the state of heresy” – those who had not confessed but were implicated in acts of the consolament ritual. The canonist’s work addressed an important legal problem: the sufficiency of evidence for participating in dissident religious practices and rituals, and thus the volume indirectly reflects the ideal procedural standards expected in the inquisitorial practice. The canonist’s analysis exposes procedural deficiencies within these earlier trials, including delays in resolution, omissions of witness names, inconsistencies in chronology, and contradictions in the descriptions of the rituals.
Many of the witnesses are found in both Doat 26 and Doat 32, appearing before the same two inquisitors, John Galand (Jean Galand) and William of Saint-Seine (Guillaume of Saint-Seine), during the same years and months. The depositions studied by the canonist mostly derive from the so-called liber decimus et undecimus (Volumes X and XI), now lost, of the Carcassonne inquisition.
Apart from this longer source, we have recently published three other transcriptions of Doat material, which are less extensive but no less important for the history of inquisition and dissidence in Languedoc.
Firstly, we published the sentences of inquisitors Ferrer and William Arnold from 1244 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds Doat, vol. 21, fol. 313r-323v).
Secondly, we published the sentences of inquisitors William Arnold and Stephen of Saint-Thibéry from the years 1235-1242 (Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds Doat, vol. 21, fol. 143v-185r)
Finally, we share a transcription of four depositions in front of an unknown inquisitor (1301-1305), with witness names anonymised, from Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, fonds Doat, vol. 34, fol. 93v-103r. The depositions concern Cathar beliefs and way of life. The content suggests that the deponents came from the milieu of Peter Autier during his revival of dissidence of the Good Men in Languedoc.
We have published the DISSICON dataset (which stands for DISSINET Conceptual Network), offering an ontology for analysing medieval inquisition records and other trial documents. It formalizes actions, concepts, and their relationships to support computational analyses of historical material.
