In 1234, the six-year-old Isarn of Villeneuve had his first encounter with the good men. He had gone with his mother to visit the house of his grandfather William, who was dying. Amongst the crowd of friends, family and neighbours who had gathered around the sickbed had been two men unfamiliar to the young boy. The strangers – whom Isarn would later identify as heretics – were performing a ritual blessing to purify William's spirit and guarantee it a place in paradise. Quite a crowd had gathered, though whether they had come to witness the rite or to pay their respects is not clear. In any case, all those present had ‘adored’ the two men, bending their knees before them and petitioning them to pray to God. In the account he later gave of that day, Isarn himself did not have much contact with the two – he could not in fact remember whether he had adored or not. Later that same year his contact with heretical preachers was briefly renewed: he was sent to them by his mother, bearing gifts of bread and wine. These two encounters, it seems, were the limit of his contact.

Twelve years later, in March in 1246, Isarn was called to appear at Toulouse before the inquisitors Bernard of Caux and Jean of Saint-Pierre, and to recount his contact with the good men. It was then that he described for his interrogators what they would probably have seen as tentative childhood steps into heresy.