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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 May 2014
On the feast day of St Denis 1273, Durand of Rouffiac testified at Toulouse before the inquisitor Ranulph of Plassac and a panel of three witnesses. A scribe recorded his testimony. The inquisitor had a pre-prepared list of questions for Durand, based upon a catalogue of jovial anti-clericalisms that had been sent to him and his colleagues earlier. It did not take Plassac long to get Durand to confess – he admitted scorning the Eucharist, questioning the existence of the soul and advocating usury. Here, it seems, was someone who enjoyed saying the unsayable. There was little substance to his utterances, though. Durand was no evangelist, and when we read his claim that he had not really meant what he said, there seems little reason for scepticism.
The inquisitor was not quite so trusting. The following day, Plassac asked Durand again about a report that he had questioned divine power – something he had previously denied. This time, a different story came out:
Item: he added on the above item concerning the divine power that when his son, named Peter of Rouffiac, whom the same witness loved very much, had gone overseas with merchants, four years ago, to Alexandria, and the same witness had prayed and begged God day and night to bring him back alive and well, he at last learned that he had died at Acre. And, devastated by this, he said that it did a man as much good if he prayed to God as if he did not.
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