War in the Languedoc
August 1562: Inquisitorial agents begin arriving in France, under the leadership of Cardinal Cristoforo Madruzzo. The bishop of Trent, Cardinal Madruzzo is an educated, cultured, and vigorous man. He is also a devout and strenuous Catholic, and a favorite of Ferdinand I, the Holy Roman Emperor. Madruzzo has been a major player at the Council of Trent, and what he has heard there has disturbed him. With the permission of Pius and Ferdinand, he has journeyed to France with the goal of extirpating heresy and enforcing the faith with all the rigor he can muster.
September 1562: Madruzzo’s first target is one of France’s most prominent Protestant ministers: Odet de Coligny. The forty-five-year-old Coligny is the younger brother of Admiral Gaspard de Coligny, a major leader of the Huguenots, and is also a former Catholic cardinal and bishop of Beauvais. Having left the Roman cloth, Coligny now preaches the Calvinist doctrine in Macon.
On September 10, agents of the Inquisition, working with civil authorities, attempt to arrest Coligny in Macon. However, Coligny is able to escape his would-be jailers and flees south, to the principality of Orange. Orange, an independent province inside France, has become under the Protestant William the Silent a bolt hole for thousands of Huguenots. There Coligny is safe. But his flight has drawn the attention of the Inquisition to the Languedoc. Although the vast majority of Provencals are Catholic, their cultural differences and past medieval heresies (see Catharism) make them suspect to the Inquisition, who begin investigating clergy and intellectuals in the south for signs of heresy.
Notable among the targets of investigation is Adrien Tournebe, a scholar in classics at the University of Toulouse, and Cardinal Georges d’Armagnac, the archbishop of Toulouse.
Tournebe is under suspicion due to his association with classical literature, which the Inquisition fears may popularize pagan beliefs. A popular and respected professor at the University, Tournebe may be inadvertently leading his students into error.
D’Armagnac is himself a devout Catholic, a fierce soldier against Protestantism, but in these charged times even the devout may find themselves under suspicion. In the past d’Armagnac has supported literary figures, poets, writers, and scholars, and is considered something of a humanist. However, the time when humanist critics of the Church could be tolerated is past, and now even the gentlest and mildest humanist finds themselves branded a potential heretic.
Although Madruzzo reasonably believes that neither man is guilty, allegations have been made, and must be investigated. He tasks his men to make a thorough, but low-key, inquiry into both men’s beliefs.
Already, the Inquisition has stirred up bad blood in the south of France. Most of the inquisitors are Italian or Spanish, and the residents of the Languedoc look on them with hostility. The Vaudois, better known as the Waldensians, are vaguely pseudo-Protestant Frenchmen of Piedmontese origins who just seventeen years prior saw their population decimated in massacres in the villages of Cabrieres, Merindol, and Lourmarin. Recently they have had their religious liberties returned to them, but the presence of the Inquisition has unsettled them deeply. Provencals already feel somewhat alienated from the rest of France; to be singled out by the Inquisition makes them resentful.
October 1562: Numerous priests and monks are investigated by the Inquisition. What the inquisitors lack in numbers they make up in energy, and throughout the fall they seem to be everywhere. At the University of Toulouse, lesser lecturers found guilty of heterodoxy are quietly dismissed, and many students are arrested by civil authorities under suspicion of heresy. The authorities make it clear they are acting on Inquisition orders.
November 1562: November 1, All Saints’ Day, is a solemnity of the Catholic Church, and across France it will be celebrated by remembering those who have departed this world. The day before, Cardinal d’Armagnac is visited by agents of the Inquisition, who in private ask him if he would be willing to be interviewed by Cardinal Madruzzo, who is passing through from Lyon the following day. They recommend meeting outside Toulouse, in order to maintain privacy. D’Armagnac is slightly put out that he would by necessity miss the All Saints’ Mass, but believes that the fight against heresy must take precedence--that, and clearing his name. He agrees, and informs his priests to perform the mass without him.
Despite his instructions to maintain silence, word spreads that d’Armagnac will not be presiding over mass the next day, and, as so often happens, the word gets twisted. Throughout Toulouse, competing rumors run rampant: d’Armagnac has been arrested by the Inquisition, the Inquisition plans to bar priests from performing the mass the next day, hundreds of priests have been arrested, the Inquisition is going to close the churches and the University. Tensions rise throughout the night.
Just after dawn, as thousands of Toulousains head to Mass, the tension snaps. The city explodes into rioting. Thousands of students pour into the streets, eager to avenge their dismissed professors and imprisoned classmates. Catholics and Protestants alike rage out of fear of the Inquisition.
Rioting and urban chaos quickly spirals out of control, and spills out of the city into the surrounding countryside. It takes a very little spark to send the already unsettled Languedoc into a massive conflagration, as across the south angry and frightened Provencals turn against the Inquisition and each other. Old grudges are settled, and new ones formed. In Cahors, two inquisitors are lynched by a baying mob on November 18.
News of the unrest reaches the royal court on November 10. Catherine d’Medici sends out soldiers to put down the mobs, but they are unsuccessful, and fearing he might make the situation worse, the commander, Henri de Montmorency, withdraws to Lyon which is relatively untouched by rioting.
