Les Albigeois et la procédure inquisitoire : le procès pontifical contre Bernard de Castanet, évêque d'Albi et inquisiteur (1307-1308)
International audience ; In 1307-1308, pope Clement V had an inquiry made into a series of crimes attributed to bishop of Albi Bernard de Castanet by two canons of the cathedral, who had presented at the roman Curia a list of accusations against their spiritual ruler. The bishop was accused of pastoral negligence, of simony, of dilapidation, of irregularities and systematic cruelty in the practice of justice, of murders and of incontinence. Soon after the hearing by pontifical commissioners of a hundred and fourteen witnesses presented by the denouncers, the pope called off the procedure. But three days later, he implicitly penalized the bishop, removing him from the see of Albi to that of Le Puy, which was much less prestigious. The study of this case develops from the critical edition of the records of the inquiry at Albi, which are held at the Vatican Archives (register 404 of the Collectoriae). The initiative of the denouncers is examined in the perspective of the conflictual history of Bernard de Castanet's episcopate (1276-1308). A continuity is shown between the witnesses' will to have the bishop's guilt admitted, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, the struggle of the urban élite against the bishop's lordly jurisdiction, but also the anti-inquisitorial movement lead by brother Bernard Délicieux in 1299-1306. The heresy of the good men, which was vigorously fought by the bishop, proves to be at the heart of the matter, though the denouncer didn't mention it at all. The analysis show the informal consistency and the social and theologico-political grounds of religious dissent. Besides, by replacing the procedure in the series of processus inquisitionis dealing with " enormous crimes " (enormia) launched by popes against prelates since the beginning of the XIIIth century and by examining it from a juridical point of view, the study of this casus shows the role played by inquiry, as a tool of State government, in the construction of a public opinion (fama), and in the differentiation of an ...