The Friar of Carcassonne by Stephen O'Shea

Author:Stephen O'Shea
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: HIS013000
Publisher: Douglas & McIntyre
Published: 2011-08-08T16:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

INTRIGUE IN THE ROUSSILLON

ONE DAY SHORTLY AFTER EASTER IN 1304, two robed figures on horseback picked their way southward alongside the Mediterranean Sea. Once past the border town of Salses, they had left the kingdom of France and come within sight of their destination, Perpignan, home to their Catalan cousins and capital of the Kingdom of Majorca. The red city slumbered in the warm spring sunshine. Beyond its church spires and russet warren of brick dwellings, in the distance, the sculpted line of the Pyrenees stretched into the clouds. The tallest peak, the Canigou, still had the snows of winter on its majestic summit. At its foot lay the well-watered plain of the Roussillon, its fertile bounty a source of amazement for visitors from arid Languedoc.

Within the travelers’ pack was a letter bearing the seal of the consuls of Carcassonne. It was addressed to a prince of Majorca. The consuls were asking him to place their city under his protection. If the prince showed himself willing to be their lord, they would gladly slip the traces of Capetian France. Secession was its goal.

Bernard Délicieux was the letter’s bearer and author. He and a fellow friar sought the third of four sons sired by King Jaume II of Majorca, Prince Ferran, a man renowned for his warrior prowess and possessed of an ambition thwarted by his status as a younger brother. Brother Bernard was offering him the kingdom he craved. In so doing, he was also committing high treason.

The events of the winter had pushed Bernard and his allies to this extremity. Following the disastrous disputation in Toulouse, the humiliation of the calvacade, the insult of the silver vases, and, in the end, the explicit advice delivered by Guillaume de Nogaret, the men of Languedoc desirous of lifting the yoke of the Dominican inquisition knew that they could no longer look to their king for help. Philip the Fair was determined to preserve a situation and an institution they could not abide. The corruption, the corvine pecking at the body of an agonized Languedoc, had to be halted another way.

The scheme seems to have been first mooted a month earlier, during King Philip’s visit to Montpellier. The great university city was, at the time, a part of the kingdom of Majorca, surrounded by Capetian holdings, so its suzerain, King Jaume II, journeyed north from the Roussillon to extend his hospitality to the French monarch. Philip was the Majorcan king’s ally in keeping the armies of Jaume’s cousin, the mighty king of Aragon, safely south of the Pyrenees, away from the kingdom of Majorca—thus France’s friendship mattered greatly to the Catalan monarch. From Perpignan, Jaume had traveled to Montpellier amid the requisite pomp to welcome his distinguished visitors, accompanied by his court and his family, including Prince Ferran.

Testimony at Bernard’s trial—the source of the scarce information concerning the nebulous plot—states that the Franciscan was seen twice conferring with the thirty-year-old prince during Philip’s visit to Languedoc. On the second occasion, at

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