The presence of Catholicism in Toulouse is almost oppressive. You can’t escape it. Everywhere you go, there’s a solemn stone cathedral or a convent with glaring gargoyles and austere stained glass windows. Run out of things to see in the city? Never fear, there’s always another cathedral to look at!
The Catholic influence in Toulouse is more sinister than you would expect. Of course, you don’t learn the dark side of it by visiting the churches and reading their pamphlets. After all, why would they want to advertise that Toulouse was the breeding ground of the Spanish Inquisition? Megan and I only encountered this information because we were blessed with an extremely passionate tour guide who had a hobby for digging up buried information.
When I think of the Inquisition, I think of the archetype of the corrupt man of faith - an individual with a warped sense of morality who commits atrocious acts in the name of moral righteousness. My two favorite examples of this trope are the archdeacon Frollo of Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, and Ambrosio of Matthew Lewis’s The Monk. In fact, I was recommended the latter by a bookseller in Toulouse. He handed the book to me with a rather knowing smile and said he was certain I would enjoy it. It was his favorite book and he’d read it three times. This book shop was less than a block away from the Convent des Jacobins, where the order of the Dominicans first convened and turned the Inquisition into the torture machine it would become.
The first landmark we visited in Toulouse was the Basilica Saint-Sernin, a popular pilgrimage destination. We admired the grave beauty of the large basilica, but the information we later received from our tour guide cast it in a new light.
We met him outside the basilica on a rainy morning - an expressive man in a hideous Hawaiian shirt. He was a talented storyteller and enjoyed thrusting a finger at the basilica while loudly denouncing the Catholic church for the atrocities it has committed.
The construction of the basilica was a strategic move on the part of the Catholic Church, because in the 12th and 13th centuries, a heretical sect called Catharism was prevalent in the area. Catharism was much more progressive than Catholicism and was inspired by Eastern religion and philosophy. Cathars believed the Catholic Church was corrupt because it existed on earth, and nothing on earth could be pure until it transcended to the spiritual plane. They also believed in literacy for the poor and more gender equality than the Catholic Church allowed.
This gave the pope anxiety, so he ordered the first crusade against a Catholic kingdom. During the Albigensian Crusade, the area was massacred with little attention paid to who was a proven heretic and who was not. Afterwards, the Inquisition remained in power in Toulouse, systematically stamping out heretics using torture, imprisonment, and execution.
On one of our day-trips from Toulouse, Megan and I visited Carcassonne - a fortified medieval village that was once a Cathar stronghold. One of Carcassonne’s tourist attractions is the Torture Museum. It is full of a nauseating array of torture instruments used by the Inquisition to force confessions and conversions out of supposed heretics. Some were specifically designed to punish wayward women or suspected homosexuals. I’ll leave these to the imagination, but let it suffice to say many of them involved genital mutilation and disembowelment.
The museum is full of tacky mannequins and fake blood, and the experience is like that of a halloween haunted mansion. It is impossible to take seriously and it turns the Inquisition into a horror story, far removed from reality. It’s difficult to grasp the real horror of the Inquisition. On a single day in 1239, 183 people were burned at the stake in Carcassonne for Catharism.
To maintain its wealth and power, which was entwined with that of the monarchy, the Church reigned through fear. They wanted to keep the peasants ignorant so they would never doubt that the Church held the fate of their souls in their hands. It was even forbidden to own copies of the Bible translated into vernacular, to prevent them from formulating their own interpretation of the Bible. Meanwhile, the Church wanted to recruit intelligent, religiously educated people to their side. This is why the University of Toulouse - still a major university today - was founded to recruit inquisitors.
Our tour guide proclaimed at the beginning of the tour that modern-day Toulouse would not be the way it is now if not for the Inquisition. As the tour went on, it became increasingly clear that this is the case. Our interest peaked, Megan and I decided to visit the Convent des Jacobins the next day.
The Convent (which is not really a convent at all) was built because the Church was concerned about Catharism in Toulouse. It is where the order of the Dominicans was organized, which played an essential role in the torturing, imprisonment, and execution that was carried out by the
Inquisition. Although the Convent is set up as a museum, with informational plaques and screens throughout, it only references the Inquisition once. On one of the plaques it says:
“This is the starting point of the order of preachers, or the Dominicans…They were involved with the inquisition set up by the pope in 1233 to quench the heresy in a more efficient manner.”
The way the convent sanitized the actions of the Catholic Church reminded me of how the torture museum sanitized the Inquisition by presenting it like a horror story. When we visited the Convent, I thought someone should’ve put those torture instruments inside the church. It would have a much stronger impact, and maybe it would serve as a reminder of the lessons Victor Hugo and Matthew Lewis tried to teach us.
“Vice is ever more dangerous when lurking behind the Mask of Virtue.” - Matthew Lewis
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