Note 487 — Chapter XIII · CONFISCATION.

Lami, Antichità Toscane, pp. 497, 536-7.—It is true that when, in 1335, Henri de Chamay, Inquisitor of Carcassonne, sent to the papal court the depositions against the memory of eighteen persons accused of heretical acts committed between 1284 and 1290, and asked for instructions, the decision was that no reliance was to be placed on the testimony of witnesses who mostly contradicted themselves, and who only swore to what they had heard long before. Three previous investigations against the same persons had been held without reaching a conclusion, and the papal advisers assumed that there had been good reasons for dropping the matter.—Vaissette, Éd. Privat, IX. 401.

How the system worked is seen in the complaint made in 1247 to St. Louis, by Guillem Pierre de Vintrou, that the royal seneschal of Carcassonne had seized his property derived through his mother, because his grandfather, seventeen years after death, had been accused of heresy. St. Louis thereupon ordered an examination and report.—Vaissette, Éd. Privat, VIII. 1196.