Note 69 — Chapter I · LANGUEDOC. (continued 2)

In 1278 the inquisitors of France applied to Nicholas III. for instructions, stating that some time previous, during a popular persecution of the Jews, many of them through fear, though not absolutely coerced, had received baptism and allowed their children to be baptized. With the passing of the storm they had returned to their Jewish blindness, whereupon the inquisitors had cast them in prison. They were duly excommunicated, but neither this nor the “squalor carceris” had been of avail, and they had thus remained for more than a year. The nonplussed inquisitors thereupon submitted to the Holy See the question as to further proceedings, and Nicholas ordered them to treat such Jews as heretics--that is to say, to burn them for continued obstinacy.--Archives de l’Inq. de Carcassonne (Doat, XXXVII. 191).