An ordinary passerby, one of the most ordinary residents of 13th-century Toulouse, strolling on an April morning through the Place du Salin, might have had various ideas for spending the day. From shopping for a meager dinner, to finding less tattered clothes, to looking for work in one of the workshops. Perhaps he simply went out for a regular walk? Amid the smell of horse urine and human excrement poured wherever convenient, it would be difficult to draw clear conclusions.

  Whatever plans the ordinary passerby had that day, they were brutally interrupted by the attraction that church authorities had planned for this morning in the - momentarily - sleepy Occitan city. Although more than 20 years had passed since the crusade against local heretics, the traces were visible to the naked eye - in the ruined and unrebuilt city walls of Toulouse itself, as well as in the deserted ruins of villages throughout Languedoc. The material destruction, however, was only a distant echo of the psychological massacre in the human masses, families separated because of faith, and the atmosphere of omnipresent fear that followed the bloody crusade.

  Inquisitors were no longer a novelty, a local attraction gossiped about in the courts of the most powerful. People gossiped - rather quietly - that the papacy was overstepping its bounds. The lords didn't like it, oh, they didn't like that a new institution was emerging independent of the current episcopal arrangements. The latter also weren't pleased that representatives of the clergy, over whom they would have no power, would be walking through their lands. Nevertheless, it was probably most displeasing to those suspected - rightly or not - of heresy when they had to answer questions posed in the cramped interrogation rooms of the Dominican convent.

  The ordinary passerby that day would try not to think about it, drowning out the memories that everyone here had in their heads after the Cathar crusade. Everyone knew someone, or had someone in family circles, who had been interrogated, tortured, or burned at the stake. The Perfecti still walked around Languedoc preaching the Good News, though decidedly more quietly.

  Not quiet was the Dominican community in Toulouse, to whom Pope Gregory had entrusted the mission of creating the first institutionalized violence of the Church against wayward sheep. This desire to kindle the fervor of faith, or as the less favorable said, the flames under more stakes, would become the reason for many interesting events in the coming months. On this day, April 5th of the year of our Lord 1240, it disturbed the peace of the ordinary passerby, and others like him, when a Dominican standing in the Place du Salin began speaking in Occitan, addressing townspeople, peasants, and human masses of all kinds.

  "In the name of His Excellency the Bishop of Toulouse, Raymond de Fauga, Defender of the Faith, by the anointing of the Vicar of Peter, the Bishop of Rome, Pope Gregory..."

  After such an introduction, the small crowd slowly began turning into a crowd. The bloody times of the crusades, and later the cruel periods of hunts led by Conrad of Magdeburg, in Toulouse did not win sympathizers for the aforementioned even among the zealous local Catholics. It was different for those who received land in exchange for murdering the unfaithful, but they didn't mingle with the people in the forming crowd. The Dominican was rather undeterred by the not-too-enthusiastic reaction of the audience. Ferrier, an inquisitor who arrived from Catalonia, didn't believe that the Church should arouse emotions other than fear.

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  "...orders the imposition on the inhabitants of Toulouse of an absolute obligation to report all suspicions, meetings, even the slightest rumors about heretics fornicating with Satan himself, worshipping cats and other animals, disgusting liars in the eyes of God..."

  "Well, nothing new," "He talks like this every week," "Boring!" Ferrier heard from the rabble. Among ordinary passersby, in ordinary clothes, in perhaps a slightly too expensive coat, Jean Fran observed, watched, and listened. A freshly minted inquisitor sent here from near Paris, entangled in local intrigues as the eyes and ears of the Archbishop of Paris. He was given an interesting mission - to look for those who were potential Cathars. "Showing signs of discontent," Jean remembered sarcastically. In Toulouse, more than in Béziers, it would be worth burning the entire city and shouting "Kill them all, God will recognize his own." A higher proportion of killed heretics.

  Jean raised his eyes from under his slightly too expensive brown coat, more reminiscent of the attire of Cathar Perfecti, and focused on Ferrier's words. The premonitions, judging by the emotions of the crowd, were not good. Ferrier, unmoved by the increasingly louder murmurs, continued - "...and decrees that the Dominican convent in Toulouse will be joined by a group of new inquisitors, to track down all heretics with renewed faith and fervor. Toulouse will be the birthplace of the true Holy Inquisition, and the stakes will blaze with the screams of heretics. Deus Vult!"

  Jean was very, very glad that he was not currently in a Dominican habit. He was also not convinced whether Ferrier deliberately agitated the entire crowd, or by accident. If someone asked Jean about it (and no one asked him, because he was a "Parisian spy"), he would answer that Ferrier wouldn't be able to predict the consequences of his actions beyond the fact that after spoiled oysters, a long date under the broom awaited him. And even that wasn't certain.

  The crowd didn't like either the intensification of inquisitorial investigations or the clear reference to the well-known crusade slogan. The human mass quickly began moving toward Ferrier, with somewhat less papal slogans on their banners. You could hear "Filh de puta!"* or the more situation-appropriate "Que siás cremat dins l'infèrn!"**

  Jean wasn't curious about the development of the spontaneous movement of the angry Toulouse crowd directed at the inquisitor who, after spectacular successes in Barcelona, hadn't had time to get used to Occitan folklore. His order was simple and unambiguous - to observe who among the participants of the gathering would be dissatisfied and might cause problems. Well, it looks like that entity would be the entire city.

  Watching as a rather large piece of horse dung extracted from under carriages flew toward Ferrier, Jean turned on his heel and headed toward the gate behind which stretched the freshly built complex of the Dominican convent.

  *"Son of a whore!"

  **"May you burn in hell!"