Extract of Record of Beatrice de Planissoles

The 22nd of August in the chamber of the Bishop’s Palace, before the Bishop and Brother Gaillard de Pomiès.

‘When I was living in Prades, after the death of my first husband, I was living in a small house between that of Jean Clergue, curate of Prades, and the inn of Pierre Gulihem of that place. Since this house touched that of the curate, everything which took place there could be heard by those in the other house. Pierre Clergue, curate of Montaillou, who had come to see me, told me that he would send Jean, his student,… to get me the following night to sleep with him. I accepted.

Therefore I was home when the first hour sounded, waiting for this student. He arrived and I followed him through a very dark night and we arrived at the church of Saint Pierre of Prades, where we entered. We found Pierre Clergue who had prepared a bed in the church. I said “O, how can we do such a thing in the church of Saint Pierre?” He answered, “What a great wrong it will do to Saint Pierre!” This said, we went to bed together in the church and this night he knew me carnally in this church. Afterward, before dawn, he showed me out of the church himself and took me to the door of the house where I was living.

I had said to him at the beginning of our relations, “What shall I do if I become pregnant from you? I will be dishonored and lost.” He answered that he had a good herb which, if a man wears it when he is with a woman, he cannot engender nor can a woman conceive. I said to him “What is this herb? Is it not the one that the cowherds put on their pots of milk into which they have put rennet and which prevents the milk from curdling as long as it is on the pot?” He told me not to bother trying to know what herb it was but that it was a herb that had this power and that he had some.

Since that time when he wanted to take me, he wore something rolled up and tied in a pieceof linen the thickness and length of an ounce or of the first joint of my little finger, with a long thread which he passed around my neck. And this thing which he said was this herb hung down between my breasts to the base of my stomach. He always placed it thus when he wanted to know me and it remained on my neck until he rose. And if sometimes during the same night this priest wanted to know me two or more times, he asked me, before we coupled, where this herb was. I would take it by finding it by the thread which I had at my neck and place it in his hand. He took it and placed it before the opening/base of my stomach, with the thread passing between my breasts. This is how he coupled with me and no other way. I asked him one day to leave this herb with me. He refused because he said that then I would give myself to some other man without becoming pregnant. He would not give it to me so that I would refrain from so doing out of fear of the consequences. He did this in particular thinking of his cousin Raimond Clergue, alias Pathau, who had first kept me before this priest, his fraternal cousin, had me, because they were jealous of each other.

He again told me that he did not want me to have a child from him while my father, Philippe de Planissoles, was alive, because the latter would have been too ashamed, but that after his death he wanted me to have his child.’

The Inquisition Record of Jacques Fourier bishop of Pamiers 1318-1325. An English translation by Nancy P. Stork of selected confessions by Cathar heretics and Jews to Bishop Jacques Fournier and the Inquisition at Pamiers. Link. Source: Jean Duvernoy, Le registre d’inquisition de Jacques Fournier (Paris: Mouton, 1978).

Image at top of the page is a detail of the plant Pennyroyal in The Virtues, 12 banners of contraceptive and abortive plants making up a Herball for a Midwife: Middelheim / Wendy Morris, 2023 / photo by Wannes Cré