In this chapter the depositional evidence as it relates to significant individuals and families is outlined. In reading this kind of evidence alongside evidence for monastic, town, military and other secular and regular activity such as that addressed in Chapters 2 and 3, we see certain individuals and families emerge as more significant than others in both socio-political and ‘heretical’ circles. This helps us further in reconstructing those networks of political and confessional affinity that shaped Quercy between c.1209 and the mid-1240s, an aspect of quercinois life that will analysed in Chapter 6. A wealth of more incidental data emerges also from the depositions relating to what we could call the ‘social life of heresy’, and also evidence that helps us to explore competing belief systems and interactions between them. The data the depositions and sentences reveal is detailed and prosopographical in nature. They have never received the treatment they deserve in this sense, except in some cases in the work of Edmunde Albe. This approach will be built on in Chapters 5–7 and the evidence related both to what we have learned about Quercy in previous chapters and to further evidence for the social and political life of Quercy.

Guillaume Arnaud and Pierre Seilan's First Inquests

Cahors (1233), Moissac (1234) and Montauban (1236)

We have no direct evidence of prosecutions until those enacted by Guilluame Arnaud in the mid-1230s and there we do not have registers and records as we do for the work of Pierre Seilan and Bernard de Caux.