Premieres May 2007
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Beatrice de Planissoles is a 13th century noblewoman whose affair with the village priest puts her under suspicion with the Inquisitor.

Listen to the words of Beatrice

"Later, towards Easter, he came to visit me several times, and asked me to give myself to him. I said to him one day when he was soliciting me in my own home that I would rather give myself to 4 men than to one priest, because I had heard that a woman who had been known carnally by a priest could not see the face of God. To which he responded that I was stupid and ignorant, because the sin was the same for a woman to be known by her husband or by any other man, equally whether the man was her husband or a priest. It was an even greater sin with a husband, he said because the spouse believed she did not sin with a husband, but she had a conscience with other men. The sin was therefore greater in the first case.

I asked him how he could talk thus, being a priest, because one said in church that marriage had been instituted by God and that it was the first sacrament, instituted by God between Adam and Eve, so that there would be no sin when spouses knew one another. He replied "If it was God who instituted marriage between Adam and Eve and if he created them, why did he not guard them from sin?" I understood then that he was saying that God did not create Adam and Eve and had not instituted marriage between them. He added that the Church taught many falsehoods. The ecclesiastics said this, because they were not inspired by respect or fear. Indeed, in part the Gospel and the Pater, and all the other texts of Scripture were "affitilhas", a word that one uses in the vulgar tongue to designate words that one adds to what one has heard. I replied to him that because of this the ecclesiastics plunged the people into error."

This translation is the work of Dr. Nancy Stork of San Jose State University. The full text can be found on their website

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