Ermessende
	Translated by David Burr, History Department, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg, VA.

The following is translated from Ermessende's process in Collection Doat, vol. 27, ff. 14r-16r. The Latin text can be found here.

Ermessende La Grosse, widow of the late Jean Castenhere of Lodève, living in Gignac in the diocese of Béziers, as is established by her confession made in legitimate judicial proceedings conducted in the month of November, 1325, made a vow of chastity twenty years ago through the instigation of certain friars whom she names. Again, she knew one of the four friars burned at Marseilles and at Gignac she saw a legal process in which she heard it said that the aforementioned were condemned and burned at Marseilles because they said they must wear the short, narrow garment they wore, and not a great one as the others did; and she heard this at Mauguio,¹ she said.

Again later, while she was in Montpellier, she heard that Na Prous Bonet, a beguin, held a fatuous set of opinions and that Friar Raymond Déjean of the Order of Friars Minor, whom Ermessende had once seen in the church of the Friars Minor at Narbonne during the feast of Friar Pierre Déjean, was living at Na Prous' home. Since no one wanted to go with her, she went alone to Prous' home in order to correct her on the following subjects: that Na Prous said she had received the Holy Spirit and possessed God's grace as perfectly as the Blessed Mother of Christ; that she could go everywhere throughout the world and people should follow her; that wherever she went the Holy Spirit followed her; that whoever did not believe in her would die a bad death; that this same Na Prous had come to such a state that she had not confessed for a long time because, she said, the sacraments of the church no longer contributed to salvation, and those who wished to have God's grace and be baptized in the Holy Spirit must now be baptized with earth² entirely nude, like a child who emerges from the belly of his mother.

A certain person reported all this to her. Because of it she went to Na Prous and castigated her, telling her to renounce these errors. Na Prous replied, "There is no error in what I believe, but only the truth, for I am well assured by God that I possess the Holy Spirit. And the sacraments do not contribute to salvation, nor are they good for anything." And she affirmed a great many of the other things the aforesaid person had reported. Having heard them Ermessende made the sign of the cross, commended herself to the Lord Jesus Christ and his passion, then left, as she said.

She heard these errors spoken by Na Prous and knew they were errors, in fact heresies. She knew also, and acknowledged that it was just and reasonable, that when one person hears another speak heresy or spread error he or she should make an accusation, revealing that person to the authorities. She did neither, though. She hid it. She believed she did neither good nor ill in doing so, but acted as a person who wishes to flee all evil, as she said.

Again, she heard from a certain person at Mauguio that the aforesaid friars condemned at Marseilles wished to live in good poverty, just as the church lived at the beginning when it first came into being; and insofar as Ermessende was able to gather from what the person said the latter considered the friars condemned and burned at Marseilles to have been good men, and to be saved, and to have been unjustly condemned. Asked if at that time she herself believed what the aforesaid person said, she replied that she was stunned and shaken, but thinking it over and immediately recognizing that the person spoke against Holy Church she wished to place no faith in that person's words or believe the condemned were either saved or saints in heaven.

Having done these things, she hid them until she had been cited to appear, although she did say that she had made confesson in the court of the Lord Bishop of Maguelonne. She says she repents.

On November 11, 1328 Ermessende was sentenced to wear crosses and go on pilgrimages, but the pilgrimages assigned her were of the lighter variety.

¹Latin Melgorium.

^2"With earth" is at best questionable. The manuscript reading is unclear.

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