Sublime

Basel,

Peter’s face settled into the arrangement of ridges and furrows in which his pained certainty had found expression over many decades. I wondered briefly if a comparison could be made between his undulating forehead and the hilly landscape and decided that was too much of a stretch. Peter’s forehead was not like Yorkshire.

It was Peter who returned first, reaching Toulouse in the autumn of 1299. That the purpose of his visit was to see a money changer suggests that securing the mission’s finances were his priority. For all his careful planning, Peter’s cover was blown almost immediately, when he was recognised by Peter, the son of Raymonde de Luzenac, a rich widow wh

Peter Autier was from the small town of Ax-les-Thermes, up-country from Foix. He was born around 1240, and had made a comfortable life for himself as a notary.

There had been a history of Catharism in Peter’s family – the father and son Peter and Raymond Autier, who flourished in the 1230s, were probably collateral relatives85 – but what is remarkable is that Peter knew full well what he was letting himself in for, and that he was prepared to turn his back on a very comfortable existence.

Throughout the civilized world, from Battery Park to Fulton Street, he was known as a dependable man for a fast tax write-off.