Guillaume Court

Who was Guillaume Court?

Guillaume Court was a French Cistercian theologian and Cardinal.

He was briefly bishop of Nîmes, and then bishop of Albi, in 1337, but only for a year, as Pope Benedict XII shortly elevated him to the cardinalate. He was the nephew of Benedict, who as Jacques Fournier had been a bishop of Mirepoix active in hunting heresy in south-west France; and in any case was a countryman and supporter in these activities.

Subsequently he investigated several cases of Franciscan spirituals under suspicion. The major work Liber secretorum eventuum of Joannes de Rupescissa was written to his order. In decisions of an Avignon theological tribune he headed in 1354, Joannes de Rupescissa was cleared; John of Castillon and Francis of Arquata were condemned and burned.