Chapter III: The Preliminaries of the Crusade (1)

The religious and political manœuvres leading up to the Albigensian Crusade extend over the space of ten years and divide naturally into three stages, the first of six years and the second and third of two years each.

The first stage (1198-1204) begins with the accession of Innocent III to the Papacy, followed by his prompt dispatch of legates to work against the Albigensian heresy. It ends with the recognition of the failure of the means first used and determination to intensify them.

The second stage (1204-1206) is marked by the investiture of the papal legates in Languedoc with extraordinary powers over the local clergy. Its first year, 1204, contains a political event of the highest importance: the conquest of the Angevin lands of Normandy, Maine, Anjou and Touraine, by the King of France, Philip Augustus. The period ends with the recognition of the insufficiency of even the extraordinary powers granted to the legates.

The third stage (1206-1208) opens with the arrival of St. Dominic, the adoption of apostolic poverty by the legates, and the setting on foot by them of a regular campaign of preaching and debate. This method yielding only slight results: the period closes with the murder of de Castelnau and the mobilization of the crusading army.

Lothario Conti, Innocent III, is one of the great figures of history. Few men, whether Churchmen or lay statesmen, have exerted a wider or more far-reaching influence. Learning and executive ability, energy and persistence, breadth of view, and, above all, the sense of a great purpose, combined with extraordinary fortune to make him great. We are here concerned with but one of his acts, the launching of the Albigensian Crusade, by which he preserved the moral unity of Europe so that it remained unbroken until the sixteenth century.

He had been born about 1160. His family were nobles of the Campagna, whose castles of Anagni and Segni dominated the “Appian Way,” the main Roman road between Rome and Naples. They early chose to make a priest of him. Accordingly he studied first at Rome, then at the Universities of Bologna where was the great law school, and finally at the University of Paris, the centre of theological study, the “queen science” of the Middle Ages. Paris he especially loved, like so many before and after him, and in the years of his power we shall see him make great play with the “French” (that is the North French, as we would say), those unequalled weapons ready to the hand of a thirteenth century pope. In 1190, when he was only 30, his uncle, Pope Clement III, made him cardinal—an example of favour promoting ability faster than it would rise by itself and thereby giving to the able man room for his powers, quite the reverse of the conventional use of favour to bolster up incompetence. Celestine III’s election forced the newly-made cardinal into retirement, for Celestine was of the Orsini family, hereditary enemies to Innocent’s mother’s people, the Scotti. In his retirement he wrote, first on “Despising the World” and the “Miseries of Mankind,” and second on mystic theological symbolism, with such rhetoric and such a jungle of quotations that his withdrawal from the administrative work of the Papal Curia rather increased his fame than lessened it, by giving him opportunity to exercise his pen on these mediæval stock themes. On the very day of Celestine’s death he was elected Pope while still only in deacon’s orders. Within two months after his consecration, already he had two agents in Languedoc to take action against the heretics there.

Certainly the Pope was not interfering in Languedoc because he had nothing better to do. It is true that the Empire was not threatening or even in a position to threaten. That huge, ill-knit mass, stretching from the Rhône to the Oder, from Holstein to the Sicilies, and including both Lille and Vienna, was taking one of its periodical sudden plunges from glittering dreams of world power into civil war and blank anarchy. When Innocent was elected, the terrible Emperor Henry VI was barely three months dead and already his work was in ruins and the Italian cities were busily driving out his German officials whom he had put to rule them. It was not that they had a scrap of anything approaching national Italian feeling; the modern reader needs to have it repeated again and again that the twelfth century had not even the idea of nationality except for the glimmering of it in France. They acted because they disliked Germans as such, and because they preferred to pay municipal salaries and perquisites to someone born and bred among themselves. Like all popes since Hildebrand, Innocent welcomed this sort of thing and aided and abetted them in it. A well-organized Empire which included Italy would have been in a position to put pressure upon popes. In his letters to the cities Innocent even speaks sometimes of “The Interest of all Italy,” but that great phrase died away without contemporary echo.

In Rome itself the imperial prefect swore homage to the Pope without even a protest. The municipality of Rome was a different matter. Even in the tenth century, long before the Papacy had set itself up against the Empire, the turbulent nobles of the Eternal City had several times driven out popes in fear and trembling. The twelfth century communal movement made matters worse from the papal point of view. Even a pope like Innocent could be insulted in the streets by the Roman mob, so that he feared for his life and quitted the place, to return only after nearly a year. From his consecration until the year 1208, when again he brought the citizens to terms by temporarily leaving town, he had on his hands the most explosive sort of political situation in his own city.

Meanwhile his agents (two monks, Rainier and Guy by name) arrived in Languedoc, accredited by papal letters to the “Prelates, Princes, Nobles and People” of Southern France, to begin the papal effort against the Albigenses. At this time there was no idea of using force on a large scale. There was already a precedent in Henry of Clairvaux’s little expedition which had taken Lavaur in 1181. But it seems to have been assumed that this sort of thing was unnecessary, perhaps that it was impossible. At any rate, it was not tried. Rainier and Guy were merely expected to persuade the religious and secular authorities to banish heretics and confiscate their property, the usual laws of the time against heresy. The two commissioners were empowered to compel obedience by interdict, and to reward those who should assist them by granting the customary “indulgences” usually enjoyed by pilgrims to Rome or Compostella.

It should perhaps be explained that interdicts are sentences laid upon localities, and in a place so sentenced there can be no public worship, no bell may ring and no Church service be held. Sometimes marriages cannot be celebrated, even in private, nor extreme unction be given to the sick. In mediæval times they were powerful weapons but at the same time dangerous ones, because they accustomed people to living almost completely shut off from the public practise of religion.

Six months later, the powers given to Rainier were enlarged so that he might reform the Church in the infected regions and restore ecclesiastical discipline. In July, 1199, he was formally designated Papal “Legate,” to be obeyed and respected as if he were the Pope in person. Thus early in the business it was necessary to “reform the lives” of the local clergy clear up to archbishops, as even these last could not be counted upon to lead outwardly pious lives, much less to take action against heresy in defiance of the public opinion of their flocks. But although he had already seen the weakness of the local clergy as instruments against heresy, nevertheless the Pope continued to act on the assumption that the local secular authorities were up to their work in the matter, if only enough clerical pressure of the proper sort could be put upon them.

It seems as if Innocent and his advisers ought to have known enough of the political situation in Languedoc and the universal failure to enforce heretical legislation there to see that this would not do. And yet anyone who has been connected with the central offices of a large corporation, or the general headquarters of a modern army of millions, knows how hard it is, with the best will in the world, to get information on conditions in the field. In this case we may assume it was at first believed at Rome that local action, or at least local secular action, against heresy would be sufficient. Or, per contra, we may assume that such local action was never confidently relied upon, but that it was thought best to try all other means to the utmost before beginning religious war against an infected member of Christendom itself. At any rate, as in all her important decisions, Papal Rome moved slowly.

Moreover, Innocent, over and above his legal training, had a fine sense of fairness and, Italian gentleman that he was, a vast deal of tact. In his dealings with the sporadic cases of heresy that sprang up here and there, weed fashion, outside Languedoc, he followed the papal precedent of curbing and moderating the sometimes excessive zeal of the lower clergy.

In 1199 we find him gentle towards a group of Lorrainers in the diocese of Metz who had come under suspicion for reading translations of the Scriptures and for murmuring against their parish priests. He reproved them indeed for not preferring charges through regular channels to their bishop against the priests complained of. He warns them that the profundity of certain dogmas makes them difficult of comprehension by the laity. Nevertheless he assures them that the desire to understand the Scriptures is worthy, in itself, of praise rather than blame, and makes haste to take upon himself the conduct of the case, apparently because he fears that their bishop may be too strict.

In the same year we find him protecting the “humiliati,” of Verona, a brotherhood who had bound themselves to voluntary poverty. An archpriest of their city had included them in the excommunication pronounced against the Manicheans, Waldensians and Arnoldists (the followers of Arnold of Brescia). Indeed, to judge from bits of heresy trials which have comedown to us, it seems as if mere eccentricity of life was reason enough for suspicion of heresy.

In appeals to Rome, whenever it appeared that the charge of heresy had not been completely proved we find the Pope anxious to give the accused the benefit of every doubt. In the district of Nevers he twice interfered in this way in the case of priests, and twice in favour of the burghers of La-Charité-sur-Loire, although there, unfortunately, his leniency bore no fruit, so that he finally felt himself forced to proceed against them.

Even in the full heat of the Albigensian Crusade, we still find him favouring an accused canon of Bar-sur-Aube, an incident which can only receive its full value by being told in connection with the very different things then going on in Languedoc.

But, however careful to go lightly in doubtful cases, Innocent was very different toward proved and defiant heretics. Luchaire would have us believe that when the great Pope calls the heretics a scourge, a pestilence, filth, an ulcer infecting society, a savage beast, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a fox that destroys the Lord’s vine, a villainous inn-keeper who poisons his guests by selling them adulterated wines, when he seems to believe in their secret sexual orgies, he is only repeating a set of stock phrases and that he was in no way animated by “fanaticism,” or by any especial hatred towards heresy. The learned Frenchman goes so far as to suggest that Innocent “proceeded rigorously against heresy ... more because of the necessities of his policy than because of the ardour of his faith.”[29] Nevertheless, such assertions are without a scrap of definite proof, as far as Luchaire’s published work is concerned. Moreover, he admits that Innocent, along with almost all his contemporaries, felt “repulsion” for the heretics. Finally, the American of to-day will be apt to say sadly that a French anti-clerical cannot even know what real fanaticism is, since, in political action, France has not for centuries even “seen the animal” in its strength.

Certainly Innocent appealed not only to the Scriptures but also to human reason against the heretics. Thus he makes great play with the logical impossibility of the Manichean idea of two contradictory gods. That is characteristic not only of the man but of the time in which he lived, with its great scholastics, a time that believed in logic as devoutly as our own time believes in “science.” Most certainly he recognized that occasions for scandal given by the clergy were at the bottom of much of the trouble. He keeps insisting that the sacraments in the hands of a priest of evil life do not lose their virtue any more than medicines in the hands of a doctor who might, personally, be far from well himself. Above all, he worked to remove the causes of scandal by improving the conduct of the clergy. But this is merely to say that anger did not blind him to facts (he had the fits of anger usually found in dominant natures). Certainly he was no vulgar ranter, but from this it by no means follows that his faith was not ardent and his feeling against heresy correspondingly keen.

In the year of his accession we find Innocent already corresponding with Raymond VI of Toulouse. The Count was then 41 years old, having three years before succeeded his father, Count Raymond V, whom we have seen (in the last chapter) appealing for help to put down heresy. The Counts of Toulouse were the most powerful princes of the South. As Dukes of Narbonne they were the first lay peers of France. They held the Marquisate of Provence, they were Counts of Vivarais, Venaissin, St. Gilles, and Rodez, and lords of the Albigeois, Gevaudan, Velai, Rouergue, and Agenois, besides being Suzerain to the Counts of Foix and Comminges. Raymond VI was married to Princess Joan of England, daughter of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sister to Richard Cœur de Lion and King John. The Count himself was no heretic, although certain hasty expressions which he had thrown out in favour of the heretics were treasured against him by zealous Catholics. However, according to the custom of Languedoc, his orthodoxy was anything but belligerent. He was accustomed to nominate Jews and heretics to public office, and altogether he and his wealthy court thought more of enjoying themselves with poetry and the society of women than of anything else in the world. He was not warlike, and trying events were to prove him lacking in courage, self command, and staunchness of purpose. He was equally innocent of wisdom or cunning in policy. He does not seem to have been base but merely weak and easy going. If not in great place or troubled times such men may do well enough.

In his first encounter with the great Pope he appears not as a favourer of heretics but as an oppressor of monks. As such he had already been excommunicated by Pope Celestine III. Innocent sent his legates to offer him absolution if he would give satisfaction to the abbot in question, that of St. Gilles; and on his promise to do so, wrote to suggest that he do penance in order to show his good will. Before a twelvemonth was out the Abbot of St. Gilles was complaining that he had in no wise mended his ways, so Innocent wrote again to his legate directing that the Count be held to his promises. It was not a hopeful beginning.

For six years, with frequently changing personnel, the papal legation in Languedoc kept on trying to realize its original programme. It was a thankless job. William VIII, Lord of Montpellier, whose family was by tradition strongly Catholic, asked for the appointment of a legate to help him root out heresy from his lands. Unfortunately he was not a personage of first-rate importance, and his action was a mere flash in the pan, as none of his fellow nobles followed suit. Lea claims that even William himself had a special interest in showing zeal because he was trying to get the Pope to legitimatize the children of a second wife whom he had married without being legally separated (by annulment no doubt) from his first.

In 1200 we hear of a Cardinal “John of St. Paul” (meaning probably that his titular church was the basilica of St. Paul without the walls at Rome) taking part in the Albigensian mission, but of him we hear no more. Two years later it appears that Rainier fell sick and was accordingly relieved from duty as legate. What became of his companion Guy we are not told; he seems to have sunk in the waters of oblivion without a splash or even a bubble.

Rainier was replaced by two Cistercian monks from the Cistercian abbey of Font Froide, near Narbonne. One of the two Cistercians was named Raoul. The other, the soul of the mission, was Peter de Castelnau, that famous name of Castelnau whose arms are still seen in the hall of the knights at Versailles, a name that the Germans will long have reason to remember, since in the desperate first week of September, 1914, it was a Castelnau who fended them off at the Grand Couronné de Nancy, and thus made possible the victory of the Marne. De Castelnau, with an energy and decision that may well remind us of the soldier Castelnau of our own generation, made straight for Toulouse itself. There he harangued the inhabitants, demanding that their magistrates should swear to keep the Catholic faith and expel heretics, in return for a papal confirmation of the liberties of the city (which were set down, no doubt, in a charter much like the old English charters preserved by Bishop Stubbs). The Toulousains rose to the bait, took the oaths and then failed to move. The legates talked in a high tone about angry princes and kings coming upon the city to pillage and destroy, and effected thereby some show of reform, but no sooner were their backs turned than the heretical preachers began their midnight meetings as before.

Incidentally, it is interesting to note that, in a place like Toulouse in the year 1203, the utmost daring of the heretics was to hold their preaching services at midnight. It looks as if, in the large centres, there was still a strong feeling that heresy, after all, was not “the thing.” It was still under a certain amount of social ban. The feeling even of these non-persecuting communities must have looked a little askance at it.

Having obtained from the “consuls” of Toulouse a promise, however hollow, of obedient persecution, the legates turned their attention to Count Raymond. They invited the Archbishop of Narbonne, the Primate of Languedoc, to join with them in demanding from the Count not only banishment of heretics and confiscation of their goods but also the dismissal of the mercenary troops who, as we have seen, were near-brigands on active service and brigands pure and simple at all other times. The Archbishop refused. Accustomed throughout a long life full of ease and riches to see heresy all about him, he had probably long forgotten to be shocked at it. As to the “brigands,” he probably made allowances, as the legates did not, for the fact that mercenaries were the only troops possible to an overlord like the Count of Toulouse whose feudal vassals were almost certain to be either unwarlike or disobedient—if not both at once. Knowing his man and Languedoc in general as he did, he must have thought it useless and silly for the legates even to make the attempt. Very likely he was alarmed at such activity shown by papal legates in his territory and afraid lest his own position might be threatened and his own sloth and unworthiness be thrown in his teeth or denounced to the Pope by this meddlesome pair of Cistercians from his own province, who might better have stayed at home in their abbey. He refused to go with them and would hardly even lend them a horse for their trip. The bishop of Beziers, who had been asked to be of the party, also refused, so the legates proceeded alone. As for Raymond, we have already seen him readier to promise than to perform in the case of the monks of St. Gilles. Now he would not even promise.

Even de Castelnau despaired. He wrote to the Pope telling of his failure, and asking to be relieved from duty as legate in order to return to his abbey. Innocent held him to his work, reminding him that heaven would reward him not according to his success, but according to his labours.

However, it was probably de Castelnau’s letter which persuaded the Pope to broaden the scope of the mission. He now took the radical step of depriving the Languedocian bishops of jurisdiction in cases of heresy and conferred it on his legates. On top of this, he went even further and empowered the legates to remove any of the clergy from their benefices should they seem unworthy to hold them, and denied to the condemned the right of appeal to Rome and of delay in executing the sentence.

From the standpoint of the canon law this was revolutionary; the grant of these wide powers to the legates marks the second stage in the preliminaries of the Crusade. Gradually, the seriousness of the situation was being understood in Rome. Only the clear belief that the higher clergy of Languedoc must be drastically purged of evil-livers, and of those who were slothful and lukewarm in prosecuting heresy, before anything else could be accomplished would justify such measures.

That there was need of strong measures was proved by the continued activity of the heretics. After the Count of Toulouse, the Count of Foix was the greatest noble of Languedoc. In this same year his sister Esclairmonde was “hereticated,” and in the great crowd present at the ceremony only the Count himself failed to “venerate” the “Perfect” according to the prescribed heretical form. His wife was already a “Cathar,” and another of his sisters was a Waldensian. So things went in the “midi.”

At the same time that the powers of the legates were increased, Innocent empowered them to offer Philip Augustus and his son Louis complete remission of sins, as if for a crusade to Palestine, if they would move against the Albigenses of Languedoc. The indulgence was to be extended to all nobles who might aid in suppressing heresy; and all who were under excommunication for crimes of violence, nobles or villains, were to be absolved on joining the expedition. At the same time, the Pope himself wrote direct to Philip, promising him not only full indulgences, as for a crusade against the Moslem, but also the territories of such nobles as might obstruct the pious work of suppressing heresy.

The time was altogether unfavourable for the King of France to grant such a request, for he was otherwise engaged. About the middle of the twelfth century, as a result of two great marriages, the Plantagenet Counts of Anjou (in addition to their hereditary lands of Anjou, Maine and Touraine) had become kings of England and Dukes of Normandy, suzerains of Brittany, and Dukes of Aquitaine, which included Poitou, Guienne, Gascony, and Auvergne. Naturally, as masters of this great sweep of territory so much greater in extent than the little royal domain which alone was directly ruled by the kings of France, the Angevins were almost continually at war with the French kings to whom they theoretically owed homage for their Continental possessions. Besides their vast lands, the Plantagenets possessed high personal energy and complete ruthlessness; their line was supposed to descend from a devil, and from their behaviour it seemed fairly probable. Further, the Norman system of administration and (as we should say) “civil service” which they directed and applied throughout their territory, was the best of its kind in Latin Christendom, at least outside of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily which was also Norman-ruled. On the surface of things, the “kings of Paris” seemed hopelessly overmatched. On the other hand, the Angevin dominions could have no possible feeling of attachment to one another. They were held together only from above. Whereas behind the kings of France were dim, vast, memories of the Roman unity; as yet mere “ideas,” to be sure, but in France ideas have power.

It is with a sure instinct that Michelet has contrasted the fashion of the great seals of the Plantagenets with those of the Capets. The demon race of Anjou are seen fully armed, mounted, and charging, while the kings of France have no need of war horse, armour, or weapons, but are sitting enthroned, holding the orb and sceptre, full of the calm consciousness of power admitted and acknowledged. I repeat once more that the time had almost nothing of our idea of nationalities; nevertheless, as we have seen in the first chapter, its currents were setting strongly in favour of the central kingships, and especially in favour of the kings of France. Even in the matter of the Albigensian crusade, we shall see the Capets, and with them the national unity, profiting quite as much as the Church from the conclusion of the struggle.

Now, in 1204, there reigned at Paris a great man, Philip, whose surname Augustus of itself recalled Rome. His character was a little detached and remote, bent altogether upon making real the great shadowy power that was lawfully his by virtue of his office. Like his father and grandfather, he was a friend to merchants and wayfaring men, a mighty slayer of bandits, and a protector of the new Municipal Communes. Like all his ancestors, he allied himself with the Church. Like some of his ancestors, and like a true Frenchman, he might quarrel bitterly with the Pope, when there was a petticoat in the business, but in spite of his dabbling in bigamy on the modern American plan, in the matter of his second marriage he remained the “eldest son of the Church” and the staunchest champion of the Papacy in Europe, and in his alliance with the Church he received quite as much as he gave.

Ever since John’s accession to the Plantagenet lands in 1199, the long struggle between the Angevins and the French Crown had gone on in haphazard raids and skirmishes, interrupted by fitful truces which settled nothing. From February to September, 1200, France had been under a Papal interdict for Philip’s repudiation of his wife followed by a second marriage, after a questionable annulment of the first marriage by the French bishops. Even though the interdict had been imperfectly enforced, still it had sufficiently weakened his general position to make him willing to conclude a truce with John, and to promise the Pope that he would mend his ways. The interdict once lifted, the intriguing and skirmishing had begun again, going more and more in Philip’s favour. In the fall of 1203 major operations had begun. After a successful six months’ siege of Chateau Gailliard, ending in March, 1204, Philip had won all Normandy and deprived John of the entire continental Plantagenet inheritance except Gascony, Guienne, and part of Poitou. With so much freshly conquered land to be administered and so many new vassals to be handled, it was no time to ask the King of France to take on the heavy task of intervening against heresy in Languedoc, or even to weaken himself by allowing any of the forces of his kingdom to do so. He refused to move.

There remained the chance of accomplishing something through reform of the personnel of the southern Church by a drastic use of the extraordinary powers granted to the papal legates. These were now three in number, the newcomer being Arnaut Amalric, abbot of Citeaux, and therefore head of the powerful Cistercian order, to which both Raoul and de Castelnau belonged. With the addition of Arnaut (whose surname of Amalric recalls the old family of Amal chieftains among the Goths), the legates attempted to use their power of deposing bishops to its full extent. They proclaimed the deposition of Berenger II, primate of Languedoc! Berenger broke boldly with the legates and refused to quit his archbishopric of Narbonne. He protested violently to the Pope, representing that only his great age and “infirmities” prevented him from pleading his cause in person at Rome, so that his case dragged on.

Meanwhile, the Bishop of Beziers, besides refusing to go with the legates to Count Raymond, had gone even further in disobedience to them than his ecclesiastical lord of Narbonne. When asked to demand of the “consuls” of his city that they abjure heresy and engage to expel heretics, he at first refused point blank and encouraged the magistrates not to do so. Under pressure he finally promised to excommunicate them, but failed to do so. Accordingly, the legates suspended him, and ordered him to appear in his own defence at Rome. Shortly afterwards he was assassinated by some treachery “among his own people”—why, our authorities do not state.

Perhaps he had been particularly slow to prosecute heresy inasmuch as his neighbour, the Bishop of Carcassonne, had gotten himself driven out for merely threatening to do so. The municipality of Carcassonne had even forbidden anyone to have relations with the unhappy cleric, on pain of a heavy fine.

In the same year that saw the assassination of the Bishop of Beziers, the legates deposed the Bishop of Toulouse for “simony,” that is selling appointments to Church offices within his control. He was a turbulent, feudal, sort of person, who had spent his time in making war on his vassals, and had mortgaged the properties of his see right and left to enable him to do so. On account of his resistance it was not until the next year that a successor could be elected.

While the see of Toulouse was still vacant, de Castelnau again went boldly to Raymond and frightened him into taking an oath to dismiss his bandit-mercenaries and personally to prosecute heretics. As in the case of the monks of St. Gilles, he took no steps towards keeping his word.

Hardly was Raymond’s oath sworn when the consuls of Toulouse passed a law forbidding an accusation of heresy to be begun after the death of the accused unless they had been “hereticated” on their death-bed—some bones of heretics having been dug up and removed from consecrated earth. And what was worse, this action of the municipality was supposed to have been due to Raymond’s influence as overlord. At any rate, he seems to have consented to it, and certainly made no move to prevent it.

Altogether, the year 1205 had been as depressing as its predecessors. A second appeal to Philip Augustus, in February, had brought no result.

In 1206 the discouragement of the legates again came to a head as it had done two years before. The one bright spot was that the cathedral chapter of Toulouse had finally elected, as their bishop, Fulk of Marseilles. After winning fame as a troubadour, he had entered the Cistercian order and been chosen an abbot. Fulk had all the enthusiasm typical of converts. He had transferred the passion that had set him writing love songs into his new task of smiting the heretic. Indeed, he was to be one of the foremost in the Crusade. Nevertheless, his election was not enough in itself to keep the legates in good heart, for in general their task was as ungrateful as ever.

Towards midsummer, the three legates with their retinues, together with a number of bishops from neighbouring sees, assembled in council at Castelnau (named for the family of the legate Pierre de Castelnau) near Montpellier. Not only the gentle Raoul, but even the stern and unbending Arnaut Amalric, and de Castelnau with his fearless, fiery spirit, were ready to despair. They talked of resigning their mission. It seems that they had even agreed to do so, when a new impulse and an altogether different plan of campaign was given them by a newcomer.

This newcomer was a Spaniard, Diego (or Didacus), Bishop of Osma in the Upper Douro valley in Castille. He had been much employed in diplomatic business by his king, and was now returning from Rome whither he had been refused permission from the Pope to go as a missionary to the savage heathen Tartars of the Ukraine steppes.

At the head of Bishop Diego’s suite was his sub-prior, Domingo de Guzman, later to be known as St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Preachers which bears his name, then a young man in the middle thirties, slender, fair-haired, dressed in the white habit and surplice worn by Augustinian canons regular. He was a gentleman born and bred who had taken his university course at Palencia, had been made canon and then sub-prior at Osma, and was Bishop Diego’s constant companion. Three years before, while accompanying his patron on one of the latter’s diplomatic trips, he had passed through Toulouse. Being lodged in the house of a heretic, he had sat up all night with the man, until by dint of prayer, exhortation, and argument he persuaded him to turn from the error of his ways. Now he was admitted, with Diego, into the council chamber of the legates.

No one else who comes directly into our story has set in motion such a force as did St. Dominic. He and St. Francis more than any men since the conversion of the Roman Empire, were to give to the Catholic Church new power over men’s thoughts and affections. Perhaps he would loom larger in our sight were he not so often considered together with St. Francis. It is true that his personality has not the same extraordinary poetry, simplicity and charm as that of the “Poverello” of Assisi. But in his consuming zeal for the faith he was Francis’s equal, while in organizing ability and statesmanlike adaptation of means to ends, he was by far Francis’s superior. He was an extraordinary man.

For the time being, he was merely the chief of Bishop Diego’s suite, and there is no evidence that he even spoke in the council. It was Diego who advised the legates to put all their energy into preaching, and (that their pomp and retinue might no longer be contrasted with the simplicity and self-denying asceticism of the heretical chiefs) he further suggested that the legates rid themselves of guards, servants, horses, and even of shoes and sandals. They were to go forth barefoot, in perfect apostolic poverty, having neither purse nor scrip like the original twelve.

Luchaire thinks[30] it improbable that a mere passing bishop, on his own responsibility, would have presumed to urge upon men in the official position of the legates so startling a departure; and that, had he done so, his counsel would almost certainly not have been accepted. He therefore infers that Diego was acting under orders from Innocent. As there is no mention in any of the chroniclers of direction from Innocent at this time, the idea remains mere inference, although probable enough.

From whatever source it came, the new and radical proposition was not easily accepted by the legates. Perhaps they feared ridicule, perhaps insults and bodily harm if they went about unprotected. At any rate they balked, suggested that they would follow if someone set the example, and ended by imitating Diego when he himself put in practice what he had just preached.

With this decision begins the third and last stage of the preliminaries of the Crusade. The preaching apostolate was destined to be continued while the Crusade itself was going on, and was to grow into the great Dominican order. The idea of voluntary poverty in the service of others was to electrify Christendom and remain as a permanent force in the world.

Promptly, the new plan of action once decided on, the legates, Diego, and Dominic, went at it vigorously. Arnaut, who had to return to Citeaux to preside at the approaching chapter general of his Order, departed thither on foot. Meanwhile de Castelnau and Raoul, with the two Spaniards and the other clergy attached to the legation, divided themselves by threes and fours and went here and there throughout the country. Barefoot, begging their bread and carrying with them only staff and breviary, they preached and debated publicly against the heretical “Perfect.” We hear of these formal “theological tournaments,” as it were, lasting a week at Servian near Beziers, for a fortnight at Beziers itself, at Carcassonne for eight days. Certainly there was no lack of energy.

Unfortunately, the effort produced no commensurate result. Peter de Vaux-Cernay says that at Servian the people were so moved by the debate that they would have expelled the heretics had it not been for the opposition of the local lord, and that they escorted the missionaries in triumph along the road when they left the town. But at Beziers there was so much hostile feeling among the inhabitants that Diego and Raoul advised de Castelnau to flee for his life. Evidently it was not altogether without reason that the legates had hesitated to dismiss their armed guards. At Carcassonne we hear of a miracle but no conversions. In the neighbourhood Dominic vehemently reproved certain peasants, possibly Catharists, who were reaping on St. John’s Day. One of them, in reply, threatened the saint, when suddenly he and his companions found the sheaves which they held in their hands red, as with blood. At Verfeil, where St. Bernard had been jeered at sixty years before, the debate is said to have gone completely in favour of the Catholics, without impressing the people in any way. Clearly, although the new tactics had made a certain impression, especially upon the lower classes, there was to be no rapid progress.

In November the Pope formally prescribed the novel methods already adopted. The legates were to choose men of “proved virtue,” who were to go about “dressed humbly and taking for model the poverty of Christ” to make conversions. The new departure was to be tested to the uttermost.

The effort was continued in the same way in 1207. At his chapter general, Arnaut Amalric had recruited many of his Cistercians, including twelve abbots, and these reinforcements gave a new impetus to the work of debate and of preaching. The conferences seem to grow more formal and to take place on a greater scale, attracting more general attention. We hear especially of two, one at Montreal and one at Pamiers.

At Montreal the debate lasted a fortnight, and here, according to Peter de Vaux-Cernay, the miracle placed by Dominican tradition at Fanjeaux really occurred. St. Dominic drew up a summary of his arguments, as did the heretics, and the two memoranda were submitted to the four judges of the debate, two knights and two burghers. The judges, in executive session, despaired of coming to an agreement and decided to try a form of ordeal. Accordingly, they ceremonially threw both manuscripts into the fire. Whereupon the heretical manuscript promptly blazed up, and St. Dominic’s, three times thrown in, was three times cast out unharmed by the flames. The judges agreed to say nothing of the matter and, miracle or no miracle, failed to give a decision.

The last of the public debates took place at Pamiers, in the territory and under the patronage of Raymond Roger, Count of Foix. Faithful to his usual policy of “Good Lord, good Devil” the Count entertained the disputants of both parties in turn, and offered his great hall for the debate. On the Catholic side, the Bishop of Osma was seconded by Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, and by the Bishop of Conserans. The opposition seems to have been quite as much Waldensian as Catharist. A single judge presided. In the course of the debate, Esclairmonde the heretical sister of the Count of Foix, broke into the debate in favour of the Cathari, with quite the assurance of a Roman lady of the first century or of a wealthy English or American woman to-day. In this case, however, one of the Catholic priests present, Stephen of Metz, replied: “Go back to your spinning, it is not for you to make a speech in such a company,” and she seems to have subsided, possibly choked with anger at being so addressed by a wretched barefoot priest. At the close of the conference certain Waldensians, among them Duran (or Durand) of Huesca, a Spanish Waldensian prominent in the sect, were converted. Otherwise this conference, too, seems to have had slight results. As at Montreal, no decision was given.

Although after the Conference at Pamiers we hear no more of public debates on a grand scale, the preaching work of the mission was continued. Legate Raoul drops out of the story. The Bishop of Osma returned to his diocese to die, the sooner perhaps because of the hardships to which the old man had subjected himself, but left Dominic to go on with the work. Arnaut Amalric was again called away for a time by business in Northern France, leaving Pierre de Castelnau, and (apparently) Dominic, as the dominant personalities of the Papal mission.

During 1207, the year of the conferences of Montreal and Pamiers, the earlier idea of putting pressure upon the secular authorities was by no means given up. It is quite possible, as Luchaire suggests, that men of the stamp of de Castelnau, Arnaut Amalric, and Fulk, continued to believe all along in measures stiffer than mere persuasion. And in this belief, if they held it, time was to show them right enough. De Castelnau crossed the Rhône into Raymond’s “Marquisate of Provence,” and persuaded the nobles there to associate themselves in a league which he organized for the prevention of feuds between its members. He further arranged to include in the objects of the league the prosecution of heretics and then summoned Raymond himself to join the association formed for two such worthy purposes by this good-sized group of his vassals.

Raymond refused. Besides being utterly unwilling to prosecute heresy, he probably felt that his prestige would suffer if he did so as a late comer into an association of his own liegemen which he had not himself helped to organize.

De Castelnau’s next move shows the gathering exasperation of years of failure. He excommunicated the Count. He interdicted his lands. Not content with that, he went boldly into his presence and denounced him publicly, to his face. No doubt he threw in his teeth the two promises which he had already broken, first that of 1199 to the Pope in the matter of the monks of St. Gilles, and second that to de Castelnau himself in 1205, two years before the denunciation when he had sworn to dismiss his mercenary troops and to prosecute heretics. The spectacle must have been dramatic; the monk, remember, had especially drawn upon himself the hatred of the heretics and the easy-going Catholics (who between them made up nearly all Languedoc), standing up barefoot in his grey Cistercian habit and cursing to his face the greatest lord of the south. For protection he had nothing but such moral authority as the Church still possessed in the face of the heresy all about. His worst enemy could not have denied de Castelnau’s courage.

Innocent lost no time in confirming the sentence. He ordered the Archbishops of Vienne, Embrun, Arles, and Narbonne to publish and to enforce it. He did more; he wrote directly, and fiercely, to Raymond himself.

The counts of the indictment as repeated to the archbishops are interesting and inclusive. Besides the two main charges of having employed bandit-mercenaries and refusing to prosecute heretics, Count Raymond had refused to interrupt military operations during Lent and on feast days and holidays, he had made fortresses out of churches, he had persecuted abbeys, despoiled the Bishop of Carpentras, bestowed public offices upon Jews, refused to join the league of peace of Provence, increased tolls upon the roads and bridges, played host to heretics, and finally (although this was never proved and seems not to have been the fact) he had become a heretic himself. It is particularly interesting, and in line with the Church’s condemnation of usury and extortion generally, to see the strong line taken in the matter of tolls.

Naturally, his vassals owed no duties of allegiance as long as their lord remained unabsolved. Should any man give him aid and comfort that man was, ipso facto, excommunicate himself, down to the blacksmith who might shoe him a horse.

The Pope’s letter to Raymond himself was devastating. “Impious folly and tyranny” were among the gentler of its phrases. It spoke hopefully of the Count’s chances of fever, leprosy, paralysis, demoniacal insanity, metamorphosis into a beast after the fashion of Nebuchadnezzar. Contrasting his love of war with the angelic devotion to peace shown by the Provençal nobles and by “the illustrious” King Pedro of Aragon, it likened its addressee to a crow feeding on dead bodies. Altogether, its tone left very little to be desired.

Specifically, Innocent accused the Count of retorting to de Castelnau that a heretic, perhaps a “Catharan bishop” could easily be found to prove the superiority of their religion over the Catholic. He speaks, therefore, of the serious grounds for suspicion of heresy in Raymond’s own case, but guards himself carefully against offering it as a fact. He is to give prompt and full satisfaction and seek to be absolved. Otherwise he will lose the county of Melgueil held by him as a vassal of the Roman Church, and if this is not enough then other princes will be stirred up against him and granted title to any of his lands they may conquer.

Raymond collapsed. He signed the Provençal truce and again swore to do everything that was demanded of him. But it was the fatal weakness of his character that he was always willing to mortgage his future by yielding to present threats and then fail to keep his engagements. He could never understand that this sort of thing would be even worse for him in the end than out and out resistance. Again he did nothing.

Meanwhile St. Dominic, having put his hand to the plough, was not the man to turn back. He succeeded in making some converts. The penance laid upon one of these, in order to reconcile him to the Church, has been preserved. Its date seems to be 1207 or 1208. It prescribes that Pons Roger of Treville “en Lauraguais” for three successive Sundays is to strip to the waist and walk from the outskirts of his village to the church, being beaten with rods all along the way by a priest. He is to wear a religious (i.e., monkish) habit with crosses sewn upon it. For the rest of his life he is to eat no meat, eggs, or cheese. Exception is made for the great feasts of Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, not for the comfort of the penitent but so that he might openly show that he had broken with the Catharan law of fasting described in the preceding chapter. Three days a week he is to have no fish, oil or wine, unless in case of sickness. He is to keep three Lents a year, and to live in perpetual chastity. The obligation, to hear mass at least once a day and to show his letter of penitence once a month to his parish priest, round out his sentence. Should he disobey, he is ipso facto excommunicate as a heretic and perjurer on top of that. A propos of this bristling catalogue the good Mother Drane, comparing it with the comparative gentleness of present-day Roman Catholic penitence, remarks that ... (the) ... “difference ... should cover us with humiliation for the feebleness of modern penitence, rather than send us to criticize the severity with which the Church has ever looked on sin.”[31] Unfortunately even in the thirteenth century few Provençals seem to have been of the good lady’s opinion. It appears quite certain that converts willing to tread such an heroic road for the sake of reconciliation with the Church were few.

In another direction St. Dominic’s labours were more fruitful. He had observed that the heretics made a practice of caring for the children of the very poor in order to bring them up in Catharan practices and beliefs. Accordingly he founded the famous nunnery of Prouille to receive the girl children of poor Catholics and also female converts from heresy who desired a secure refuge in which they might enjoy their new faith. The place filled a real need and prospered from the first.

However, in spite of the fame that Prouille was to have in the future, its foundation had little immediate effect upon the situation. Converts by preaching were few, as we have seen. The people cared no more for sermons than for rotten apples, remarks the “Chanson de la Crusade.” For the third time discouragement fell upon the papal mission to Languedoc.

There is a bit of evidence tending to prove that, in St. Dominic, the discouragement of his fellow missioners was translated into anger. To his congregation at Prouille he is said to have told of his years of preaching, prayer and tears, in their behalf, then to have quoted a Spanish proverb: “Use the stick where a blessing will not serve!” “So,” said he calling up before them visions of war and massacre, “force shall prevail where sweetness has failed.”

If this sermon of St. Dominic’s was, in fact, preached towards the end of the year 1207, it coincided in time with a new and particularly solemn and pressing series of letters addressed by Innocent not only to Philip Augustus but also to that king’s chief vassals the Duke of Burgundy and the Counts of Bar, Dreux, Nevers, Champagne, and Blois. The Pope recalled to the “French” princes (i.e., North-French as we should say) the nine years already spent in the hopeless effort to convert the southern heretics by means of gentleness. Now, said he, the miseries of war must bring them to truth. Those who took the Cross were to receive full and complete remission of their sins as if their crusading had been to Palestine itself. As the lands of heretics were to be their lawful prey, so their own lands and families were under special protection of the Pope. No creditors could collect interest from a Crusader during his absence, and crusading clergy were authorized to mortgage their revenues for two years in advance. Really it seems as if the Pope could hardly have bid higher. By this time he must have been convinced, not only that the Albigenses must be put down by force, but also that the task was equal in importance to recovering the Holy Land itself. Better a lion in the desert than a wild cat in the bed chamber, as Scott makes Saladin remark to Richard Cœur de Lion. Innocent would almost certainly have maintained that the Saracenic lion was a fair fighter, whereas the teeth and claws of the Albigensian wild-cat bore poison.