Chapter III: The Preliminaries of the Crusade (2)

We hear of no reply to Innocent’s three former appeals, but in this case Philip answered briefly by a letter written in the King’s name by the Bishop of Paris. Whether any of his great vassals answered is not known, but if their decisions were essentially different from that of their overlord then they were certainly of no effect. The King’s answer was typical of the colder side of his character, for besides his ceaseless energy, his boldness where only boldness would serve him, and his gift for intrigue, he possessed a prudence that never ran unnecessary risks but made sure to get as many chances as possible on his side before he would move. As we say, he was a great “politician.” Three years before by taking Normandy he had cleared the mouth of the Seine, the only real navigable river in France, in the middle basin of which river the centre of his power lay. For the first time since the coming of the Danish invasion nearly three centuries before, northern Gaul held the keys of her own door so that her commerce could come and go at her own will. He had done more. He had settled himself in the rich lower valley of the shallow Loire and pushed back John almost to the Dordogne. Now, when he received Innocent’s letter, the campaigning season of 1207 had passed without incident thanks to a two years’ truce patched up in the previous autumn (of 1206), which had still about another year to run. Nevertheless the King of France knew that John had not given up the struggle but was making great efforts to raise money for the hiring of mercenaries and the bribing of possible allies. The Archbishop of York had just gone into exile in protest against unprecedented taxation of the English clergy for these pious objects. Also, it was common talk throughout Europe that John was refusing to recognize Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, in spite of strong pressure from Innocent to do so. A complete break had not yet come, but relations between the King of England and the Pope were getting more and more strained.

Under these conditions Philip Augustus’s answer to Innocent’s invitation to go crusading in Languedoc was, in form, a half consent to do so, hedged about with such conditions as to make it, in fact, a refusal. He reminded the Pope of his war with John. His resources were not large enough for him to levy two armies at a time. Let Innocent first make a firm truce between John and himself for two years and, second, decree an assessment upon the French clergy and nobles. Then, according to Luchaire’s account of the letter, Philip Augustus would himself undertake the Crusade, reserving the right to withdraw his troops in case John broke the truce. According to Lea, he promised, in case the truce were arranged, only to permit his barons to undertake the Crusade and to aid them with fifty livres a day for a year. In either case he knew very well that Innocent could get him no truce with John. Since the King of England was already braving possible excommunication for himself and interdict for his kingdom, the Pope had no hold on him whatsoever. With a craftiness worthy of his far-off Roman namesake Augustus, the King of France had knowingly proposed conditions impossible to fulfil.

In those times of slow communication we do not know exactly how long it took important despatches to pass between Rome and Paris. Innocent’s letter is dated November 17, 1207, but perhaps even before it was received, and certainly before King Philip’s disappointing answer to it could have been delivered, a crime was committed that put the whole game in the Pope’s hands. On January 15, 1208, de Castelnau the legate was murdered by a retainer of Count Raymond.

Of the crime there are different versions. In Hallam’s ill-informed Victorian day it could be maintained that Raymond was responsible in no way whatsoever. There is a story that the legate got into a hot religious argument with a gentleman of the count’s retinue who ended by drawing his dagger and killing him. The version of the Catholic chroniclers is substantially as follows: Raymond had called the legates to a conference at St. Gilles in order to arrange the conditions on which he might give satisfaction to the Church and thereby obtain the lifting of the excommunication in force upon himself and the interdict upon his lands. Very likely he was informed of the new call to a Crusade and was correspondingly frightened. As before, he was willing to promise anything, but de Castelnau and the Bishop of Conserans who was present understood him thoroughly by this time, and refused to give absolution until he should at least begin to fulfil his easily given pledges. Lea speaks of “demands greater than Raymond was willing to concede.” In all probability de Castelnau carried things with a high hand. Already we have seen him forced to escape by night from Carcassonne, and already he had cursed Raymond to his face. The tree of faith, he was accustomed to say, would never spring up in Languedoc until its roots had been watered with the blood of a martyr. Now, when the discussion was about to be broken off, Raymond is said to have uttered threats, more or less vague. In fear for the legates, the abbot and burghers of St. Gilles gave the legates an escort as far as the western bank of the Rhône, where they passed the night at an inn already partly occupied by some of Raymond’s people. In the morning, after saying mass, the Churchmen set out to cross the river, de Castelnau being mounted (according to William of Tudela) “on his ambling mule,” which would seem to show that in his case at least the practice of barefoot apostolic poverty had not lasted long, when a “sergeant” (i.e., a heavy armed, mounted, soldier not of noble blood) in the service of the Count, coming treacherously and from behind, mortally wounded him, with his lance. “May God forgive thee even as I forgive thee!” said the dying man.

Accounts of Raymond’s behaviour after the crime differ as widely as those of the crime itself. The version quoted by Lea claims that the Count, “... greatly concerned at an event so deplorable, ... would have taken summary vengeance of the murderer but for his escape and hiding with friends at Beaucaire.” According to the Catholic chronicler Peter de Vaux-Cernay Raymond showed himself throughout his domain with the murderer at his side, making an intimate of him and covering him with praise and with gifts. This was the version published far and wide by Innocent, although with his usual lawyer-like exactitude he adds that in so doing he is merely echoing the reports sent to him, which makes it appear as if, perhaps, he did not altogether believe those accounts. Finally, it is worth noting that, unlike Becket, the martyred de Castelnau was not canonized nor did his tomb at St. Gilles become a centre of pilgrimage and of miracles.

Whatever the details of the affair may have been, the crime made Innocent master of the situation. As with Becket, so it was with de Castelnau: the dead Churchman was too much for the layman who had successfully resisted him living. The Pope lost little time. Within three months of the murder, the unrivalled papal heavy artillery of curses was put into action so vigorously as almost to surpass itself. Flaming circular letters went to every bishop in Raymond’s lands, recounting the crime and the strong presumption of the Count’s complicity therewith, directing that the murderer be excommunicated, that Raymond be re-excommunicated, and that the interdict upon Raymond’s lands be enlarged so as to cover any place that either he or the murderer might curse and pollute with their presence. This masterpiece of malediction was to be solemnly published with bell, book, and candle, in all churches and republished, until further notice, every Sunday and feast day. Raymond’s person was outlawed, his land titles were voided, saving only the rights of the king as suzerain thereto; any Catholic who was able might kill him and seize upon anything that was his. His vassals were loosed from their oaths of liege-homage to him and his allies loosed from their oaths of alliance. Before he could even seek reconciliation by penitence he must first banish the heretics from his dominions. “No pity for these criminals who, not content to corrupt souls by abetting heresy, kill bodies also.”

At the same time, letters went to the French bishops and archbishops, to Philip Augustus, and to his chief vassals. The prelates were directed to help the legates make peace between Capet and Angevin, and to stir up clergy and laity to the Crusade. Philip was congratulated on his great increase in power, his affection for the Holy See, and the hatred which he had often shown for heresy. Now, so it was represented, his office compelled him to punish the murderers of the papal legate. He had once crusaded to Palestine. Now he ought again to serve the Church, more and more imperilled as she was by the heretics who were worse than Saracens (an epoch-making phrase). It was his duty to drive out Raymond, to take the land from the heretics, and to give it to good Catholics who would faithfully serve the Lord, “_under Philip’s happy suzerainty_.” Probably Innocent wished Philip to read between the pious lines the thought that vassals directly planted upon new lands by the King would be far more his creatures than those who held them by a long chain of inheritance. As usual with Innocent, the letter is a masterpiece of its kind.

Meanwhile, Arnaut Amalric made haste to call a chapter general of the whole Cistercian order. That the murdered de Castelnau himself had been a Cistercian was an additional reason for his own order to see to it that their dead brother should not be forgotten and that the cause for which he had given his life should not be allowed to fail for want of champions. Their chapter-general, when assembled, voted unanimously to direct the whole energies of the order into preaching the Crusade, and forthwith throughout Christendom their monks set themselves to stir up the people.

In all this, Arnaut Amalric surpassed himself. The “Chanson de la Crusade” makes him say, in words that echo a fierce (sometimes grotesque) rhetoric he may well have used: “Cry the indulgences throughout all the earth, even to Constantinople. Let him that will not crusade never more drink wine, never more, evening or morning, eat from a table decked with a table cloth (!), may he never more wear cloth of flax or of linen, and at his death let him be buried like a dog.”

Innocent’s letters and the Cistercian’s hardly less passionate sermons had their effect. Enthusiasm rose. It was like the ominous cracking and groaning that sometimes follow the explosion of a heavy blasting charge at the base of a mountain, threatening a landslide, perhaps greater and more uncontrollable than those who set the train foresaw.

Still, Philip Augustus stood out. He wrote to Innocent a letter full of decorous grief for de Castelnau, in which he recited also his own complaints against Raymond. Although the Toulousain held one of the greatest baronies of the kingdom, he had lent no aid to his suzerain in the great struggle with John. Nay more, when Philip had taken Falaise he had found Toulousain soldiers among John’s garrison there. Nevertheless, the King of France refused to throw himself whole-heartedly into the Crusade. He repeated, once more, that Innocent must give him the means of raising the money for the expedition and must see to it that John remained quiet. He even read the Pope a lesson in law by insisting that Raymond could not legally be deprived of his lands and honours (the two words were almost synonymous to a mediæval) unless he had first been convicted of heresy, which was not the case. Whether or not he was actually displeased at the idea of the Crusade, is by no means certain. It would seem that he might well count on better service from North-French barons established in Languedoc than from its hereditary lords, accustomed as these last were to the independence of Paris. We find him attempting at least to limit the size of the crusading army. In his authorization to Eudes Duke of Burgundy and Hervé Count of Nevers to take the Cross, he stipulates that, between them, they must take no more than five hundred knights.

Significantly enough, this letter is erased from the royal register. Events were to make the King wish to destroy any evidence which might put him in the position of having hindered the Crusade.

Nevertheless, he persisted in refusing to join personally in the proposed expedition. Innocent did all that was possible to persuade him. After asking him, in a letter dated October 9, 1208, to assist the legates in persuading his subjects to take the Cross, the Pope wrote again, on February 9, 1209, asking him to designate a commander whom all were to obey, and so avoid the danger of faction in the crusading higher command. The King of France preferred that the entire responsibility for the undertaking should rest with the Pope.

Little the French nobles and their followers cared for the cold caution of their King. Frenchmen had been and were to be foremost in every Crusade from Godfroy de Bouillon to Philip’s grandson, St. Louis. It is the peculiar and permanent gift of that people, not only to phrase ideas in clear and definite terms, but to act upon the ideas thus formulated with an intensity and passion that perpetually amazes those who do not know them. Finally, it is their glory to make of the ideas which they define so clearly, and upon which they act so intensely, the instruments of a vast and solid accomplishment. They are an astonishing nation.

Now they began to swarm like bees. Seeing Languedoc hostile to the creed that inspired and held together all their society, they prepared to move upon her as their descendants, singing the “Marseillaise” and shouting for “Liberté, Egalité, Fraternité,” went out against the kings of Europe. In the Crusades, as in those later Crusades of the Republic and the Empire, the inspiration was a transcendental formula, from its nature, therefore, incapable of proof, but with enormous power to stir and to persuade. Moreover, that formula, the creed, was the visible architect of a new and fruitful world. The crusading times must have felt themselves above the Dark Ages as the French Republicans despised the innumerable petty restrictions that made of the old régime a stifling thing. So they made ready to come out, as we or our descendants may see Frenchmen come out, to do battle for a creed and thereby to change the world.

Of course there were other and lesser motives. Instead of having to make the long and dangerous trip to Palestine, a mere forty days’ term of service in Languedoc was enough to qualify a man for the crusading indulgences. The price of a salved conscience had fallen. Further, the enemy to be combated was probably known to be divided against himself, and certainly known to be rich and unwarlike compared with those who were preparing the invasion. Jealousy of the refined and wealthy South no doubt spurred many a Crusader. Finally, there was the chance, not only of fine plunder, but also of permanent possession at the expense of the heretic. No doubt certain Crusaders felt that they were using the Church more than the Church was using them, just as certain of our large employers of labour use a base religious fanaticism (which in other respects they despise) to deprive the workman of his beer.

Raymond was frightened, and no wonder. He felt the ground cracking and stirring under his feet. Weak and infirm of purpose as he was, at least he had wit enough not to stand still under the menace that threatened him. His first move seems to have been to consult with his nephew and vassal, Raymond Roger Trencavel, Viscount of Beziers and Carcassonne, with a view to a common plan of action. In this he was unsuccessful. One account has the nephew for resistance and his uncle for submission, and another account has these positions reversed. At any rate they could not agree as to what should be done and parted on bad terms. The Count of Toulouse next made for the court of his overlord the King of France. Philip received him kindly and courteously but would promise nothing. Some authorities say he advised Raymond to yield, and others that he forbade Raymond to appeal to the Emperor Otto who was unfriendly to Philip.

Otto, it should be explained, had for ten years been gradually losing in a haphazard civil war for the imperial crown. Innocent had supported him, in return for a grant of increased privileges for the Church. Nevertheless the other candidate, Philip of Hohenstaufen, Duke of Suabia, a younger brother of the redoubtable Henry VI, with the prestige of his line and the traditional German dislike of Papal interference to help him, had been gradually getting the upper hand. Otto was nephew to John of England, his mother had been the Plantagenet Princess Matilda, daughter of Henry II and Eleanor. It is not surprising, therefore, that he was in close touch with John, and correspondingly hostile, in diplomacy at least, to Philip Augustus, John’s mortal enemy. Philip Augustus had even gone so far as to get into relations with Otto’s rival Philip of Suabia. While neither the two Philips nor Otto and John had ever actively aided one another with more than diplomatic and moral support, still the diplomatic alignment counted for something. In June, 1208, Otto’s rival, Philip of Suabia, had been murdered. Otto’s position was accordingly strengthened, particularly as he had had nothing to do with the crime, which had been committed for private motives.

At the time of Raymond’s visit to Philip Augustus, Otto had just become sole Emperor, so that the King of France was particularly anxious that Raymond should not attach himself to the powerful German nephew of John Plantagenet his greatest enemy. As often happened in feudal law, Raymond had more than one overlord. For the greater part of his lands he owed allegiance to the King of France. For the Marquisate of Provence, which lay east of the Rhône, and for the county of Vivarais to the west of that river, he was the “man” of the Emperor. Philip’s interest in him was so much greater than Otto’s that Raymond would have done well to leave the German alone. Unfortunately he could never take a broad view. With his usual knack for doing exactly the thing that would hurt him the most in the long run, he went straight from Philip to Otto. The Emperor had not his own house in order, therefore he could give no help, and any dealings with him were sure to weaken Raymond’s position with Philip.

One last resource remained to the Toulousain, to throw himself on the mercy of the legates and the Pope. While he had been running after Philip Augustus and Otto, his agents had been dealing with the papal curia, under instructions to raise the question of the personality of Arnaut Amalric. Should another legate, less hard and pitiless, be sent, then Raymond authorized them to promise complete submission. While Raymond’s ambassadors were framing these promises (no doubt in the full-blown oratory characteristic of the meridional to this day), laying the blame for what had occurred upon Arnaut Amalric, and showering rich presents upon all who might be useful to them, Raymond himself was giving away the game by throwing himself on the mercy of the man he professed to be unwilling to deal with on any terms. Hearing that Arnaut Amalric was holding a council at Aubinas, he knelt at Arnaut’s feet, and begged for mercy and pardon. As might have been expected, he gained nothing, the abbot coldly referred him to Rome. The effect of the fruitless humiliation was only to strain still further his relations with his nephew, and to lower still further, if possible, Churchmen’s opinion of his crooked dealings with them.

Innocent determined to play with the wretched count. Excommunicate as he was, the fact that his agents had been received at Rome and their complaints against Arnaut listened to at all may prove that the Pope and his advisers had already considered such a plan. Certainly Raymond’s repeated shuffling with the Church had been enough to wipe out any further claim to consideration for him. His abject fear was now to be used to put him into the power of Rome, so as to lessen his ability to resist the coming Crusade, should he determine to do so. As for renouncing the Crusade, whatever Raymond might do, that was probably not considered for a moment. After ten years of failure Rome was at last convinced that nothing could be done with heresy in Languedoc except by terrifying that country. Further, now that the crusading army was actually mobilizing, the Church could not call off the expedition even if she so desired.

Accordingly, the curia fell in with Raymond’s request for new legates. Without removing Arnaut Amalric, the Pope gave him two new colleagues—Milo, a notary of the Lateran, and Theodisius, a Genoese canon—who were to arrange the conditions of the Count’s reconciliation with the Church. Raymond was overjoyed, and there are indications that Arnaut Amalric and his colleague the bishop of Conserans were correspondingly depressed, or at least puzzled at the apparent success of the Toulousain ambassadors at Rome, with their fluent tongues and their showers of presents.

Innocent made haste to reassure his earlier legates. Milo was directed to obey Arnaut Amalric implicitly. The new appointments were a mere ruse. The Pope quoted Scripture in defence of the use of craft, and explained that, while seeming for a time to favour Raymond, the lesser defenders of heresy could be the more easily crushed by the Crusade. Raymond himself, should he make no move to support his vassals, was at first to be left alone. Then, when those who might have rallied round him had been disposed of, he could be easily dealt with in his turn—that is, “should he persist in his evil ways,” Innocent added for form’s sake. What had appeared as a diplomatic victory for Raymond was only a move to make his destruction more certain.

Through the spring and early summer of 1209 the pious comedy was played. Raymond again solemnly swore (he must have known the formulas by heart, he had sworn to them so often) to consider as heretics those designated as such by the clergy, and to turn them over to the Crusaders, together with their abettors and goods; to dismiss his bandit-mercenaries, and never hire such troops again; to remove such Jews as he had appointed to public offices; to restore the Church properties he had stolen; to police the roads; to abolish his excessive toll-rates, and keep the “Truce of God” on feast and fast days. All this was familiar ground. What was new was the oath taken by the “consuls” representing the municipalities of Avignon, Nimes and St. Gilles, no longer to recognize him as their overlord should he fail to satisfy the Church. More serious still was Raymond’s delivery of seven of his strongest castles into Milo’s custody, thus giving the Church party the whip hand in a military sense when the crusading army should arrive. Only when this had been done did Milo and Theodisius proceed with the ceremony of formal reconciliation.

On June 18, 1209, the humiliating ceremony of his public penance took place at St. Gilles, on its bluff over the Rhône delta. The town was the seat of Raymond’s remote ancestors, from which they had gradually extended their power through four centuries. Its great romanesque church had been built by his grandfather. A great throng filled the square before the church, crowding, no doubt, upon the broad flight of steps that rises to the façade with its wealth of sculpture and its three round-arched bays. Before the central door, the excommunicate Count swore upon relics of Christ, and of various saints, to obey the Pope and the legates in everything. Milo then put his stole about the penitent’s neck, and using it like a halter, drew him along, naked to the waist, and stooping forward so that he might the better be beaten with rods as he walked the whole length of the church. Before the high altar he was absolved. Then came a hitch in the proceedings. It had been planned that he should leave the church by the door through which he had come, but the crowd had packed the whole place so densely that their humiliated lord with his shoulders all bloody had to be gotten out by way of the crypt; past the tomb of de Castelnau which stood there—an unexpected change of plan which added still another touch of drama to the vivid scene.

Readers of English history will be reminded of the similar penance of Henry II for the murder of Becket. Two differences, however, should be noted. De Castelnau (unlike Thomas of Canterbury) was never canonized, and Raymond’s penance (unlike Henry’s) did not improve his political position in the least. Within six days, before his lacerated shoulders had ceased to smart, the crusading army marched south from its mobilization point at Lyons. Raymond was to learn that, like Ulysses in the Cyclops’ cave, he had obtained only the privilege of being eaten last.

Before closing the account of the preliminaries of the Crusade and taking up the Crusade itself, a word should be given to a short lived but significant movement which came about in consequence of the Papal mission. At the conference of Pamiers, a Spanish Waldensian leader, Durand of Huesca, was converted to orthodoxy. It seems that he and his immediate personal followers had, all along, considered Waldensianism as an instrument for re-invigorating the Church rather than for opposing her. Their strength seems to have been on both sides of the Eastern Pyrenees, although we hear of their founding a school at Milan. As the limits of what was and what was not heresy were rapidly becoming more defined, their middle position became untenable. They had finally been excommunicated and their school at Milan torn down by the archbishop there. Now Durand went to Rome and asked sanction of the Pope himself for the foundation of a community of “Poor Catholics” (so called in contrast to the “Poor men of Lyons” as the Waldensians called themselves). The members of the new community were to be bound by strict vows of abstinence, chastity, and especially of poverty. They were forbidden to possess anything more than bare necessities, and were to beg their bread from day to day. Their clothing was to be of the coarsest stuff, with shoes of a special design so that they might be distinguished from the Waldenses. The principal change from their former life was that they promised no longer to attack the clergy as the Waldensians did, but to preach against heresy instead. Innocent saw at once the value of the proposed community, and in December 1208, accepted Durand’s oath binding himself and his followers. Already, in 1209 there were communities of “Poor Catholics” in Aragon, Narbonne, Beziers, Uzès, Carcassonne, and Nimes. At this time, they must have quite overshadowed the little band of preachers, as yet loosely organized and bound by no rule, who had grouped themselves around St. Dominic. But unfortunately for the “Poor Catholics” they were permanently suspected as converted heretics. In those crusading days, it needed no prophet or son of a prophet to predict that such a body would survive with difficulty, if at all. That Innocent authorized it is proof of his desire to spread the peaceful propaganda of Catholicism by every possible means.

Meanwhile, events were moving swiftly. As has been said, the Church had not the slightest intention of giving up the Crusade because of Raymond’s submission. He had violated too many oaths. Besides, they probably could not have persuaded the Crusaders to disperse, at least without causing bitter disappointment, and very serious loss of prestige to the Church among her own champions. Not more than a week after Raymond’s humiliating penance at St. Gilles, the crusading army moved southward from Lyons.

FOOTNOTES:

[29] “Innocent III, La Croisade des Albigeois,” by Achille Luchaire. Published Hachette, Paris, 1911. Ch. ii, p. 47.

[30] Innocent III, “La Croisade des Albigeois,” Luchaire, p. 91.

[31] “Life of St. Dominic,” p. 40.