Early in 1212 the Abbot of Vaux-Cernay received in the bishopric of

Carcassonne the reward of his zeal in furthering the crusade, and Legate

Arnaud obtained the great archbishopric of Narbonne on the death or

degradation of the negligent Berenger. Not content with the

ecclesiastical dignity, Arnaud claimed to be likewise duke, giving rise

to a vigorous quarrel with de Montfort, who, notwithstanding his

devotion to the Church, had no intention of surrendering to it his

temporal possessions. Possibly it was the commencement of coolness

between them that induced Arnaud to favor the crusade preached at the

request of Alonso IX. of Castile, at that time threatened by a desperate

effort of the Moors, largely reinforced from Africa, to regain their

Spanish possessions. Much as de Montfort needed every man, the new

Archbishop of Narbonne marched into Spain at the head of a large force

of Crusaders to swell the army with which the kings of Aragon, Castile,

and Navarre advanced against the Saracen. It is characteristic of the

tenacity of the man that, when the French contingent grew weary of the

service and refused to advance after the capture of Calatrava, returning

ingloriously home, Arnaud remained with those whom he could persuade to

stay, and shared in the glory of Las Navas de Tolosa, where a cross in

the sky encouraged the Christians, and two hundred thousand Moors were

slain.[142]

The spring and summer of 1212 saw an almost unbroken series of successes

for de Montfort, until Raymond's territories were reduced to Montauban

and Toulouse, and the latter city, crowded with refugees from the

neighboring districts, was virtually beleaguered, as the Crusaders from

their surrounding strongholds made forays up to the very gates. De

Montfort desired the papal confirmation of his new acquisitions, and for

this application was made to Rome by the legates. Innocent seems to have

been aroused to a sense of the scandal created by the faithful carrying

out of his policy, for Raymond, though constantly claiming a trial, had

never been heard or convicted, and yet had been punished by the seizure

of nearly all his dominions. Innocent accordingly assumed a tone of

grave surprise. It is true, he said, that the count had been found

guilty of many offences against the Church, for which he had been

excommunicated and his lands exposed to the first comer; but the loss of

most of them had served as a punishment, and it must be remembered that,

although suspected of heresy and of the murder of the legate, he had

never been convicted, nor did the pope know why his commands to afford

him an opportunity of purging himself had never been carried out. In the

absence of a formal trial and conviction his lands could not be adjudged

to another. The proper forms must be observed, or the Church might be

deemed guilty of fraud in continuing to hold the castles made over to it

in pledge. Innocent evidently felt that his representatives, involved in

the passions and ambitions of the strife, had done what could not be

justified, and he wound up by ordering them to report to him the full

and simple truth. Another letter, in the same sense, to Master

Theodisius and the Bishop of Riez, cautioned them not to be remiss in

their duty, as they were said to have thus far been, which undoubtedly

refers to their withholding from Raymond the opportunity of

justification. At the same time, a prolonged correspondence on the

subject of the hearth-tax, and the acceptance of an opportune donation

of a thousand marks from de Montfort, place Innocent in an unfortunate

light as an upright and impartial judge.[143]

To this Theodisius and the Bishop of Riez replied with the transparent

falsehood that they had not been remiss, but had repeatedly summoned

Raymond to justify himself, and that Raymond had neglected to make

reparation to certain prelates and churches, which was quite likely,

seeing that de Montfort had been giving him ample occupation. They

proceeded, however, to make a bustling show of activity in compliance

with Innocent's present commands, and they called a council at Avignon

to give a colorable pretext for pushing Raymond to the wall. Avignon,

however, was fortunately unhealthy, so that many prelates refused to

attend, and Theodisius had a timely sickness, rendering a postponement

necessary. Another council was therefore summoned to convene at Lavaur,

a castle not far from Toulouse, in the hands of de Montfort, who, at the

request of Pedro of Aragon, graciously granted an eight days' suspension

of hostilities for the purpose.[144]

The matter, in fact, had assumed a shape which could no longer be

eluded. Pedro of Aragon, fresh from the triumph of Las Navas, was a

champion of the faith who was not to be treated with contempt, and he

had finally come forward as the protector of Raymond and of his own

vassals. As overlord he could not passively see the latter stripped of

their lands, and his interests in the whole region were too great for

him to view with indifference the establishment of so overmastering a

power as de Montfort was rapidly consolidating. The conquered fiefs

were being filled with Frenchmen; a parliament had just been held at

Pamiers to organize the institutions of the country on a French basis,

and everything looked to an overturning of the old order. It was full

time for him to act. He had already sent a mission to Innocent to

complain of the proceedings of the legates as arbitrary, unjust, and

subversive of the true interests of religion, and he came to Toulouse

for the avowed purpose of interceding for his ruined brother-in-law. By

assuming this position he was assuring the supremacy of the House of

Aragon over that of Toulouse, with which it had had so many fruitless

struggles in the past.[145]

Pedro's envoys drew from Innocent a command to de Montfort to give up

all lands seized from those who were not heretics, and instructions to

Arnaud not to interfere with the crusade against the Saracens by using

indulgences to prolong the war in the Toulousain. This action of

Innocent, coupled with the powerful intercession of Pedro, created a

profound impression, and all the ecclesiastical organization of

Languedoc was summoned to meet the crisis. When the council assembled at

Lavaur, in January, 1213, a petition was presented by King Pedro, humbly

asking mercy rather than justice for the despoiled nobles. He produced a

formal cession executed by Raymond and his son and confirmed by the city

of Toulouse, together with similar cessions made by the Counts of Foix

and Comminges and by Gaston of Béarn, of all their lands, rights, and

jurisdictions to him, to do with as he might see fit in compelling them

to obey the commands of the pope in case they should prove recalcitrant.

He asked restitution of the lands conquered from them, on their

rendering due satisfaction to the Church for all misdeeds; and if

Raymond could not be heard, the proposal was made that he should retire

in favor of his young son--the father serving with his knights against

the infidel in Spain or Palestine, and the youth being retained in

careful guardianship until he should show himself worthy the confidence

of the Church. All this, in fact, was virtually the same as the offers

already transmitted by Pedro to Innocent.[146]

No submission could be more complete; no guarantees more absolute could

be demanded. There was no pretence of shielding heretics, who could,

under such a settlement, be securely exterminated; but the prelates

assembled at Lavaur were under the domination of passions and ambitions

and hatreds, the memory of wrongs suffered and inflicted, and the dread

of reprisals, which rendered them deaf to everything that might

interfere with the predetermined purpose. The ruin of the house of

Toulouse was essential to their comfort--they might well believe even to

their personal safety--and it was pressed unswervingly. As legates,

Master Theodisius and the Bishop of Riez presided, while the assembled

prelates of the land were led by the intractable Arnaud of Narbonne. All

forms were duly observed. The legates, as judges, asked the opinion of

the prelates as assessors, whether Raymond should be admitted to

purgation. A written answer was returned in the negative, not only for

the reason previously alleged, that he was too notorious a perjurer to

be listened to, but also because of fresh offences committed during the

war, the slaying of Crusaders who were attacking him being seriously

included among his sins. As a further subterfuge it was agreed that the

excommunication under which he lay could only be removed by the pope.

Shielding themselves behind this answer, the legates notified Raymond

that they could proceed no further without special license from the

pope--a repetition of the eternal shifting of responsibility, like a

shuttlecock from one player in the game to another--and when Raymond

implored for mercy and begged an interview, he was coldly told that it

would be useless trouble and expense for both parties. There remained

the appeal of King Pedro to be disposed of, and this was treated with

the same disingenuous evasion. The prelates undertook to answer this

without the legates, so as to be able to say that Raymond's affairs were

out of their hands, as he had himself committed them to the legates;

and, besides, his excesses had rendered him unworthy of all mercy or

kindness. As for the other three nobles, their crimes were recited,

especially their self-defence against the Crusaders, and it was added

that if they would satisfy the Church and obtain absolution, their

complaints would be listened to; but no method was indicated by which

absolution could be obtained, and no notice was deigned to the

guarantees offered in Pedro's petition. Indeed, Arnaud of Narbonne, in

his capacity of legate, wrote to him in violent terms, threatening him

with excommunication for consorting with excommunicants and accused

heretics, and his request for a truce until Pentecost, or at least until

Easter, was refused on the ground that it would interfere with the

success of the crusade, which was still preached in France with a vigor

justifying doubts of the sincerity of Innocent's orders to the

contrary.[147]

The whole proceedings were so defiant a mockery of justice that there

was a very manifest alarm lest Innocent should repudiate them and yield

to the powerful intercession of King Pedro. Master Theodisius and

several bishops were despatched to Rome with the documents so as to

bring personal influence to bear. The prelates of the council addressed

him, adjuring him by the bowels of the mercy of God not to draw back

from the good work which he had commenced, but to lay his axe to the

root of the tree and cut it down forever. Raymond was painted in the

blackest colors. The effort he had made to obtain succor from the

Emperor Otho, and the assistance at one time rendered him by Savary de

Mauleon, lieutenant of King John in Aquitaine, were skilfully used to

excite odium, as both these monarchs were hostile to Rome; and he was

even accused of having implored help from the Emperor of Morocco, to the

subversion of Christianity itself. Fearing that this might be

insufficient, letters were showered on Innocent by bishops from every

part of the troubled region, assuring him that peace and prosperity had

followed on the footsteps of the Crusaders, that the land which had been

ravaged by heretics and bandits was restored to religion and safety,

that if but one more supreme effort were made and the city of Toulouse

were wiped out, with its villainous brood, wicked as the children of

Sodom and Gomorrah, the faithful could enjoy the Land of Promise; but

that if Raymond were allowed to raise his head, chaos would come again,

and it would be better for the Church to take refuge among the

barbarians. Yet in all this nothing was said to the pope of the

guarantees offered through King Pedro, who was obliged, in March, 1213,

to transmit to Rome copies of the cessions executed by the inculpated

nobles, duly authenticated by the Archbishop of Tarragona and his

suffragans.[148]

Master Theodisius and his colleagues found the task harder than they had

anticipated. Innocent had solemnly declared that Raymond should have the

opportunity of vindication, and that condemnation should only follow

trial. He was now required to eat his words, while the persistent

refusal to allow a trial must have shown him that the charges so

industriously made were destitute of proof. The struggle was hard for a

proud man, but he finally yielded to the pressure, though the delay of

the decision until May 21, 1213, shows what effort it cost. When the

decree came, however, its decisiveness proved that pride and consistency

had been overcome. Innocent's letters to his legates have not reached

us--perhaps a prudent reticence kept them out of the Regesta--but to

Pedro he wrote sternly, commanding him to abandon the protection of

heretics unless he was ready to be included in the objects of the new

crusade which was threatened if further resistance was attempted. The

orders which Pedro had obtained for the restoration of non-heretical

lands were withdrawn as granted through misrepresentation, and the lords

of Foix, Comminges, and Navarre were remitted to the discretion of

Arnaud of Narbonne. The city of Toulouse could obtain reconciliation by

banishment and confiscation inflicted on all whom Foulques, its fanatic

bishop, might point out, and no peace or truce or other engagement

entered into with heretics was to be observed. As to Raymond, the

complete silence preserved with respect to him was more significant than

could have been the severest animadversions. He was simply ignored, as

though no further account was to be taken of him.[149]

Meanwhile both parties had proceeded without waiting the event in Rome.

In France the crusade had been vigorously preached; Louis

Cœur-de-Lion, son of Philip Augustus, had taken the cross with many

barons, and great hopes were entertained of the overwhelming force which

would put an end to further resistance, when Philip's preparations for

the invasion of England caused him to intervene and stop the movement

which threatened seriously to interfere with his designs. On the other

hand, King Pedro entered into still closer alliance with Raymond and the

excommunicated nobles, and received an oath of fidelity from the

magistracy of Toulouse. When the papal mandate was received, he made a

pretence of obeying it, but continued, nevertheless, his preparations

for the war, among which the one which best illustrates the man and the

age was his procuring from Innocent the renewal of Urban's bull of 1095,

placing his kingdom under the special protection of the Holy See, with

the privilege that it should not be subjected to interdict except by the

pope himself. A _sirvente_ by an anonymous troubadour shows how

anxiously he was expected in Languedoc. He is reproached with his

delays, and urged to come to collect his revenues from the Carcassès

like a good king, and to suppress the insolence of the French, whom may

God confound.[150]

The rupture came with a formal declaration of war from Pedro, accepted

by de Montfort, though he had but few troops and the hoped-for

reinforcements from France were not forthcoming; indeed, a legate sent

by Innocent to preach the crusade for the Holy Land had turned in that

direction all the effort which Philip would permit to be made. Pedro had

left in Toulouse his representatives and had gone to his own dominions

to raise forces, with which he recrossed the Pyrenees and was received

enthusiastically by all those who had submitted to de Montfort. He

advanced to the castle of Muret, within ten miles of Toulouse, where de

Montfort had left a slender garrison, and was joined by the Counts of

Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges, their united forces amounting to a

considerable army, though far from the hundred thousand men represented

by the eulogists of de Montfort. Pedro had brought about a thousand

horsemen with him; the three counts, stripped of most of their

dominions, can scarce have furnished a larger force of cavaliers, and

the great mass of their array consisted of the militia of Toulouse, on

foot and untrained in arms.[151]

The siege of Muret commenced September 10, 1213. Word was immediately

carried to de Montfort, who lay about twenty-five miles distant at

Fanjeaux, with a small force, including seven bishops and three abbots

sent by Arnaud of Narbonne to treat with Pedro. Notwithstanding the

disparity of numbers, he did not hesitate a moment to advance and succor

his people. Sending back the Countess Alice, who was with him, to

Carcassonne, where she persuaded some retiring Crusaders to return to

his aid, he set forth at once, hastily collecting such troops as were

within reach. At Bolbonne, near Saverdun, where he halted to hear mass,

Maurin, the sacristan, afterwards Abbot of Pamiers, expressed wonder at

his risking with a mere handful of men an encounter with a warrior so

renowned as the King of Aragon. De Montfort in reply drew from his pouch

an intercepted letter to a lady in Toulouse, in which Pedro assured her

that he was coming out of love for her to drive the Frenchman from her

land, and when Maurin asked him what he meant by it, he exclaimed, "What

do I mean? God help me as much as I little fear him who comes for the

sake of a woman to undo the work of God!" It was the God-trusting Norman

against the chivalrous Catalan gallant, and he never doubted the result.

The next day de Montfort entered Muret, which was besieged only on one

side, the enemy interposing no obstacle, as they hoped to capture the

chief of the Crusaders. The bishops sought to negotiate with Pedro, but

no terms could be reached, and the following morning, Thursday,

September 13, the Crusaders, numbering perhaps a thousand cavaliers,

sallied forth for the attack. As they passed, the Bishop of Comminges

comforted them greatly by assuring them that on the Day of Judgment he

would be their witness, and that none who might be slain would have to

undergo the fires of purgatory for any sins which they had confessed or

might intend to confess after the battle. The holy men then gathered in

the church, praying fervently to God for the success of his warriors;

and here we get a traditional glimpse of Dominic, who is said to have

been one of the little band; indeed, we are gravely told by his

followers that the ensuing victory was due to the devotion of the

Rosary, which he invented and assiduously practised.

As de Montfort drew away in the opposite direction, the besiegers at

first thought that he was abandoning the town, and they were only

undeceived when he wheeled and they saw he had made a circuit to obtain

a level field for the attack. Count Raymond counselled awaiting the

onset behind the rampart of wagons and exhausting the Crusaders with

missiles, but the fiery Catalan rejected the advice as pusillanimous.

Then armor was donned in hot haste, and the horsemen rushed forth in a

confused mass, leaving the footmen to continue the labors of the siege.

Emulous rather of the fame of a good knight than of a general, Pedro was

immediately behind the vanguard, as two squadrons of the Crusaders came

on in solid order, and was readily found by two renowned French knights,

Alain de Roucy and Florent de Ville, who had concerted to set upon him.

He was speedily thrown from his horse and slain. The confusion into

which his followers were thrown was converted into a panic as de

Montfort, at the head of a third squadron, charged them in flank. They

turned and fled, followed by the Frenchmen, who slew them without mercy,

and then, returning from the pursuit, fell upon the camp where the

infantry had remained unconscious of the evil-fortune of the field. Here

the slaughter was tremendous, until the flying wretches succeeded in

crossing the Garonne, in which many were drowned. The loss of the

Crusaders was less than twenty, that of the allies from fifteen to

twenty thousand, and no one was hardy enough to doubt that the hand of

God was visible in a triumph so miraculous, especially as on the last

Sunday in August a great procession had been held in Rome with solemn

ceremonies, followed by a two days' fast, for the success of the

Catholic arms. Yet King Jayme tells us that his father's death, and the

consequent loss of the battle, arose from his prevailing vice. The

Albigensian nobles, to ingratiate themselves with him, had placed their

wives and daughters at his disposal, and he was so exhausted by his

excesses that on the morning of the battle he could not stand at the

celebration of the mass.[152]

With the few men at his command de Montfort was unable to follow up his

advantage, and the immediate effect of the miraculous victory was

scarcely perceptible. The citizens of Toulouse professed a desire for

reconciliation, but when their bishop, Foulques, demanded two hundred

hostages as security, they refused to give more than sixty, and when the

bishop assented to this, they withdrew the offer. De Montfort made a

foray into Foix, carrying desolation in his track, and showed himself

before Toulouse, but was soon put on the defensive. When he came

peaceably to the city of Narbonne, of which he claimed the overlordship,

he was refused entrance; the same thing happened to him at Montpellier,

and he was obliged to digest these affronts in silence. His condition,

indeed, was almost desperate in the winter of 1214, when affairs

suddenly took a different turn. The prohibition to preach the crusade in

France was removed, and news came that an army of one hundred thousand

fresh pilgrims might be expected after Easter. Besides this a new

legate, Cardinal Peter of Benevento, arrived with full powers from the

pope, and at Narbonne received the unqualified submission of the Counts

of Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges, of Aimeric, Viscount of Narbonne, and

of the city of Toulouse. All these agreed to expel heretics and to

comply explicitly with all demands of the Church, furnishing whatever

security might be demanded. Raymond, moreover, placed his dominions in

the hands of the legate, at whose command he engaged to absent himself,

either at the English court or elsewhere, until he could go to Rome; and

in effect, on his return to Toulouse he and his son lived as private

citizens with their wives, in the house of David de Roaix. Rome having

thus obtained everything that she had ever demanded, the legate absolved

all the penitents and reconciled them to the Church.

If the land expected peace with submission it was cruelly deceived. The

whole affair had been but another act in the comedy which Innocent and

his agents had so long played, another juggle with the despair of whole

populations. The legate had merely desired to tide de Montfort over the

time during which in his weakness he might have been overwhelmed, and to

amuse the threatened provinces until the arrival of the fresh swarm of

pilgrims. The trick was perfectly successful, and the monkish chronicler

is delighted with the pious fraud so astutely conceived and so

dexterously managed. His admiring ejaculation, "O pious fraud of the

legate! O fraudulent piety!" is the key which unlocks to us the secrets

of Italian diplomacy with the Albigenses.[153]

In spite of King Philip's war with John of England and the Emperor Otho,

the expected hordes of Crusaders, eager to win pardon so easily, poured

down upon the unhappy southern provinces. Their initial exploit was the

capture of Maurillac, notable to us as conveying the first distinct

reference to the Waldenses in the history of the war. Of these

sectaries, seven were found among the captives; they boldly affirmed

their faith before the legate, and were burned, as we are told, with

immense rejoicings by the soldiers of Christ. With his wonted ability de

Montfort made use of his reinforcements to extend his authority over the

Agenois, Quercy, Limousin, Rouergue, and Périgord. Resistance being now

at an end, the legate, in January, 1215, assembled a council of prelates

at Montpellier. The jealous citizens would not allow de Montfort to

enter the town, though he directed the deliberations from the house of

the Templars beyond the walls; and once, when he had been secretly

introduced to attend a session, the people discovered it, and would have

set upon him, had he not been conveyed away through back streets. The

council fulfilled its functions by deposing Raymond and electing de

Montfort as lord over the whole land; and, as the confirmation of

Innocent was required, an embassy was sent to Rome, which obtained his

assent. He declared that Raymond, who had never yet had the trial so

often demanded, was deposed on account of heresy; his wife was to have

her dower, and one hundred and fifty marks were assigned to her, secured

by the Castle of Beaucaire. The final disposition of the territory was

postponed for the decision of the general council of Lateran, called for

the ensuing November; and meanwhile it was confided to the custody of de

Montfort, whom the bishops were exhorted to assist and the inhabitants

to obey, while from its revenues some provision was contemptuously

ordered to be made for the support of Raymond. Bishop Foulques returned

to his city of Toulouse, of which he was virtually master, under the

legate who continued to hold it and Narbonne, to keep them out of the

hands of Louis Cœur-de-Lion, who was shortly expected in fulfilment

of his Crusader's vow, taken three years previously; and the "faidits,"

as the dispossessed knights and gentlemen were called, were graciously

permitted to seek a livelihood throughout the country, provided they

never entered castles or walled towns, and travelled on ponies, with but

one spur, and without arms.[154]

The battle of Bouvines had released France from the dangers which had

been so threatening, and the heir-apparent could be spared for the

performance of his vow. Louis came with a noble and gallant company, who

earned the pardon of their sins by a peaceful pilgrimage of forty days.

The fears which had been felt as to his intentions proved groundless. He

showed no disposition to demand for the crown the acquisitions made by

previous crusades, and advantage was taken of his presence to obtain

temporary investiture for de Montfort, and to order the dismantling of

the two chief centres of discontent--Toulouse and Narbonne. De

Montfort's brother Gui took possession of the former city, and saw to

the levelling of its walls. As for Narbonne, Archbishop Arnaud, mindful

rather of his pretensions as duke than of the interests of religion,

vainly protested against its being rendered defenceless. In making over

Raymond's territories to de Montfort, however, Innocent had excepted the

county of Melgueil, over which the Church had a sort of claim, and this

he sold to the Bishop of Maguelonne, costing the latter, including

gratifications to the creatures of the papal camera, no less a sum than

thirty-three thousand marks. The transaction held good, in spite of the

claims of the crown as the eventual heir of the Count of Toulouse, and,

until the Revolution, the Bishops of Maguelonne or Montpellier had the

satisfaction of styling themselves Counts of Melgueil. It was but a

small share of the gigantic plunder, and Innocent would have best

consulted his dignity by abstention.[155]

Meanwhile the two Raymonds had withdrawn--possibly to the English court,

where King John is said to have given them ten thousand marks in return

for the rendering of a worthless homage, to which is perhaps

attributable the permission given by Philip Augustus to his son to

perform the crusade and grant investiture to de Montfort of the lands

thus transferred to English sovereignty.[156] Foreign humiliations and

domestic revolt, however, rendered John useless as an ally or a

suzerain, and Raymond awaited, with what patience he might, the

assembling of the great council to which the final decision of his fate

had been referred. Here, at least, he would have a last chance of being

heard, and of appealing for the justice so long and so steadily denied

him.

In April, 1213, had gone forth the call for the Parliament of

Christendom, the Twelfth General Council, where the assembled wisdom and

piety of the Church were to deliberate on the recovery of the Holy Land,

the reformation of the Church, the correction of excesses, the

rehabilitation of morals, the extirpation of heresy, the strengthening

of faith, and the quieting of discord. All these were specified as the

objects of the convocation, and two years and a half had been allowed

for preparation. By the appointed day, November 1, 1215, the prelates

had gathered together, and Innocent's pardonable ambition was gratified

in opening and presiding over the most august assemblage that Latin

Christianity had ever seen. The Frankish occupation of Constantinople

gave opportunity for the reunion, nominal at least, of the Eastern and

the Western churches, and Patriarchs of Constantinople and Jerusalem

were there in humble obedience to St. Peter. All that was foremost in

Church and State had come, in person or by representative. Every monarch

had his ambassador there, to see that his interests suffered no

detriment from a body which, acting under the direct inspiration of the

Holy Ghost, and under the principle that temporal concerns were wholly

subordinate to spiritual, might have little respect for the rights of

sovereigns. The most learned theologians and doctors were at hand to

give counsel as to points of faith and intricate questions of canon law.

The princes of the Church were present in numbers wholly unprecedented.

Besides patriarchs, there were seventy-one primates and metropolitans,

four hundred and twelve bishops, more than eight hundred abbots and

priors, and the countless delegates of those prelates who were unable

to attend in person.[157] Two centuries were to pass away before Europe

was again to show its collective strength in a body such as now crowded

the ample dimensions of the Basilica of Constantine; and it is a weighty

illustration of the service which the Church has rendered in

counteracting the centrifugal tendencies of the nations, that such a

federative council of Christendom, attainable in no other way, was

brought together at the summons of the Roman pontiff. Without some such

cohesive power modern civilization would have worn a very different

aspect.

The Counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges had reached Rome in advance,

where they were joined by the younger Raymond, coming through France

from England disguised as the servitor of a merchant, to escape the

emissaries of de Montfort. In repeated interviews with Innocent they

pleaded their cause, and produced no little impression on him. Arnaud of

Narbonne, embittered by his quarrel with de Montfort, is said to have

aided them, but the other prelates, to whom it was almost a question of

life or death, were so violent in their denunciations of Raymond, and

drew so fearful a picture of the destruction impending over religion,

that Innocent, after a short period of irresolution, was deterred from

action. De Montfort had sent his brother Gui to represent him, and when

the council met both parties pressed their claims before it. Its

decision was prompt, and, as might be expected, was in favor of the

champion of the Church. The verdict, as promulgated by Innocent,

December 15, 1215, recited the labors of the Church to free the province

of Narbonne from heresy, and the peace and tranquillity with which its

success had been crowned. It assumed that Raymond had been found guilty

of heresy and spoliation, and therefore deprived him of the dominion

which he had abused, and sentenced him to dwell elsewhere in penance for

his sins, promising him four hundred marks a year so long as he proved

obedient. His wife was to retain the lands of her dower, or to receive a

competent equivalent for them. All the territories won by the Crusaders,

together with Toulouse, the centre of heresy, and Montauban, were

granted to de Montfort, who was extolled as the chief instrument in the

triumph of the faith. The other possessions of Raymond, not as yet

conquered, were to be held by the Church for the benefit of the younger

Raymond, to be delivered to him when he should reach the proper age, in

whole or in part, as might be found expedient, provided he should

manifest himself worthy. So far as Count Raymond was concerned, the

verdict was final; thereafter the Church always spoke of him as "the

former count," "_quondam comes_." Subsequent decisions as to Foix and

Comminges at least arrested the arms of de Montfort in that direction,

although they proved far less favorable to the native nobles than they

appeared on the surface.[158]

The highest tribunal of the Church Universal had spoken, and in no

uncertain tone; and we may see a significant illustration of the

forfeiture of its hold on popular veneration in the fact that this, in

place of meeting with acquiescence, was the signal of revolt. Apparently

the decision had been awaited in the confidence that it would repair the

long course of wrong and injustice perpetrated in the name of religion;

and, with the frustration of that hope, there was no hesitation in

resorting to resistance, with the national spirit inflamed to the

highest pitch of enthusiasm. If de Montfort thought that his conquests

were secured by the voice of the Lateran fathers, and by King Philip's

reception of the homage which he lost no time in rendering, he only

showed how little he had learned of the temper of the race with which he

had to deal. Yet in France he was naturally the hero of the hour, and

the journey on his way to tender allegiance was a triumphal progress.

Crowds flocked to see the champion of the Church; the clergy marched

forth in solemn procession to welcome him to every town, and those

thought themselves happy who could touch the hem of his garment.[159]

The younger Raymond, at this time a youth of eighteen, hardened by years

of adversity, was winning in manner, and is said to have made a most

favorable impression on Innocent, who dismissed him with a benediction

and good advice; not to take what belonged to another, but to defend his

own--"res de l'autrui non pregas; lo teu, se degun lo te vol hostar,

deffendas"--and he made haste to follow the counsel, according to his

own interpretation. The part of his inheritance which had been reserved

for him under custody of the Church lay to the east of the Rhone, and

thither, on their return from Italy, early in 1216, father and son took

their way, to find a basis of operations. The outlook was encouraging,

and after a short stay the elder Raymond proceeded to Spain to raise

what troops he could. Marseilles, Avignon, Tarascon--the whole country,

in fact--rose as one man to welcome their lord, and demanded to be led

against the Frenchmen, reckless of the fulminations of the Church, and

placing life and property at his disposal. The part which the cities and

the people play in the conflict becomes henceforth even more noticeable

than heretofore--the semi-republican communes fighting for life against

the rigid feudalism of the North. How subordinated was the religious

question, and how confused were religious notions, is manifested by the

fact that, while thus warring against the Church, at the siege of the

castle of Beaucaire, when entrenchments were necessary against the

relieving army of de Montfort, Raymond's chaplain offered salvation to

any one who would labor on the ramparts, and the townsfolk set eagerly

to work to obtain the promised pardons. The people apparently reasoned

little as to the source from whence indulgences came, nor the object for

which they were granted.[160]

De Montfort met this unexpected turn of fortune with his wonted

activity, but his hour of prosperity was past, and one might almost say,

with the Church historians, that he was weighed down by the

excommunication launched at him by the implacable Arnaud of Narbonne,

whom he had treated harshly in their quarrel over the dukedom--an

excommunication which he wholly disregarded, not even intermitting his

attendance at mass, though he had looked upon the censures of the Church

with such veneration when they were directed against his antagonists.

Obliged, after hard fighting, to leave Beaucaire to its fate, he marched

in angry mood to Toulouse, which was preparing to recall its old lord.

He set fire to the town in several places, but the citizens barricaded

the streets, and resisted his troops step by step, till accommodation

was made, and he agreed to spare the city for the immense sum of thirty

thousand marks; but he destroyed what was left of the fortifications,

filled up the ditches, rendered the place as defenceless as possible,

and disarmed the inhabitants. Despite his excommunication, he still had

the earnest support of the Church. Innocent died July 20, 1216, but his

successor, Honorius III., inherited his policy, and a new legate,

Cardinal Bertrand of St. John, and St. Paul, was, if possible, more

bitter than his predecessors in the determination to suppress the revolt

against Rome. The preaching of the crusade had been resumed, and in the

beginning of 1217, with fresh reinforcements of Crusaders and a small

contingent furnished by Philip Augustus, de Montfort crossed the Rhone,

and made rapid progress in subduing the territories left to young

Raymond.

He was suddenly recalled by the news that Toulouse was in rebellion;

that Raymond VI. had been received there with rejoicings, bringing with

him auxiliaries from Spain; that Foix and Comminges, and all the nobles

of the land, had flocked thither to welcome their lord, and that the

Countess of Montfort was in peril in the Château Narbonnais, the citadel

outside of the town, which he had left to bridle the citizens.

Abandoning his conquests, he hastened back. In September, 1217,

commenced the second siege of the heroic city, in which the burghers

displayed unflinching resolve to preserve themselves from the yoke of

the stranger--or perhaps, rather, the courage of desperation, if the

account is to be believed that the cardinal-legate ordered the Crusaders

to slay all the inhabitants, without distinction of age or sex. In spite

of the defenceless condition of the town, which men and women unitedly

worked night and day to repair; in spite of the threatening and

beseeching letters which Honorius wrote to the Kings of Aragon and

France, to the younger Raymond, the Count of Foix, the citizens of

Toulouse, Avignon, Marseilles, and all whom he thought to deter or

excite; in spite of heavy reinforcements brought by a vigorous renewal

of preaching the crusade, for nine weary months the siege dragged on, in

furious assaults and yet more furious sallies, with intervals of

suspended operations as the crusading army swelled or decreased. De

Montfort's brother Gui and his eldest son Amauri were seriously wounded.

The baffled chieftain's troubles were rendered sorer by the legate, who

taunted him with his ill-success, and accused him of ignorance or

slackness in his work. Sick at heart, and praying for death as a

welcome release, on the morrow of St. John's day, 1218, he was

superintending the reconstruction of his machines, after repelling a

sally, when a stone from a mangonel, worked, as Toulousain tradition

says, by women, went straight to the right spot--"E venc tot dret la

peira lai on era mestiers"--it crushed in his helmet, and he never more

spoke word. Great was the sorrow of the faithful through all the lands

of Europe when the tidings spread that the glorious champion of Christ,

the new Maccabee, the bulwark of the faith, had fallen as a martyr in

the cause of religion. He was buried at Haute-Bruyère, a cell of the

Monastery of Dol, and the miracles worked at his tomb showed how

acceptable to God had been his life and death, though there were not

wanting those who drew the moral that his sudden downfall, just as his

success seemed to be firmly established, was the punishment of

neglecting the persecution of heresy in his eagerness to gratify his

ambition.[161]

If proof were lacking of de Montfort's pre-eminent capacity it would be

furnished by the rapid undoing of all that he had accomplished, in the

hands of his son and successor Amauri. Even during the siege his

prestige was yet such that, December 18, 1217, the powerful Jourdain de

l'Isle-Jourdain made submission to him as Duke of Narbonne and Count of

Toulouse and furnished as securities Géraud, Count of Armagnac and

Fézenzac, Roger, Viscount of Fézenzaquet, and other nobles; and in

February, 1218, the citizens of Narbonne abandoned their rebellious

attitude. His death was regarded as the signal of liberation, and

wherever the French garrisons were not too strong, the people arose,

massacred the invaders, and gave themselves back to their ancient lords.

Vainly did Honorius recognize Amauri as the successor to his father's

lordships, put the two Raymonds to the ban, and grant Philip Augustus a

twentieth of ecclesiastical revenues as an incentive to another

crusade, while plenary indulgence was offered to all who would serve.

Vainly did Louis Cœur-de-Lion, with his father's sanction, and

accompanied by the Cardinal-Legate Bertrand, lead a gallant army of

pilgrims which numbered in its ranks no less than thirty-three counts

and twenty bishops. They penetrated, indeed, to Toulouse, but the third

siege of the unyielding city was no more successful than its

predecessors, and Louis was obliged to withdraw ingloriously, having

accomplished nothing but the massacre of Marmande, where five thousand

souls were put to the sword, without distinction of age or sex. Indeed,

the pitiless cruelty and brutal licentiousness habitual among the

Crusaders, who spared no man in their wrath, and no woman in their lust,

aided no little in inflaming the resistance to foreign domination. One

by one the strongholds still held by the French were wrested from their

grasp, and but very few of the invaders founded families who kept their

place among the gentry of the land. In 1220 a new legate, Conrad, tried

the experiment of founding a military order under the name of the

Knights of the Faith of Jesus Christ, but it proved useless. Equally

vain was the papal sentence of excommunication and exheredation

fulminated in 1221; and when, in the same year, Louis undertook a new

crusade and received from Honorius a twentieth of the Church revenues to

defray the expenses, he turned the army thus raised against the English

possessions and captured La Rochelle, in spite of the protests of king

and pope.[162]

Early in 1222, Amauri, reduced to desperation, offered to Philip

Augustus all his possessions and claims, urging Honorius to support the

proposal. The pope welcomed it as the only feasible mode of

accomplishing the result for which years of effort had been fruitlessly

spent, and he wrote to the king, May 14, representing that in this way

alone could the Church be saved. The heretics who had hid themselves in

caverns and mountain fastnesses where French domination prevailed, came

forth again as soon as the invaders were driven out, and their unceasing

missionary efforts were aided by the common detestation in which the

foreigner was held by all. The Church had made itself the national

enemy, and we can easily believe the description which Honorius gives of

the lamentable condition of orthodoxy in Languedoc. Heresy was openly

practised and taught; the heretic bishops set themselves up defiantly

against the Catholic prelates, and there was danger that the pestilence

would spread throughout the land. In spite of all this, however, and of

an offer of a twentieth of the church revenues and unlimited indulgences

for a crusade, Philip turned a deaf ear to the entreaty; and when

Amauri's offer was transferred to Thibaut of Champagne, and the latter

applied to the king for encouragement, he was coldly told that if, after

due consideration, he resolved on the undertaking, the king wished him

all success, but could render him no aid nor release him from his

obligations of service in view of the threatening relations with

England. Possibly encouraged by this, the younger Raymond in June

appealed to Philip as his lord, and, if he dared so to call him, as his

kinsman, imploring his pity, and begging in the humblest terms his

intervention to procure his reconciliation to the Church, and thus

remove the incapacity of inheritance to which he was subjected.[163]

This must have been suggested by the expectation of the death of Raymond

VI., which occurred shortly after, in August, 1222. It made no change in

the political or religious situation, but is not without interest in

view of the charge of heresy so persistently made and used as an excuse

for his destruction. In 1218 he had executed his will, in which he left

pious legacies to the Templars and Hospitallers of Toulouse, declared

his intention of entering the latter order, and desired to be buried

with them. On the morning of his sudden death he had twice visited for

prayer the church of la Daurade, but his agony was short and he was

speechless when the Abbot of St. Sernin, who had been hurriedly sent

for, reached his bedside, to administer to him the consolations of

religion. A Hospitaller who was present cast over him his cloak with the

cross, to secure the burial of the body for his house; but a zealous

parishioner of St. Sernin pulled it off, and a disgraceful squabble

arose over the dying man, for the abbot claimed the sepulture, as the

death chanced to take place in his parish, and he summoned the people

not to allow the corpse to be removed beyond its precincts. This ghastly

struggle over the remains has its ludicrous aspect, from the fact that

the Church would never permit the inhumation of its enemy, and the body

remained unburied in spite of the reiterated pious efforts of Raymond

VII., after his reconciliation, to secure the repose of his father's

soul. It was in vain that the inquest ordered by Innocent IV., in 1247,

gathered evidence from a hundred and twenty witnesses to prove that

Raymond VI. had been the most pious and charitable of men and most

obedient to the Church. His remains lay for a century and a half the

sport of rats in the house of the Hospitallers, and when they

disappeared piece-meal, the skull was still kept as an object of

curiosity, at least until the end of the seventeenth century.[164]

After his father's death Raymond VII. pursued his advantage, and in

December Amauri was reduced to offering again his claims to Philip

Augustus, only to be exposed to another refusal. In May, 1223, there

seem to have been hopes that Philip would undertake a crusade, and the

Legate Conrad of Porto, with the bishops of Nîmes, Agde, and Lodève

wrote to him urgently from Béziers describing the deplorable state of

the land in which the cities and castles were daily opening their gates

to the heretics and inviting them to take possession. Negotiations with

Raymond followed, and matters went so far that we find Honorius writing

to his legate to look after the interest of the Bishop of Viviers in the

expected settlement. There was fresh urgency felt for the pacification

in the absence of any hope of assistance from the king, since the

progress of the Catharan heresy was ever more alarming. Additional

energy had been infused into it by the activity of its Bulgarian

antipope. Heretics from Languedoc were resorting to him in increasing

numbers and returning with freshened zeal; and his representative,

Bartholomew, Bishop of Carcassonne, who styled himself, in imitation of

the popes, Servant of the servants of the Holy Faith, was making

successful efforts to spread the belief. Truces between Amauri and

Raymond were therefore made and conferences held, and finally the legate

called a council to assemble at Sens, July 6, 1223, where a final

pacification was expected. It was transferred to Paris, because Philip

Augustus desired to be present, and its importance in his eyes must have

been great, since he set out on his journey thither in spite of a raging

fever, to which he succumbed on the road, at Meudon, July 14. Raymond's

well-grounded hopes were shattered on the eve of realization, for

Philip's death rendered the council useless and changed in a moment the

whole face of affairs.[165]

Though Philip showed his practical sympathy with de Montfort by leaving

him a legacy of thirty thousand livres to assist him in his Albigensian

troubles, his prudence had avoided all entanglements, and he had

steadily rejected the proffer of the de Montfort claims. Yet his

sagacity led him to prophesy truly that after his death the clergy would

use every effort to involve Louis, whose feeble health would prove

unequal to the strain, and the kingdom would be left in the hands of a

woman and a child. It was probably the desire to avert this by a

settlement which led him to make the fatal effort to attend the council,

and his prediction did not long await its fulfilment. Louis, on the very

day of his coronation, promised the legate that he would undertake the

matter; Honorius urged it with vehemence, and in February, 1224, Louis

accepted a conditional cession from Amauri of all his rights over

Languedoc. Raymond thus found himself confronted by the King of France

as his adversary.[166]

The situation was full of new and unexpected peril. But a month before,

Amauri, in utter penury, had been obliged to surrender what few

strongholds he yet retained, and had quitted forever the land which he

and his father had cursed, a portion of Philip's legacy being used to

extricate his garrisons. The triumph, so long hoped for and won by so

many years of persistent struggle, was a Dead-Sea apple, full of ashes

and bitterness. The discomfited adversary was now replaced by one who

was rash and enterprising, who wielded all the power gained by Philip's

long and fortunate reign, and whose pride was enlisted in avenging the

check which he had received five years before under the walls of

Toulouse. Already in February he wrote to the citizens of Narbonne,

praising their loyalty and promising to lead a crusade three weeks after

Easter, which should restore to the crown all the lands forfeited by the

house of Toulouse. Zealous as he was, however, he felt that the

eagerness of the Church warranted him in driving the best bargain he

could for his services to the faith, and he demanded as conditions of

taking up arms that peace abroad and at home should be assured to him,

that a crusade should be preached with the same indulgences as for the

Holy Land, that all his vassals not joining in it should be

excommunicated, that the Archbishop of Bourges should be legate in place

of the Cardinal of Porto, that all the lands of Raymond, of his allies,

and of all who resisted the crusade should be his prize, that he should

have a subsidy of sixty thousand livres parisis a year from the Church,

and that he should be free to return as soon or remain as long as he

might see fit.[167]

Louis asserted that these conditions were accepted, and went on with his

preparations, while Raymond made desperate efforts to conjure the coming

storm. Henry III. of England used his good offices with Honorius, and

Raymond was encouraged to make offers of obedience through envoys to

Rome, whose liberalities among the officials of the curia are said to

have produced a most favorable impression. Honorius replied in a most

gracious letter, promising to send Romano, Cardinal of Sant' Angelo, as

legate to arrange a settlement, and he followed this by informing Louis

that the offers of Frederic II. to recover the Holy Land were so

favorable that everything else must be postponed to that great object,

and all indulgences must be used solely for that purpose; but that if he

will continue to threaten Raymond, that prince will be forced to submit.

Instructions were at the same time sent to Arnaud of Narbonne to act

with other prelates in leading Raymond to offer acceptable terms. Louis,

justly indignant at being thus played with, made public protestation

that he washed his hands of the whole business, and told the pope the

curia might come to what terms it pleased with Raymond, that he had

nothing to do with points of faith, but that his rights must be

respected and no new tributes be imposed. At a parliament held in Paris,

May 5, 1224, the legate withdrew the indulgences granted against the

Albigenses and approved of Raymond as a good Catholic, while Louis made

a statement of the whole transaction in terms which showed how

completely he felt himself to be duped. He turned his military

preparations to account, however, by wrenching from Henry III. a

considerable portion of the remaining English possessions in

France.[168]

The storm seemed to be successfully conjured. Nothing remained but to

settle the terms, and Raymond's escape had been too narrow for him to

raise difficulties on this score. At Pentecost (June 2) with his chief

vassals, he met Arnaud and the bishops at Montpellier, where he agreed

to observe and maintain the Catholic faith throughout his dominions, and

expel all heretics pointed out by the Church, confiscate their property

and punish their bodies, to maintain peace and dismiss the bandit

mercenaries, to restore all rights and privileges to the churches, to

pay twenty thousand marks for reparation of ecclesiastical losses and

for Amauri's compensation, on condition that the pope would cause Amauri

to renounce his claims and deliver up all documents attesting them. If

this would not suffice, he would submit himself entirely to the Church,

saving his allegiance to the king. His signature to this was accompanied

by those of the Count of Foix and the Viscount of Béziers. As an

evidence of good faith he reinstated his father's old enemy, Theodisius,

in the bishopric of Agde, which the quondam legate had obtained and from

which he had been driven, and in addition he restored various other

church properties. These conditions were transmitted to Rome for

approbation with notice that a council would be held August 20 for their

ratification, and Honorius returned an equivocal answer which might be

construed as accepting them. On the appointed day the council met at

Montpellier. Amauri sent a protest begging the bishops desperately not

to throw away the fruits of victory within their grasp. The King of

France, he said, was on the point of making the cause his own, and to

abandon it now would be a scandal and a humiliation to the Church

Universal. Notwithstanding this, the bishops received the oaths of

Raymond and his vassals to the conditions previously agreed, with the

addition that the decision of the pope should be followed as to the

composition with Amauri, and that any further commands of the Church

should be obeyed, saving the supremacy of the king and the emperor, for

all of which satisfactory security was offered.[169]

What more the Church could ask it is hard to see. Raymond had triumphed

over it and all the Crusaders whom it could muster, and yet he offered

submission as complete as could reasonably have been exacted of his

father in the hour of his deepest abasement. At this very time,

moreover, a public disputation held at Castel-Sarrasin between some

Catholic priests and Catharan ministers shows the growing confidence of

heresy and the necessity of an accommodation if its progress was to be

checked. Not less significant was a Catharan council held not long after

at Pieussan, where, with the consent of Guillabert of Castres, heretic

bishop of Toulouse, the new episcopate of Rasez was carved out of his

see and that of Carcassès. Yet the vicissitudes and surprises in this

business were not yet exhausted. In October, when Raymond's envoys

reached Rome to obtain the papal confirmation of the settlement, they

were opposed by Gui de Montfort, sent by Louis to prevent it. There were

not wanting Languedocian bishops who feared that with peace they would

be forced to restore possessions usurped during the troubles, and who

consequently busied themselves with proving that Raymond was at heart a

heretic. Honorius shuffled with the negotiation until the commencement

of 1225, when he sent Cardinal Romano again to France with full powers

as legate, and with instructions to threaten Raymond and to bring about

a truce between France and England so as to free Louis's hands. He wrote

to Louis in the same sense, while to Amauri he sent money and words of

encouragement. His description of Languedoc, as a land of iron and

brass of which the rust could only be removed by fire, shows the side

which he had finally determined to take.[170]

After several conferences with Louis and the leading bishops and nobles,

the legate convened a national council at Bourges in November, 1225, for

the final settlement of the question. Raymond appeared before it, humbly

seeking absolution and reconciliation; he offered his purgation and

whatever amends might be required by the churches, promising to render

his lands peaceful and secure and obedient to Rome. As for heresy, he

not only engaged to suppress it, but urged the legate to visit every

city in his dominions and make inquisition into the faith of the people,

pledging himself to punish rigorously all delinquents and to coerce any

town offering opposition. For himself, he was ready to render full

satisfaction for any derelictions, and to undergo an examination as to

his faith. On the other hand, Amauri exhibited the decrees of Innocent

condemning Raymond VI. and bestowing his lands on Simon, and Philip's

recognition of the latter. There was much wrangling in the council until

the legate ordered each archbishop to deliberate separately with his

suffragans and deliver to him the result in writing, to be submitted to

the king and pope, under the seal of secrecy, enforced by

excommunication.[171]

There is an episode in the proceedings of this council worth attention

as an illustration of the relations between Rome and the local churches

and the character of the establishment to which the heretics were

invited to return with the gentle inducements of the stake and gibbet.

After the ostensible business of the assemblage was over, the legate

craftily gave to the delegates of the chapters permission to depart,

while retaining the bishops. The delegates thus dismissed were keen to

scent some mischief in the wind; they consulted together and sent to the

legate a committee from all the metropolitan chapters to say that they

understood him to have special letters from the Roman curia demanding

for the pope in perpetuity the fruits of two prebends in every episcopal

and abbatial chapter and one in every conventual church. They adjured

him, for the sake of God, not to cause so great a scandal, assuring him

that the king and the barons would be ready to resist at the peril of

life and dignity, and that it would cause a general subversion of the

Church. Under this pressure the legate exhibited the letters and argued

that the grant would relieve the Roman Church of the scandal of

concupiscence, as it would put an end to the necessity of demanding and

receiving presents. On this the delegate from Lyons quietly observed

that they did not wish to be without friends in the Roman court, and

were perfectly willing to bribe them; others represented that the

fountain of cupidity never would run dry, and that the added wealth

would only render the Romans more madly eager, leading to mutual

quarrels which would end in the destruction of the city; others, again,

pointed out that the revenues thus accruing to the curia, computed to be

greater than those of the crown, would render its members so rich that

justice would be more costly than ever; moreover, it was evident that

the host of officials in each church, whom the pope would be entitled to

appoint to look after the collections, would not only lead to infinite

additional exactions, but would be used to control the elections of the

chapters, and end by bringing them all under subjection to Rome. They

wound up by assuring him that it was for the interest of Rome itself to

abandon the project, for if oppression thus became universal it would be

followed by universal revolt. The legate, unable to face the storm,

agreed to suppress the letters, saying that he disapproved of them, but

had had no opportunity of remonstrance, as they had only reached him

after his arrival in France. An equally audacious proposition, by which

the curia hoped to obtain control over all the abbeys in the kingdom,

was frustrated by the active opposition of the archbishops. Heresy might

well hold itself justifiable in keeping aloof from such a Church as

this.[172]

What were really the conclusions reached in the Albigensian matter by

the archiepiscopal caucuses no one might reveal, but with pope and king

resolved on intervention there could be little doubt as to the practical

result. Moreover, the stars in their courses had fought against Raymond,

for in this critical juncture death had carried off Archbishop Arnaud of

Narbonne, who had become his vigorous friend, and who was succeeded by

Pierre Amiel, his bitter enemy. There could be no effective resistance

to royal and papal wishes; it was announced that no peace honorable to

the Church could be reached with Raymond, and that a tithe of

ecclesiastical revenues for five years was offered to Louis if he would

undertake the holy war. Reckless as was Louis, however, and eager to

clutch at the tempting prize, he shrank from the encounter with the

obstinate patriotism of the South while involved in hostilities with

England. He demanded therefore that Honorius should prohibit Henry III.

from disturbing the French territories during the crusade. When Henry

received the papal letters he was eagerly preparing an expedition to

relieve his brother, Richard of Cornwall, but his counsellors urged him

not to prevent Louis from entangling himself in so difficult and costly

an enterprise, and one of them, William Pierrepont, a skilled

astrologer, confidently predicted that Louis would either lose his life

or be overwhelmed with misfortune. In the nick of time, news arrived

from Richard giving good accounts of his success; Henry's anxieties were

calmed, and he gave the required assurances, in spite of an alliance

into which he had shortly before entered with Raymond. As a further

precaution to insure the success of the crusade, all private wars were

forbidden during its continuance.[173]

The question of religion had practically disappeared by this time,

except as an excuse for indulgences and ecclesiastical subsidies and as

a cloak for dynastic expansion. If Raymond had not yet actively

persecuted his heretic subjects it was merely because of the impolicy,

under constant threats of foreign aggression, of alienating so large a

portion of the population on which he relied for support. He had shown

himself quite ready to do so in exchange for reconciliation to the

Church, and he had urged the legate to establish an organized

inquisition throughout his dominions. Amid all the troubles the

Dominicans had been allowed to grow and establish themselves in his

territories; and when their rivals in persecution, the Franciscans, had

come to Toulouse, he had welcomed them and assisted them in taking root.

In this very year, 1225, St. Antony of Padua, who stands next to St.

Francis in the veneration of the order, came to France to preach against

heresy, and in the Toulousain his eloquence excited such a storm of

persecution as to earn for him the honorable title of the Tireless

Hammer of Heretics. The coming struggle thus, even more than its

predecessors, was to be a war of races, with the whole power of the

North, led by the king and the Church, against the exhausted provinces

which clung to Raymond as their suzerain. We cannot wonder that he was

willing to submit to any terms to avert it, for he was left to breast

the tempest alone. His greatest vassal, the Count of Foix, it is true,

stood by him, but the next in importance, the Count of Comminges, made

his peace, and is found acting for the king; the Count of Provence

entered into the alliance against him, while, at a warning from Louis,

Jayme of Aragon and Nuñez Sancho of Roussillon forbade their subjects

from lending aid to the heretic.[174]

Meanwhile the crusade was organized on the largest scale. At a great

parliament held in Paris, January 28, 1226, the nobles presented an

address urging the king to undertake it and pledging their assistance to

the end. He assumed the cross under condition that he should lay it

aside when he pleased, and his example was followed by nearly all the

bishops and barons, though we are told that many did so unwillingly,

holding it an abuse to assail a faithful Christian who, at the Council

of Bourges, had offered all possible satisfaction. Amauri and his uncle

Gui executed a renunciation of all their claims in favor of the crown;

the cross was diligently preached throughout the kingdom, with the

customary offer of indulgences, and the legate guaranteed that the

ecclesiastical tithe granted for five years should amount to at least

one hundred thousand livres per annum. The only cloud to mar the

prospect was the discovery that Honorius had sent letters and legates to

the barons of Poitou and Aquitaine, ordering them within a month to

return to their allegiance to England in spite of any oaths taken to the

contrary. This curious piece of treachery can only be explained by

persuasive bribes from Raymond or from Henry III., and Louis promptly

met it with liberal payments to the pope, by which he procured the

suspension of the letters. This being got out of the way, another

council was held March 29, where Louis commanded his lieges to assemble

on May 17, at Bourges, fully equipped and prepared to remain with him as

long as he should stay in the South. The forty day's service which had

so repeatedly snatched from de Montfort the fruits of his victories was

no longer to arrest the tide of a permanent conquest.[175]

On the appointed day the chivalry of the kingdom gathered around their

monarch at Bourges, but before setting forth there was much to be done.

Innumerable abbots and delegates from chapters besieged the king,

imploring him not to reduce the national Church to servitude by exacting

the tithe bestowed on him, and promising to make ample provision for his

needs; but he was unrelenting, and they departed, secretly cursing both

crusade and king. The legate was busy dismissing the boys, women, old

men, paupers, and cripples who had assumed the cross. These he forced to

swear as to the amount of money which they possessed; of this he took

the major part and let them go after granting them absolution from the

vow--an indirect way of selling indulgences which became habitual and

produced large sums. Louis drove a thriving trade of the same kind from

a higher class of Crusaders by accepting heavy payments from those who

owed him service and were not ambitious of the glory or the perils of

the expedition. He also forced the Count of La Marche to send back to

Raymond his young daughter Jeanne, betrothed to La Marche's son, and

reserved, as we shall see, for loftier nuptials. To Bourges likewise

flocked many of the nobles of Narbonne, eager to show their loyalty by

doing homage to the king and to advise him not to advance through their

district, which was devastated by war, but to march by way of the Rhone

to Avignon--disinterested counsel which he adopted.[176]

Louis set forth from Lyons with a magnificent army consisting, it is

said, of fifty thousand horse and innumerable foot. The terror of his

coming preceded him; many of Raymond's vassals and cities made haste to

offer their submission--Nîmes, Narbonne, Carcassonne, Albi, Béziers,

Marseilles, Castres, Puylaurens, Avignon--and he seemed reduced to the

last extremity. When the host reached Avignon, however, and Louis

proposed to march through the city, the inhabitants, with sudden fear,

shut their gates in his face, and though they offered him unmolested

passage around it, he resolved on a siege, in spite of its being a fief

of the empire. It had lain for ten years under excommunication, and was

noted as a nest of Waldenses, so the Cardinal-Legate Romano ordered the

Crusaders to purge it of heresy by force of arms. The task proved no

easy one. From June 10 till about September 10 the citizens resisted

desperately, inflicting heavy loss upon the besiegers. Raymond had

devastated the surrounding country and was ever on the watch to cut off

foraging-parties, so that supplies were scanty. An epidemic set in, and

a plague of flies carried infection from the dead to the living.

Disaffection in the camp aggravated the trouble. Pierre Mauclerc of

Britanny was offended with Louis for traversing his plot of marriage

with Jeanne of Flanders, whose divorce from her husband he had procured

from the pope, and he entered into a league with Thibaut of Champagne

and the Count of La Marche, who were all suspected of entertaining

secret relations with the enemy. Thibaut even left the army without

leave, after forty days of service, returned home and commenced

strengthening his castles. The crusade, so brilliantly begun, was on the

point of abandoning its first serious enterprise, when the Avignonese,

reduced to the utmost straits, unexpectedly offered to capitulate.

Considering the customs of the age, the terms were not hard. They agreed

to satisfy the king and Church, they paid a considerable ransom, their

walls were thrown down and three hundred fortified houses in the town

were dismantled, and they received as bishop, at the hands of the

legate, Nicholas de Corbie, who instituted laws for the suppression of

heresy. It was fortunate for Louis that the submission came when it did,

for a few days later there occurred an inundation of the Durance which

would have drowned his camp.[177]

From Avignon Louis marched westward, everywhere receiving the submission

of nobles and cities until within a few leagues of Toulouse. The

reduction of that obstinate focus of heresy was apparently all that

remained to complete the ruin of Raymond and the success of the crusade,

when Louis suddenly turned his face homeward. No explanation of this

unlooked-for termination of the campaign is furnished by any of the

chroniclers, but it is probably to be sought in the sickness which

pursued the Crusaders, and possibly in the commencement of the disease

which terminated the march and the life of the king at Montpensier on

November 8--fulfilling the prophecy of Merlin, "In ventris monte

morietur leo pacificus"--and not without suspicion of poisoning by

Thibaut of Champagne. Throughout Europe, however, the retreat was

regarded as the result of serious military reverses. Louis had designed

to return the following year, and had left garrisons in the places which

had submitted to him, with Humbert de Beaujeu, a renowned captain, in

supreme command, and Gui de Montfort under him, but their feats of arms

were few, though the burning of heretics was not neglected, when

occasion offered, if only to maintain the sacred character of the

war.[178]

Saved as by a miracle from the ruin which had seemed inevitable, Raymond

lost no time in recovering a portion of his dominions. The death of

Louis had worked a complete revolution in the situation, and, for a

time at least, he had little to fear. It is true that Louis IX., a child

of thirteen, was crowned without delay at Reims, and the regency was

confided to his mother, Blanche of Castile, but the great barons were

restive, and the conspiracy, hatched before the walls of Avignon, was

yet in existence. Britanny, Champagne, and La Marche ostentatiously kept

away from the coronation, delayed offering their homage, and intrigued

with England. Early in 1227, however, they quarrelled, when a show of

force and favorable terms brought them in one by one; short truces were

made with Henry III. and the Viscount of Thouars, and a temporary

respite was obtained. Gregory IX., who mounted the papal throne March

19, 1227, took the regent and the boy-king under the papal protection,

on the ground of their being engaged in war against heresy; but the

succors which they sent from time to time to de Beaujeu were probably

only enough to give color to a continuance of the ecclesiastical tithe,

which the four great provinces of Reims, Rouen, Sens, and Tours resisted

till the legate authorized the regent to seize church property and

compel the payment. Raymond thus was enabled to continue the struggle

with varying fortune. The Council of Narbonne, held during Lent, 1227,

in excommunicating those who had proved faithless to the oaths given to

Louis shows that the people had returned to their ancient allegiance

where they safely could; and in commanding a strict perquisition of

heretics by the bishops and their punishment by the secular authorities,

it indicates that even in territories held by the French the duties of

persecution were slackly performed.[179]

The war dragged on through 1227 with varying result. De Beaujeu,

assisted by Pierre Amiel of Narbonne and Foulques of Toulouse, captured,

after a desperate siege, the castle of Bécède, when the garrison was

slaughtered and the heretic deacon Géraud de Motte and his comrades were

burned, the castellan, Pagan de Bécède, becoming a "faidit" and a

leader among the proscribed heretics, to be burned at last in 1233.

Raymond recovered Castel-Sarrasin, but could not prevent the Crusaders

from devastating the land up to the walls of Toulouse. The following

year found both parties inclined for peace. We have seen that Raymond

was eager to make sacrifices for it, even before the last crusade had

stripped him of most of his possessions. The regent Blanche had ample

motives to come to terms. With all her firmness and capacity the task

before her was no easy one. The nobles of Aquitaine were corresponding

with Henry III. who always cherished the hope of reconquering the ample

territories wrenched from the English crown by Philip Augustus. The

great barons, despising the rule of a woman, were quarrelling between

themselves and involving a large portion of the kingdom in war. The hope

of completing the conquest of the South could scarce repay the constant

drain on the royal resources, while chronic warfare there was highly

dangerous in the explosive condition of the realm. The difficulty of

collecting the tithe from the recalcitrant churches was increasing, and

it could not be continued permanently. Every motive of policy would

therefore incline Queen Blanche to listen to the humble prayers for

reconciliation which Raymond and his father had never ceased to utter,

and a way of securing for the royal line the rich inheritance of the

house of Toulouse seemed to offer itself in the fact that Raymond had

but one child, Jeanne, still unmarried. A union between her and one of

the younger brothers of St. Louis, with a reversion of the territories

to them and to their heirs, would attain peaceably all the political

advantages of the crusade, while, as to its religious objects, Raymond

had left no doubts of his willingness to secure them.

Gregory IX. was quite content thus to close the war which Innocent had

commenced twenty years before. Already, in March, 1228, he wrote to

Louis IX., urging him to make peace according to the judgment of the

legate, Cardinal Romano, who had full powers in the premises, and it was

in the name of the legate that the first overtures were made to Raymond

through the Abbot of Grandselve. That the marriage was the pivot upon

which from the beginning the negotiations turned is shown by another

letter of June 25, authorizing Romano to dispense with the impediment of

consanguinity if the union between Jeanne and one of the king's

brothers would lead to peace. Another epistle of October 21, announcing

to all the prelates of France that he had renewed the indulgences for a

crusade against the Albigenses, would seem to show that the terms

offered to Raymond were hard of acceptance, and that renewed pressure on

him was necessary. This was enforced by extensive devastations in his

territories, and in December, 1228, he gave the abbot full power to

assent to whatever might be agreed upon by Thibaut of Champagne, who

acted as mediator for him. A conference was held at Meaux, where we find

the consuls of Toulouse also represented, and preliminaries were signed

in January, 1229. Finally, on Holy Thursday, April 12, 1229, the long

war came to an end. Before the portal of Nôtre Dame de Paris Raymond

humbly approached the legate and begged for reconciliation to the

Church; barefooted and in his shirt he was conducted to the altar as a

penitent, received absolution in the presence of the dignitaries of

Church and State, and his followers were relieved from excommunication.

After this he constituted himself a prisoner in the Louvre until his

daughter and five of his castles should be in the hands of the king, and

five hundred toises of the walls of Toulouse should be demolished.[180]

The terms to which he had agreed were hard and humiliating. In the royal

proclamation of the treaty, he is represented as acting at the command

of the legate, and humbly praying Church and king for mercy and not for

justice. He swore to persecute heresy with his whole strength, including

heretics and believers, their protectors and receivers, and not sparing

his nearest kindred, friends, and vassals. On all these speedy

punishment was to be inflicted, and an inquisition for their detection

was to be instituted in such form as the legate might dictate, while in

its aid Raymond agreed to offer the large reward of two marks per head

for every manifest ("perfected") heretic captured during two years, and

one mark forever thereafter. As for other heretics, believers,

receivers, and defenders, he agreed to do whatever the legate or pope

should command. His _baillis_, or local officers, moreover, were to be

good Catholics, free of all suspicion. He was to defend the Church and

all its members and privileges; to enforce its censures by seizing the

property of all who should remain for a year under excommunication; to

restore all church lands and lands of ecclesiastics occupied since the

commencement of the troubles, and to pay as damages for personal

property taken the sum of ten thousand silver marks; to enforce for the

future the payment of tithes, and, as a special fine, to pay five

thousand marks to five religious houses named, besides six thousand

marks to be expended in fortifying certain strongholds to be held by the

king as security for the Church, and between three thousand and four

thousand marks to support for ten years at Toulouse two masters in

theology, two decretalists, and six masters in grammar and the liberal

arts. Moreover, as penance, he agreed to assume the cross immediately on

receiving absolution, and to proceed within two years to Palestine, to

serve there for five years--a penance which he never performed, though

repeatedly summoned to do so, until in 1247 he made preparations for a

departure which was arrested by death. An oath was further to be

administered to his people, renewable every five years, binding them to

make active war upon all heretics, their believers, receivers, and

fautors, and to help the Church and king in subduing heresy.

The interests of the Church and of religion being thus provided for, the

marriage of Jeanne with one of the king's brothers was treated as a

favor bestowed on Raymond. It was tacitly assumed that all his dominions

had been forfeited, and the king graciously granted him all the lands

comprised within the ancient bishopric of Toulouse, subject to their

reversion after his death to his daughter and her husband, in such wise

that whether there was issue of the marriage or not, or whether she

survived her husband or not, they passed irrevocably to the royal

family. Agen, Rouergue, Quercy, except Cahors, and part of Albi were

likewise granted to Raymond, with reversion to his daughter in default

of lawful heirs; but the king retained the extensive territories

comprised within the duchy of Narbonne and the counties of Velay,

Gévaudan, Viviers, and Lodève. The marquisate of Provence, beyond the

Rhone, a dependency of the empire, was given to the Church. Raymond thus

lost two thirds of his vast dominions. In addition to this he was

obliged to destroy the fortifications of Toulouse and of thirty other

strongholds, and was prohibited from strengthening any in their stead;

he was to deliver to the king eight other specified places for ten

years, and to pay fifteen hundred marks per annum for five years for

their maintenance; and he was to take active measures to reduce to

subjection any recalcitrant vassals, especially the Count of Foix, who,

being thus abandoned, came in the same year and made a humiliating

peace. A general amnesty was proclaimed, and the "faidits," or ejected

knights and gentlemen, were restored, excluding, of course, all who were

heretics. Raymond, moreover, engaged to maintain peace throughout the

land, and the _routiers_, or bandit mercenaries, who for fifty years had

been the special objects of animadversion by the Church, were to be

expelled forever. To all these conditions his vassals and people were to

be sworn, obligating themselves to assist him in the performance; and

if, after forty days' notice, he continued derelict on any point, all

the lands granted him reverted to the king, his subjects' allegiance was

transferred, and he fell back into his present condition of an

excommunicate.[181]

The king's assumed right to the territories thus disposed of arose

partly from the conquests of his father, and partly from Amauri, who a

few days later executed a third cession of all his claims without

reserve or consideration, other than what the king in his bounty might

see fit to grant. The reward he obtained was the reversion of the

dignity of Constable of France, which fell in the next year on the death

of Matthieu de Montmorency. In 1237 he foolishly revived his claims,

again styled himself Duke of Narbonne, made an unsuccessful effort to

seize Dauphiné in right of his wife, and invaded the county of Melgueil,

thereby incurring the wrath of Gregory IX., who ordered him as a penance

to join the crusade then preparing to start for the Holy Land. In effect

he did so, and Gregory generously granted him, to be paid after he was

beyond seas, the large sum of three thousand marks out of the fund

arising from the redemption of their vows by Crusaders staying at

home--by this time a customary mode of selling indulgences, and one

exceedingly lucrative, for this payment was assigned simply on the

province of Sens and the lands of Amauri himself. In 1238 he sailed, and

his customary ill-luck pursued him, for in 1241 we hear of him as a

prisoner of the Saracens, and Gregory again came to his aid by

contributing to his ransom four thousand marks from the same redemption

fund. His death occurred the same year at Otranto, on his return from

Palestine, thus closing a life of strange vicissitudes and almost

uninterrupted misfortune.[182]

* * * * *

The house of Toulouse was thus reduced from the position of the most

powerful feudatory, with possessions greater than those of the crown, to

a condition in which it was to be no longer dreaded, though Gregory IX.

and Frederic II., in 1234, at the reiterated request of Louis IX.,

restored to it the Marquisate of Provence, probably as a reward for

increased zeal in persecution. Raymond no longer, as Duke of Narbonne,

held the first rank among the six lay peers of France, but was relegated

to the fourth place. The treaty resulted as its framers intended. In

1229 Jeanne of Toulouse and her destined husband Alphonse, brother of

Louis, were children in their ninth year. Their marriage was deferred

until 1237, and when Raymond, in 1249, closed his unquiet career, they

succeeded to his territories. They both died without issue in 1271, when

Philip III. took possession, not only of the county of Toulouse, as

provided for in the settlement, but also of the other possessions which

Jeanne had vainly attempted to dispose of by will, thus rendering the

crown supreme throughout southern France, and preparing it for the rude

shocks of the wars with Edward III. and Henry V. It is fairly

questionable, indeed, whether, during those convulsions, the house of

Toulouse might not have become independently royal, governing a

well-defined territory of homogeneous population, had not the religious

enthusiasm excited by heresy enabled the Capets, with the assistance of

the papacy, to destroy it in the thirteenth century.

That a monarchy so distracted and weakened as that of France during the

minority of Louis IX. could demand and exact terms so humiliating as

those which Raymond was glad to accept, shows the helpless isolation to

which the religious question had reduced him, despite the fidelity of

his subjects and the repeated failure of the assaults upon him. Those

assaults he had met with the courage of a gallant knight and the

resources of a skilful leader, but his neglect to persecute heresy

deprived him of sympathy and of allies, and the anathema of the Church

hung over him as an ever-present curse. To the public law of the period

he was an outlaw, without even the right of self-defence against the

first-comer, for his very self-defence was rated among his crimes; in

the popular faith of the age he was an accursed thing, without hope,

here or hereafter. The only way of readmission into human fellowship,

the only hope of salvation, lay in reconciliation with the Church

through the removal of the awful ban which had formed part of his

inheritance. To obtain this he had repeatedly offered to sacrifice his

honor and his subjects, and the offer had been contemptuously spurned.

Now that the necessities of the royal court had rendered the regent and

her counsellors unwilling to risk the drain and the dangers of prolonged

war, he was too eager to escape from his cruel position to hesitate long

in accepting the hard conditions which were exacted of him, although, as

Bernard Gui says, the single provision which assured the reversion of

Toulouse to the royal house would have been sufficiently hard if the

king had captured Count Raymond on a stricken field.[183]

There was much that he could allege in justification, had he imagined

that justification was needed. Born in 1197, he was yet a child when the

storm had broken over his father's head. Ever since he could observe and

reason he had seen his land the prey of the ruthless chivalry of the

North, at the head of vagabond hordes, as eager for spoil as for the

redemption of their sins. As soon as one host had melted away it had

been succeeded by another, and for twenty years the wretched people who

clung to him had known no peace. He and they had barely escaped as by a

miracle from destruction in the last crusade, and there was no prospect

of better days in the future, so long as Rome's implacable enmity to

heresy, acting upon the ambition of the restless Franks, could always

call forth fresh swarms of marauders and dignify them with the Cross.

Though he could not be a fervent disciple of a Church which had been to

him so stern a stepmother, he was yet no Catharan; and while perfectly

ready to tolerate the heresy of a large portion of his subjects, he

might well ask himself whether their toleration was to be purchased at

the cost of the whole population, who could never look for peace so long

as heresy was endured among them. The choice lay between sacrificing one

side or both sides; and what well might seem the lesser evil coincided

with his own selfish instincts of self-preservation. He never hesitated

as to the choice; and, after he had accomplished his object, he

faithfully adhered to his promise of uprooting heresy, though more than

once he interfered when the excessive rigor of the Inquisition

threatened trouble. Perhaps the task at first was a distasteful one, but

he had no alternative. He was but a man of his time; had he been more he

might have played a martyr's part without better securing the happiness

of his people.

* * * * *

The battle of toleration against persecution had been fought and lost;

nor, with such a warning as the fate of the two Raymonds, was there risk

that other potentates would disregard the public opinion of Christendom

by ill-advised mercy to the heretic. Calling upon the state for its

assured support, the Church made haste to reap the fruits of victory,

and the Inquisition was soon at work among those who had so long bidden

her defiance. That this was unanimously regarded by Europe as necessary

and righteous, in spite of the vices and corruption of the

ecclesiastical body, is so strange a development of the religion of

Christ as to render the process of its evolution an indispensable

subject for our consideration.