THE PRELIMINARIES OF THE CRUSADE.
The religious and political manœuvres leading up to the Albigensian
Crusade extend over the space of ten years and divide naturally into
three stages, the first of six years and the second and third of two
years each.
The first stage (1198-1204) begins with the accession of Innocent III
to the Papacy, followed by his prompt dispatch of legates to work
against the Albigensian heresy. It ends with the recognition of the
failure of the means first used and determination to intensify them.
The second stage (1204-1206) is marked by the investiture of the
papal legates in Languedoc with extraordinary powers over the local
clergy. Its first year, 1204, contains a political event of the
highest importance: the conquest of the Angevin lands of Normandy,
Maine, Anjou and Touraine, by the King of France, Philip Augustus.
The period ends with the recognition of the insufficiency of even the
extraordinary powers granted to the legates.
The third stage (1206-1208) opens with the arrival of St. Dominic,
the adoption of apostolic poverty by the legates, and the setting
on foot by them of a regular campaign of preaching and debate. This
method yielding only slight results: the period closes with the
murder of de Castelnau and the mobilization of the crusading army.
Lothario Conti, Innocent III, is one of the great figures of history.
Few men, whether Churchmen or lay statesmen, have exerted a wider or
more far-reaching influence. Learning and executive ability, energy
and persistence, breadth of view, and, above all, the sense of a
great purpose, combined with extraordinary fortune to make him great.
We are here concerned with but one of his acts, the launching of the
Albigensian Crusade, by which he preserved the moral unity of Europe
so that it remained unbroken until the sixteenth century.
He had been born about 1160. His family were nobles of the Campagna,
whose castles of Anagni and Segni dominated the “Appian Way,” the
main Roman road between Rome and Naples. They early chose to make
a priest of him. Accordingly he studied first at Rome, then at the
Universities of Bologna where was the great law school, and finally
at the University of Paris, the centre of theological study, the
“queen science” of the Middle Ages. Paris he especially loved, like
so many before and after him, and in the years of his power we
shall see him make great play with the “French” (that is the North
French, as we would say), those unequalled weapons ready to the
hand of a thirteenth century pope. In 1190, when he was only 30,
his uncle, Pope Clement III, made him cardinal—an example of favour
promoting ability faster than it would rise by itself and thereby
giving to the able man room for his powers, quite the reverse of the
conventional use of favour to bolster up incompetence. Celestine
III’s election forced the newly-made cardinal into retirement, for
Celestine was of the Orsini family, hereditary enemies to Innocent’s
mother’s people, the Scotti. In his retirement he wrote, first on
“Despising the World” and the “Miseries of Mankind,” and second on
mystic theological symbolism, with such rhetoric and such a jungle of
quotations that his withdrawal from the administrative work of the
Papal Curia rather increased his fame than lessened it, by giving
him opportunity to exercise his pen on these mediæval stock themes.
On the very day of Celestine’s death he was elected Pope while still
only in deacon’s orders. Within two months after his consecration,
already he had two agents in Languedoc to take action against the
heretics there.
Certainly the Pope was not interfering in Languedoc because he
had nothing better to do. It is true that the Empire was not
threatening or even in a position to threaten. That huge, ill-knit
mass, stretching from the Rhône to the Oder, from Holstein to the
Sicilies, and including both Lille and Vienna, was taking one of
its periodical sudden plunges from glittering dreams of world power
into civil war and blank anarchy. When Innocent was elected, the
terrible Emperor Henry VI was barely three months dead and already
his work was in ruins and the Italian cities were busily driving out
his German officials whom he had put to rule them. It was not that
they had a scrap of anything approaching national Italian feeling;
the modern reader needs to have it repeated again and again that the
twelfth century had not even the idea of nationality except for the
glimmering of it in France. They acted because they disliked Germans
as such, and because they preferred to pay municipal salaries and
perquisites to someone born and bred among themselves. Like all popes
since Hildebrand, Innocent welcomed this sort of thing and aided and
abetted them in it. A well-organized Empire which included Italy
would have been in a position to put pressure upon popes. In his
letters to the cities Innocent even speaks sometimes of “The Interest
of all Italy,” but that great phrase died away without contemporary
echo.
In Rome itself the imperial prefect swore homage to the Pope without
even a protest. The municipality of Rome was a different matter.
Even in the tenth century, long before the Papacy had set itself up
against the Empire, the turbulent nobles of the Eternal City had
several times driven out popes in fear and trembling. The twelfth
century communal movement made matters worse from the papal point
of view. Even a pope like Innocent could be insulted in the streets
by the Roman mob, so that he feared for his life and quitted the
place, to return only after nearly a year. From his consecration
until the year 1208, when again he brought the citizens to terms by
temporarily leaving town, he had on his hands the most explosive sort
of political situation in his own city.
Meanwhile his agents (two monks, Rainier and Guy by name) arrived in
Languedoc, accredited by papal letters to the “Prelates, Princes,
Nobles and People” of Southern France, to begin the papal effort
against the Albigenses. At this time there was no idea of using
force on a large scale. There was already a precedent in Henry of
Clairvaux’s little expedition which had taken Lavaur in 1181. But it
seems to have been assumed that this sort of thing was unnecessary,
perhaps that it was impossible. At any rate, it was not tried.
Rainier and Guy were merely expected to persuade the religious and
secular authorities to banish heretics and confiscate their property,
the usual laws of the time against heresy. The two commissioners
were empowered to compel obedience by interdict, and to reward those
who should assist them by granting the customary “indulgences”
usually enjoyed by pilgrims to Rome or Compostella.
It should perhaps be explained that interdicts are sentences laid
upon localities, and in a place so sentenced there can be no public
worship, no bell may ring and no Church service be held. Sometimes
marriages cannot be celebrated, even in private, nor extreme unction
be given to the sick. In mediæval times they were powerful weapons
but at the same time dangerous ones, because they accustomed people
to living almost completely shut off from the public practise of
religion.
Six months later, the powers given to Rainier were enlarged so that
he might reform the Church in the infected regions and restore
ecclesiastical discipline. In July, 1199, he was formally designated
Papal “Legate,” to be obeyed and respected as if he were the Pope in
person. Thus early in the business it was necessary to “reform the
lives” of the local clergy clear up to archbishops, as even these
last could not be counted upon to lead outwardly pious lives, much
less to take action against heresy in defiance of the public opinion
of their flocks. But although he had already seen the weakness of the
local clergy as instruments against heresy, nevertheless the Pope
continued to act on the assumption that the local secular authorities
were up to their work in the matter, if only enough clerical pressure
of the proper sort could be put upon them.
It seems as if Innocent and his advisers ought to have known enough
of the political situation in Languedoc and the universal failure
to enforce heretical legislation there to see that this would not
do. And yet anyone who has been connected with the central offices
of a large corporation, or the general headquarters of a modern
army of millions, knows how hard it is, with the best will in the
world, to get information on conditions in the field. In this case
we may assume it was at first believed at Rome that local action, or
at least local secular action, against heresy would be sufficient.
Or, per contra, we may assume that such local action was never
confidently relied upon, but that it was thought best to try all
other means to the utmost before beginning religious war against an
infected member of Christendom itself. At any rate, as in all her
important decisions, Papal Rome moved slowly.
Moreover, Innocent, over and above his legal training, had a fine
sense of fairness and, Italian gentleman that he was, a vast deal of
tact. In his dealings with the sporadic cases of heresy that sprang
up here and there, weed fashion, outside Languedoc, he followed the
papal precedent of curbing and moderating the sometimes excessive
zeal of the lower clergy.
In 1199 we find him gentle towards a group of Lorrainers in the
diocese of Metz who had come under suspicion for reading translations
of the Scriptures and for murmuring against their parish priests.
He reproved them indeed for not preferring charges through regular
channels to their bishop against the priests complained of. He warns
them that the profundity of certain dogmas makes them difficult of
comprehension by the laity. Nevertheless he assures them that the
desire to understand the Scriptures is worthy, in itself, of praise
rather than blame, and makes haste to take upon himself the conduct
of the case, apparently because he fears that their bishop may be too
strict.
In the same year we find him protecting the “humiliati,” of Verona,
a brotherhood who had bound themselves to voluntary poverty. An
archpriest of their city had included them in the excommunication
pronounced against the Manicheans, Waldensians and Arnoldists (the
followers of Arnold of Brescia). Indeed, to judge from bits of heresy
trials which have comedown to us, it seems as if mere eccentricity of
life was reason enough for suspicion of heresy.
In appeals to Rome, whenever it appeared that the charge of heresy
had not been completely proved we find the Pope anxious to give
the accused the benefit of every doubt. In the district of Nevers
he twice interfered in this way in the case of priests, and twice
in favour of the burghers of La-Charité-sur-Loire, although there,
unfortunately, his leniency bore no fruit, so that he finally felt
himself forced to proceed against them.
Even in the full heat of the Albigensian Crusade, we still find him
favouring an accused canon of Bar-sur-Aube, an incident which can
only receive its full value by being told in connection with the very
different things then going on in Languedoc.
But, however careful to go lightly in doubtful cases, Innocent was
very different toward proved and defiant heretics. Luchaire would
have us believe that when the great Pope calls the heretics a
scourge, a pestilence, filth, an ulcer infecting society, a savage
beast, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a fox that destroys the Lord’s
vine, a villainous inn-keeper who poisons his guests by selling
them adulterated wines, when he seems to believe in their secret
sexual orgies, he is only repeating a set of stock phrases and
that he was in no way animated by “fanaticism,” or by any especial
hatred towards heresy. The learned Frenchman goes so far as to
suggest that Innocent “proceeded rigorously against heresy ...
more because of the necessities of his policy than because of the
ardour of his faith.”[29] Nevertheless, such assertions are without
a scrap of definite proof, as far as Luchaire’s published work is
concerned. Moreover, he admits that Innocent, along with almost all
his contemporaries, felt “repulsion” for the heretics. Finally,
the American of to-day will be apt to say sadly that a French
anti-clerical cannot even know what real fanaticism is, since, in
political action, France has not for centuries even “seen the animal”
in its strength.
Certainly Innocent appealed not only to the Scriptures but also to
human reason against the heretics. Thus he makes great play with the
logical impossibility of the Manichean idea of two contradictory
gods. That is characteristic not only of the man but of the time in
which he lived, with its great scholastics, a time that believed
in logic as devoutly as our own time believes in “science.” Most
certainly he recognized that occasions for scandal given by the
clergy were at the bottom of much of the trouble. He keeps insisting
that the sacraments in the hands of a priest of evil life do not lose
their virtue any more than medicines in the hands of a doctor who
might, personally, be far from well himself. Above all, he worked
to remove the causes of scandal by improving the conduct of the
clergy. But this is merely to say that anger did not blind him to
facts (he had the fits of anger usually found in dominant natures).
Certainly he was no vulgar ranter, but from this it by no means
follows that his faith was not ardent and his feeling against heresy
correspondingly keen.
In the year of his accession we find Innocent already corresponding
with Raymond VI of Toulouse. The Count was then 41 years old, having
three years before succeeded his father, Count Raymond V, whom we
have seen (in the last chapter) appealing for help to put down
heresy. The Counts of Toulouse were the most powerful princes of the
South. As Dukes of Narbonne they were the first lay peers of France.
They held the Marquisate of Provence, they were Counts of Vivarais,
Venaissin, St. Gilles, and Rodez, and lords of the Albigeois,
Gevaudan, Velai, Rouergue, and Agenois, besides being Suzerain to the
Counts of Foix and Comminges. Raymond VI was married to Princess Joan
of England, daughter of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine,
and sister to Richard Cœur de Lion and King John. The Count himself
was no heretic, although certain hasty expressions which he had
thrown out in favour of the heretics were treasured against him by
zealous Catholics. However, according to the custom of Languedoc, his
orthodoxy was anything but belligerent. He was accustomed to nominate
Jews and heretics to public office, and altogether he and his wealthy
court thought more of enjoying themselves with poetry and the society
of women than of anything else in the world. He was not warlike, and
trying events were to prove him lacking in courage, self command, and
staunchness of purpose. He was equally innocent of wisdom or cunning
in policy. He does not seem to have been base but merely weak and
easy going. If not in great place or troubled times such men may do
well enough.
In his first encounter with the great Pope he appears not as a
favourer of heretics but as an oppressor of monks. As such he had
already been excommunicated by Pope Celestine III. Innocent sent his
legates to offer him absolution if he would give satisfaction to the
abbot in question, that of St. Gilles; and on his promise to do so,
wrote to suggest that he do penance in order to show his good will.
Before a twelvemonth was out the Abbot of St. Gilles was complaining
that he had in no wise mended his ways, so Innocent wrote again to
his legate directing that the Count be held to his promises. It was
not a hopeful beginning.
For six years, with frequently changing personnel, the papal legation
in Languedoc kept on trying to realize its original programme. It was
a thankless job. William VIII, Lord of Montpellier, whose family was
by tradition strongly Catholic, asked for the appointment of a legate
to help him root out heresy from his lands. Unfortunately he was not
a personage of first-rate importance, and his action was a mere flash
in the pan, as none of his fellow nobles followed suit. Lea claims
that even William himself had a special interest in showing zeal
because he was trying to get the Pope to legitimatize the children of
a second wife whom he had married without being legally separated (by
annulment no doubt) from his first.
In 1200 we hear of a Cardinal “John of St. Paul” (meaning probably
that his titular church was the basilica of St. Paul without the
walls at Rome) taking part in the Albigensian mission, but of him
we hear no more. Two years later it appears that Rainier fell sick
and was accordingly relieved from duty as legate. What became of his
companion Guy we are not told; he seems to have sunk in the waters of
oblivion without a splash or even a bubble.
Rainier was replaced by two Cistercian monks from the Cistercian
abbey of Font Froide, near Narbonne. One of the two Cistercians
was named Raoul. The other, the soul of the mission, was Peter de
Castelnau, that famous name of Castelnau whose arms are still seen in
the hall of the knights at Versailles, a name that the Germans will
long have reason to remember, since in the desperate first week of
September, 1914, it was a Castelnau who fended them off at the Grand
Couronné de Nancy, and thus made possible the victory of the Marne.
De Castelnau, with an energy and decision that may well remind us
of the soldier Castelnau of our own generation, made straight for
Toulouse itself. There he harangued the inhabitants, demanding that
their magistrates should swear to keep the Catholic faith and expel
heretics, in return for a papal confirmation of the liberties of the
city (which were set down, no doubt, in a charter much like the old
English charters preserved by Bishop Stubbs). The Toulousains rose to
the bait, took the oaths and then failed to move. The legates talked
in a high tone about angry princes and kings coming upon the city to
pillage and destroy, and effected thereby some show of reform, but
no sooner were their backs turned than the heretical preachers began
their midnight meetings as before.
Incidentally, it is interesting to note that, in a place like
Toulouse in the year 1203, the utmost daring of the heretics was to
hold their preaching services at midnight. It looks as if, in the
large centres, there was still a strong feeling that heresy, after
all, was not “the thing.” It was still under a certain amount of
social ban. The feeling even of these non-persecuting communities
must have looked a little askance at it.
Having obtained from the “consuls” of Toulouse a promise, however
hollow, of obedient persecution, the legates turned their attention
to Count Raymond. They invited the Archbishop of Narbonne, the
Primate of Languedoc, to join with them in demanding from the Count
not only banishment of heretics and confiscation of their goods but
also the dismissal of the mercenary troops who, as we have seen, were
near-brigands on active service and brigands pure and simple at all
other times. The Archbishop refused. Accustomed throughout a long
life full of ease and riches to see heresy all about him, he had
probably long forgotten to be shocked at it. As to the “brigands,”
he probably made allowances, as the legates did not, for the fact
that mercenaries were the only troops possible to an overlord like
the Count of Toulouse whose feudal vassals were almost certain to be
either unwarlike or disobedient—if not both at once. Knowing his man
and Languedoc in general as he did, he must have thought it useless
and silly for the legates even to make the attempt. Very likely he
was alarmed at such activity shown by papal legates in his territory
and afraid lest his own position might be threatened and his own
sloth and unworthiness be thrown in his teeth or denounced to the
Pope by this meddlesome pair of Cistercians from his own province,
who might better have stayed at home in their abbey. He refused to
go with them and would hardly even lend them a horse for their trip.
The bishop of Beziers, who had been asked to be of the party, also
refused, so the legates proceeded alone. As for Raymond, we have
already seen him readier to promise than to perform in the case of
the monks of St. Gilles. Now he would not even promise.
Even de Castelnau despaired. He wrote to the Pope telling of his
failure, and asking to be relieved from duty as legate in order
to return to his abbey. Innocent held him to his work, reminding
him that heaven would reward him not according to his success, but
according to his labours.
However, it was probably de Castelnau’s letter which persuaded the
Pope to broaden the scope of the mission. He now took the radical
step of depriving the Languedocian bishops of jurisdiction in cases
of heresy and conferred it on his legates. On top of this, he went
even further and empowered the legates to remove any of the clergy
from their benefices should they seem unworthy to hold them, and
denied to the condemned the right of appeal to Rome and of delay in
executing the sentence.
From the standpoint of the canon law this was revolutionary; the
grant of these wide powers to the legates marks the second stage
in the preliminaries of the Crusade. Gradually, the seriousness of
the situation was being understood in Rome. Only the clear belief
that the higher clergy of Languedoc must be drastically purged
of evil-livers, and of those who were slothful and lukewarm in
prosecuting heresy, before anything else could be accomplished would
justify such measures.
That there was need of strong measures was proved by the continued
activity of the heretics. After the Count of Toulouse, the Count
of Foix was the greatest noble of Languedoc. In this same year his
sister Esclairmonde was “hereticated,” and in the great crowd present
at the ceremony only the Count himself failed to “venerate” the
“Perfect” according to the prescribed heretical form. His wife was
already a “Cathar,” and another of his sisters was a Waldensian. So
things went in the “midi.”
At the same time that the powers of the legates were increased,
Innocent empowered them to offer Philip Augustus and his son Louis
complete remission of sins, as if for a crusade to Palestine, if they
would move against the Albigenses of Languedoc. The indulgence was to
be extended to all nobles who might aid in suppressing heresy; and
all who were under excommunication for crimes of violence, nobles
or villains, were to be absolved on joining the expedition. At the
same time, the Pope himself wrote direct to Philip, promising him not
only full indulgences, as for a crusade against the Moslem, but also
the territories of such nobles as might obstruct the pious work of
suppressing heresy.
The time was altogether unfavourable for the King of France to grant
such a request, for he was otherwise engaged. About the middle
of the twelfth century, as a result of two great marriages, the
Plantagenet Counts of Anjou (in addition to their hereditary lands
of Anjou, Maine and Touraine) had become kings of England and Dukes
of Normandy, suzerains of Brittany, and Dukes of Aquitaine, which
included Poitou, Guienne, Gascony, and Auvergne. Naturally, as
masters of this great sweep of territory so much greater in extent
than the little royal domain which alone was directly ruled by the
kings of France, the Angevins were almost continually at war with
the French kings to whom they theoretically owed homage for their
Continental possessions. Besides their vast lands, the Plantagenets
possessed high personal energy and complete ruthlessness; their line
was supposed to descend from a devil, and from their behaviour it
seemed fairly probable. Further, the Norman system of administration
and (as we should say) “civil service” which they directed and
applied throughout their territory, was the best of its kind in Latin
Christendom, at least outside of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily
which was also Norman-ruled. On the surface of things, the “kings
of Paris” seemed hopelessly overmatched. On the other hand, the
Angevin dominions could have no possible feeling of attachment to one
another. They were held together only from above. Whereas behind the
kings of France were dim, vast, memories of the Roman unity; as yet
mere “ideas,” to be sure, but in France ideas have power.
It is with a sure instinct that Michelet has contrasted the fashion
of the great seals of the Plantagenets with those of the Capets. The
demon race of Anjou are seen fully armed, mounted, and charging,
while the kings of France have no need of war horse, armour, or
weapons, but are sitting enthroned, holding the orb and sceptre,
full of the calm consciousness of power admitted and acknowledged.
I repeat once more that the time had almost nothing of our idea of
nationalities; nevertheless, as we have seen in the first chapter,
its currents were setting strongly in favour of the central
kingships, and especially in favour of the kings of France. Even in
the matter of the Albigensian crusade, we shall see the Capets, and
with them the national unity, profiting quite as much as the Church
from the conclusion of the struggle.
Now, in 1204, there reigned at Paris a great man, Philip, whose
surname Augustus of itself recalled Rome. His character was a
little detached and remote, bent altogether upon making real the
great shadowy power that was lawfully his by virtue of his office.
Like his father and grandfather, he was a friend to merchants and
wayfaring men, a mighty slayer of bandits, and a protector of the new
Municipal Communes. Like all his ancestors, he allied himself with
the Church. Like some of his ancestors, and like a true Frenchman, he
might quarrel bitterly with the Pope, when there was a petticoat in
the business, but in spite of his dabbling in bigamy on the modern
American plan, in the matter of his second marriage he remained the
“eldest son of the Church” and the staunchest champion of the Papacy
in Europe, and in his alliance with the Church he received quite as
much as he gave.
Ever since John’s accession to the Plantagenet lands in 1199, the
long struggle between the Angevins and the French Crown had gone on
in haphazard raids and skirmishes, interrupted by fitful truces which
settled nothing. From February to September, 1200, France had been
under a Papal interdict for Philip’s repudiation of his wife followed
by a second marriage, after a questionable annulment of the first
marriage by the French bishops. Even though the interdict had been
imperfectly enforced, still it had sufficiently weakened his general
position to make him willing to conclude a truce with John, and to
promise the Pope that he would mend his ways. The interdict once
lifted, the intriguing and skirmishing had begun again, going more
and more in Philip’s favour. In the fall of 1203 major operations had
begun. After a successful six months’ siege of Chateau Gailliard,
ending in March, 1204, Philip had won all Normandy and deprived John
of the entire continental Plantagenet inheritance except Gascony,
Guienne, and part of Poitou. With so much freshly conquered land to
be administered and so many new vassals to be handled, it was no time
to ask the King of France to take on the heavy task of intervening
against heresy in Languedoc, or even to weaken himself by allowing
any of the forces of his kingdom to do so. He refused to move.
There remained the chance of accomplishing something through reform
of the personnel of the southern Church by a drastic use of the
extraordinary powers granted to the papal legates. These were now
three in number, the newcomer being Arnaut Amalric, abbot of Citeaux,
and therefore head of the powerful Cistercian order, to which both
Raoul and de Castelnau belonged. With the addition of Arnaut (whose
surname of Amalric recalls the old family of Amal chieftains among
the Goths), the legates attempted to use their power of deposing
bishops to its full extent. They proclaimed the deposition of
Berenger II, primate of Languedoc! Berenger broke boldly with the
legates and refused to quit his archbishopric of Narbonne. He
protested violently to the Pope, representing that only his great age
and “infirmities” prevented him from pleading his cause in person at
Rome, so that his case dragged on.
Meanwhile, the Bishop of Beziers, besides refusing to go with the
legates to Count Raymond, had gone even further in disobedience to
them than his ecclesiastical lord of Narbonne. When asked to demand
of the “consuls” of his city that they abjure heresy and engage to
expel heretics, he at first refused point blank and encouraged the
magistrates not to do so. Under pressure he finally promised to
excommunicate them, but failed to do so. Accordingly, the legates
suspended him, and ordered him to appear in his own defence at Rome.
Shortly afterwards he was assassinated by some treachery “among his
own people”—why, our authorities do not state.
Perhaps he had been particularly slow to prosecute heresy inasmuch as
his neighbour, the Bishop of Carcassonne, had gotten himself driven
out for merely threatening to do so. The municipality of Carcassonne
had even forbidden anyone to have relations with the unhappy cleric,
on pain of a heavy fine.
In the same year that saw the assassination of the Bishop of Beziers,
the legates deposed the Bishop of Toulouse for “simony,” that is
selling appointments to Church offices within his control. He was a
turbulent, feudal, sort of person, who had spent his time in making
war on his vassals, and had mortgaged the properties of his see right
and left to enable him to do so. On account of his resistance it was
not until the next year that a successor could be elected.
While the see of Toulouse was still vacant, de Castelnau again went
boldly to Raymond and frightened him into taking an oath to dismiss
his bandit-mercenaries and personally to prosecute heretics. As in
the case of the monks of St. Gilles, he took no steps towards keeping
his word.
Hardly was Raymond’s oath sworn when the consuls of Toulouse passed
a law forbidding an accusation of heresy to be begun after the
death of the accused unless they had been “hereticated” on their
death-bed—some bones of heretics having been dug up and removed
from consecrated earth. And what was worse, this action of the
municipality was supposed to have been due to Raymond’s influence
as overlord. At any rate, he seems to have consented to it, and
certainly made no move to prevent it.
Altogether, the year 1205 had been as depressing as its predecessors.
A second appeal to Philip Augustus, in February, had brought no
result.
In 1206 the discouragement of the legates again came to a head as
it had done two years before. The one bright spot was that the
cathedral chapter of Toulouse had finally elected, as their bishop,
Fulk of Marseilles. After winning fame as a troubadour, he had
entered the Cistercian order and been chosen an abbot. Fulk had all
the enthusiasm typical of converts. He had transferred the passion
that had set him writing love songs into his new task of smiting the
heretic. Indeed, he was to be one of the foremost in the Crusade.
Nevertheless, his election was not enough in itself to keep the
legates in good heart, for in general their task was as ungrateful as
ever.
Towards midsummer, the three legates with their retinues, together
with a number of bishops from neighbouring sees, assembled in council
at Castelnau (named for the family of the legate Pierre de Castelnau)
near Montpellier. Not only the gentle Raoul, but even the stern
and unbending Arnaut Amalric, and de Castelnau with his fearless,
fiery spirit, were ready to despair. They talked of resigning their
mission. It seems that they had even agreed to do so, when a new
impulse and an altogether different plan of campaign was given them
by a newcomer.
This newcomer was a Spaniard, Diego (or Didacus), Bishop of Osma in
the Upper Douro valley in Castille. He had been much employed in
diplomatic business by his king, and was now returning from Rome
whither he had been refused permission from the Pope to go as a
missionary to the savage heathen Tartars of the Ukraine steppes.
At the head of Bishop Diego’s suite was his sub-prior, Domingo de
Guzman, later to be known as St. Dominic, the founder of the Order
of Preachers which bears his name, then a young man in the middle
thirties, slender, fair-haired, dressed in the white habit and
surplice worn by Augustinian canons regular. He was a gentleman
born and bred who had taken his university course at Palencia, had
been made canon and then sub-prior at Osma, and was Bishop Diego’s
constant companion. Three years before, while accompanying his patron
on one of the latter’s diplomatic trips, he had passed through
Toulouse. Being lodged in the house of a heretic, he had sat up
all night with the man, until by dint of prayer, exhortation, and
argument he persuaded him to turn from the error of his ways. Now he
was admitted, with Diego, into the council chamber of the legates.
No one else who comes directly into our story has set in motion
such a force as did St. Dominic. He and St. Francis more than any
men since the conversion of the Roman Empire, were to give to the
Catholic Church new power over men’s thoughts and affections. Perhaps
he would loom larger in our sight were he not so often considered
together with St. Francis. It is true that his personality has not
the same extraordinary poetry, simplicity and charm as that of the
“Poverello” of Assisi. But in his consuming zeal for the faith he
was Francis’s equal, while in organizing ability and statesmanlike
adaptation of means to ends, he was by far Francis’s superior. He was
an extraordinary man.
For the time being, he was merely the chief of Bishop Diego’s suite,
and there is no evidence that he even spoke in the council. It was
Diego who advised the legates to put all their energy into preaching,
and (that their pomp and retinue might no longer be contrasted with
the simplicity and self-denying asceticism of the heretical chiefs)
he further suggested that the legates rid themselves of guards,
servants, horses, and even of shoes and sandals. They were to go
forth barefoot, in perfect apostolic poverty, having neither purse
nor scrip like the original twelve.
Luchaire thinks[30] it improbable that a mere passing bishop, on
his own responsibility, would have presumed to urge upon men in the
official position of the legates so startling a departure; and that,
had he done so, his counsel would almost certainly not have been
accepted. He therefore infers that Diego was acting under orders
from Innocent. As there is no mention in any of the chroniclers
of direction from Innocent at this time, the idea remains mere
inference, although probable enough.
From whatever source it came, the new and radical proposition was not
easily accepted by the legates. Perhaps they feared ridicule, perhaps
insults and bodily harm if they went about unprotected. At any rate
they balked, suggested that they would follow if someone set the
example, and ended by imitating Diego when he himself put in practice
what he had just preached.
With this decision begins the third and last stage of the
preliminaries of the Crusade. The preaching apostolate was destined
to be continued while the Crusade itself was going on, and was to
grow into the great Dominican order. The idea of voluntary poverty in
the service of others was to electrify Christendom and remain as a
permanent force in the world.
Promptly, the new plan of action once decided on, the legates, Diego,
and Dominic, went at it vigorously. Arnaut, who had to return to
Citeaux to preside at the approaching chapter general of his Order,
departed thither on foot. Meanwhile de Castelnau and Raoul, with the
two Spaniards and the other clergy attached to the legation, divided
themselves by threes and fours and went here and there throughout
the country. Barefoot, begging their bread and carrying with them
only staff and breviary, they preached and debated publicly against
the heretical “Perfect.” We hear of these formal “theological
tournaments,” as it were, lasting a week at Servian near Beziers,
for a fortnight at Beziers itself, at Carcassonne for eight days.
Certainly there was no lack of energy.
Unfortunately, the effort produced no commensurate result. Peter de
Vaux-Cernay says that at Servian the people were so moved by the
debate that they would have expelled the heretics had it not been
for the opposition of the local lord, and that they escorted the
missionaries in triumph along the road when they left the town. But
at Beziers there was so much hostile feeling among the inhabitants
that Diego and Raoul advised de Castelnau to flee for his life.
Evidently it was not altogether without reason that the legates had
hesitated to dismiss their armed guards. At Carcassonne we hear of a
miracle but no conversions. In the neighbourhood Dominic vehemently
reproved certain peasants, possibly Catharists, who were reaping on
St. John’s Day. One of them, in reply, threatened the saint, when
suddenly he and his companions found the sheaves which they held in
their hands red, as with blood. At Verfeil, where St. Bernard had
been jeered at sixty years before, the debate is said to have gone
completely in favour of the Catholics, without impressing the people
in any way. Clearly, although the new tactics had made a certain
impression, especially upon the lower classes, there was to be no
rapid progress.
In November the Pope formally prescribed the novel methods already
adopted. The legates were to choose men of “proved virtue,” who
were to go about “dressed humbly and taking for model the poverty of
Christ” to make conversions. The new departure was to be tested to
the uttermost.
The effort was continued in the same way in 1207. At his chapter
general, Arnaut Amalric had recruited many of his Cistercians,
including twelve abbots, and these reinforcements gave a new impetus
to the work of debate and of preaching. The conferences seem to grow
more formal and to take place on a greater scale, attracting more
general attention. We hear especially of two, one at Montreal and one
at Pamiers.
At Montreal the debate lasted a fortnight, and here, according to
Peter de Vaux-Cernay, the miracle placed by Dominican tradition
at Fanjeaux really occurred. St. Dominic drew up a summary of his
arguments, as did the heretics, and the two memoranda were submitted
to the four judges of the debate, two knights and two burghers. The
judges, in executive session, despaired of coming to an agreement and
decided to try a form of ordeal. Accordingly, they ceremonially threw
both manuscripts into the fire. Whereupon the heretical manuscript
promptly blazed up, and St. Dominic’s, three times thrown in, was
three times cast out unharmed by the flames. The judges agreed to say
nothing of the matter and, miracle or no miracle, failed to give a
decision.
The last of the public debates took place at Pamiers, in the
territory and under the patronage of Raymond Roger, Count of Foix.
Faithful to his usual policy of “Good Lord, good Devil” the Count
entertained the disputants of both parties in turn, and offered
his great hall for the debate. On the Catholic side, the Bishop of
Osma was seconded by Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, and by the Bishop of
Conserans. The opposition seems to have been quite as much Waldensian
as Catharist. A single judge presided. In the course of the debate,
Esclairmonde the heretical sister of the Count of Foix, broke into
the debate in favour of the Cathari, with quite the assurance of a
Roman lady of the first century or of a wealthy English or American
woman to-day. In this case, however, one of the Catholic priests
present, Stephen of Metz, replied: “Go back to your spinning, it is
not for you to make a speech in such a company,” and she seems to
have subsided, possibly choked with anger at being so addressed by
a wretched barefoot priest. At the close of the conference certain
Waldensians, among them Duran (or Durand) of Huesca, a Spanish
Waldensian prominent in the sect, were converted. Otherwise this
conference, too, seems to have had slight results. As at Montreal, no
decision was given.
Although after the Conference at Pamiers we hear no more of public
debates on a grand scale, the preaching work of the mission was
continued. Legate Raoul drops out of the story. The Bishop of Osma
returned to his diocese to die, the sooner perhaps because of the
hardships to which the old man had subjected himself, but left
Dominic to go on with the work. Arnaut Amalric was again called
away for a time by business in Northern France, leaving Pierre de
Castelnau, and (apparently) Dominic, as the dominant personalities of
the Papal mission.
During 1207, the year of the conferences of Montreal and Pamiers, the
earlier idea of putting pressure upon the secular authorities was by
no means given up. It is quite possible, as Luchaire suggests, that
men of the stamp of de Castelnau, Arnaut Amalric, and Fulk, continued
to believe all along in measures stiffer than mere persuasion. And in
this belief, if they held it, time was to show them right enough. De
Castelnau crossed the Rhône into Raymond’s “Marquisate of Provence,”
and persuaded the nobles there to associate themselves in a league
which he organized for the prevention of feuds between its members.
He further arranged to include in the objects of the league the
prosecution of heretics and then summoned Raymond himself to join the
association formed for two such worthy purposes by this good-sized
group of his vassals.
Raymond refused. Besides being utterly unwilling to prosecute heresy,
he probably felt that his prestige would suffer if he did so as a
late comer into an association of his own liegemen which he had not
himself helped to organize.
De Castelnau’s next move shows the gathering exasperation of years of
failure. He excommunicated the Count. He interdicted his lands. Not
content with that, he went boldly into his presence and denounced
him publicly, to his face. No doubt he threw in his teeth the two
promises which he had already broken, first that of 1199 to the
Pope in the matter of the monks of St. Gilles, and second that to
de Castelnau himself in 1205, two years before the denunciation
when he had sworn to dismiss his mercenary troops and to prosecute
heretics. The spectacle must have been dramatic; the monk, remember,
had especially drawn upon himself the hatred of the heretics and the
easy-going Catholics (who between them made up nearly all Languedoc),
standing up barefoot in his grey Cistercian habit and cursing to his
face the greatest lord of the south. For protection he had nothing
but such moral authority as the Church still possessed in the face
of the heresy all about. His worst enemy could not have denied de
Castelnau’s courage.
Innocent lost no time in confirming the sentence. He ordered the
Archbishops of Vienne, Embrun, Arles, and Narbonne to publish and to
enforce it. He did more; he wrote directly, and fiercely, to Raymond
himself.
The counts of the indictment as repeated to the archbishops are
interesting and inclusive. Besides the two main charges of having
employed bandit-mercenaries and refusing to prosecute heretics, Count
Raymond had refused to interrupt military operations during Lent and
on feast days and holidays, he had made fortresses out of churches,
he had persecuted abbeys, despoiled the Bishop of Carpentras,
bestowed public offices upon Jews, refused to join the league of
peace of Provence, increased tolls upon the roads and bridges, played
host to heretics, and finally (although this was never proved and
seems not to have been the fact) he had become a heretic himself.
It is particularly interesting, and in line with the Church’s
condemnation of usury and extortion generally, to see the strong line
taken in the matter of tolls.
Naturally, his vassals owed no duties of allegiance as long as
their lord remained unabsolved. Should any man give him aid and
comfort that man was, ipso facto, excommunicate himself, down to the
blacksmith who might shoe him a horse.
The Pope’s letter to Raymond himself was devastating. “Impious
folly and tyranny” were among the gentler of its phrases. It spoke
hopefully of the Count’s chances of fever, leprosy, paralysis,
demoniacal insanity, metamorphosis into a beast after the fashion of
Nebuchadnezzar. Contrasting his love of war with the angelic devotion
to peace shown by the Provençal nobles and by “the illustrious” King
Pedro of Aragon, it likened its addressee to a crow feeding on dead
bodies. Altogether, its tone left very little to be desired.
Specifically, Innocent accused the Count of retorting to de Castelnau
that a heretic, perhaps a “Catharan bishop” could easily be found
to prove the superiority of their religion over the Catholic. He
speaks, therefore, of the serious grounds for suspicion of heresy in
Raymond’s own case, but guards himself carefully against offering it
as a fact. He is to give prompt and full satisfaction and seek to be
absolved. Otherwise he will lose the county of Melgueil held by him
as a vassal of the Roman Church, and if this is not enough then other
princes will be stirred up against him and granted title to any of
his lands they may conquer.
Raymond collapsed. He signed the Provençal truce and again swore to
do everything that was demanded of him. But it was the fatal weakness
of his character that he was always willing to mortgage his future by
yielding to present threats and then fail to keep his engagements. He
could never understand that this sort of thing would be even worse
for him in the end than out and out resistance. Again he did nothing.
Meanwhile St. Dominic, having put his hand to the plough, was not the
man to turn back. He succeeded in making some converts. The penance
laid upon one of these, in order to reconcile him to the Church, has
been preserved. Its date seems to be 1207 or 1208. It prescribes
that Pons Roger of Treville “en Lauraguais” for three successive
Sundays is to strip to the waist and walk from the outskirts of his
village to the church, being beaten with rods all along the way
by a priest. He is to wear a religious (i.e., monkish) habit with
crosses sewn upon it. For the rest of his life he is to eat no meat,
eggs, or cheese. Exception is made for the great feasts of Easter,
Pentecost and Christmas, not for the comfort of the penitent but so
that he might openly show that he had broken with the Catharan law
of fasting described in the preceding chapter. Three days a week
he is to have no fish, oil or wine, unless in case of sickness. He
is to keep three Lents a year, and to live in perpetual chastity.
The obligation, to hear mass at least once a day and to show his
letter of penitence once a month to his parish priest, round out
his sentence. Should he disobey, he is ipso facto excommunicate as
a heretic and perjurer on top of that. A propos of this bristling
catalogue the good Mother Drane, comparing it with the comparative
gentleness of present-day Roman Catholic penitence, remarks that ...
(the) ... “difference ... should cover us with humiliation for the
feebleness of modern penitence, rather than send us to criticize
the severity with which the Church has ever looked on sin.”[31]
Unfortunately even in the thirteenth century few Provençals seem
to have been of the good lady’s opinion. It appears quite certain
that converts willing to tread such an heroic road for the sake of
reconciliation with the Church were few.
In another direction St. Dominic’s labours were more fruitful. He had
observed that the heretics made a practice of caring for the children
of the very poor in order to bring them up in Catharan practices and
beliefs. Accordingly he founded the famous nunnery of Prouille to
receive the girl children of poor Catholics and also female converts
from heresy who desired a secure refuge in which they might enjoy
their new faith. The place filled a real need and prospered from the
first.
However, in spite of the fame that Prouille was to have in the
future, its foundation had little immediate effect upon the
situation. Converts by preaching were few, as we have seen. The
people cared no more for sermons than for rotten apples, remarks the
“Chanson de la Crusade.” For the third time discouragement fell upon
the papal mission to Languedoc.
There is a bit of evidence tending to prove that, in St. Dominic, the
discouragement of his fellow missioners was translated into anger. To
his congregation at Prouille he is said to have told of his years of
preaching, prayer and tears, in their behalf, then to have quoted
a Spanish proverb: “Use the stick where a blessing will not serve!”
“So,” said he calling up before them visions of war and massacre,
“force shall prevail where sweetness has failed.”
If this sermon of St. Dominic’s was, in fact, preached towards
the end of the year 1207, it coincided in time with a new and
particularly solemn and pressing series of letters addressed by
Innocent not only to Philip Augustus but also to that king’s chief
vassals the Duke of Burgundy and the Counts of Bar, Dreux, Nevers,
Champagne, and Blois. The Pope recalled to the “French” princes
(i.e., North-French as we should say) the nine years already spent
in the hopeless effort to convert the southern heretics by means of
gentleness. Now, said he, the miseries of war must bring them to
truth. Those who took the Cross were to receive full and complete
remission of their sins as if their crusading had been to Palestine
itself. As the lands of heretics were to be their lawful prey, so
their own lands and families were under special protection of the
Pope. No creditors could collect interest from a Crusader during
his absence, and crusading clergy were authorized to mortgage
their revenues for two years in advance. Really it seems as if the
Pope could hardly have bid higher. By this time he must have been
convinced, not only that the Albigenses must be put down by force,
but also that the task was equal in importance to recovering the
Holy Land itself. Better a lion in the desert than a wild cat in
the bed chamber, as Scott makes Saladin remark to Richard Cœur de
Lion. Innocent would almost certainly have maintained that the
Saracenic lion was a fair fighter, whereas the teeth and claws of the
Albigensian wild-cat bore poison.
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.