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BOOK
III.
HENRY
VI—PHILIP—OTHO IV.
CHAPTER XI.
PHILIP - OTHO IV.
1198—1208
Heresy in Western Europe—Variety of
Doctrines—Innocent’s plan of Depression—Purification of Clergy—Zealous
Teaching—St. Dominic—Murder of Castelnau—Consequences
— Submission of the Earl of Toulouse.
The first war avowedly waged for the extirpation of
heresy, was only beginning at the epoch at which the necessity for continuous
attention to German interests ceasing, afforded leisure to bring the history of
the rest of the Holy Roman Empire, the Sicilies, the Papacy, and the Crusades
down to the same point. Hence, the atrocities and horrors characterizing it,
were contemporary rather with the incidents to be, than with those that have
been narrated. But Innocent’s struggle against heresy began with his
pontificate; but the gradual development of fanaticism into guilty ambition,
resolute and active, by which Innocent was deluded or driven into measures most
contradictory to his avowed principles, preceded the epoch in question, and
may, therefore, naturally find their place here. Indeed, Innocent’s part
throughout the transaction, painfully connects itself with the last chapter, as
illustrating the utter impracticability of his theory of the duties and the
rights of the Papacy. The Crusade against the Albigenses, even independently of
the mode in which it was conducted, is the most startlingly extraordinary
result, from the tolerant principles of St. Bernard, avowed his by Innocent,
that the most vehement antagonist of Romanism, or the bitterest lampooner of
human nature, could desire.
The dissensions in, and with, the Church, which have
formed so material a portion of this history from its very commencement, had,
it may be observed, no reference to the doctrines she inculcated. Not that
amongst the learned schoolmen of mediaeval Europe there ever wanted subtle
dialecticians, who advanced objections to specific dogmas, and interpreted
texts of Scripture differently from the received sense:—instances have been
mentioned. Such heresies were the natural fruit of the abstruse speculations of
scholasticism, and the cause of St. Bernard’s aversion to the science. But
these metaphysical heretics were either recluse students, whose tenets, in days
when the printing press was unknown, gained little notoriety, or College
Professors, like Abelard, who, whilst suffered to teach heterodox opinions,
might gather a school of disciples. But few if any of these thinkers were
gifted with the impetuous temperament, or even with the passion for their
theological innovations, impelling men to brave the Powers that be, in pursuit
almost of martyrdom; and such men only are founders of sects. Abelard, it has
been seen, submitted, as a matter of course, to the papal censure of his
innovations; and so did most of those who really entertained opinions esteemed
heretical; whilst the less yielding Arnold of Brescia, as has also been seen,
was more of a political demagogue than of a heresiarch. That the submission was
often hypocritical there can be no doubt; Aimery de Bene renounced his peculiar
opinions so clearly unconvinced, that his death, within a year from his
palinode, is ascribed to shame and remorse; and Berenger, who in the eleventh
century denied the dogma of Transubstantiation, recanted, revoked his
recantation, and recanted anew, according as he was or was not, under immediate
fear of the pope. The hypocrisy of such conduct was better security against
success in revolutionizing religious opinion, than persecution armed with fire
and faggot. If some of the more persevering heretics,—who in the eleventh and
twelfth centuries were occasionally scourged, branded, and outlawed in various
parts of Europe, simply destroyed by privation of food and shelter—said to have
been the fate of some thirty in England under Henry II—or even burnt, as in a
few places has been seen—objected to some points of the Roman Catholic ritual,
were, generally speaking, like Arnold of Brescia and the Monk Henri, rather
disciplinarian Reformers than Heresiarchs; the bulk little more than declaimers
against the wealth, power, luxury, and vices of ecclesiastics.
In the East, on the other hand, a variety of religious
opinions upon points of doctrine, such as the origin of evil, the union of the
divine and human natures in Christ, and others, similarly inscrutable to finite
intellect, have existed, even from the days of the Apostles. Most of these
heresies had died away; but many, as Manicheanism, Gnosticism, Nestorianism,
Paulicianism, an offspring of Manicheanism though disowning its parentage, to
name no more, all differing from each other as well as from the three
established Churches, i. e., the Latin,
the Greek, and the Armenian, survived; and the last-named, Paulicianism, is
generally considered as the parent of those European heresies that are to form
the subject of the present chapter—the majority being Manichean in principle.
Paulicianism appears to have been first introduced
into Europe by palmers returning from the Holy Land, since mention occurs even
prior to the first Crusade, of Paulician doctrines at Milan. Their teachers
called themselves Kathan, from the Greek word kaftzpos (pure), to express the superior purity of their creed to that of the Roman
Church, corrupted, they averred, by Pope Sylvester, the Anti-Christ. The
orthodox Roman Catholics gave them the name of Patareni,
the etymological meaning of which, after long puzzling the learned—who could
but guess whether it were self-assumed or hostilely imposed, laudatory, or
vituperative—has lately been referred to pate, a word of the Milanese dialect
signifying crooked or hump-backed. From Lombardy, the doctrines of the Katharists or Patarenes—the
Anglicized forms of their names—are said to have been introduced into the south
of France by a female proselyte. Either thence, or through Switzerland—where
Arnold of Brescia had left disciples, and an anti-papal tendency—they spread
into Germany, and in the Netherlands acquired the new name of Poplicians, supposed to have been a corruption of
Paulicians, whilst in the North of France they were designated as Tisserands, probably from the tenets becoming especially
popular amongst weavers.
But nowhere, as yet, were Katharists so numerous as to form a body that could alarm, or much attract the notice of
the established Church. So decidedly did no spirit of martyrdom animate these
early dissenters, that it is hard to conceive how their doctrines acquired
disciples, how they grew into a sect. Far from avowing themselves seceders,
they professed implicit belief in every article of the Roman faith, propagating
their doctrines under the seal of secrecy, and seeking safety in obscurity,
even in equivocation and subterfuge. Of this, the expedient resorted to by the Katharists of Troyes to avert all suspicion of heresy from
their heads, will be a sufficient instance. They gave two old women of their
faith the names of Sancta Ecclesia and Sancta Maria, and then with untroubled
conscience answered: Ego credo quidquid credit
Sancta Ecclesia et Sancta Maria. An actual luxuriating in equivocation,
since to believe with Holy Church would have amply sufficed; and the most
devout worshippers of the Blessed Virgin, are not conceived to have sought the
standard of orthodoxy in her opinions, or indeed to know what they were. So
successful was this dissimulation, that a heretical Milanese teacher had nearly
been canonized by the Pope.
During the whole of the twelfth century the taste for
scholasticism was upon the increase, and with it, the turn of thought that
induces subjecting even religious doctrines to logical investigation.
Nevertheless, the progress of Katharism and the birth
of new heresies were still shrouded in mystery; and only when, Paulicianism
streamed in direct from the East—by means, it may be surmised, of returned
crusaders—the emboldened anti-papists avowed their revolt from the established
Church, was her attention awakened. But the importers of Paulicianism into
western Europe appear to have brought it, not from Asia, from an intermediate
country, where metaphysical subtleties might least have been expected, viz.,
from Bulgaria. So numerous there, were the believers in these doctrines, that
they were noticed by the Greeks, and named Bogomiloi from the Bulgarian, i. e., Slavonian, words Bog (God), and miloi (have mercy), which they
habitually ejaculated, in conversation as well as in prayer. So decidedly was
Bulgaria then esteemed the head quarters of this heresy, that, as no religion
could be conceived without a Head, contemporary Roman Catholic writers assert
that the Pope of the Albigenses (when this name was given to the heretics
collectively), entitled Nequintor—whether that were
name or title—resided in Bulgaria; whence, in 1167, he visited the South of
France to consecrate Katharist bishops, and preside
over a Katharist Synod, whilst the Archbishops of
Lyons and Narbonne, and the Bishop of Nevers were burning his co-religionists.
When attention was thus drawn to the possibility of an
impending schism, Paulicianism, or Katharism, was by
no means the only heresy threatening. Numerous sects now arose, of few of
which, except the Waldenses or Poor of Lyons, have the names been preserved;
for, although the Lateran Council of 1179 specified the condemned heretics as Katharists, Paterenes, and
Publicans, and one nearly contemporaneous chronicler speaks of many sects, the
orthodox in general scorned to discriminate between errors. To them a heretic
was a heretic, and the collective name of Albigeois,
or Albigenses was given to all French heretics, either because they abounded in
the vicinity of Albi, or because a Synod held by command of Alexander III, to
inquire into and put down erroneous opinions, sat there.
Of the tenets of the Albigenses little is known, save
through their Roman Catholic adversaries, and through deserters from their
faith, always the bitterest of adversaries; hence, what is told must be
received with caution, as fraught with exaggeration. Still enough is really
known to refute the error of those who, in their Protestant zeal, regard all
anti-papists as wise and virtuous precursors of the great Reformers. Another
difficulty arises from the confusion produced by imputing to all what is true
of some. Under this category falls licentiousness, which, with respect to the
Albigenses in general, might boldly be rejected, as analogous to that imputed
by Pagans to the early Christians, whilst some sects almost confessed it. So
are there tenets which, as contradicting each other, evidently could not be
entertained by one and the same sect. To assign to each sect its proper name
and opinions, or even to join each opinion with its associated opinions without
giving them a name, were, if at this distance of time feasible, the business of
Church History. But the variety of the opinions, strangely massed as
co-existent, constitutes so important a feature of the character of the age, so
elucidates the horror inspired by heretics, which eventually gave birth to the
tribunal of the Inquisition, that these often astounding tenets, must in some
measure be developed, and if possible, classified.
In abhorrence of the Pope, his ritual, his hierarchy,
and his authority, all these sects agreed, and, perhaps, in the rejection of
transubstantiation, purgatory, auricular confession, and the like. But here, at
furthest, unanimity ends. The answer, said to have been given by a converted
heretic to Archbishop Arnold of Cologne—“Whatever the Church believes and does,
the heretics hold to be false and useless,”—must be received, if true, simply
as the extravagant caricature of a renegade; and, even so, applicable only to
the particular sect or subdivision of sect that he had deserted. One other
point of rather general agreement, indicating a common Paulician origin, was
the Manichean doctrine of two antagonist principles; but even in this dogma
begins the diversity. Whilst some sects ascribed to the Evil Principle, or
Satan, only the evil existing in the world; others, seemingly the majority,
held him to be the Creator of the material universe itself; denying any share
in so worthless a work to the Good Principle, or God: others included the
Angels in the Satanic creation, and finally, some actually identified Christ as
the Creator, with Satan.
From the dogma, of the worthlessness of the material
universe, were educed corollaries so contradictory, that how even the credulity
of sectarian hatred could impute both to one and the same body of misbelievers,
is hard to comprehend. Whilst one sect, in order to extinguish as fast as
possible this diabolical creation, where the pure soul is miserably imprisoned
in flesh, prohibited marriage altogether, alleging that only inviolate
virginity could to God be endurable; other, less rapid depopulators, allowed
wedlock even to priests, provided every couple, when parents of one child,
separated to resume a life of single blessedness. In opposition to all these,
others held the Satan-created body too thoroughly contemptible to be worth a
thought; its actions so utterly insignificant, that if they did not explicitly
permit, they regarded licentiousness, unbridled even by the closest ties of
blood, with absolute indifference. Another sect, who ascribed the creation to
the Good Principle, maintained, that appetites implanted in man’s nature by
God, are not to be curbed; and Aimery de Bene taught, that sin was a nonentity,
and every action whatsoever innoxious, so the agent were filled with love of
God. Another of loftier views, who asserted that everything, the human soul
especially, emanating from the Divine Essence, would into it be ultimately
re-absorbed, deemed carnal instincts and appetites given to be conquered by
meditation; and modesty a symptom of disgraceful feelings; wherefore zealots of
both sexes, confident in their own conquering strength, proved their purity by
associating wholly divested of garments.
With respect to our Saviour various fantastical
notions are enumerated; some of which, as blasphemous, the pen shrinks from
recording; and all are, as usual, attributed to all. One very general belief
was, that Christ assumed an illusory or phantasm body, being really neither
incarnate of the Virgin, nor crucified. Another, that the Virgin herself was an
Archangel, according to one subdivision of this sect, without sex, according
to another, really the mother of Christ, though still his incarnation gave him
only an illusory body. A third sect averred that Christ never was seen upon
earth, having compelled a Demon to assume his form, which Demon really was
crucified; a fourth, accepting the Gospel history literally, held that it
recorded the transactions of another world, where the New Testament was
written. A fifth, proclaimed two Christs, one bad, who, born of an unchaste
woman, did suffer as related; one good, altogether spiritual, who was unseen
upon earthy until incarnate in St. Paul. A sixth asserted that the Ark was a
mere symbol of their sect, and that Christ, a sinner like other men, was saved
by entering it; a seventh, the intellectual ancestors of modern Rationalists,
merely rejected everything supernatural in the New Testament, interpreting the
miracles of Our Saviour and his Apostles allegorically; an eighth held every
good man to be an only begotten son of God, this being the sense in which
Christ was so; and finally, a ninth, most extravagant of all, that Satan was
the second son of God.
Some of these sects denied the Resurrection of the
body, some any future existence whatever. Many rejected infant Baptism, some
Baptism altogether. Some repudiated a priesthood, whilst others had a regular
hierarchy, with forms of ordination of their own: some are even said to have
had degrees of initiation, and recondite doctrines, revealed only to the tried
and chosen few; but this last must needs refer to the time when they shrouded
themselves in mystery. They all refused to pay tithes, denied the right of the
civil authorities to inflict capital punishment—as encroaching upon the
functions of the Almighty. They generally deemed taking an oath a breach of the
third Commandment; and some, on account of the uncertainty of human affairs,
are said never to have made a positive statement, lest they should unwittingly
utter a falsehood. Finally, whilst with some mystics, Faith was the only
requisite to salvation, others sought to work out theirs, by a certain number
of prayers daily and nightly repeated; and again, others by a hundred
genuflexions regularly distributed through the four and twenty hours.—A few
Roman Catholic writers impute yet more blasphemous absurdities to the
Albigenses; but enough have been mentioned to show that all heretics were not
necessarily sound Protestant Christians.
Some of these sects objected to churches as
superfluous, worship being everywhere equally fitting. Many held church bells,
plate, altars, chalices, crosses, in short, whatever may be denominated church
furniture, in abhorrence; also church music, and certain books of the Old
Testament. With respect to some of these things much difference of opinion
existed amongst the sects; whilst some spurned a crucifix as an idol, others
simply objected to the usual form, requiring the cross to be in the shape of a
capital T, upon which the effigy of the Redeemer should be fastened with three
nails instead of four, one nail piercing both feet. But the opinion of
enlightened modern Romanists appears to be, that their aversion was the natural
fruit of a deep Christian feeling of horror, for the instrument of their
Saviour’s sufferings. This abhorrence, whatever its ground, was upon one
occasion exemplified by making a fire of crosses and crucifixes, to cook the
dinner of the heretic army—a proceeding which the orthodox might well interpret
as an abjuring of Christianity. In regard to the Bible, all sects built their
faith upon the New Testament, as expounded by themselves, and to all,
therefore, this portion of the sacred volume was an object of veneration. But
the Old Testament, as before said, was not so unanimously revered; while some
sects accepted it like the Church, others selected particular books to be
esteemed sacred, rejecting the rest, and others rejected it altogether. Hence
the stories of sacrilegious treatment of Bibles, which Protestants have
peremptorily denied, as, because sacrilegious, impossible. Nothing more likely,
than that besieged Albigenses should defile and toss from the walls, the
rejected books of the Old Testament, with cries of “There is your Bible!” and
that the orthodox besiegers should conclude the volume contained the whole of
the Holy Scriptures. And how should it occur to the spectators, to connect any
but irreligious ideas with the desecration of a crucifix?
How much of the various extravagant and absurd
opinions here collected is to be considered as caricature—which, however
preposterous, presupposes a strong, if disagreeable, likeness—must remain
doubtful; and this part of the subject might, perhaps, be so dismissed; but as
the actual origin of one, and only one sect, is known, that must be distinctly
stated, as some guide to the judgment formed both of it and of the rest. Peter,
surnamed because born at Vau, le Fauclois, Latinized
Valdus, whence Waldo, a wealthy and free-living merchant of Lyons, upon seeing
a gay companion, struck by lightning, fall dead at his side, was so impressed
with the nothingness of worldly prosperity, that he thenceforth devoted himself
wholly to the study of the Bible. In the injunction “Sell that thou hast and
give to the poor,” he found the rule of life; obeyed, and next day begged his
bread. His wife, who had some separate property, deeply felt the disgrace of
his mendicancy; remonstrated, “Why beg of strangers when I can support thee?”
and, upon his persisting, complained to the Archbishop. The prelate
investigated the matter, and far from treating Peter as a heretic, commended
his piety and charity; but ordered him to content himself with begging of his
wife, and forbade him, being a layman, to preach or teach. But in preaching and
teaching Peter delighted, as probably in begging; and he appealed to Rome. The
sentence was confirmed, and he became an avowed heretic; his chief heresies
being the duty of absolute poverty, and contempt for fasting; in opposition to
the Katharists, who uniformly abstained from animal
food, except fish. Peter soon formed a sect called indifferently the Poor of
Lyons, and the Vaudois, or Waldenses, from his surname, which last designation,
apparently, causes the habitual confusion of the Poor of Lyons, whose heresies
were of so simple a kind, with the Vaudois, so called from being chiefly found
in the valleys of Piedmont, where for centuries their creed had prevailed. When
attacked as a heretic, Peter fled, and at length found a resting place in
Bohemia, where he made and left a number of converts.
These various heresies had been spreading, and
creeping to light, throughout the twelfth century; and in an age so essentially
intolerant as this has shown itself, no surprise can be felt that heretics,
when known as such, became objects of detestation. Even as early as the
eleventh century, heretics had been burnt in France; in the beginning of the
twelfth, to bring the subject collectively before the reader, Alexius Comnenus
burnt Bogomiloi at Constantinople; at St. Gilles, in
France, the populace burnt a rejecter of rites, ceremonies, and churches, in
1130; in 1139 a larger sacrifice was, in England, offered—if, as above
mentioned, rather passively than actively—to the God of mercy and long
suffering; as was, in 1166, a regular holocaust at Cologne; and smaller
executions, the King’s acts of expiation, followed, as has been seen, at
intervals in France. All these victims are represented as dying joyfully,
triumphing in the honours of martyrdom; and at Cologne, a young girl, whom the
mob, moved by her extraordinary beauty, had rescued, sprang back into the
flames. This is almost a solitary instance, of compassion for heretics in the
populace, who appear to have greatly enjoyed such exciting spectacles,
occasionally undertaking the executioners office.
But heresy, long increasing in silence and obscurity,
now acquired such extent and consistency as to become an object of anxious
attention to the Head of the Church. In 1163, Alexander III, then in France,
held a Council at Tours, in which Katharists, Paterenes and Publicans, were specifically condemned; and a
Synod of the clergy of the province was ordered to assemble two years later at Lombez, to take measures for the suppression of heresy. The
Ecumenic Council that he held at the Lateran, in 1179, decreed that heretics,
when proved irreclaimable, should be delivered over to the secular arm;
carefully explaining that, in this recurrence to temporal authority, the object
was to work upon the soul by fear for the body. In 1183, Lucius III commanded
every bishop, during the obligatory annual visitation of his diocese, when
every man was bound to reveal to him whatever great and secret crime had come
to his knowledge, to inquire particularly into religious opinions. They were
directed to allow persons accused of heresy to clear themselves by oath; but to
deliver the relapsed up to the secular arm, taking their property for the
Church. From princes and princely nobles he, at the same time, required an oath
to support the prelates in these proceedings. The following year, in a Council
held at Verona, he confirmed all these measures, and excommunicated Katharists, Paterenes, Poor of
Lyons, Passagini, Umiliati,
and Giuseppini, specifically, and all Manicheans
indiscriminately. But the alarm created by Saladin’s conquests speedily
diverted the attention of succeeding Popes from heresy; and in this condition, Innocent
III, at his election, found religious opinion in Europe.
To such a Pope as Innocent—a master of scholastic
theology, firmly convinced that his own was the sole saving faith, and deeply
imbued with the authority, the duties, and the awful responsibility of the
papal office—this growing prevalence of heresy must have been alike grievous
and mortifying. To bring back the lost sheep to the fold, to rescue from
eternal perdition all Christian souls, misled from the path of salvation, he
naturally esteemed the peculiar and imperative duty of the supreme Pontiff, and
he prepared to grapple with the enemy. His preparations were such as might be
expected from his commanding intellect and his moral character.
He first sought for the cause, that could thus have
fostered the rise and propagation of heresy, and believed he had found two;
one, the vices of part of the clergy, which, in the eyes of their flocks,
degraded and polluted the religion they preached; the other, the negligence of
a yet larger part, who, leaving their flocks without religious instruction,
laid them open to any false doctrine, inculcated by zealous sectarians. His
first measure, therefore, was a strenuous endeavour to reform the clergy. He commanded
those intrusted with the cure of souls, to exert indefatigable assiduity in
teaching their parishioners, in reasoning with the heretically disposed, and
refuting their errors. That they might be capable of so doing, he commanded
them diligently to study the Holy Scriptures. But as Innocent desired not to
interfere between the lower clergy and their diocesans, he committed to the
bishops the duty of inforcing obedience to these
commands; with the bishops, therefore, did the reform begin.
Innocent required, from every prelate, the assiduous
visitation of his diocese, enjoined by Lucius III; and he invited such, as,
from age or other infirmity, might be unequal to this active superintendence,
to resign their sees. With those whose vices dishonoured the Church, he took
stronger measures; the Legates, whom he sent into various countries to see that
all papal injunctions were obeyed, were instructed to inquire into the conduct
of the bishops, and authorized to depose, if necessary, any immoral member of
the order, whom they could not persuade to avoid such disgrace by resigning.
Nowhere was this reforming mission more needed than in the heretical South of
France. The Archbishop of Narbonne, an illegitimate son of Pedro of Aragon’s
grandfather or great grandfather, was reported to be about the worst of the
objectionable prelates. Avaricious, he accumulated benefices, keeping prebends,
rectories, and the like, vacant, when the incumbents died; indolent and
negligent, he rarely appeared in church, and interfered not with the unbounded
licentiousness of his clergy. Innocent’s Legates, after earnestly and
repeatedly, but vainly, pressing him to prevent scandal by resigning his see,
deposed him. He appealed to the Pope, and, despite his age and infirmities,
repaired to Rome. The Holy Father treated him with personal forbearance, but
confirmed his deposal; and the example proved effective. Prelates of inferior
birth and station hoped not for more indulgence, and several bishops resigned
their sees, upon learning that their chapters had complained of them. Some,
indeed, still abused the degree of consideration, which respect for the church
they disgraced, not tenderness for them, called forth. As, for instance, the
Archbishop of Bordeaux, accused of leaguing with banditti to plunder his
flock, obtained a prolongation of the time allowed him in which to resign, and
died in his archiepiscopal palace ere this period of grace expired.
The clergy, thus purified and prepared, were expected
to effect, by reasoning, the conversion of all heretics. For Innocent, fully
adopting the opinion of St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable upon this subject,
in all his early epistles and sermons inculcated this great duty, and decidedly
eschews the idea of employing force in lieu of argument. In a sermon preached
upon an Ash Wednesday, he says:—“The bonds of the heretics must be loosened by
teaching the truth; for God desireth not the death of
a sinner, but rather that he should turn from his wickedness and live.” He
further justifies this opinion by that of the Fathers of the Church, who have
said, “men are to be persuaded not forced to believe.” And chiefly to the Cistertians—whose austere lives were calculated to give
weight to their words—as subsidiary to, and, when necessary, substitutive for,
the ministry of the parochial clergy, he committed the business of teaching and
refuting heretics. It must be added, that at this time, Innocent, as indeed the
Roman Church generally, does not appear averse to the perusal of the Scriptures
by the laity. Translations of the Bible into Scandinavian and other languages
by Cistercian monks, for the use of the natives, are often mentioned; and
Innocent, in an epistle to the Bishop of Metz, says that he is informed the
people of this diocese wish to hear the Bible read in their mother tongue, and
deride the ignorance of their parish priests; that the desire to read and
understand the Holy Scriptures is rather laudable than otherwise; but that
secret meetings for the purpose, arrogant private interpretation, and insolence
to priests is wrong. He then inquires what translation of the Bible they study,
and whether those who study it are orthodox. If apprehension consequent of evil
be there, it is faint and remote.
But long before he could hope to see any result from
his judicious measures against heresy, Innocent was called upon to deal with
individual heretics. The first place where this occurred was Bosnia. There, in
the very year in which he took possession of St. Peter’s Chair, the Ban’s
consort, and the Bishop,—the whole bannat formed but
one diocese—who had long been suspected of Paulicianism, avowed their creed;
and their example encouraged all compatriot secret Paulicians and Katharists to declare themselves. Innocent commissioned the
neighbouring Archbishop of Spalatro, or Spalato, to
undertake the conversion of the Bosnian heretics, sending a Chaplain of his own
to his assistance. The Chaplain ascribed the prevalence of heresy to the causes
generally assigned by Innocent himself; and, whilst endeavouring temporarily to
supply the want of religious instruction by his own preaching, he proposed, as
a permanent remedy for this evil, to divide the single bishopric into five, to
which learned Italian ecclesiastics should, in the first instance, be
appointed. Whatever these measures of precaution against future evil might do,
those adopted for present cure remained ineffective during the political
disturbances mentioned in the last chapter. Vulcan, when King of Servia, took
advantage of a husband’s reluctance to act rigorously towards his wife’s
co-religionists, to charge the Ban himself with heresy, thinking thus to get
Bosnia. He laid the accusation before Innocent, who called upon the King of
Hungary, as suzerain, not to punish or to coerce opinion, but to guard the
orthodox from heretical infection. “Care for the healthy,” he wrote, “must
always outweigh pity for the diseased;” and added:—“For therefore do kings bear
the sword, to guard the pious, and execute vengeance upon evil doers; to
protect the orthodox in their faith, and reduce to submission heretics, who
mock at the punishments inflicted by the Church.” To this end he required the
expulsion of all obstinate Katharists from Bosnia by
force of arms. Ultimately Kulin, yielding to Emmeric’s earnest remonstrances,
with the bulk of his subjects, formally abjured heresy; when the Archbishop and
Chaplain left Bosnia, professedly orthodox, and supplied with learned prelates
to keep her so.
But nearer home, even in his own dominions, had he
next to guard the orthodox from contagion, to convert or expel heretics, as
seditious as they were heretical. At the close of the twelfth century, Katharists and Paterenes lurked
in many papal cities—at Orvieto boldly showing themselves. There they taunted
the Roman Catholics, challenged them to the combat, not of wits but of swords,
and threatened them with exile. The Bishop proved wholly unable to contend with
the growing evil, and in 1199, the orthodox Orvietans sent a petition to Rome for a Podesta who could stem the torrent. The Pope, in
concurrence with the Romans, appointed to the office Pietro Parenzio,
a young Roman noble, very devout and energetic, if not equally judicious.
Parenzio’s operations upon assuming the government were little in accordance with
Innocent’s principles, unless the disorderly violence of the heretics be
supposed to have altered their character to that of rebels. After a
consultation with the Bishop, he issued an edict, promising pardon to whoever
should return to the true faith by a specified day; and threatening with heavy
pains and penalties whoever should slight the invitation. Sectarians, who
proclaim their opinions, are not to be so influenced; the invitation was
slighted, and the Podestà proceeded to punish. He did not, indeed, shed blood;
but the imprisonments, fines, demolition of houses, and public flagellations,
by which he endeavoured to convince misbelievers of their errors, appear to
have provoked enmity as bitter as could any prodigality of human life.
At Easter of the following year, Parenzio visited Rome, where, according to the law regulating the office of podesta, he
had left his whole family. The Pope inquired of him the state of heresy at
Orvieto, and he replied: “I have so punished the heretics that they publicly
menace me with death.” The Holy Father thereupon—whether praising or
blaming—granted him, for the contingency of his falling under heretic
vengeance, a full remission of his sins; and Parenzio,
thus relieved from all anxiety respecting his lot in another world, despite the
tears of his wife and mother, returned to his post.
May-day he reached Orvieto; and, upon the 21st, gave a
banquet to his friends. The evening passed in social hilarity; the guests
withdrew, and the Podestà was preparing for bed, when a bribed menial admitted
the Paterenes into his palace. They dragged the
champion of orthodoxy out of his room, out of his house, out of the town, and
into a field. There they demanded of him the restitution of all the fines
extorted from them, and a solemn pledge either to protect and support the Paterenes, or to resign his post, leaving them to
themselves. To the pecuniary demand Parenzio is said
to have assented, positively refusing the pledge. The discussion was not
allowed to grow tedious. One of the party, crying “What is the use of so many
words?” struck the Podestà on the mouth; when his companions, fired by the bold
act, instantly despatched him with their daggers. Celestial lights are reported
to have irradiated the grave of the victim, who, as a martyr, was canonized.
The murderers, one and all, are believed to have expiated their crime by speedy
and dreadful deaths; the obstinate Paterenes were
expelled; and centuries afterwards, a. d. 1560, the city erected a magnificent
monument to the memory of San Pietro Parenzio—its
patron Saint, from the hour it was cured of heresy.
Next to Orvieto, Viterbo abounded with heretics, who
were even able to elect Paterene Consuls. Thence,
however, Innocent appears to have scared them by a sort of act of outlawry.
This castigation of the Viterban heretics, combined
with Parenzio’s measures at Orvieto, and the
consequences of his murder, so alarmed their compatriot co-religionists, that
ere long the pontifical dominions, if not wholly and thoroughly orthodox, were
at least free from the public display of heresy, in seeming defiance of the Pope.
Throughout Tuscany, and in some parts of Lombardy, similar measures were
adopted with similar success; but from Milan—long the Italian head quarters of
heresy, there strangely brought into close alliance with Papalism, i.e. Guelphism—the expulsion was only apparent, and, even so,
very imperfect. Milan remained the heretical supporter of the Popes, being, in
fact, simply the enemy of the Emperor, and therefore the ally of another of his
enemies, the Pope.
Into Germany, likewise, had these heresies crept. Into
the eastern states they came direct from Bulgaria; and as a mean of checking
their progress, through increased activity in spiritual instruction and
superintendence, Innocent, as requested by the Duke of Austria, erected a new
bishopric of Vienna. Into Bavaria and Swabia they penetrated from Switzerland;
into the north-western parts through the Netherlands from France, whence, upon
the other side, they invaded the north of Spain. The prevalent heresy in
Germany seems to have been Katharism, which there
acquired a mystic hue. But the German heretics were as yet few, neither causing
anxiety, nor much attracting the Pope’s attention. It was in the South of
France, that a hard struggle against impending schism, awaited the champions of
orthodoxy.
Various circumstances had contributed to render that
district a nursery of innovation. Intellectual culture, luxury, and
licentiousness, there, as has been seen, emulated each other; and whilst the
first revealed some of the errors of the Roman Church, the two latter generated
an alienation from all religion, which, by inevitable reaction, produced
fanaticism, whether for the old faith, for that faith divested of its errors,
or for any of the wild fancies that have been enumerated. Moreover the spirit of
toleration, actuating its princes to the degree of suffering Jews to possess
land, exercise civil offices, and have colleges of their own, encouraged
reformers and heretics to show themselves earlier and more boldly there than
elsewhere. Before the middle of the twelfth century, the personal exertions of
St. Bernard have been seen necessary there, to put down the Henricians;
and prior to its close, the bulk of the population appears to have been
heretical; a spiritual condition fully—if covertly—tolerated by the princely
nobles, some of whom were suspected of secretly entertaining the new opinions,
as was almost known to be the case with many of their noble vassals, their
priests, monks, nuns, and even mitred abbots. Thus confident of protection, the
professors of the new creeds were ardent in their zeal, and as intolerant as
the Roman Catholics presently showed themselves.
Innocent directed the Cistercian missionaries, to
whose piety and eloquence he at once committed the conversion of the
Albigenses, to investigate the cause of this prevalence of heresy, and to
satisfy themselves, by distinct interrogation, as to the orthodoxy or
heterodoxy of all persons whose religious opinions were in the least
mistrusted. And this simple inquiry, a mere variety of, or assistance to, the
regular duty of every bishop at his visitation, proved the seed of the terrible
tribunal of the Inquisition. The chief of these missionaries, invested with
legatine authority, were the Cistercian Abbot of Abbots, Arnold, and the monk,
Peter of Castelnau; a man so innately devout, that
when Archdeacon of Maguelonne, and evidently on the high road to a bishopric,
he renounced his prospects in the secular church, to take the cowl in a Cistercian
monastery. As to the causes promoting the growth of heresy, Peter agreed with
Innocent; but, judging mere argument insufficient for its extirpation,
entreated the Pope to send legates of higher rank, whose dignity might support
and give weight to their preaching. The request was granted, and the Cardinals,
in consequence from time to time sent, took up their temporary residence at
Montpellier, and other towns of these vassal principalities.
The Cistercians began their operations in Innocent’s
own spirit, with the purification of the episcopal order. They flattered
themselves that considerable progress towards the performance of their allotted
task was effected, when they had prevailed upon the almost superannuated Bishop
Otho of Carcassonne, and an illegally intruded Bishop of Toulouse, to vacate
their respective sees. This confidence increased when they had carried the
elections of Bishop Otho’s active and vigorous nephew, as his successor, and of
the ex-troubadour, Folco, of Genoa, alias Folquet, Foulquet or Foulques, of
Marseilles, to the see of Toulouse. But the troubadour-prelate is another of
the remarkable persons who claim a more particular introduction.
Folco, the son of a Genoese merchant settled at
Marseilles, was intended to succeed his father in his business. But the lively
imagination of the youth sickened at the drudgery of a counting-house; and
whilst his spirits revelled in the delights of the world of poesy, he felt the
intellectual, free, and more than free, life of the troubadour, irresistibly
alluring to his temper and his senses. He devoted himself to the gai saber, and, like his fellow votaries, to lawless
gallantry. As a troubadour he ranked high, especially at the courts of King
Richard, with whom he was a personal favourite, of Richard’s brother-in-law,
Raymond Earl of Toulouse, and of the Viscount of Marseilles. To Adelaide, Vicountess of Marseilles, his first love lays are
addressed, though he masked his courtship of his Lord’s wife, with a show of
wooing his two sisters; sufficient evidence that the passion of the poet,
himself a married man and father of a family, did not even affect to be
platonic. Were more proof wanted, his amorous ditties afford it, in one of
which he prays the lady of his heart, to make him happy while she can do so
unsuspected, he being supposed to be enamoured of her sisters-in-law, Laura and
Mobile. But the connubial fidelity of Viscountess Adelaide was invincible, even
by poetic flames, and she banished the audacious lover from her presence. The
less constant than susceptible Troubadour sought and found consolation, in the
smiles of Eudocia Countess of Montpellier, to whom his amorous strains were
thenceforward dedicated.
But now occurs another of the sudden conversions, of
those days of impulse and of contrast. The rapidly successive deaths of his two
successive patrons and dupes, the Comte de Montpellier and the Vicomte de
Marseilles, so struck the impressionable fancy of Folco, as completely to
change the current of his feelings and ideas. Love and gaiety were for him no
more; and an austerely ascetic life became the sole object of his desires. He
persuaded his wife, to whom it may be surmised that wedlock had not been a heaven
upon earth, to adopt his new views; and she pronounced her vows in a Cistercian
nunnery, as he and their two sons did theirs, in a monastery of the same Order.
The Monk, Folquet, was as distinguished a personage
as the Troubadour, Folco, had been. Nor indeed did he wholly neglect the muse,
though the character of his effusions was changed, if, as is reported, he
preached, in verse, a crusade against the Spanish Mohammedans. He was speedily
chosen Abbot of his monastery, and in 1206, the epoch now reached in the
progress of heresy, was elected Bishop of Toulouse. Peter of Castelnau, then confined to a sick bed, raised his hands to
heaven in thankfulness for such a prelate in such a diocese.
The new Bishop, amidst the vexations and annoyances of
all kinds, to which he was subjected by his heretical flock, discharged the
arduous duties of the high office in critical times intrusted to him, with a
disinterested and indefatigable zeal, that it is grievous to see disfigured—as
we presently shall—not only by inexorable cruelty, but by treachery towards
supposed heretics, or their suspected indulgers. Amongst the criminally
indulgent, he reckoned the Earl of Toulouse. It is equally grievous to discover
that these qualities did not deteriorate his character, in the estimation
either of contemporary co-religionists,—monks, if they could not quite
canonize, gave him the title of Le Bienheureux,—or
of the greatest of their immediate posterity. Dante and Petrarc—the
first, ultimately a decided Ghibeline, the second, so
anti-papal that late writers have represented him as a Reformer, the precursor
of Wicliffe and Huss,—have, severally, placed Folquet in Paradise, and in the Trionfo di Amor; in the last, he, indeed,
appears merely as a Troubadour, but without a hint that his heart was less
admirable than his intellect.
But preaching, even supported by the new Bishop’s zeal
and eloquence, and by the high dignity of a Cardinal, proved inadequate to the
conversion of the Albigenses; and legates, prelates, and missionaries were
perplexed what measures to adopt, when a new actor appeared upon the stage.
This was another of the extraordinary men of an age rich in such phenomena; a
man influential, for evil as well as for good, not only amongst his contemporaries,
but through many succeeding generations. The individual in question was Dominic
de Guzman, canonized as St. Dominic, the founder of the Order of Dominicans or
Predicant Friars, and eventually—it may well be hoped unintentionally—of the Inquisition.
Dominic, born in 1170, in a small town of the Spanish
diocese of Osma, was, as his name imports, the son of noble parents, related,
if distantly, to the first families in Spain. He is said to have discovered, in
actual infancy, such innately intense piety, that an ecclesiastical uncle took
charge of the six-years-old child, to educate him for the Church. As he
advanced towards adolescence he devoted himself to the studies appropriate to
his intended profession, with an ardour and a perseverance that debarred him
from all participation in the pleasures of his fellowstudents,
at the high school of Palencia. He inured himself to all the austerities and
privations, deemed ornaments, if not actually essentials, of that profession,
and refused to touch wine, although medically prescribed for his delicate
health, until commanded by his bishop to drink it. His charity equalled his
piety; upon the occurrence of a fearful scarcity, he sold his furniture and
other property to procure relief for the famishing poor; and when this fund
proved insufficient, sacrificed even his highly prized books to that object. In
a young and eager student, as remarkable a sacrifice, as that which he
afterwards proposed making, to insure a poor old woman’s salvation. Upon her
telling him that she would fain leave the Albigenses, to join the true Church,
but could not, having no support save their alms, given only to fellowworshippers, he offered to sell himself into
slavery, and with the price secure her a subsistence as a Roman Catholic. The
necessity for the sacrifice was obviated by his wealthier associates. But to
return to his early life. So high and so rapidly did the reputation of the
youthful ecclesiastic rise, that he had barely completed his twenty-third year,
when Diego, Bishop of Osma, named him a Canon of his Cathedral; and so
completely did he gain the good will as well as the respect of his brother
Canons, that upon the death of the Sub-Prior, he was unanimously elected in his
stead. Dominic, shrinking from posts of dignity, strove to decline, but was
compelled to accept, the office. Preaching, however, continued to be his chief
occupation and pleasure. To preach in different places he incessantly travelled
about the diocese, and is said to have converted many Spanish heretics. In the
year 1204, the theatre of his activity was changed. The King of Castile sent
the Bishop of Osma as his embassador into the north
of Europe, to negotiate a marriage for his minor son and heir; and the Bishop
selected his Sub-Prior as his companion. Various difficulties obstructed the
negotiation, which appears to have ultimately failed. Upon their return, the
prelate seized the opportunity to visit Rome with his companion; whence they
travelled homeward, through the South of France. They reached Montpellier at
the very moment when the Cistercian Abbots, to the number of a dozen, amongst
whom was Guy of Vaux-Sernay, now returned from the fourth Crusade, were
deliberating with Peter of Castelnau, upon the course
to be adopted for the conversion of the Albigenses.
The new comers were deeply impressed with the alarming
spiritual condition of the country. They had learnt upon their journey to
appreciate the advantage, which the envy, excited by the wealth, pomp, and
luxury of the high clergy, gave the plain heretic teachers. Hence Dominic at
once pronounced that, in order to counteract an influence so pernicious, the
simplicity and frugality by which it was acquired, must be emulated. He
therefore pressed the legatine-missionaries to travel the country on foot. Prosperity
had wrought its usual effect upon the Cistercians, and most of the potent
Abbots shrank from the unwonted step; when he easily induced his own, more
apostolically tempered prelate,—who, but for Innocent’s prohibition, would have
resigned his see, to devote himself to missionary toils and perils among heretics—to
set the example. Bishop Diego sent forward his horses and his train, and,
accompanied by Dominic alone, undertook a pedestrian, and seemingly barefoot,
expedition of this kind.
Their purpose took them far from high roads, through
secluded valleys, and into the loneliest recesses of the mountains. One day,
their guide, a secret heretic, purposely misled them through briary thickets,
and bramble-covered ground, where thorns wounded their unprotected limbs.
Dominic exultingly cried, to his somewhat depressed associate, “Joy! joy, my
revered Lord! Our blood is flowing in expiation of our sins. We are cleansed,
and our hallowed object must be attained”. These words, this fervent zeal,
combined with such patient humility, touched the heart of the guide, who was
even then glorying in the hope of disheartening the pedestrians; and he
embraced the faith of which he saw the fruits. During this journey, Dominic is
said to have achieved a more important conversion, in the person of Ponce
Roger, one of the principal preachers of the Albigenses.
The example thus set by the Spanish Bishop, and
rendered more impressive by its success, however partial, was followed. The Cistercian
Abbots took the pilgrim’s staff in hand, summoned the most learned of their
monks to join them, and dividing themselves into small bands, undertook
pedestrian missions. The Bishop of Osma resumed his homeward journey; but
Dominic remained in France, where he and Peter of Castelnau were alike, though differently, zealous and active missionaries. The whole
heretical region was now traversed in all directions by ecclesiastics of all
grades, cheerfully undergoing unaccustomed toil and hardships, and fervently
preaching the creed of Rome. The proceeding was not ineffective. Many heretics
of humble condition were converted, more waverers were confirmed in their old
faith; and the zeal of staunch Roman Catholics rose to white heat. But if some
were gained over, if some of the missionaries .won the love and respect even of
those whom they failed to convince, their success was not sufficiently
brilliant to support the ardour impelling them to the effort. They found the
new opinions too firmly rooted to be easily extirpated, and most of the Cistercians,
sickening of their laboriously won imperfect success, or recalled by the
business of their monasteries, returned to the usual routine of their cloister
duties. Abbots Arnold and Guy, with Dominic and Peter, persevered.
When Bishop Diego reached Pamiers on his road home, he
was entreated to pause there, in order either to preside ever, or to share in,
a conference about to be held by Romanist and Katharist theologians, to attend which the Comte de Foix had come thither with his wife
and sisters. Both parties, as usual in such bloodless, verbal wars, claimed the
victory; and the colloquy is chiefly worth notice for a little incident,
explanatory, perhaps, of the superior popularity of the creed of the Albigenses
over that of Rome, with the female sex; and the influence of woman in
propagating religious opinions is an admitted historical fact that needs no
proof. Countess Clairemonde, one of de Foix’s
sisters, interposing in the debate, with some remark favourable to the
Albigenses, her right to be heard was gladly acknowledged by their champions.
But the orthodox disputants silenced her, scornfully exclaiming “To thy
distaff, Lady! It is not for thee to speak in such controversy!” Who can wonder
if the worshipped divinities of knights and troubadours resented such contempt?
Who need be told that Clairemonde’s apparent
predisposition to heterodoxy was strengthened, and perhaps her brother’s? The
Bishop of Osma prosecuted his journey, but died ere he could reach his
monarch’s court.
Regardless of the Pamiers discussions, the fanatical
monk, Peter, seemed to court the crown of martyrdom, at least as much as
success in his allotted duty; whilst Dominic, continuing to tread the path he
had marked out for himself and his fellow-labourers, still effected a few
conversions. What was perhaps of more avail, he managed to stop one grand
source of success to the Albigenses, in gaining proselytes. They had fallen
upon the scheme of affording gratuitous education to young girls of all
conditions. To indigent parents, indigent nobles included, this temptation
seems to have been irresistible; and the pupils, of course, returned home
staunch adherents of some sect or other; certain to instil their own sentiments
into their future children, and many of them well drilled controversialists,
prepared to convert their families. Dominic, when he felt himself sufficiently
established in the esteem of the whole of Romanist southern France, proposed to
the inferior nobility to unite their daughters, with others of humbler station,
in a sort of conventual seminary, where they should be educated, according to
their several conditions, by nuns, trained for, and devoted to, such an office.
The proposal was approved, and he adopted for his educational institution the
Augustinian rule, with the superadded austerity of the Praemonstratensians.
This nunnery-school was the first germ of the far-famed Dominican Order.
Encouraged by the success of this plan, Dominic next
invited pious men to join him at Toulouse, in a species of monkish fraternity,
unbound by monastic vows, but pledged to dedicate their lives and energies to
the conversion of heretics. The invitation was numerously accepted, and Bishop Folquet took the association under his especial protection;
assigning for its support, much as the heretics, by obstructing the collection
of his episcopal revenues, cramped his means, a share in the tithes of one
specified district. This was the second phase of the embryo Dominican Order.
Another association was about this time formed, which,
among the lower classes, competed in popularity with the Poor of Lyons, by
adopting the same literal interpretation of the command, “Sell that thou hast
and give to the poor.” It was founded by one Durand, whom Bishop Diego had
converted from the Poor of Lyons’ sect, and who, retaining the spirit of that
sect, was wholly devoted to works of charity, as tending the sick, building
hospitals, and the like, but above all to converting heretics. Dominic is said
to have found in this association very useful auxiliaries; but Durand having
likewise retained some unorthodox practices of his earlier co-religionists, the
fraternity was accused of heresy at Rome. Innocent treated these unintentional
offenders most leniently; lauded their devout purposes, but warned them against
innovations. They at once submissively renounced their errors, and the
institution was thought to promise great utility; but it did not outlive its
founder.
Innocent’s views and instructions, concerning the
treatment of heretics, had hitherto been governed by the belief, natural to a
man firmly convinced of the truth of his own faith, that any heretic who
listened to orthodox doctrine, preached by good, pious, and zealous men, must
perceive that the Church was in the right; and would at once; abjuring his
erroneous opinions, return to her bosom. Whether he were enough in advance of
his age to ascribe the pertinacity of such, as would not be so convinced, rather
to prejudice than to a depraved heart, may be questionable; but even if he were
thus liberal, even if the few conversions that were achieved prevented his
despairing of the ultimate efficacy of argumentative preaching, his avowed
principle, the duty of guarding the sound from the danger of contagion, must
needs set limits to his longanimity towards the plague-spotted. By the year
1207, that limit was reached. He now called upon the King of France, to expel
such spiritual lepers from his kingdom. He commanded the Earl of Toulouse, in
whose extensive dominions heretics abounded, to deal severely with the
incorrigible, confiscating their property and banishing them. Something of the
kind, Earl Raymond, sixth of the name, had promised in 1204, when visited, and
exhorted to clear his territory of heretics, by Peter of Castelnau and the partner of his mission, the monk Raoul; but he had delayed to fulfil
his promise, and at least tolerated his heretic vassals, being naturally
reluctant to depopulate his principality, and, perhaps, having more of the
troubadour—his court was a home of the Joyous Science—than of the devotee in
his disposition. In fact, he had long before been excommunicated by Celestin
III, for some aggression upon the Abbey of St. Gilles; and still Earl Raymond
deferred obeying these commands, urging the duty of converting, rather than
punishing, the heterodox population. Again Innocent, to whom this delay might
be represented as disobedience, called upon Philip Augustus; he now required
him either to visit his southern provinces in person, or send his son and heir,
Lewis, thither, to inforce compliance with the
slighted papal injunctions. He addressed exhortations to divers French prelates
and nobles to co-operate to this end; and a thundering epistle to Raymond,
confirming the excommunication denounced against him by the Legates; from which,
however, obedience was ipso facto to relieve him. The Pope’s exhortations and
menaces were, unintentionally, assisted, by the perpetration of the first great
crime staining this religious controversy.
The crime in question was committed upon the person of
Peter of Castelnau, but as to both the manner of
perpetration, and the degree of guilt attaching to the deed, doubts exist. He
and some of his missionary colleagues met Raymond by appointment at St. Gilles,
to discuss the conditions upon which he should be relieved from
excommunication. Their demands offended the Earl, and the debate that ensued
produced mutual exasperation. The Legates declared they would quit St. Gilles,
where their presence was manifestly useless; and the angry Earl threatened to
punish their departure with death. They departed nevertheless, and separated.
Upon the 15th of January, 1208, Peter, apparently with a single clerical
companion, was stepping into a ferry boat to cross the Rhone, when he was
accosted by two persons who had slept at the same inn with them. A sharp
argument seems to have ensued, in the midst of which, one of the missionary’s
interlocutors, suddenly drawing his sword, ran him through the body. He fell,
repeatedly exclaiming, in a genuine Christian spirit, that offers a striking
contrast to his habitual intolerance, “Forgive him, Lord, even as I forgive
him;” and after a few words to his companion touching their mission, Peter of Castelnau died.
Raymond’s enemies allege that no dispute preceded the
fatal blow; that a servant of the Earl’s, who lay under his displeasure,
pursued the Legate, upon overtaking stabbed him, and thenceforward enjoyed his
Lord’s especial favour. Raymond’s advocates, on the contrary, aver that the
murderer fled for safety to his friends and family at Beaucaire,
and that the Earl was more wroth at the deed than he had ever been known; and
even the Benedictine, Dom Vaissette, evidently
inclines to think the anonymous chronicler of the next century in the right,
when he says, “If the Earl could have caught the murderer of Castelnau, he would have done such justice upon him as must
have satisfied the Pope.” And well might Earl Raymond be wroth at the deed, for
it sealed his doom.
The report concerning this murder addressed to Rome by
the infuriated colleagues of the slaughtered Legate, would of course adopt the
account, true or false, inculpating Raymond. Thus was Innocent, apparently,
exasperated into forgetfulness of his own nice distinction between spiritual
authority and sovereign power. He himself now assumed the disturbing power,
claimed by Popes, but never willingly acknowledged by monarchs and statesmen of
any religion. After having, in his proper pontifical character, pronounced Castelnau a martyr—whose blood would become matter of
triumph, since a happy harvest must be produced from such seed—he further
pronounced the hereditary dominions of the Earl of Toulouse forfeited; he
released his vassals from their oaths of fealty, authorizing every true
Christian to lay violent hands upon his person, and, the rights of suzerainty
being respected, to occupy his lands. He exhorted the King of France to give
efficacy to this verbal deposal of the Earl, by conquering, and either appropriating
to himself, or bestowing upon meritorious Christian knights, his many
principalities. Still, however fierce his anger, Innocent left a door open for
repentance; which Raymond . was to testify, and thus earn a full pardon, by
clearing his dominions of heretics: and be it noticed, even in this recourse to
temporal arms, Innocent demands the banishment not the death of the heretic;
the protection of the orthodox from the taint of false doctrines, not a
hypocritical pretended conversion, extorted by terror or the rack, is what he
desires.
The Earl, despite the vehement exhortations of his
nephew, the Vicomte de Beziers, at once to arm in selfdefence,
only appealed to the French King, both as his uncle and as his sovereign, for
assistance and advice in this extremity. The first, Philip, who had had enough
of contention with Innocent, declined to give, and his advice was, implicit
obedience. Raymond followed the counsel. He submitted to the humiliating terms
upon which he was promised relief from excommunication, with the consequent
restitution of his civil and political rights ; and to the equally humiliating
ceremonial imposed by the Legate, as the mode in which alone the sentence could
be taken off. He engaged to join in the war, now found indispensable to the
expulsion of the Albigenses, (the comprehensive name was at this time adopted,)
and to be waged against his own subjects; he authorized his vassals to swear,
that they would cease to obey him whenever he broke his oath to the Pope; and
he delivered over seven castles to Milo—a Secretary of Innocent’s, sent to
succeed Castelnau as Legate—in pledge for his
observance of these engagements. That done, upon the 17th of June 1209, the
day fixed for the ceremony, he presented himself barefooted and barebacked, with a rope about his neck, at the door of the
Abbey church of St. Giles, and on his knees prayed for readmission into the
Church. Milo did not sully his hands with the rope, but passing his own stole
round the Earl’s neck, dragged him with one hand by that into the church;
whilst with the other he sharply scourged him. Innocent hereupon wrote to
Raymond to express perfect satisfaction with his conduct, and confident hope
that he would be able to clear himself of complicity in the murder of Castelnau. But still his dominions must be freed from
heretics.
The Crusade against the Albigenses—Innocents Views—Bigotry
of the Legates—Simon de Montfort’s Ambition—Innocent repeatedly
deceived—Atrocities of both parties—Battle of Lesbordes—Interference
of Pedro of Aragon—Battle of Muret
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