CHAPTER X.

CRUSADES AND HERESIES

 

AMONG the most loyal adherents of Pope Gregory VII was Odo, a Frenchman, who became Pope with the name of Urban II, and reigned from 1088 to 1099. He had shown himself a vigorous sub prior of the great monastery of Cluny, and was made Cardinal Bishop of Ostia, and when acting as legate in Germany he had been imprisoned by Henry IV. He showed all the determination of Gregory VII and more diplomacy. He skillfully extended his authority in France. He maintained good terms with Roger, the son of Robert Guiscard, the Norman ruler of Sicily and Apulia. He encouraged Conrad, the son of Henry IV, to rebel against his father. He united Italian and German opposition to the emperor by arranging a marriage between Matilda, Countess of Tuscany, then a middle-aged widow, and the eighteen-year-old son of Welf, Duke of Bavaria. The Welfs were well content, being ignorant of the fact that Matilda had left her vast lands to the papacy. Henry himself proved his own enemy by marrying again, this time a Russian princess named Praxedis, who laid before the Pope serious accusations against the conduct of her husband. Henry's position in Italy was completely shaken, while that of Urban was steadily strengthened, in spite of the presence of an antipope in Rome itself during the early days of his pontificate.

As though these triumphs were not sufficient, Urban was able to put himself at the head of a popular religious movement which immensely enhanced his importance. In 1095 he presided at a great synod at Piacenza. To this synod the Greek Emperor Alexius sent ambassadors to beg for help against the Muslims. It was indeed an anxious time for Christendom. Seven years before this date a new clan of Saracens, the Almoravides, had crossed from Africa to Spain and inflicted a severe defeat upon a Christian army near Badajoz, a defeat which was a counterpoise to the recovery of Toledo by the Christians in 1085. And now the Seljukid Turks, recent and ferocious converts to Islam, had established themselves within the historic walls of Nicaea, and in 1071 captured Jerusalem from the more tolerant Saracens of Egypt. Christian pilgrims—for Christian pilgrims had never for long ceased to visit the holy places—returned with unhappy stories of their maltreatment by the Turks. Urban II heard the envoys of Alexius with sympathy, but he saw the necessity of appealing to a wider public. He felt that he would be on surer ground in his own country, so he summoned a council at Clermont-Ferrand in Auvergne.

He crossed the Alps and everywhere in France he was received with respect. When the council met at Clermont, in November 1095, he delivered before a vast concourse a moving discourse with an impassioned appeal on behalf of the persecuted Eastern Christians. The multitude replied with a shout of 'God wills it', and cut out crosses of stuff to fasten on their shoulders. The First Crusade was already brought to birth and Urban was its proud and honored parent. Every method at the disposal of the Church was employed to secure success. Monks preached the crusade. Of the preachers Peter the Hermit and a poor knight, Gauthier 'sans Avoir' (Walter Lackpenny), were among the most popular and effective. Led by these two zealous enthusiasts, an unauthorized crusade, the crusade of a horde of French and German peasants and adventurers, set forth towards the East by way of Hungary and Bulgaria. The inhabitants of the lands along the Danube were infuriated by their excesses, the roads were strewn with their corpses, and when at last they reached Asia Minor the heat of the sun and the swords of the Turks devoured almost the whole of the lamentable band except Peter himself and some German nobles.

The official crusade was put in motion a little later. Urban II could not count upon the help of Philip of France, William Rufus of England, or Henry IV of Germany, for he had excommunicated all three. So the leaders were not kings, but nobles. Four armies began their march by four different routes. Raymond IV, Count of Toulouse, Godfrey de Bouillon and his brother Baldwin, leaders of the northern French, and Bohemond and Tancred, leaders of the Normans dwelling in Italy and the Italian crusaders, were, with the brothers of the King of France and Robert II, Count of Flanders, the generals of these armies. Godfrey, strong, of high character and gentle in his speech, became the most popular of them all, but Baldwin was quick to understand the Oriental mind, and the tall Bohemond, with his white skin and blue-green eyes, was the ablest soldier, the commander who knew when and how to strike. Arrived in Asia, the Crusaders, in spite of the rivalries of their leaders and the murmurs of the soldiers, took Nicaea and then Edessa, which from early Christian times had been an outpost of Christianity. Then they captured the great and strongly fortified city of Antioch, where most of them gave themselves up to luxury and ease. Their luxury was soon followed by the extremity of hunger, for the Turks besieged them in their turn, and the Christian army was on the brink of despair. Their depression was overcome by a priest who claimed to have found the spear that pierced the side of Christ. The spear was borne in front of the enthusiastic ranks of the Christians, whom Bohemond marshaled with his wonted skill; the Turks were decisively defeated and their commander agreed to accept the Christian faith.

Again they took their ease, fought among themselves, and paid a heavy toll to the climate of Antioch. If Jerusalem was to be won it must be won quickly, or the army of the Crusaders would melt away. In spite of the fears of their leaders, the remnant were eager to march to the holy city. When they arrived there, in June 1099, it is probable that they had lost one half of a possible 30,000 that had reached Nicaea. Tortured with thirst, the soldiers fought with each other to obtain water at the pool of Siloam, the Muslims having destroyed every well that could be used by the invaders. The barons saw that all must be staked on one supreme effort, and Jerusalem was taken. Fearing that they would be attacked by Egyptian reinforcements, the Christian soldiers methodically massacred the inhabitants of Jerusalem, then met and killed the Egyptians at Ashkelon.

The First Crusade was followed within a space of one hundred and seventy years by six other Crusades, and their whole history is interwoven with tragedy and folly, religion and romance.

In 1144 Nuraddin, 'light of the faith', wrested from the Christians their frontier fortress, Edessa. The news was received in Europe with emotion, and Pope Eugenius III appealed to the chivalry of France. The appeal was seconded by St. Bernard, who at first had distrusted the wisdom of a crusade.

St. Bernard of Clairvaux (1090-1153) was an outstanding personality of the time, spiritually, intellectually, and in the power of communicating to others the fire which burned in his heart. Filled with zeal for holiness, he had gone at the age of twenty-two to the languishing Cistercian monastery near Dijon, taking with him an uncle, five brothers, and a group of young friends whom he had persuaded to dedicate themselves to God. The result was the growth of the Cistercian order which is one of the great features of the history of the twelfth century. Bernard's devotion, which was centered in the human life and suffering of Christ, led him to practice austerities which he afterwards saw were injurious to his health and usefulness. But his inner life and his love of contemplation were united with an extraordinary practical activity. It was manifested in his sermons, treatises, and letters, in the numerous monasteries which he founded, and in the part which he played in the gravest events of his age. He spoke with the same courage to popes and kings and peasants. Among the salient facts of his career was his intervention in the simultaneous election of Innocent II and Anacletus II to the papacy in 1130. Asked for his advice, he pronounced without hesitation in favor of the former; and during a struggle which lasted until the death of Anacletus in 1138 he gained many adherents for the Pope whom he protected.

Such was the man, saint, statesman, and preacher, who persuaded Conrad III of Germany to join Louis VII of France in the Crusade, and in 1147 the two monarchs set forth to meet the 'infidel'. Arrived in the East they made an initial mistake. They attacked Damascus, instead of trying to secure the friendship of the vizier, who might have helped them to checkmate Nuraddin. The attack was futile. They returned to Europe after covering themselves with discredit, and Nuraddin steadily continued his task of enveloping the Frankish colonies in the East until his death in 1174.

About five years before the death of Nuraddin the redoubtable Saladin, 'honoring the faith', had conquered Egypt. It was the goal not only of the Christian Latins but also of the 'orthodox' (Sunni) Muslims, who hated the rival sect of Muslims as much as the Latins detested the Greeks. Saladin's ambition was boundless, and he resolved to wrest Jerusalem from the Crusaders, who felt at ease in Zion. Muhammad himself was believed to have been miraculously transported to Jerusalem, and such an enterprise was to Saladin a 'holy war', the most sacred and meritorious work in which a Muslim could engage. This was the belief that strengthened the resolution of his soldiers, and after a sharp battle at Tiberias they captured the holy city in 1187.

This fall of Jerusalem was followed by forty years of a struggle that was concentrated in the Third, the Fourth, and the Fifth Crusade. The Third Crusade (1189-119z) was the most imposing that had hitherto been launched. Nor did it lack a genuinely religious element, for the people of Europe were touched with a sense that if the Christian world had not sinned Jerusalem would not have fallen captive. Henry II of England and Philip Augustus of France laid aside their bitter quarrel and gave to each other the kiss of peace. The Emperor Frederic I Barbarossa, went to Asia Minor and penetrated it beyond Iconium, but was drowned in crossing a river, and only a feeble remnant of his soldiers survived their marches. The English Henry II was succeeded by his son Richard Coeur de Lion, who with the King of France betook himself to Acre. This important fortress had been besieged by the Christians for two years. The besiegers were perishing for want of water, and the besieged were dying for want of food. Richard captured the city and he refortified Jaffa. The Christian principality of Antioch was also saved. But the most remarkable event of this Third Crusade was the conclusion of a three years' truce between Richard and Saladin, a treaty which appears to have been dictated by genuine chivalrous respect on either side, and was accompanied with the strange proposal that Saladin’s brother should marry Richard's sister Johanna.

In spite of the active interest which Pope Gregory VIII took in organizing the Third Crusade, it is evident that the crusading movement was slipping more than ever out of papal control into the hands of kings and statesmen. This was made sharply manifest in the Fourth and in the Fifth Crusade.

The Fourth Crusade (1202-1204) had as its first objective Egypt, which was seen to be the true gateway of the East. The Crusaders, who were mostly French, sent envoys to Venice to negotiate for the passage of their army to Egypt. The Venetians, cunning merchantmen, demanded, in payment for their assistance, not only half of any conquests which the Crusaders might make, but also 85,000 marks. When it was told them that the Crusaders had not enough money to pay, it was suggested that the debt could be cleared if they would capture from the King of Hungary the seaport of Zara on the Adriatic. To the wrath of Pope Innocent III, the Crusaders took Zara. Nor did this infamy stop on the shores of the Adriatic. Philip, Duke of Swabia, who had a quarrel with the Pope, was by marriage related to the Greek prince, Alexius, son of the deposed emperor, Isaac Angelus. Philip induced the Crusaders to go to Constantinople; they entered it in November 1203 and proclaimed Alexius emperor with the title of Alexius IV. The city rebelled, the Crusaders besieged the city, and during the siege another Alexius was chosen emperor. A brave man, he fled when he saw that the city was doomed. He was captured and killed by the Crusaders, who in 1204 took the city and looted its almost unsearchable treasures. The only satisfaction to be derived from this repulsive story is the fact that some of these exquisite treasures, which are still to be found in Western museums and sacristies, were saved from the future clutches of the Turks by the avarice of the 'Franks'. Innocent III came gradually to acquiesce. He was dazzled by the hope of subjugating the Eastern Church to Rome, and a Venetian prelate was made Latin Patriarch of Constantinople.

The Fifth Crusade (1219-1222) was preceded by the piteous Children's Crusade, of which a faint tradition appears to survive in the legend of the Piper of Hameln, the magic of whose flute lured little children to follow him to an unknown world. A French shepherd boy named Stephen and a German boy named Nicolas persuaded thousands of children to begin a journey to the Holy Land, fully persuaded that miracles would attend them and bring them across the sea. They died or were captured and sold as slaves to the Muslims. The Fifth Crusade itself proved a dismal failure. It was led by John of Brienne, titular King of Jerusalem, who was unfortunately accompanied by a papal legate with the ill-omened name of Pelagius. Damietta was captured and Malik-al-Kamil, the Sultan of Egypt, was ready to offer generous terms if the Crusaders would evacuate the country. The legate, however, demanded an indemnity as well as territory. The sultan’s attitude then stiffened. He resolved to fight and soon cleared the country of its invaders.

The Sixth Crusade (1228-1229) was a lay crusade, cursed by the papacy but not unsuccessful. It was the work of the Emperor Frederick II. An adroit diplomatist, he established friendly relations with Al-Kamil, secured possession of Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Jerusalem, and crowned himself King of Jerusalem in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. For fifteen-years Jerusalem was again a Christian city, and then again it fell in 1244, never to be recovered by crusading armies.

The Seventh Crusade (1248-1254) and the Eighth (1267­1270) were the Crusades of Saint Louis. This Louis IX, King of France, was a mirror of medieval chivalry and of devotion to God and man. Simple in his dress and most ascetic in his food, he maintained the full dignity of his court. Humble and constant in prayer, habitually rising at midnight to attend Mattins, and never hearing less than two masses a day, he was a brave and accomplished knight with a spice of irony and humor. He was without favorites and without affectation. He could be thrifty and prudent, but his darling object was to free the Holy Land, and when this object was concerned he threw to the winds both thrift and prudence. He was not content to build in Paris the Sainte-Chapelle to enshrine the Saviour’s crown of thorns and other relics of the Passion. He must himself take the cross with his three brothers. He captured Damietta, but suffered a crushing defeat at Mansura, where he was taken prisoner and not released until he had paid 400,000 pieces of gold to the Sultan of Egypt. After spending four years in the Holy Land, where he effected little, he returned to France where his presence was urgently needed.

But the heart of Saint Louis was not in France. He was determined to fight the infidel once more, and Prince Edward of England prepared to follow his example. The Crusaders left Aigues-Mortes in the south of France on July the 1st, 1270.

In a scorching sun they sailed for Tunis. Louis had been led to think that the Bey of Tunis was willing to be converted, he imagined that the Egyptians drew supplies from Tunis, and he longed to restore to Christendom the regions which had once been illuminated by the teaching of St. Augustine. After a voyage of seventeen days the fleet reached Carthage; then heat and disease began to do their work and mowed down the army like grass. Louis caught the plague and died murmuring “Jerusalem, we shall go into Jerusalem”. But it was not the earthly Jerusalem that he saw and entered.

When Prince Edward, afterwards our King Edward I, reached Africa Louis was already dead, and to his wrath he found that the other chiefs of the crusade had made peace with the unbelievers. He swore by the blood of God that he would enter Acre, and he kept his word. It was in the Holy Land and on his birthday, June the 17th, 1272, that an assassin gave him the poisoned wound which Eleanor his wife was afterwards said to have sucked with her own lips. His forces were too small to achieve great permanent results. He made a ten years' truce with the sultan and came back to England. Thus the Crusades came to their inevitable and melancholy dissolution. And yet this end was not destitute of dignity, nor even of glamour, since the last great figures in the last real Crusade were the King of France who lived to pray, the King of England who honored his own words, and the Castilian queen who was 'the lover of all the English' and beloved by them all.

The effect of the Crusades upon the history of the Church was wide and in some respects permanent. The First Crusade consolidated the papal theocracy, for it was Rome that planned and guided the movement that planted the cross on the mosque of Omar and set free the Holy Sepulchre. The military orders, composed of men who were both monks and soldiers, took their origin from the necessity of defending the frontiers of Christendom. Within those distant frontiers many Latin bishoprics and monasteries were established, and efforts were made for uniting the Churches of the East with Rome. As early as 1098 a synod was held at Bari in South Italy at which St. Anselm of Canterbury was present, and Latin and Greek theologians discussed the doctrine of the procession of the Holy Ghost. No solid result was attained, and the orthodox Greeks conceived, a passionate hatred of the 'Franks' when the latter, on their pretended crusade of 1204, looted Constantinople, the second city in Christendom. With Orientals who were not Greeks Rome established more friendly relations. In 1182 the large Syrian Christian sect known as the Maronites accepted Roman supremacy, and their descendants in the Lebanon have remained faithful to the papacy. In Cilicia, about the same date, Rome secured the adhesion of a considerable number of Armenians. In Serbia, at the dawn of the thirteenth century, Pope Innocent III gained a temporary footing. The throne of Serbia was claimed by two brothers, Vulkan and Stephen, who in turn appealed to the Pope. The former won at the expense of recognizing the suzerainty of the King of Hungary and the jurisdiction of the Pope (1202). The King of Hungary died two years later, Stephen defeated Vulkan, and for a time the schemes of the Pope were frustrated.

More important than these attempts to promote reunion with Rome, was the stimulus given by the Crusades to peaceful missionary work among non-Christians, both heathen and Muslim. In 1252 Saint Louis sent the Franciscan William Rubruquis to the Great Khan in central Asia, hoping for the conversion of the new Mongol empire. The next year Pope Innocent IV created the first missionary society formed since the conversion of the West, the Peregrinantes propter Christum, and at the beginning of the fourteenth century active missionary work was in progress in Persia, India, China, and Tibet. Raymond Lull, the apostle to the Muslims, will be mentioned later. The evangelistic activities of the Church were chilled by troubles nearer home in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but some knowledge of the East and its spiritual needs was gradually accumulated for future generations.

The early years of the thirteenth century witnessed in France certain vigorous movements opposed to the Church, movements which provoked a crusade against heresy more successful than the crusades against Islam. France in fact was threatened by a religious revolution. It was a peril not only to the Church but also in a considerable degree to the State, a peril increased by the fact that it arose in the south of France, which differed widely from the north of France in language and in general culture. The revolutionary movement included two distinct elements. The more moderate element was essentially Christian, and might almost be described as an ascetic form of Methodism. The more extreme element was essentially non-Christian, and might be called an organized theosophy. The former was calculated to weaken the Catholic hierarchy, the latter was also of such a nature as to undermine the whole fabric of Christian society. The two sects are known respectively as the Vaudois or Waldensians, and the Albigenses or Cathari.

The Waldensians or Vaudois have been surrounded by a thick mist of legend since the sixteenth century. It became widely believed that the inhabitants of the Piedmontese valleys had preserved from primitive, if not actually apostolic, times a religion distinct from the religion of Rome and opposed to it. This legend has been shattered by a critical investigation of their literature. It has been shown that certain alleged early Waldensian writings are translated from Hussite Bohemian works, that their Confession of Faith, said to be ancient, is based on the works of the reformer Bucer, and that the manuscript of the Waldensian religious poem called the Nobla Laiczon or Noble Lesson has had the year 1430 unscrupulously altered into 1130 in order to make it appear that there were Waldensians before Waldus began to preach.

Peter Valdo, Waldus, Valdez, or Valesius, was a rich citizen of Lyons who, in 1173, was deeply impressed by reading Christ's words to the rich young man in Matthew XIX. 21. After bestowing his goods upon the poor and studying the Bible, he founded, in 1177, a society of men and women, who abandoned all worldly possessions and went forth two and two to preach the Gospel. The Archbishop of Lyons forbade their preaching. Valdo then appealed to the Pope, Alexander III. The Pope was not unsympathetic; he praised Valdo for taking the vow of poverty and gave him leave to preach if and where the clergy agreed. The Waldensians, however, were excommunicated in 1184 by Pope Lucius III, who describes them as the 'Poor men of Lyons'. They spread rapidly from Provence in the south to Lorraine in the north, and in 1210 Pope Innocent III tried to counteract their work by founding a society called the 'Poor Catholics', whom he allowed to preach and expound the Scriptures. They were to adopt apostolic poverty, dress, and life. This Catholic movement met with some success both in France and in Lombardy, where Valdo had secured a very large number of adherents. But in both countries it was eclipsed by the two great mendicant orders, that of St. Francis and that of St. Dominic, which did the same work with better resources and far greater results.

Some sharp differences of opinion separated the French and the Lombard Waldensians. The most important was that the French maintained, and the Lombards repudiated, the Catholic doctrine that the efficacy of the sacraments is not hindered by the unworthiness of the priest who administers them. Both parties held that priests were guilty of mortal sin if they assumed the privileges of their office without undertaking the obligation of apostolic poverty and a life such as is described in Luke X. They prohibited all swearing and also military service. Both parties also rejected the then current doctrines of indulgences and purgatory, and with them the celebration of requiem masses and the performance of good works by the living for the dead, practices which were becoming inextricably associated with indulgences. Valdo himself ordained 'ministers' for his sect. They had bishops, priests, and deacons, whose duties closely corresponded with those of the threefold ministry of the Church. Admission to the 'Society of the Brethren' was granted by ordination to the diaconate, which necessitated vows of poverty, chastity, and obedience. The lay adherents or 'Friends' were not organized as independent communities, because they continued to share in the services and sacraments of the Catholic Church. But they also made their confessions to their own ministers, who imposed penances and absolved, or rather prayed for the absolution of the penitents. They were well versed in the Bible, which, with some extracts from the Fathers and the Moralia of St. Gregory, provided their favorite reading.

Fiercely persecuted in the thirteenth century, the remnants of the Waldensians were in the fourteenth century mostly to be found in the valleys of the Cottian Alps. Large colonies moved from thence to Calabria and Apulia, where they were exterminated in 1561. Those in Piedmont were discovered late in the fifteenth century by the Bohemian Hussites, and there was a somewhat close intercourse between the two bodies. But it was not until the sixteenth century that the main body of the Waldensians adopted any specifically Protestant opinions. In 1520 one of their ministers, Martin of Lucerne, brought to them certain writings of the Reformers, and in 1530 two Waldensians, George Morel and Peter Masson, conferred with Ecolampadius and Bucer. The result was a synod held in 1532 at the Piedmontese village of Chanvoran, at which for the first time the Waldensians gave up reckoning the sacraments as seven, the invocation of saints, and auricular confession. They adopted the Calvinistic `doctrine of predestination, and from that day until the present have been a Protestant community. After the Reformation the Waldensians were more fiercely persecuted than ever, and their sufferings inspired Milton's noble, if misleading, sonnet which begins,

 

Avenge, 0 Lord, thy slaughtered saints, whose bones

Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold;

Even them who kept thy truth so pure of old,

When all our fathers worship'd stocks and stones.

 

The Albigenses were very different from their Waldensian neighbors, and far more dangerous. The survival of the Waldensians may be attributed partly to their sincere Christianity and partly to their poverty. But the Albigenses invited and provoked attack by their abundant riches no less than by their erroneous principles. Their earliest history is rather obscure. But it is a most significant fact that whereas they bore the Greek name of Cathari or Puritans, their opponents in popular speech called them by two other names. One of these is simply a slightly corrupted form of the Southern Slav word for Bulgarian, and the other word, Publicani, is a corruption of Pauliciani. In the eighth and in the tenth century large numbers of Armenians who were members of the Unitarian sect of Paulicians were transplanted by the Greeks into Thrace, and according to the Slavonic Life of St. Clement, Paulicians entered Bulgaria after his death in 916. This Unitarian and anti-sacramental sect had become infected with a dualistic theory which taught that physical matter is evil. The same theory was developed by a Slavonic sect called the Bogumili, Friends of God, who were already active in the tenth century. They gained a firm hold over the Serbians and retained it for two centuries, until they were crushed in the reign of Stephen Nemanja. Many of the Bogumili then migrated to Bosnia and dominated the social life of the country until the time of the Turkish conquest of Bosnia. They then accepted Islam.

Although the town of Albi, famous for its wonderful cathedral church, gave to the Cathari their usual name of Albigenses, their first centre in France appears to have been Toulouse. They are found there in 1017, a century before the notable heretics Peter de Bruys and Henry of Lausanne, who are thought to have belonged to the same sect. In 1163 the Cathari held a general council at St. Felix near Toulouse. In 1223 the Bogumili were in communication with the Cathari of Toulouse, and Matthew of Paris mentions the Pope of the Cathari, who lived between Croatia and Dalmatia. He was called by the Bogumili their “Djed” (grandfather). The sect had originally no hierarchy, but gradually developed a simple organization. In the Balkans the vow of poverty was strictly enforced and marriage was only permitted to the inferior class of adherents.

Pope Innocent III endeavored to counteract the work of the Cathari by vigorous evangelistic methods. These efforts met with only a meager success, and in 1208 the murder of Pierre de Castelnau, the papal legate, by an adherent of the Albigenses, led to a change in the papal policy. In the next chapter a short account will be given of the persecution of the Cathari, a persecution which was almost an extermination. For the present we may observe that the diffusion of the doctrines of the Waldensians and the Cathari was the chief cause of the establishment of the papal Inquisition in the thirteenth century. Previous to that date bishops exercised inquisitorial powers by virtue of their authority to guard the deposit of the faith. They did not put the heretics to death by the agency of their own officials, but they might leave them to the mercy of a mob, or hand them over to 'the secular arm'. But merely local authorities, whether ecclesiastical or civil, are frequently lenient, and the popes began to think that the work would be done better by commissioners of their own choosing. So we find after the time of Innocent III papal inquisitors, who were selected from the ranks of the Dominicans and Franciscans. After various preliminary steps the papal Inquisition was put on a definite basis in 1252 by the bull Ad extirpanda of Innocent IV. The immediate cause of this bull was the murder at Verona of the inquisitor St. Peter Martyr, a persecutor of the Cathari of Lombardy.

These papal inquisitors could not carry on their work against the wish of the diocesan bishops and the temporal princes. And in view of the events of a later time it is worth noting that they were not admitted into England, nor into Portugal and Castile, where the extermination of the Jews was almost as thorough as that of the Cathari in Languedoc.