CHAPTER IV

THE ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE

1

POPULAR VERSIONS OF SCRIPTURE.

 

The Church admitted that it had brought upon itself the dangers which threatened it—that the alarming progress of heresy was caused and fostered by clerical negligence and corruption. In his opening address to the great Lateran Council, Innocent III had no scruple in declaring to the assembled fathers: “The corruption of the people has its chief source in the clergy. From this arise the evils of Christendom: faith perishes, religion is defaced, liberty is restricted, justice is trodden under foot, the heretics multiply, the schismatics are emboldened, the faithless grow strong, the Saracens are victorious”; and after the futile attempt of the council to strike at the root of the evil, Honorius III, in admitting its failure, repeated the assertion. In fact this was an axiom which none were so hardy as to deny, yet when, in 1204, the legates whom Innocent had sent to oppose the Albigenses appealed to him for aid against prelates whom they had failed to coerce, and whose infamy of life gave scandal to the faithful and an irresistible argument to the heretic. Innocent curtly bade them attend to the object of their mission and not allow themselves to be diverted by less important matters. The reply fairly indicates the policy of the Church. Thoroughly to cleanse the Augean stable was a task from which even Innocent’s fearless spirit might well shrink. It seemed an easier and more hopeful plan to crush revolt with fire and sword.

We have seen how promptly and persistently Innocent took in hand the heretics of Italy, nor were his dealings with those beyond the Alps less active and decisive, though they manifest an evident desire to do exact justice, and not to confound the innocent with the guilty. The Nivernois had long been noted as a deeply infected district. The troubles occasioned by Catharism at Vezelai in 1167 have already been alluded to, and the sharp repression of heresy then had put an end to its outward manifestation without destroying its germs. Towards the end of the century Bishop Hugues of Auxerre earned the title of the Hammer of Heretics by his energy and success in persecution; and though he was likewise noted for avarice, usurpation of illegal rights, oppression of his flock, and ferocity in ruining those who had offended him, his zeal for the faith covered the multitude of sins, hardly needing the urgency with which, in 1201, Innocent commanded him to clear his diocese of heresy. By the pitiless employment of confiscation, exile, and the stake he labored to purify it, but the evil was stubborn and constantly reappeared. The chief propagator was an anchorite named Terric who dwelt in a cavern near Corbigny, where he was finally surprised and burned, through the exertions of Foulques de Neuilly, but the infection was not confined to the poor and humble.

In 1199 we find the Dean of Nevers and the Abbot of St. Martin of Nevers appealing to Innocent from prosecutions commenced against them, and the answers of the pope show both his anxious desire that they should have full opportunity to prove their innocence, and the uncertainty and cumbrous nature of the ecclesiastical procedure of the time. In 1201 Bishop Hugues was more successful with a criminal of equal importance, the knight Everard of Chateauneuf, to whom Count Hervey of Neers had entrusted the stewardship of his territories. In this case, the Legate Octavian called a council in Paris, comprising many bishops and theologians, for his trial; he was convicted principally on the testimony of Bishop Hugues and was handed over to the secular arm and burned, after a respite for the purpose of rendering an account of his office to Count Hervey. His nephew, Thierry, an equally hardened heretic, escaped to Toulouse, where five years later we find him a bishop among the Albigenses, who were gratified in having a Frenchman as an accomplice. La Charité was an especially active centre of heresy in the Nivernois, and from 1202 to 1208 there are frequent appeals to Innocent from its citizens, showing that Rome was regarded as more indulgent than the local courts; and the papal decisions continue to manifest a laudable desire to prevent injustice. All this proved inefficient, and it was one of the first places to which, in 1233, an inquisitor was sent. At Troyes, in 1200, five male and three female Catharans were burned; and at Braisne, in 1204, a number were similarly put to death, among whom was Nicholas, the most renowned painter in France.

In 1199 another danger threatened the Church in Metz, where Waldensian sectaries were found in possession of French translations of the New Testament, the Psalter, Job, and other portions of Scripture, which they contumaciously studied with unwearied perseverance and refused to abandon at the command of their parish priests; nay, they were hardy enough to assert that they knew more of Holy Writ than their pastors, and that they had a right to the consolation which they found in its perusal. The case was somewhat puzzling, since the Church as yet had had no occasion to interdict formally the popular reading of the Bible, and these poor folk were not accused of any definite heretical tenets. Innocent, therefore, when applied to, admitted that there was nothing condemnable in the desire to understand Scripture, but he added that such is its profundity that even the learned and wise are unequal to its comprehension, and consequently it is far beyond the grasp of the simple and illiterate. The people of Metz were therefore exhorted to abandon these reprehensible practices and return to a proper degree of respect for their pastors if they wished pardon for their sins, with a significant threat of compulsion in case of further obstinacy; and when the simple and illiterate folk proved deaf to this command, a commission was sent to the Abbot of Citeaux and two others, to proceed to Metz and put a stop, without appeal, to these unlawful studies—with what success we may infer from the fact that in 1231 the heretics of Trèves were found in possession of German versions of Holy Writ.

It was the stronghold of heresy in southern France, however, which rightly gave rise to chief concern in Rome, and to this Innocent resolutely bent his energies. Raymond VI of Toulouse, in the full vigor of mature manhood, at the age of thirty-eight, had, in January, 1195, succeeded his father in the possession of territories which rendered him the most powerful feudatory of the monarchy and almost an independent sovereign. Besides the county of Toulouse, the duchy of Narbonne conferred on him the dignity of first lay peer of France. He was likewise suzerain, with more or less direct authority, of the Marquisate of Provence, the Comtat Venaissin and the counties of St. Gilles, Foix, Comminges, and Rodez, and of the Albigeois, Vivarais, Gevaudan, Velai, Rouergue, Querci, and Agenois. Even in distant Italy he was known as the greatest count on earth, with fourteen counts as his vassals, and his troubadour flatterers assured him that he was the equal of emperors—

Car il val tan qu'en la soa valor

Ami' assatz ad un emperador.

 

POSITION OF RAYMOND OF TOULOUSE.