Chapter 11
CHAPTER XVIII. The Kingship in France. In France, properly so called at that time, north of the Rhone and the Loire, the Church had herself accomplished the chief part of the reforms which had become necessary. It was there that the most active and most eloquent of the reforming monks had appeared,
had preached, and had founded or regenerated a great number of monasteries. It was there that, at first amongst the clergy, and then, through their example, amongst the laity, Christian discipline and morals had resumed some sway. There, too, the Christian faith and Church were, amongst the mass of the population, but little or not assailed.
Heretics, when any appeared, obtained support neither from princes nor people. They were preceded against, condemned, and burned without their exciting public sympathy by their presence, or public commiseration by their punishment. It was in the very midst of the clergy themselves, amongst literates and teachers, that, in northern France, the intellectual and innovating movement of the period was manifested and concentrated.
The movement was vigorous and earnest, and it was a really studious host which thronged to the lessons of Abelard at Paris, on Manse and Geneviève, at Mellon, at Corbet, and at the Paraclete. But this host contained but few of the people. The greater part of those who formed it were either already in the Church, or soon, in
various capacities, about to be. And the discussions raised at the meetings corresponded with the persons attending them. There was the disputation of the schools, there was no founding of sects, the lessons of Abelard and the questions he handled were scientifically religious. It was to expound and propagate what they regarded as the philosophy of Christianity
that masters and pupils made bold use of the freedom of thought. They made but slight war upon the existing practical abuses of the Church. They differed from her in the interpretation and comments contained in some of her dogmas, and they considered themselves in a position to explain and confirm faith by reason. The chiefs of the Church, with St. Bernard at their head, were not slow to describe,
in these interpretations and comments based upon science, danger to the simple and pure faith of the Christian. They saw the apparition of dawning rationalism confronting orthodoxy. They were, as all their contemporaries were, wholly strangers to the bare notion of freedom of thought and conscience, and they began a zealous struggle against the new teachers.
But they did not push it to the last cruel extremities. They had many a handle against Abelard. His private life, the scandal of his connection with Eloise, the restless and haughty fickleness of his character, laid him open to severe strictures. But his stern adversaries did not take so much advantage of them as they might have
taken. They had his doctrines condemned at the councils of Soissons and Sons. They prohibited him from public lecturing, and they imposed upon him the seclusion of the cloister. But they did not even harbour the notion of having him burned as a heretic, and science
and glory were respected in his person, even when his ideas were prescribed. Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny, one of the most highly considered and honoured prelates of the Church, received him amongst his own monks, and treated him with paternal kindness, taking care of his health, as well as of his eternal welfare. And he who was the adversary of Saint Bernard and the teacher condemned by the councils
of Soissons and Sons died peacefully on the 21st of April, 1142, in the abbey of Saint Lyselis, near Chalon-sur-Saen, after having received the sacraments with much piety, and in presence of all the brethren of the monastery. Thus, wrote Peter the Venerable to Eloise, abbess for eleven years past of the Paraclete, the man who, by his singular authority in science, was known to nearly all the world,
and was illustrious wherever he was known, learned, in the school of him who said, Know that I am meek and lowly of heart, to remain meek and lowly, and, as it is but right to believe, he has thus returned to him. The struggle of Abelard with the Church of northern France and the crusade against the Albigensians in southern France are divided by much more than diversity and contrast.
There is an abyss between them. In their religious condition, and in the nature as well as degree of their civilisation, the populations of the two regions were radically different. In the northeast, between the Rhine, the Scheldt and the Loire, Christianity had been obliged to deal with little more than the barbarism and ignorance of the German conquerors.
In the south, on the two banks of the Rhône and the Garonne, along the Mediterranean and by the Pyrenees, it had encountered all manner of institutions, traditions, religions and disbeliefs—Greek, Roman, African, Oriental, Pagan and Musselman. The frequent invasions and long stays of the Saracens in those countries had mingled Arab blood with the Gallic, Roman, Asiatic and Visigothic, and this mixture of so many
different races, tongues, creeds and ideas had resulted in a civilisation more developed, more elegant, more humane and more liberal, but far less coherent, simple and strong, morally as well as politically, than the warlike feudal civilisation of Germanic France. In the religious order especially, the dissimilarity was profound. In northern France, in spite of internal disorder, and through the influence of its bishops,
missionaries and monastic reformers, the Orthodox Church had obtained a decided superiority and full dominion. But in southern France, on the contrary, all the controversies, all the sects, and all the mystical or philosophical heresies which had disturbed Christendom from the second century to the ninth, had crept in and spread abroad.
In it there were Aryans, Manichaeans, Gnostics, Polyseans, Cathars, the Pure, and other sects of more local or more recent origin and name, Albigensians, Vordians, Good People and Poor of Lyon, some piously possessed with the desire of returning to the pure faith and fraternal organisation of the primitive evangelical Church, others given over to the extravagances of imagination or asceticism.
The princes and the great Laic lords of the country, the Counts of Toulouse, Croix and Comange, the Viscount of Bézières, and many others had not remained unaffected by this condition of the people. The majority were accused of tolerating and even protecting the heretics, and some were suspected of allowing their ideas to penetrate within their own households.
The bold sallies of the critical and jeering spirit, and the abandonment of established creeds and disciplines, bring about before long a relaxation of morals, and liberty requires long time and many trials before it learns to disavow and rise superior to license. In many of the feudal courts and castles of Languedoc, Provence and Aquitaine, imaginations, words and lives were licentious, and the charming poetry of the troubadours and the gallant
adventures of knights caused it to be too easily forgotten that morality was but little more regarded than the faith. Dating from the latter half of the eleventh century, not only the popes, but the whole orthodox Church of France and its spiritual heads, were seriously disquieted at the state of mind of southern France and the dangers it threatened to the whole of Christendom.
In 1145, Saint Bernard, in all the lustre of his name and influence, undertook, in concert with Cardinal Albrecht, legate of the pope Eugenius III, to go and preach against the in the countship of Toulouse. We see here, he wrote to Alphonse Jourdan, count of Toulouse, churches without flocks, flocks without priests, priests without the respect which is their due, and Christians
without Christ. Men die in their sins without being reconciled by penance or admitted to the Holy Communion. Souls are sent pelmel before the awful tribunal of God. The grace of baptism is refused to little children. The souls to whom the Lord said,
Suffer little children to come unto me, do not obtain the means of coming to salvation. Is it because of a belief that these little children have no need of the Saviour inasmuch as they are little? Is it then for naught that our Lord from being great became little? What say I?
Is it then for naught that he was scourged and spat upon, crucified and dead? Saint Bernard preached with great success in Toulouse itself, but he was not satisfied with easy success. He had come to fight the heretics, and he went to look for them where he was told he would find them numerous and powerful.
He repaired, says a contemporary chronicler, to the castle of Vertfoy, or Vervey, in the district of Toulouse, where flourished at that time the sirens of a numerous nobility and a multitude of people, thinking that if he could extinguish heretical perversity in this place where it was so very much spread, it would be easy for him to make head against it elsewhere.
When he had begun preaching in the church against those who were of most consideration in the place, they went out, and the people followed them. But the holy man going out after them gave utterance to the word of God in the public streets. The nobles then hid themselves on all sides in their houses, and as for him he continued
to preach to the common people who came about him. Whereupon the others making uproar and knocking upon the doors so that the crowd could not hear his voice, he then, having shaken off the dust from his feet as a testimony against them, departed from their midst, and looking on the town, cursed it saying, Vertfoy, God wither thee!
Now there were at that time in the castle a hundred knights abiding, having arms, banners and horses, and keeping themselves at their own expense, not at the expense of other. After the not very effectual mission of St. Bernard, who died in 1153, and for half a century, the Orthodox Church was several times occupied with the heretics of southern France, who were before long called Albigensians, either because they were numerous in the diocese
of Ulby, or because the Council of Lombards, one of the first at which their condemnation was expressly pronounced in 1165, was held in that diocese. But the measures adopted at that time against them were at first feebly executed, and had but little effect. The new ideas spread more and more, and in 1167 the innovators themselves held at Saint-Ferlis-de-Caramagne
a petty council at which they appointed bishops for districts where they had numerous partisans. Raymond VI, who in 1195 succeeded his father Raymond V, as Count of Toulouse, was supposedly to be favorably disposed towards them. He admitted them to intimacy with him, and, it was said, allowed himself, in respect of the Orthodox Church, great liberty of thought and speech.
Meanwhile, the great days and the chief actors in the struggle commenced by St. Bernard were approaching. In 1198, L'Ossère Conti, a pupil of the University of Paris, was elected Pope, with the title of Innocent III, and four or five years later, Simon, Count of Montfort-Lomerie, came back from the Fifth Crusade in the East with a celebrity already established by his valour
and his zeal against the infidels. Innocent III, no unworthy rival of Gregory VII, his late predecessor in the Holy See, had the same grandeur of ideas and the same fixity of purpose, with less headiness in and more knowledge of the world, and more of the spirit of policy. He looked upon the whole of Christendom as his kingdom, and upon himself as the king
whose business it was to make prevalent everywhere the law of God. Simon, as Count of Montfort-Lomerie, was not a powerful lord, but he was descended, it was said, from a natural son of King Robert. His mother, who was English, had left him heir to the Uldum of Leicester, and he had for his wife Alice de Montmorency, his social status and his personal renown, superior as
they were to his worldly fortunes, authorized in his case any flight of ambition, and in the East he had learned to believe that anything was allowed to him in the service of the Christian faith. Innocent III, on receiving the Teyara, set to work at once upon the government of Christendom. Simon de Montfort, on returning from Palestine, did not dream of the new crusade to which
he was soon to be summoned, and for which he was so well prepared. Innocent III at first employed against the heretics of southern France only spiritual and legitimate weapons. Before prescribing, he tried to convert them. He sent to them a great number of missionaries, nearly all taken from the order of Citeaux,
and of proved zeal already, many amongst them had successively the title and power of legates, and they went preaching throughout the whole country, communicating with the princes and laic lords, whom they requested to drive away the heretics from their domains, and holding with the heretics themselves conferences which frequently drew a numerous attendance. A night full of sagacity, according to a contemporary chronicle.
Ponce d'Ademar of Rodel said, One day to Fulc, bishop of Toulouse, one of the most zealous of the pope's delegates. We could not have believed that Rome had so many powerful arguments against these folk here. "'See you not,' said the bishop, how little force there is in their objections.
"'Certainly,' answered the knight, "'why then do you not expel them from your lands?' "'We cannot,' answered Ponce, "'we have been brought up with them. We have amongst them folk near and dear to us, and we see them living honestly.' Some of the legates, wearied at the little effect of their preaching, showed an inclination and gave up their mission.
Peter de Castelnau himself, the most zealous of all, and destined before long to pay for his zeal with his life, wrote to the pope to beg for permission to return to his monastery. Two Spanish priests, Diego Aceves, bishop of Rosmar, and his subprior Dominic, falling in with the Roman legates at Montpellier, heard them express their disgust. "'Give up,' they said to the legates, "'your retinue, your horses, and your goings in
state, proceed in all humility, afoot and barefoot, without gold or silver, living and teaching after the example of the divine master.' "'We dare not take on ourselves such things,' answered the pope's agents. They would seem sort of innovation, but if some person of sufficient authority consented to precede us in such guise, we would follow him readily.
The bishop of Osmar sent away his retinue to Spain, and kept with him only his companion And they, taking with them two of the monks of Citeau, Peter de Castelnau and Raoul, the most fervent of the delegates from Rome, began that course of austerity and of preaching amongst the people which was ultimately to make of the subprior Dominic a saint and the founder of a great religious order, to which has often but wrongly been attributed the
origin, though it certainly became the principal agent, of the Inquisition. Whilst joining in humble and pious energy with the two Spanish priests, the two monks of Citeau and Peter de Castelnau especially, did not cease to urge amongst the lay princes the extirpation of the heretics. In 1205 they prepared to Toulouse to demand of Raymond VI a formal promise, which indeed
they obtained, but Raymond was one of those undecided and feeble characters who dare not refuse to promise what they dare not attempt to do. He wished to live in peace with the Orthodox Church, without behaving cruelly to a large number of his subjects. The fanatical legate Peter de Castelnau, enraged at his tergiverseration, instantly excommunicated
him, and the pope sent to the count a threatening letter, giving him therein to understand that in case of need stronger measures would be adopted against him. Raymond, affrighted, prevailed on the two legates to repair to Saint-Gilles, and he there renewed his promises to them, but he always sought for and found on the morrow some excuse for retarding the execution of them.
The legates, after having reproached him vehemently, determined to leave Saint-Gilles without further delay, and the day after their departure, January 15, 1208, as they were getting ready to cross the Rhône, two strangers, who had lodged the night before in the same hostel with them, drew near, and one of the two gave Peter de Castelnau a lance thrust with such force that the legate, after exclaiming, God forgive thee, as I do, had only time to give
his comrade his last instructions, and then expired. Great was the emotion in France and at Rhône. It was barely thirty years since in England, after an outburst of passion on the part of King Henry II, four knights of his court had murdered the Archbishop Thomas Abbecket in Canterbury Cathedral.
Was the Count of Toulouse too guilty of having instigated the shedding of blood and the murder of a prelate? Such was, in the thirteenth century, the general cry throughout the Catholic Church, and the signal for war against Raymond VI, a war undertaken on the plea of a personal crime, but in reality for the extirpation of heresy in southern France, and for the dispossession
of the native princes, who would not fully obey the decrees of the papacy, in favour of foreign conquerors who would put them into execution. The crusade against the Elbergencians was the most striking application of two principles equally false and fatal, which did more than as much evil to the Catholics as to the heretics, and to the papacy as to freedom, and they are the right of the spiritual power to claim
for the coercion of souls the material force of the temple powers, and its right to strip temporal sovereigns, in case they set at naught its injunctions, of their title to the obedience of their people, in other words, denial of religious liberty to conscience and of political independence to states. It was by virtue of these two principles, at that time dominant, but not without some
opposition in Christendom, that Innocent III, in 1208, summoned the King of France, the great lords and the knights, and the clergy, secular and regular, of the kingdom to assume the cross and go forth to extirpate from southern France the Elbergencians, worse than the Saracens, and that he promised to the chiefs of the crusaders the sovereignty of such domains as they should win by conquest from the princes who were heretics or protectors of heretics.
