§ 11. A PREACHING EXPERIMENT
No help was to be expected at this time from the Pope in the suppression of heresy either in the South of France or the North of Italy, for he had more than he could manage in his struggle with Barbarossa and his Anti-pope. The Council had done little more than advertise its own weakness and the strength of the heretics. The Church therefore determined upon new methods, meeting preaching by preaching. Persuasion is better than force, but persuasion is more effective when coupled with force—or hints of severe penalties for contumacy. The Kings of France and England sent out the Cistercian monk, Peter Chrysogonus, Cardinal and Legate, with certain Archbishops and Bishops "ut praedicatione sua haereticos illos ad fidem Christianam converterent," Raymond, Count of Toulouse and Raymond, Count of Castranuovo, and others lending them secular support. This move proved more successful than the Council, and many yielded. Sometimes the Commission would summon or invite the heretics to be more explicit as to their creed, granting them a safe conduct eundi et redeundi. Under these conditions two heresiarchs came forward, called Raymond and Bernard, and produced a certain paper in which they had drawn up the articles of their faith. But they could scarcely speak a word of Latin, and the Court "condescended" to hold the discussion in the vulgar tongue. They answered, "sane et circumspecte, ac si Christiani essent;" so much so indeed, that they were charged with deliberate lying, and accused of holding the usual erroneous opinions with which previous investigations have made us familiar. This they strenuously denied. They even asserted their belief that "panis et vinum in corpus et sanguinem Christi vere transubstantiabantur." But to this creed they would not swear, deeming oaths unlawful. The Court regarded this avowal as a mere cloke of duplicity and condemned and excommunicated them. This sentence Peter Chrysogonus justified in an open letter, and Henry of Clairvaux, who accompanied him, in a similar letter declared that if they had deferred their visit for three years scarcely anyone would have remained orthodox.