§ 6. LITERATURE
Although it suited the purpose of the Church to regard them as "unlearned and ignorant men," it was from the people that the Provençal literature emanated. The bourgeoisie encouraged poetry and art. The industrial classes turned in contempt from the stupid and impossible stories of saints to a personal study of the Scriptures and their patristic explanations. The Poor Men of Lyons were poor in spirit, not in pocket. Business ability and training enabled them to organize their movement on lines that were both flexible and compact, and their wealth supported their officers. Clerks could copy out their pamphlets, and their colporteurs or travellers could distribute them. At the beginning of the thirteenth century the Marquis of Montferrand, in Auvergne, just before his death, burnt a great quantity of books, especially those of Albigensian propaganda, which he had been collecting for forty years. (Stephen de Belleville, 85.) The Provençal, Arnauld, was a most prolific writer, and sold or gave to the Catholics little books deriding the saints of the Church. Moneta de Cremona, in his great work against the Albigenses, declares that he drew his information of their doctrines from their own writings, and quotes largely from a teacher called Tetricus, a dialectician and interpreter of the Bible. Tetricus was probably that William who was Canon of Nevers, returned to Toulouse in 1201, under the name of Theodoric, and was held in great esteem by the Albigenses for his knowledge.[20]