De Montfort's son could make no headway against a people in arms. But in 1222 Raymond VI and Philip of France vainly tried to promote a peaceful settlement between Amaury de Montfort and Raymond VII. Amaury, despairing of success, offered his claims to the French King, and in 1223 Philip's successor, Louis VIII, overpersuaded by the Pope, accepted them. The young Count Raymond vainly endeavoured to ward off the threatened invasion and showed every desire to be reconciled with the Church. There was scarcely any longer a pretence of religious war. From the first it had been largely a war of races, promoted by northern jealousy at the wealth and civilisation of the south and by a desire for the completion of the Frank conquest of Gaul. Thus from the beginning of hostilities the whole population of the south, Catholic as well as heretic, had stood together in resistance to the crusading army, and despite his tergiversations Raymond VI had never lost their affection and support. The war lasted for three years (1226-9); Louis VIII led an expedition southwards, which for some inexplicable reason turned back before it had achieved complete success; and after his death the Queen-Regent, Blanche of Castile, with the encouragement of Pope Gregory IX, came to terms with Raymond VII. By the Treaty of Meaux (1229) Count Raymond agreed to hunt down all heretics, to assume the cross as a penance, to give up at once about two-thirds of his lands, while the remainder was to go to his daughter, who was to be married to a French prince, with the ultimate reversion to the French Crown. In 1237 Jeanne of Toulouse was married to Alfonso, brother of Louis IX; in 1249, on the death of Raymond VII, they succeeded to his dominions, and on their death in 1271 without children Philip III annexed all their possessions to the dominions of the French Crown.
[Sidenote: Punishment for heresy.]
The question of the acquisition of territory was thus shown to be far more important than the suppression of heresy. But a university was established at Toulouse for the teaching of true philosophy, and the Inquisition was set up under the Dominicans for the suppression of false doctrine. The time had definitely gone by when the Church would rely upon methods of persuasion in dealing with heretics. And yet for a long time there was much hesitation among Churchmen. Even as late as 1145 St. Bernard pleads for reasoning rather than coercion. And the application of methods of coercion was equally tentative. At first the obstinate heretic was imprisoned or exiled and his property was confiscated. But the practice of burning a heretic alive was long the custom before it was adopted anywhere as positive law. Pedro II of Aragon, the champion of Raymond VI, first definitely legalised it (1197). In 1238 by the Edict of Cremona this became the recognised law of the Empire, and was afterwards embodied in the Sachsenspiegel and Schwabenspiegel, the municipal codes of Northern and Southern Germany respectively. The Etablissements of Louis IX (1270) recognised the practice for France. It is a tribute to English orthodoxy that the Act "de haeretico comburendo" was not passed until 1401.
[Sidenote: The secular arm.]
Early usage forbade the clergy to be concerned in judgments involving death or mutilation. This finds expression in the Constitutions of Clarendon (1164); and the fourth Lateran Council (1215) definitely forbade clerks to utter a judgment of blood or to be present at an execution. Thus the Church merely found a man a heretic and called upon the secular authority to punish him. It was impressed upon all secular potentates from highest to lowest that it was their business to obey the behests of the Church in the extirpation of heresy. Indeed, it may almost be said that the validity of this command of the Church was the principal point at issue in the Albigensian crusade; for Raymond's lands were declared forfeit merely because he would not take an active part in the punishment of his heretical subjects. Thus by the thirteenth century all hesitation as to the attitude of the Church towards heretics had entirely disappeared. As Innocent III lays it down, "faith is not to be kept with him who keeps not faith with God," and Councils of this century declared that any temporal ruler who did not persecute heresy must be regarded as an accomplice and so as himself a heretic.
We cannot apply modern standards to the mediaeval feelings about heresy. The noblest and most saintly among clergy and laity alike were often the fiercest persecutors. Church and State were closely intermingled; heresy was a crime as well as a sin; the heretic was a rebel; mild measures only made him bolder; and in fear of the overthrow of the whole social system the rulers of State and Church combined to crush him.
CHAPTER XIII
THE MENDICANT ORDERS
[Sidenote: Need for new kinds of Orders.]
At the Lateran Council in 1215 Innocent III issued a decree which practically forbade the foundation of new monastic Orders. The increase of such Orders in the name of religious reform had not always tended to the promotion of orthodoxy. Moreover, the monastic ideal was the spiritual perfection of the individual, to be gained by separation from the world; but the growth of large urban populations with the accompanying disease and misery called for a new kind of dedication to religion. There was strength in membership of an Order, and during the twelfth century there were founded alongside of the newer monastic Orders organisations devoted to social work of various kinds. Such was the origin of the Hospitallers and perhaps of the Templars also, and of a number of small Orders, most of them merely local in their work and following, which were founded all over Western Europe for care of the sick and pilgrims and for other charitable work.