In appeals to Rome, whenever it appeared that the charge of heresy had not been completely proved we find the Pope anxious to give the accused the benefit of every doubt. In the district of Nevers he twice interfered in this way in the case of priests, and twice in favour of the burghers of La-Charité-sur-Loire, although there, unfortunately, his leniency bore no fruit, so that he finally felt himself forced to proceed against them.
Even in the full heat of the Albigensian Crusade, we still find him favouring an accused canon of Bar-sur-Aube, an incident which can only receive its full value by being told in connection with the very different things then going on in Languedoc.
But, however careful to go lightly in doubtful cases, Innocent was very different toward proved and defiant heretics. Luchaire would have us believe that when the great Pope calls the heretics a scourge, a pestilence, filth, an ulcer infecting society, a savage beast, a wolf in sheep’s clothing, a fox that destroys the Lord’s vine, a villainous inn-keeper who poisons his guests by selling them adulterated wines, when he seems to believe in their secret sexual orgies, he is only repeating a set of stock phrases and that he was in no way animated by “fanaticism,” or by any especial hatred towards heresy. The learned Frenchman goes so far as to suggest that Innocent “proceeded rigorously against heresy ... more because of the necessities of his policy than because of the ardour of his faith.”[29] Nevertheless, such assertions are without a scrap of definite proof, as far as Luchaire’s published work is concerned. Moreover, he admits that Innocent, along with almost all his contemporaries, felt “repulsion” for the heretics. Finally, the American of to-day will be apt to say sadly that a French anti-clerical cannot even know what real fanaticism is, since, in political action, France has not for centuries even “seen the animal” in its strength.
Certainly Innocent appealed not only to the Scriptures but also to human reason against the heretics. Thus he makes great play with the logical impossibility of the Manichean idea of two contradictory gods. That is characteristic not only of the man but of the time in which he lived, with its great scholastics, a time that believed in logic as devoutly as our own time believes in “science.” Most certainly he recognized that occasions for scandal given by the clergy were at the bottom of much of the trouble. He keeps insisting that the sacraments in the hands of a priest of evil life do not lose their virtue any more than medicines in the hands of a doctor who might, personally, be far from well himself. Above all, he worked to remove the causes of scandal by improving the conduct of the clergy. But this is merely to say that anger did not blind him to facts (he had the fits of anger usually found in dominant natures). Certainly he was no vulgar ranter, but from this it by no means follows that his faith was not ardent and his feeling against heresy correspondingly keen.
In the year of his accession we find Innocent already corresponding with Raymond VI of Toulouse. The Count was then 41 years old, having three years before succeeded his father, Count Raymond V, whom we have seen (in the last chapter) appealing for help to put down heresy. The Counts of Toulouse were the most powerful princes of the South. As Dukes of Narbonne they were the first lay peers of France. They held the Marquisate of Provence, they were Counts of Vivarais, Venaissin, St. Gilles, and Rodez, and lords of the Albigeois, Gevaudan, Velai, Rouergue, and Agenois, besides being Suzerain to the Counts of Foix and Comminges. Raymond VI was married to Princess Joan of England, daughter of Henry Plantagenet and Eleanor of Aquitaine, and sister to Richard Cœur de Lion and King John. The Count himself was no heretic, although certain hasty expressions which he had thrown out in favour of the heretics were treasured against him by zealous Catholics. However, according to the custom of Languedoc, his orthodoxy was anything but belligerent. He was accustomed to nominate Jews and heretics to public office, and altogether he and his wealthy court thought more of enjoying themselves with poetry and the society of women than of anything else in the world. He was not warlike, and trying events were to prove him lacking in courage, self command, and staunchness of purpose. He was equally innocent of wisdom or cunning in policy. He does not seem to have been base but merely weak and easy going. If not in great place or troubled times such men may do well enough.
In his first encounter with the great Pope he appears not as a favourer of heretics but as an oppressor of monks. As such he had already been excommunicated by Pope Celestine III. Innocent sent his legates to offer him absolution if he would give satisfaction to the abbot in question, that of St. Gilles; and on his promise to do so, wrote to suggest that he do penance in order to show his good will. Before a twelvemonth was out the Abbot of St. Gilles was complaining that he had in no wise mended his ways, so Innocent wrote again to his legate directing that the Count be held to his promises. It was not a hopeful beginning.
For six years, with frequently changing personnel, the papal legation in Languedoc kept on trying to realize its original programme. It was a thankless job. William VIII, Lord of Montpellier, whose family was by tradition strongly Catholic, asked for the appointment of a legate to help him root out heresy from his lands. Unfortunately he was not a personage of first-rate importance, and his action was a mere flash in the pan, as none of his fellow nobles followed suit. Lea claims that even William himself had a special interest in showing zeal because he was trying to get the Pope to legitimatize the children of a second wife whom he had married without being legally separated (by annulment no doubt) from his first.
In 1200 we hear of a Cardinal “John of St. Paul” (meaning probably that his titular church was the basilica of St. Paul without the walls at Rome) taking part in the Albigensian mission, but of him we hear no more. Two years later it appears that Rainier fell sick and was accordingly relieved from duty as legate. What became of his companion Guy we are not told; he seems to have sunk in the waters of oblivion without a splash or even a bubble.
Rainier was replaced by two Cistercian monks from the Cistercian abbey of Font Froide, near Narbonne. One of the two Cistercians was named Raoul. The other, the soul of the mission, was Peter de Castelnau, that famous name of Castelnau whose arms are still seen in the hall of the knights at Versailles, a name that the Germans will long have reason to remember, since in the desperate first week of September, 1914, it was a Castelnau who fended them off at the Grand Couronné de Nancy, and thus made possible the victory of the Marne. De Castelnau, with an energy and decision that may well remind us of the soldier Castelnau of our own generation, made straight for Toulouse itself. There he harangued the inhabitants, demanding that their magistrates should swear to keep the Catholic faith and expel heretics, in return for a papal confirmation of the liberties of the city (which were set down, no doubt, in a charter much like the old English charters preserved by Bishop Stubbs). The Toulousains rose to the bait, took the oaths and then failed to move. The legates talked in a high tone about angry princes and kings coming upon the city to pillage and destroy, and effected thereby some show of reform, but no sooner were their backs turned than the heretical preachers began their midnight meetings as before.
Incidentally, it is interesting to note that, in a place like Toulouse in the year 1203, the utmost daring of the heretics was to hold their preaching services at midnight. It looks as if, in the large centres, there was still a strong feeling that heresy, after all, was not “the thing.” It was still under a certain amount of social ban. The feeling even of these non-persecuting communities must have looked a little askance at it.