The Inquisition

by Hoffman Nickerson

Having obtained from the “consuls” of Toulouse a promise, however hollow, of obedient persecution, the legates turned their attention to Count Raymond. They invited the Archbishop of Narbonne, the Primate of Languedoc, to join with them in demanding from the Count not only banishment of heretics and confiscation of their goods but also the dismissal of the mercenary troops who, as we have seen, were near-brigands on active service and brigands pure and simple at all other times. The Archbishop refused. Accustomed throughout a long life full of ease and riches to see heresy all about him, he had probably long forgotten to be shocked at it. As to the “brigands,” he probably made allowances, as the legates did not, for the fact that mercenaries were the only troops possible to an overlord like the Count of Toulouse whose feudal vassals were almost certain to be either unwarlike or disobedient—if not both at once. Knowing his man and Languedoc in general as he did, he must have thought it useless and silly for the legates even to make the attempt. Very likely he was alarmed at such activity shown by papal legates in his territory and afraid lest his own position might be threatened and his own sloth and unworthiness be thrown in his teeth or denounced to the Pope by this meddlesome pair of Cistercians from his own province, who might better have stayed at home in their abbey. He refused to go with them and would hardly even lend them a horse for their trip. The bishop of Beziers, who had been asked to be of the party, also refused, so the legates proceeded alone. As for Raymond, we have already seen him readier to promise than to perform in the case of the monks of St. Gilles. Now he would not even promise.

Even de Castelnau despaired. He wrote to the Pope telling of his failure, and asking to be relieved from duty as legate in order to return to his abbey. Innocent held him to his work, reminding him that heaven would reward him not according to his success, but according to his labours.

However, it was probably de Castelnau’s letter which persuaded the Pope to broaden the scope of the mission. He now took the radical step of depriving the Languedocian bishops of jurisdiction in cases of heresy and conferred it on his legates. On top of this, he went even further and empowered the legates to remove any of the clergy from their benefices should they seem unworthy to hold them, and denied to the condemned the right of appeal to Rome and of delay in executing the sentence.

From the standpoint of the canon law this was revolutionary; the grant of these wide powers to the legates marks the second stage in the preliminaries of the Crusade. Gradually, the seriousness of the situation was being understood in Rome. Only the clear belief that the higher clergy of Languedoc must be drastically purged of evil-livers, and of those who were slothful and lukewarm in prosecuting heresy, before anything else could be accomplished would justify such measures.

That there was need of strong measures was proved by the continued activity of the heretics. After the Count of Toulouse, the Count of Foix was the greatest noble of Languedoc. In this same year his sister Esclairmonde was “hereticated,” and in the great crowd present at the ceremony only the Count himself failed to “venerate” the “Perfect” according to the prescribed heretical form. His wife was already a “Cathar,” and another of his sisters was a Waldensian. So things went in the “midi.”

At the same time that the powers of the legates were increased, Innocent empowered them to offer Philip Augustus and his son Louis complete remission of sins, as if for a crusade to Palestine, if they would move against the Albigenses of Languedoc. The indulgence was to be extended to all nobles who might aid in suppressing heresy; and all who were under excommunication for crimes of violence, nobles or villains, were to be absolved on joining the expedition. At the same time, the Pope himself wrote direct to Philip, promising him not only full indulgences, as for a crusade against the Moslem, but also the territories of such nobles as might obstruct the pious work of suppressing heresy.

The time was altogether unfavourable for the King of France to grant such a request, for he was otherwise engaged. About the middle of the twelfth century, as a result of two great marriages, the Plantagenet Counts of Anjou (in addition to their hereditary lands of Anjou, Maine and Touraine) had become kings of England and Dukes of Normandy, suzerains of Brittany, and Dukes of Aquitaine, which included Poitou, Guienne, Gascony, and Auvergne. Naturally, as masters of this great sweep of territory so much greater in extent than the little royal domain which alone was directly ruled by the kings of France, the Angevins were almost continually at war with the French kings to whom they theoretically owed homage for their Continental possessions. Besides their vast lands, the Plantagenets possessed high personal energy and complete ruthlessness; their line was supposed to descend from a devil, and from their behaviour it seemed fairly probable. Further, the Norman system of administration and (as we should say) “civil service” which they directed and applied throughout their territory, was the best of its kind in Latin Christendom, at least outside of the kingdom of Naples and Sicily which was also Norman-ruled. On the surface of things, the “kings of Paris” seemed hopelessly overmatched. On the other hand, the Angevin dominions could have no possible feeling of attachment to one another. They were held together only from above. Whereas behind the kings of France were dim, vast, memories of the Roman unity; as yet mere “ideas,” to be sure, but in France ideas have power.

It is with a sure instinct that Michelet has contrasted the fashion of the great seals of the Plantagenets with those of the Capets. The demon race of Anjou are seen fully armed, mounted, and charging, while the kings of France have no need of war horse, armour, or weapons, but are sitting enthroned, holding the orb and sceptre, full of the calm consciousness of power admitted and acknowledged. I repeat once more that the time had almost nothing of our idea of nationalities; nevertheless, as we have seen in the first chapter, its currents were setting strongly in favour of the central kingships, and especially in favour of the kings of France. Even in the matter of the Albigensian crusade, we shall see the Capets, and with them the national unity, profiting quite as much as the Church from the conclusion of the struggle.

Now, in 1204, there reigned at Paris a great man, Philip, whose surname Augustus of itself recalled Rome. His character was a little detached and remote, bent altogether upon making real the great shadowy power that was lawfully his by virtue of his office. Like his father and grandfather, he was a friend to merchants and wayfaring men, a mighty slayer of bandits, and a protector of the new Municipal Communes. Like all his ancestors, he allied himself with the Church. Like some of his ancestors, and like a true Frenchman, he might quarrel bitterly with the Pope, when there was a petticoat in the business, but in spite of his dabbling in bigamy on the modern American plan, in the matter of his second marriage he remained the “eldest son of the Church” and the staunchest champion of the Papacy in Europe, and in his alliance with the Church he received quite as much as he gave.

Ever since John’s accession to the Plantagenet lands in 1199, the long struggle between the Angevins and the French Crown had gone on in haphazard raids and skirmishes, interrupted by fitful truces which settled nothing. From February to September, 1200, France had been under a Papal interdict for Philip’s repudiation of his wife followed by a second marriage, after a questionable annulment of the first marriage by the French bishops. Even though the interdict had been imperfectly enforced, still it had sufficiently weakened his general position to make him willing to conclude a truce with John, and to promise the Pope that he would mend his ways. The interdict once lifted, the intriguing and skirmishing had begun again, going more and more in Philip’s favour. In the fall of 1203 major operations had begun. After a successful six months’ siege of Chateau Gailliard, ending in March, 1204, Philip had won all Normandy and deprived John of the entire continental Plantagenet inheritance except Gascony, Guienne, and part of Poitou. With so much freshly conquered land to be administered and so many new vassals to be handled, it was no time to ask the King of France to take on the heavy task of intervening against heresy in Languedoc, or even to weaken himself by allowing any of the forces of his kingdom to do so. He refused to move.