There remained the chance of accomplishing something through reform of the personnel of the southern Church by a drastic use of the extraordinary powers granted to the papal legates. These were now three in number, the newcomer being Arnaut Amalric, abbot of Citeaux, and therefore head of the powerful Cistercian order, to which both Raoul and de Castelnau belonged. With the addition of Arnaut (whose surname of Amalric recalls the old family of Amal chieftains among the Goths), the legates attempted to use their power of deposing bishops to its full extent. They proclaimed the deposition of Berenger II, primate of Languedoc! Berenger broke boldly with the legates and refused to quit his archbishopric of Narbonne. He protested violently to the Pope, representing that only his great age and “infirmities” prevented him from pleading his cause in person at Rome, so that his case dragged on.
Meanwhile, the Bishop of Beziers, besides refusing to go with the legates to Count Raymond, had gone even further in disobedience to them than his ecclesiastical lord of Narbonne. When asked to demand of the “consuls” of his city that they abjure heresy and engage to expel heretics, he at first refused point blank and encouraged the magistrates not to do so. Under pressure he finally promised to excommunicate them, but failed to do so. Accordingly, the legates suspended him, and ordered him to appear in his own defence at Rome. Shortly afterwards he was assassinated by some treachery “among his own people”—why, our authorities do not state.
Perhaps he had been particularly slow to prosecute heresy inasmuch as his neighbour, the Bishop of Carcassonne, had gotten himself driven out for merely threatening to do so. The municipality of Carcassonne had even forbidden anyone to have relations with the unhappy cleric, on pain of a heavy fine.
In the same year that saw the assassination of the Bishop of Beziers, the legates deposed the Bishop of Toulouse for “simony,” that is selling appointments to Church offices within his control. He was a turbulent, feudal, sort of person, who had spent his time in making war on his vassals, and had mortgaged the properties of his see right and left to enable him to do so. On account of his resistance it was not until the next year that a successor could be elected.
While the see of Toulouse was still vacant, de Castelnau again went boldly to Raymond and frightened him into taking an oath to dismiss his bandit-mercenaries and personally to prosecute heretics. As in the case of the monks of St. Gilles, he took no steps towards keeping his word.
Hardly was Raymond’s oath sworn when the consuls of Toulouse passed a law forbidding an accusation of heresy to be begun after the death of the accused unless they had been “hereticated” on their death-bed—some bones of heretics having been dug up and removed from consecrated earth. And what was worse, this action of the municipality was supposed to have been due to Raymond’s influence as overlord. At any rate, he seems to have consented to it, and certainly made no move to prevent it.
Altogether, the year 1205 had been as depressing as its predecessors. A second appeal to Philip Augustus, in February, had brought no result.
In 1206 the discouragement of the legates again came to a head as it had done two years before. The one bright spot was that the cathedral chapter of Toulouse had finally elected, as their bishop, Fulk of Marseilles. After winning fame as a troubadour, he had entered the Cistercian order and been chosen an abbot. Fulk had all the enthusiasm typical of converts. He had transferred the passion that had set him writing love songs into his new task of smiting the heretic. Indeed, he was to be one of the foremost in the Crusade. Nevertheless, his election was not enough in itself to keep the legates in good heart, for in general their task was as ungrateful as ever.
Towards midsummer, the three legates with their retinues, together with a number of bishops from neighbouring sees, assembled in council at Castelnau (named for the family of the legate Pierre de Castelnau) near Montpellier. Not only the gentle Raoul, but even the stern and unbending Arnaut Amalric, and de Castelnau with his fearless, fiery spirit, were ready to despair. They talked of resigning their mission. It seems that they had even agreed to do so, when a new impulse and an altogether different plan of campaign was given them by a newcomer.
This newcomer was a Spaniard, Diego (or Didacus), Bishop of Osma in the Upper Douro valley in Castille. He had been much employed in diplomatic business by his king, and was now returning from Rome whither he had been refused permission from the Pope to go as a missionary to the savage heathen Tartars of the Ukraine steppes.