At Montreal the debate lasted a fortnight, and here, according to Peter de Vaux-Cernay, the miracle placed by Dominican tradition at Fanjeaux really occurred. St. Dominic drew up a summary of his arguments, as did the heretics, and the two memoranda were submitted to the four judges of the debate, two knights and two burghers. The judges, in executive session, despaired of coming to an agreement and decided to try a form of ordeal. Accordingly, they ceremonially threw both manuscripts into the fire. Whereupon the heretical manuscript promptly blazed up, and St. Dominic’s, three times thrown in, was three times cast out unharmed by the flames. The judges agreed to say nothing of the matter and, miracle or no miracle, failed to give a decision.
The last of the public debates took place at Pamiers, in the territory and under the patronage of Raymond Roger, Count of Foix. Faithful to his usual policy of “Good Lord, good Devil” the Count entertained the disputants of both parties in turn, and offered his great hall for the debate. On the Catholic side, the Bishop of Osma was seconded by Bishop Fulk of Toulouse, and by the Bishop of Conserans. The opposition seems to have been quite as much Waldensian as Catharist. A single judge presided. In the course of the debate, Esclairmonde the heretical sister of the Count of Foix, broke into the debate in favour of the Cathari, with quite the assurance of a Roman lady of the first century or of a wealthy English or American woman to-day. In this case, however, one of the Catholic priests present, Stephen of Metz, replied: “Go back to your spinning, it is not for you to make a speech in such a company,” and she seems to have subsided, possibly choked with anger at being so addressed by a wretched barefoot priest. At the close of the conference certain Waldensians, among them Duran (or Durand) of Huesca, a Spanish Waldensian prominent in the sect, were converted. Otherwise this conference, too, seems to have had slight results. As at Montreal, no decision was given.
Although after the Conference at Pamiers we hear no more of public debates on a grand scale, the preaching work of the mission was continued. Legate Raoul drops out of the story. The Bishop of Osma returned to his diocese to die, the sooner perhaps because of the hardships to which the old man had subjected himself, but left Dominic to go on with the work. Arnaut Amalric was again called away for a time by business in Northern France, leaving Pierre de Castelnau, and (apparently) Dominic, as the dominant personalities of the Papal mission.
During 1207, the year of the conferences of Montreal and Pamiers, the earlier idea of putting pressure upon the secular authorities was by no means given up. It is quite possible, as Luchaire suggests, that men of the stamp of de Castelnau, Arnaut Amalric, and Fulk, continued to believe all along in measures stiffer than mere persuasion. And in this belief, if they held it, time was to show them right enough. De Castelnau crossed the Rhône into Raymond’s “Marquisate of Provence,” and persuaded the nobles there to associate themselves in a league which he organized for the prevention of feuds between its members. He further arranged to include in the objects of the league the prosecution of heretics and then summoned Raymond himself to join the association formed for two such worthy purposes by this good-sized group of his vassals.
Raymond refused. Besides being utterly unwilling to prosecute heresy, he probably felt that his prestige would suffer if he did so as a late comer into an association of his own liegemen which he had not himself helped to organize.
De Castelnau’s next move shows the gathering exasperation of years of failure. He excommunicated the Count. He interdicted his lands. Not content with that, he went boldly into his presence and denounced him publicly, to his face. No doubt he threw in his teeth the two promises which he had already broken, first that of 1199 to the Pope in the matter of the monks of St. Gilles, and second that to de Castelnau himself in 1205, two years before the denunciation when he had sworn to dismiss his mercenary troops and to prosecute heretics. The spectacle must have been dramatic; the monk, remember, had especially drawn upon himself the hatred of the heretics and the easy-going Catholics (who between them made up nearly all Languedoc), standing up barefoot in his grey Cistercian habit and cursing to his face the greatest lord of the south. For protection he had nothing but such moral authority as the Church still possessed in the face of the heresy all about. His worst enemy could not have denied de Castelnau’s courage.
Innocent lost no time in confirming the sentence. He ordered the Archbishops of Vienne, Embrun, Arles, and Narbonne to publish and to enforce it. He did more; he wrote directly, and fiercely, to Raymond himself.
The counts of the indictment as repeated to the archbishops are interesting and inclusive. Besides the two main charges of having employed bandit-mercenaries and refusing to prosecute heretics, Count Raymond had refused to interrupt military operations during Lent and on feast days and holidays, he had made fortresses out of churches, he had persecuted abbeys, despoiled the Bishop of Carpentras, bestowed public offices upon Jews, refused to join the league of peace of Provence, increased tolls upon the roads and bridges, played host to heretics, and finally (although this was never proved and seems not to have been the fact) he had become a heretic himself. It is particularly interesting, and in line with the Church’s condemnation of usury and extortion generally, to see the strong line taken in the matter of tolls.
Naturally, his vassals owed no duties of allegiance as long as their lord remained unabsolved. Should any man give him aid and comfort that man was, ipso facto, excommunicate himself, down to the blacksmith who might shoe him a horse.
The Pope’s letter to Raymond himself was devastating. “Impious folly and tyranny” were among the gentler of its phrases. It spoke hopefully of the Count’s chances of fever, leprosy, paralysis, demoniacal insanity, metamorphosis into a beast after the fashion of Nebuchadnezzar. Contrasting his love of war with the angelic devotion to peace shown by the Provençal nobles and by “the illustrious” King Pedro of Aragon, it likened its addressee to a crow feeding on dead bodies. Altogether, its tone left very little to be desired.