Specifically, Innocent accused the Count of retorting to de Castelnau that a heretic, perhaps a “Catharan bishop” could easily be found to prove the superiority of their religion over the Catholic. He speaks, therefore, of the serious grounds for suspicion of heresy in Raymond’s own case, but guards himself carefully against offering it as a fact. He is to give prompt and full satisfaction and seek to be absolved. Otherwise he will lose the county of Melgueil held by him as a vassal of the Roman Church, and if this is not enough then other princes will be stirred up against him and granted title to any of his lands they may conquer.
Raymond collapsed. He signed the Provençal truce and again swore to do everything that was demanded of him. But it was the fatal weakness of his character that he was always willing to mortgage his future by yielding to present threats and then fail to keep his engagements. He could never understand that this sort of thing would be even worse for him in the end than out and out resistance. Again he did nothing.
Meanwhile St. Dominic, having put his hand to the plough, was not the man to turn back. He succeeded in making some converts. The penance laid upon one of these, in order to reconcile him to the Church, has been preserved. Its date seems to be 1207 or 1208. It prescribes that Pons Roger of Treville “en Lauraguais” for three successive Sundays is to strip to the waist and walk from the outskirts of his village to the church, being beaten with rods all along the way by a priest. He is to wear a religious (i.e., monkish) habit with crosses sewn upon it. For the rest of his life he is to eat no meat, eggs, or cheese. Exception is made for the great feasts of Easter, Pentecost and Christmas, not for the comfort of the penitent but so that he might openly show that he had broken with the Catharan law of fasting described in the preceding chapter. Three days a week he is to have no fish, oil or wine, unless in case of sickness. He is to keep three Lents a year, and to live in perpetual chastity. The obligation, to hear mass at least once a day and to show his letter of penitence once a month to his parish priest, round out his sentence. Should he disobey, he is ipso facto excommunicate as a heretic and perjurer on top of that. A propos of this bristling catalogue the good Mother Drane, comparing it with the comparative gentleness of present-day Roman Catholic penitence, remarks that ... (the) ... “difference ... should cover us with humiliation for the feebleness of modern penitence, rather than send us to criticize the severity with which the Church has ever looked on sin.”[31] Unfortunately even in the thirteenth century few Provençals seem to have been of the good lady’s opinion. It appears quite certain that converts willing to tread such an heroic road for the sake of reconciliation with the Church were few.
In another direction St. Dominic’s labours were more fruitful. He had observed that the heretics made a practice of caring for the children of the very poor in order to bring them up in Catharan practices and beliefs. Accordingly he founded the famous nunnery of Prouille to receive the girl children of poor Catholics and also female converts from heresy who desired a secure refuge in which they might enjoy their new faith. The place filled a real need and prospered from the first.
However, in spite of the fame that Prouille was to have in the future, its foundation had little immediate effect upon the situation. Converts by preaching were few, as we have seen. The people cared no more for sermons than for rotten apples, remarks the “Chanson de la Crusade.” For the third time discouragement fell upon the papal mission to Languedoc.
There is a bit of evidence tending to prove that, in St. Dominic, the discouragement of his fellow missioners was translated into anger. To his congregation at Prouille he is said to have told of his years of preaching, prayer and tears, in their behalf, then to have quoted a Spanish proverb: “Use the stick where a blessing will not serve!” “So,” said he calling up before them visions of war and massacre, “force shall prevail where sweetness has failed.”
If this sermon of St. Dominic’s was, in fact, preached towards the end of the year 1207, it coincided in time with a new and particularly solemn and pressing series of letters addressed by Innocent not only to Philip Augustus but also to that king’s chief vassals the Duke of Burgundy and the Counts of Bar, Dreux, Nevers, Champagne, and Blois. The Pope recalled to the “French” princes (i.e., North-French as we should say) the nine years already spent in the hopeless effort to convert the southern heretics by means of gentleness. Now, said he, the miseries of war must bring them to truth. Those who took the Cross were to receive full and complete remission of their sins as if their crusading had been to Palestine itself. As the lands of heretics were to be their lawful prey, so their own lands and families were under special protection of the Pope. No creditors could collect interest from a Crusader during his absence, and crusading clergy were authorized to mortgage their revenues for two years in advance. Really it seems as if the Pope could hardly have bid higher. By this time he must have been convinced, not only that the Albigenses must be put down by force, but also that the task was equal in importance to recovering the Holy Land itself. Better a lion in the desert than a wild cat in the bed chamber, as Scott makes Saladin remark to Richard Cœur de Lion. Innocent would almost certainly have maintained that the Saracenic lion was a fair fighter, whereas the teeth and claws of the Albigensian wild-cat bore poison.
We hear of no reply to Innocent’s three former appeals, but in this case Philip answered briefly by a letter written in the King’s name by the Bishop of Paris. Whether any of his great vassals answered is not known, but if their decisions were essentially different from that of their overlord then they were certainly of no effect. The King’s answer was typical of the colder side of his character, for besides his ceaseless energy, his boldness where only boldness would serve him, and his gift for intrigue, he possessed a prudence that never ran unnecessary risks but made sure to get as many chances as possible on his side before he would move. As we say, he was a great “politician.” Three years before by taking Normandy he had cleared the mouth of the Seine, the only real navigable river in France, in the middle basin of which river the centre of his power lay. For the first time since the coming of the Danish invasion nearly three centuries before, northern Gaul held the keys of her own door so that her commerce could come and go at her own will. He had done more. He had settled himself in the rich lower valley of the shallow Loire and pushed back John almost to the Dordogne. Now, when he received Innocent’s letter, the campaigning season of 1207 had passed without incident thanks to a two years’ truce patched up in the previous autumn (of 1206), which had still about another year to run. Nevertheless the King of France knew that John had not given up the struggle but was making great efforts to raise money for the hiring of mercenaries and the bribing of possible allies. The Archbishop of York had just gone into exile in protest against unprecedented taxation of the English clergy for these pious objects. Also, it was common talk throughout Europe that John was refusing to recognize Stephen Langton as Archbishop of Canterbury, in spite of strong pressure from Innocent to do so. A complete break had not yet come, but relations between the King of England and the Pope were getting more and more strained.
Under these conditions Philip Augustus’s answer to Innocent’s invitation to go crusading in Languedoc was, in form, a half consent to do so, hedged about with such conditions as to make it, in fact, a refusal. He reminded the Pope of his war with John. His resources were not large enough for him to levy two armies at a time. Let Innocent first make a firm truce between John and himself for two years and, second, decree an assessment upon the French clergy and nobles. Then, according to Luchaire’s account of the letter, Philip Augustus would himself undertake the Crusade, reserving the right to withdraw his troops in case John broke the truce. According to Lea, he promised, in case the truce were arranged, only to permit his barons to undertake the Crusade and to aid them with fifty livres a day for a year. In either case he knew very well that Innocent could get him no truce with John. Since the King of England was already braving possible excommunication for himself and interdict for his kingdom, the Pope had no hold on him whatsoever. With a craftiness worthy of his far-off Roman namesake Augustus, the King of France had knowingly proposed conditions impossible to fulfil.
In those times of slow communication we do not know exactly how long it took important despatches to pass between Rome and Paris. Innocent’s letter is dated November 17, 1207, but perhaps even before it was received, and certainly before King Philip’s disappointing answer to it could have been delivered, a crime was committed that put the whole game in the Pope’s hands. On January 15, 1208, de Castelnau the legate was murdered by a retainer of Count Raymond.