Through the spring and early summer of 1209 the pious comedy was played. Raymond again solemnly swore (he must have known the formulas by heart, he had sworn to them so often) to consider as heretics those designated as such by the clergy, and to turn them over to the Crusaders, together with their abettors and goods; to dismiss his bandit-mercenaries, and never hire such troops again; to remove such Jews as he had appointed to public offices; to restore the Church properties he had stolen; to police the roads; to abolish his excessive toll-rates, and keep the “Truce of God” on feast and fast days. All this was familiar ground. What was new was the oath taken by the “consuls” representing the municipalities of Avignon, Nimes and St. Gilles, no longer to recognize him as their overlord should he fail to satisfy the Church. More serious still was Raymond’s delivery of seven of his strongest castles into Milo’s custody, thus giving the Church party the whip hand in a military sense when the crusading army should arrive. Only when this had been done did Milo and Theodisius proceed with the ceremony of formal reconciliation.
On June 18, 1209, the humiliating ceremony of his public penance took place at St. Gilles, on its bluff over the Rhône delta. The town was the seat of Raymond’s remote ancestors, from which they had gradually extended their power through four centuries. Its great romanesque church had been built by his grandfather. A great throng filled the square before the church, crowding, no doubt, upon the broad flight of steps that rises to the façade with its wealth of sculpture and its three round-arched bays. Before the central door, the excommunicate Count swore upon relics of Christ, and of various saints, to obey the Pope and the legates in everything. Milo then put his stole about the penitent’s neck, and using it like a halter, drew him along, naked to the waist, and stooping forward so that he might the better be beaten with rods as he walked the whole length of the church. Before the high altar he was absolved. Then came a hitch in the proceedings. It had been planned that he should leave the church by the door through which he had come, but the crowd had packed the whole place so densely that their humiliated lord with his shoulders all bloody had to be gotten out by way of the crypt; past the tomb of de Castelnau which stood there—an unexpected change of plan which added still another touch of drama to the vivid scene.
Readers of English history will be reminded of the similar penance of Henry II for the murder of Becket. Two differences, however, should be noted. De Castelnau (unlike Thomas of Canterbury) was never canonized, and Raymond’s penance (unlike Henry’s) did not improve his political position in the least. Within six days, before his lacerated shoulders had ceased to smart, the crusading army marched south from its mobilization point at Lyons. Raymond was to learn that, like Ulysses in the Cyclops’ cave, he had obtained only the privilege of being eaten last.
Before closing the account of the preliminaries of the Crusade and taking up the Crusade itself, a word should be given to a short lived but significant movement which came about in consequence of the Papal mission. At the conference of Pamiers, a Spanish Waldensian leader, Durand of Huesca, was converted to orthodoxy. It seems that he and his immediate personal followers had, all along, considered Waldensianism as an instrument for re-invigorating the Church rather than for opposing her. Their strength seems to have been on both sides of the Eastern Pyrenees, although we hear of their founding a school at Milan. As the limits of what was and what was not heresy were rapidly becoming more defined, their middle position became untenable. They had finally been excommunicated and their school at Milan torn down by the archbishop there. Now Durand went to Rome and asked sanction of the Pope himself for the foundation of a community of “Poor Catholics” (so called in contrast to the “Poor men of Lyons” as the Waldensians called themselves). The members of the new community were to be bound by strict vows of abstinence, chastity, and especially of poverty. They were forbidden to possess anything more than bare necessities, and were to beg their bread from day to day. Their clothing was to be of the coarsest stuff, with shoes of a special design so that they might be distinguished from the Waldenses. The principal change from their former life was that they promised no longer to attack the clergy as the Waldensians did, but to preach against heresy instead. Innocent saw at once the value of the proposed community, and in December 1208, accepted Durand’s oath binding himself and his followers. Already, in 1209 there were communities of “Poor Catholics” in Aragon, Narbonne, Beziers, Uzès, Carcassonne, and Nimes. At this time, they must have quite overshadowed the little band of preachers, as yet loosely organized and bound by no rule, who had grouped themselves around St. Dominic. But unfortunately for the “Poor Catholics” they were permanently suspected as converted heretics. In those crusading days, it needed no prophet or son of a prophet to predict that such a body would survive with difficulty, if at all. That Innocent authorized it is proof of his desire to spread the peaceful propaganda of Catholicism by every possible means.
Meanwhile, events were moving swiftly. As has been said, the Church had not the slightest intention of giving up the Crusade because of Raymond’s submission. He had violated too many oaths. Besides, they probably could not have persuaded the Crusaders to disperse, at least without causing bitter disappointment, and very serious loss of prestige to the Church among her own champions. Not more than a week after Raymond’s humiliating penance at St. Gilles, the crusading army moved southward from Lyons.
FOOTNOTES:
[29] “Innocent III, La Croisade des Albigeois,” by Achille Luchaire. Published Hachette, Paris, 1911. Ch. ii, p. 47.
[30] Innocent III, “La Croisade des Albigeois,” Luchaire, p. 91.
[31] “Life of St. Dominic,” p. 40.