Meantime the Pope did not cease to protest against this turning aside of the expedition from its lawful object. The legate had forbidden the assault of Zara, but in vain; the Pope forbade the attack upon Constantinople also in vain, and vainly pressed upon the Crusaders, by every argument, the necessity of proceeding to the Holy Land without delay. Innocent, it is true, did not refuse his share of the splendid stuffs and ornaments which fell into their hands, for ecclesiastical uses: and he was silenced by the fictitious submission of the Greek Church, and the supposed healing of the schism which had rent the East and the West from each other. Nevertheless he looked on upon the progress of affairs in Constantinople with unquiet eyes. But what could the Pope do in his distant seat, armed with those spiritual powers alone which even at home these fierce warriors held so lightly, against the rage of acquisition, the excitement of conquest, even the sweep and current of affairs, which carried the chiefs of the armies in the East so much further and in so changed a direction from that which even they themselves desired? He entreated, he commanded, he threatened: but when all was said he was but the Pope, far off and powerless, who could excommunicate indeed, but do no more. The only thing possible for Innocent was to look on, sometimes with a gleam of high hope as when the Greek Church came over to him, as appeared, to be received again into full communion with the rest of Christendom: sometimes with a half unwilling pleasure as when Baldwin's presents arrived, cloth of gold and wonderful embroideries to decorate the great arches of St. Peter's and the Lateran: and again with a more substantial confidence when Constantinople itself had become a Latin empire under the same Baldwin—that it might henceforward become a basis of operations in the holy war against the Saracens and promote the objects of the Crusade more effectually than could be done from a distance. Amid all his disappointments and the impatient sense of futility and helplessness which must have many a time invaded his soul, it is comfortable to know that Innocent died in this last belief, and never found out how equally futile it was.
There was, however, one other great undertaking of his time in which it would seem that the Pontiff was more directly influential, even though, for any reader who respects the character and ideal of Innocent, it is sickening to the heart to realise what it was. It was that other Crusade, so miserable and so bloody, against the Albigenses, which was the only successful enterprise which with any show of justice could be set down to the account of the Church. Nobody seems even now to know very well what the heresies were, against which, in the failure of other schemes, the arms of the defenders of religion were directed. They were, as Dissent generally is, manifold, while the Church regarded them as one. Among them were humble little sects who desired only to lead a purer and truer life than the rude religionists among whom they dwelt; while there were also others who held in various strange formulas all kinds of wild doctrine: but between the Poor Men of Lyons, the Scripture-Readers whose aim was to serve God in humility, apart from all pomps of religion and splendour of hierarchies—and the strange Manichean sects with their elaborate and confused philosophical doctrine—the thirteenth century knew no difference. It ranked them all under the same name of heretic, and attributed to all of them the errors of the worst and smallest section. Even so late as the eighteenth century, Muratori, a scholar without prejudice, makes one sweeping assertion that they were Manicheans, without a doubt or question. It is needless to say that whatever they were, fire and sword was not the way to mend them of their errors; for that also was an idea wholly beyond the understanding of the time.
When Innocent came first to the Papacy his keen perception of the many vices of the Church was increased by a conviction that error of doctrine accompanied in certain portions of Christendom the general corruption of life. In some of his letters he comments severely, always with a reference to the special evils against which he struggled, on the causes and widening propagation of heresy. "If the shepherd is a hireling," he says, "and thinks not of the flock, but solely of himself: if he cares only for the wool and the milk, without defending them from the wolves that attack them, or making himself a wall of defence against their enemies: and if he takes flight at the first sound of danger: the ruin and loss must be laid to his charge. The keeper of the sheep must not be like a dumb dog that cannot bark. When the priesthood show that they do not know how to separate holy things from common, they resemble those vile wine-sellers who mingle water with their wine. The name of God is blasphemed because of those who love money, who seek presents, who justify the wicked by allowing themselves to be corrupted by them. The vigilance of the ministers of religion can do much to arrest the progress of evil. The league of heretics should be dissolved by faithful instruction: for the Lord desires not the death of a sinner, but rather that he should be converted and live."
It may be curious also to quote here the cautious utterance of Innocent upon the pretension of the more pious sectarians to found everything on Scripture and to make the study of the Bible their chief distinction. The same arguments are still used in the Catholic Church, sometimes even in the same terms.
"The desire to know the Holy Scriptures and to profit by their teaching is praiseworthy, but this desire must not be satisfied in secret, nor should it degenerate into the wish to preach, or to despise the ministers of religion. It is not the will of God that His word should be proclaimed in secret places as is done by these heretics, but publicly in the Church. The mysteries of the faith cannot be explained by every comer, for not every intellect is capable of understanding them. The Holy Scriptures are so profound that not only the simple and ignorant but even intelligent and learned men are unqualified to interpret them."
At no time however, though he spoke so mildly and so candidly, acknowledging that the best way to overcome the heretics was to convert and to convince them, did Innocent conceal his intention and desire to carry proceedings against them to the sternest of conclusions. If it were possible by any exertions to bring them back to the bosom of the Church, he charged all ecclesiastical authorities, all preachers, priests, and monastic establishments to do everything that was possible to accomplish this great work; but failing that, he called upon all princes, lords, and civil rulers to take stringent measures and cut them off from the land—recommendations that ended in the tremendous and appalling expedient of a new Crusade, a Crusade with no double motive, no object of restoration and deliverance combined with that of destruction, but bound to the sole agency of sheer massacre, bloodshed, and ruin, an internecine warfare of the most horrible kind.
It must be added, however, that the preachers who at Innocent's command set out, more or less in state, high officials, ecclesiastics of name and rank, to convince the heretics, by their preaching and teaching, took the first part in the conflict. According to his lights he spared no pains to give the doomed sects the opportunity of conversion, though with very little success. Among his envoys were two Spaniards, one a bishop, one that great Dominic, the founder of the Dominican order, who filled so great a part in the history of his time. Amid the ineffectual legates these two were missionaries born: they represented to the other preachers that demonstrations against heresy in the cathedrals was no way of reaching the people, but that the true evangelists must go forth into the country, humble and poor as were the adversaries whom they had to overcome. They themselves set out on their mission barefoot, without scrip or purse, after the manner of the Apostles. Strange to think that it was in Provence, the country of the Troubadours, the land of song, where poetry and love were supreme according to all and every tradition of history, that the grimmest heresy abounded, and that this stern pair carried on their mission! but so it was. Toulouse, where Courts of Love sate yearly, and the trouvères held their tournaments of song, was the centre of the tragedy. But not even those devoted preachers, nor the crowd of eager priests and monks who followed in their steps, succeeded in their mission. The priesthood and the religion it taught had fallen very low in Provence, and no one heeded the new missionaries, neither the heretics nor the heedless population around.
No doubt the Pope, the man of so many disappointments, had set his heart on this as a thing in which for once he must not fail, and watched with a sore and angry heart the unsuccess of all these legitimate efforts. But it was not until one of the legates, a man most trusted and honoured, Pierre de Castelnau, was treacherously killed in the midst of his mission, that Innocent was fully roused. Heretofore he had rained excommunications over all the world, and his curses had come back to him without avail. But on this occasion at least he had a sure weapon in hand. The Pope proclaimed a Crusade against the heretics. He proclaimed throughout Europe that whoever undertook this holy enterprise it should be counted to him as if he had fought for Jerusalem: all the indulgences, blessings, hopes for heaven and exemptions for earth, which had been promised to those who were to deliver the Holy Sepulchre, were equally bestowed on those who went no further than the south of France, one of the richest districts in Christendom, where fair lands and noble castles were to be had for the conquest without risking a stormy voyage or a dangerous climate. The goods of unrepentant heretics were confiscated, and every one was free to help himself as if they had been Turks and infidels. In none of his undertakings was the Pope so hotly in earnest. There is something of the shrillness of a man who has found himself impotent in many undertakings in the passion which Innocent throws into this. "Rise, soldier of Christ!" he cries to the king of France; "up, most Christian prince! The groans of the Church rise to your ears, the blood of the just cries out: up, then, and judge my cause: gird on your sword; think of the unity of the cross and the altar, that unity taught us by Moses, by Peter, by all the fathers. Let not the bark of the Church make shipwreck. Up, for her help! Strike strongly against the heretics, who are more dangerous than the Saracens!"
The appeal came to a host of eager ears. Many good and true men were no doubt among the army which gathered upon the gentle hill of Hyères in the blazing midsummer of the year 1209, cross on breast and sword in hand, sworn to exterminate heresy, and bring back the country to the sway of the true religion; but an overwhelming number besides, who were hungry for booty however obtained, and eager to win advancement for themselves, filled up the ranks. Such motives were not absent even from the bosom of Simon de Montfort, their general, otherwise a good man and true. The sovereignty of Toulouse glimmered before him over seas of blood, which was as the blood of the Saracen, no better, though it flowed in the veins of Frenchmen; but the Provençaux could scarcely be called Frenchmen in those early days. They were no more beloved of their northern neighbours than the English were by the Scots, and the expedition against them was as much justified by distinctions of race as was the conflict of Bannockburn.
The chapter of history that followed we would fain on all sides obliterate, if we could, from the records of humanity, and we doubt not that the strictest Catholic as much as the most indignant Protestant would share this wish; but that, alas, cannot be done. And no such feeling was in any mind of the time. The remedy was not thought to be too terrible for the disease, for centuries after: and the most Christian souls rejoiced in the victories of the Crusade, the towns destroyed, the nests of heretics broken up. The very heretics themselves, who suffered fiercely and made reprisals when they could, had no doctrine of toleration among themselves, and would have extirpated a wicked hierarchy, and put down the mass with a high hand, as four hundred years later their more enlightened successors did, when the power came to them. There are many shuddering spectators who now try to represent to themselves that Innocent so far off was but half, or not at all, acquainted with the atrocities committed in his name; that his legates over-stepped their authority, as frequently happened, and were carried away by the excitement of carnage and the terrible impulse of destruction common to wild beasts and men when that fatal passion is aroused; and that his generals soon converted their Crusade, as Crusades more or less were converted everywhere, into a raid of fierce acquisition, a war for booty and personal enrichment. And all this is true for as much as it is worth in reducing the guilt of Innocent; but that is not much, for he was a man very well acquainted with human nature, and knew that such things must be.