Count Roger had escaped to Carcassonne, which was next besieged, as he had shut himself up with the inhabitants in that city; but he offered to capitulate. Dissimulation was practised, as enjoined by the Pope; so that the prince, with three hundred knights, were admitted to confer with Arnald, who, with the leaders of the army, had given a solemn oath for their safety; but having them now in his power, he perfidiously arrested them, delivering them over to the general of the army, Simon de Montfort. The citizens, however, made their escape, during the night, and fled to other provinces; but a few of them being captured, four hundred of the captives were burned alive, and fifty more were hanged, by Simon de Montfort, under the direction of Arnald, as legate of the Pope. The noble Count Roger was thrown into prison, and soon died by violence, as acknowledged by the Pope.
It would be impossible to detail the sufferings of the poor Albigenses, under Simon de Montfort. With an army of cross-bearers, A.D. 1210, he took several strong castles, and hanged the inhabitants and refugees on gibbets. He selected more than a hundred of the people of Brom, tore out their eyes, and cut off their noses, and sent them, under the guidance of a one-eyed man, to Cabaret, to terrify the inhabitants by their example. In the following year, he stormed La Vaur, and destroyed the inhabitants by fire and sword. He hanged Almeric, the governor, lord of Montreal, and then massacred eighty of the chief citizens. His sister, Girarda, the lady of the castle, by order of the count, was thrown into a pit, and covered with stones. He afterwards collected all the heretics in the castle, and burned them, with rejoicing. He took possession of the castle of Cassero, which surrendered; but “the pilgrims, seizing nearly sixty heretics, burned them with infinite joy,” as testified by the Catholic historian, Petrus Pallensis. At Castris de Termis they put Raymond, the governor, into prison, where he died shortly; and, in one large fire, they burned his wife, his sister, and his daughter, with some other noble ladies, whom they could not prevail upon to return to the profession of the church of Rome. Thus they were sacrificed to papal bigotry, as faithful martyrs for Christ! What adds to the revolting character of these murders was, as usual, the bishops and priests present in the army, in their pontifical habits, who expressed their satisfaction in witnessing the carnage, by singing Veni Creator!
Historians scarcely know how to speak of these enormities. Sismondi states, that “hundreds of villages had seen all their inhabitants massacred with a blind fury, and without the crusaders giving themselves the trouble to examine whether they contained a single heretic. We cannot tell what credit to give to the numbers assigned for the armies of the cross, nor whether we may believe that, in the course of a single year, five hundred thousand men were poured into Languedoc.” But this we certainly know, that armies, much superior in numbers, and much inferior in discipline, to those which were employed in other wars, had arrived for seven or eight successive years; that they entered this country without pay, and without magazines; that they provided for all their necessities with the sword; that they considered it as their right to live at the expense of the country; and that all the harvests of the peasants, all the provisions and merchandise of the citizens, were on every occasion seized with a rapacious hand, and divided among the crusaders. No calculation can ascertain, with any degree of precision, the dissipation of wealth, or the destruction of human life, which were the consequences of the crusade against the Albigenses. “There was scarcely a peasant who did not reckon in his family some unhappy one cut off by the sword of Montfort’s soldiers. More than three quarters of the knights and landed proprietors had been spoiled of their castles and fiefs, to gratify some of the French soldiers—some of Simon de Montfort’s creatures. Thus spoiled, they were named Faidits, and had the favour granted them of remaining in the country, provided they were neither heretics nor excommunicated, nor suspected of having given an asylum to those who were so; but they were never to be permitted to enter a walled city, nor to enjoy the honour of mounting a war-horse. Every species of injustice, all kinds of affronts, persecutions of every name, had been heaped on the heads of the unhappy Languedocians, under the general name of Albigenses.”
So truly horrible was this bloody work, that a native of Thoulouse, a poet and a Catholic, who witnessed this crusade against the Albigenses, afterwards delivered the following denunciation against Antichrist:—“I know I shall be censured if I write against Rome, that sink of all evil; but I cannot hold my peace. It is no wonder that the world lies in wickedness. It is you, treacherous Rome, who have sown confusion and war. By the baits of thy delusive pardons, thou deliverest up the French nobility to persecution, and dost establish thy throne in the bottomless pit. Heaven will remember thy pilgrimage to Avignon, and the murders thou committest there. In what book hast thou read that it was thy duty to exterminate Christians? Like an enraged beast, thou devourest both great and small. Rome, your head and whole body is arraigned for having committed that horrible murder at Beziers. Under the appearance of a lamb, with an air of modesty and simplicity, you are inwardly a wily serpent and a ravenous wolf. Rome, I comfort myself in the assurance that thy power will decay, and thou wilt soon be no more. If thy dominion is not destroyed, the world will be overthrown!”
Dominic witnessed many of these sad outrages and dreadful slaughters; and he proceeded, as the chief inquisitor, to search out the number and quality of the alleged heretics, to excite the princes and prelates to extirpate them, and so to fulfil his commission from the Pope. His success he fully reported to Rome; and formed a plan of a regular Court of Inquisition. In this he was aided by a nobleman, with whom he had resided at Thoulouse; for having been seduced by that zealous monk to the Catholic faith, he devoted his mansion and his other property to the service of that father. Dominic submitted his scheme to the papal legate, Arnald, by whom it was highly approved; and that abbot appointed him inquisitor-general in Gallia Narbonensis, about A.D. 1208; and he was confirmed in that office, in the fourth Lateran Council, A.D. 1215, at which Dominic was present, and greatly honoured by the Pope on account of his exploits against the Albigenses.
Dominic was a native of Spain, of the noble family of Gusman. His mother dreamed, before his birth, that she was delivered of a whelp carrying a lighted torch in his mouth; that he alarmed the world by his barking, and set it on fire by his torch. These were interpreted of his preaching, by which he terrified the people, and of his dreadful Inquisition. His promotion was the consequence of his fiery zeal and activity; and his priestly domination will appear from a few passages in his imposition of penance on a reclaimed heretic, as follow:—
“Brother Dominic, the least of preachers, to all Christ’s faithful people, to whom these presents shall come, greeting in the Lord:—
“By the authority of the Cistertian abbot, who hath appointed us to this office, we have reconciled the bearer of these presents, P. Rogerius, converted by God’s blessing from the heretical sect, charging and requiring him, by the oath which he hath taken, that three Sundays, or three festival days, he be led by a priest, naked from his shoulders down to his drawers, from the coming into the town unto the church doors, being whipped all the way!” Most rigorous rules for the whole of his life, and total separation from his wife, were also imposed on him, on pain of excommunication!
Dominic founded sixty monasteries, in different provinces, forming the centres of so many courts of inquisition; and he died, A.D. 1221, esteemed as an extraordinary character; so that he was canonised, A.D. 1234, by Pope Gregory IX. The Dominicans were called Jacobins in France, and Black Friars in England.