The earlier measures taken against the heretics in southern France had caused so little hindrance to their extension that they constituted the dominant party at the end of the twelfth century in many parts of this country. For this reason Innocent III, immediately after his accession to the see in 1198, was induced to send legates thither armed with the most unlimited powers for the suppression of heretics. After they had produced, by forcible measures, effects more apparent than real, Diego, bishop of Osma, with Dominic, the subprior of his cathedral, persuaded them in the year 1206 to adopt a more apostolic way of proceeding. Now the two legates, the Cistercians Peter of Castelnau and Raoul, with these two Spaniards, wandered barefoot from place to place and held conferences with the heretics on the disputed points (1206 and 1207). When however all this continued without effect, they returned again to the old method with tenfold cruelty.
CRUSADE AGAINST THE ALBIGENSES
Raymond VI. count of Toulouse, though outwardly a Catholic, had fallen out with the ambitious legate Peter of Castelnau. So when the latter in 1208 was murdered by an unknown hand, the monks threw the blame on the count; and Innocent III seized this opportunity to have a crusade preached against him by Arnold, abbot of Citeaux; for which national jealousy and the allurements of the delicious south procured great popularity in northern France. In order to avert the threatening danger, Raymond sought for reconciliation. Innocent granted this with a view to weaken the resistance of the victims by division. When, in June, 1209, the count submitted to the most humiliating conditions which Milo the papal legate prescribed to him, and even took the cross himself from his hands, he only effected the delay of the blow destined for himself, that it might strike with so much the greater certainty.
The crusading army assembled against the Albigenses, with the frantic Arnold[189] as papal legate at its head, first marched upon the domain of Raymond Roger, viscount of Béziers (1209). After the fall of Béziers and Carcassonne, the devastated land was conquered. But among the noble crusaders only Simon de Montfort was willing to receive the spoil from the legate. Next they turned against Raymond of Toulouse, who had been spared till now. Extravagant demands, which he could not satisfy, formed the pretext for excommunicating and attacking him (1211). The pope himself was no longer able to check his own instruments; the crusade was preached with fresh ardour; the territory of the count was conquered by Simon de Montfort, and formally adjudged to him by a council at Montpellier in 1215 for his own possession.
Innocent III did not only confirm this grant at the great Lateran Council in this same year, but also held up the principle of the method of procedure hitherto adopted against these countries, as a precedent in similar cases. Then at length Raymond sought for help in the attachment of his former subjects, and after Simon’s death (1218) he made a considerable advance in the reconquest of his country, although the pope, without ceasing, used every means of resistance. When, after the death of Raymond VI (1222), Raymond VII regained his whole ancestral heritage, and had even forced his enemy Amaury, son of Simon, to a complete surrender, then Honorius III, elsewhere so mild, still thought it due to the papal honour to hate the father in the son, however guiltless. He stirred up Louis VIII, king of France, to conquer Toulouse for himself in a new crusade. Hostilities began on the 6th of June, 1226, but they were greatly crippled by the death of Louis VIII on the 18th of November of the same year; at length Raymond obtained peace on the hardest conditions, by which a part of his domain passed into the power of France, and the annexation of the rest to this kingdom was furthered.
THE INQUISITION ESTABLISHED
The unhappiness of this country was accomplished by the horrors of the Inquisition which now rose up.[190] In order to perpetuate the work of blood begun by the papal legate in a permanent institution, the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215 made it the chief business of the episcopal synodal tribunals to search out and punish heretics; and the Council of Toulouse (1229) achieved the organisation of this episcopal Inquisition. However, soon after it was in fact almost annihilated; for in 1232 and 1233 Gregory IX appointed the Dominicans to be the standing papal inquisitors, and forthwith they began their hideous work in the countries tainted with heresy. In order that the church may not seem to soil herself with blood, the secular princes must serve the office as executioner. Louis IX in 1228, Frederick II in 1232, the ill-fated Raymond VII in 1233, each passed the requisite laws.
That the new Inquisition might strike more of the guilty, a way of proceeding was prescribed for it, to which of necessity many of the guiltless must fall victims. Thus armed, this monster raged with most frightful fury in southern France, where the heretics had only learned from former events to keep themselves more secret. Germany for a short space of time (1231-1233) was taught to know the Inquisition in its maddest rage in Conrad of Marburg, and in the Dominican monk Conrad Dorso who came to Strasburg; and at the same time acquired the most fearful experience of the abuse of the new laws against heretics in the crusade on the Stedinger, the lovers of freedom, in 1234. But by these events so universal a resistance against every Inquisition was aroused, that Germany for a long time after remained free from this monster.
In the twelfth century the executions of heretics were for the most part the handiwork of the irritated populace, and even found much opposition among the clergy. However, the theory of religion, which in the thirteenth century was especially flexible, in this case also adapted itself to the practice of the church by the vindication of the new laws against heresy.
Another no less evil result of this period, so fraught with outrage, was that the laity were entirely forbidden Holy Scripture, so that the possession of a translation of the Bible was forthwith accounted a token of heresy, and only translations prepared for the purpose of supporting the Romish church were tolerated.