"The battle of toleration against persecution had been fought and lost; nor, with such a warning as the fate of the two Raymonds, was there risk that other potentates would disregard the public opinion of Christendom by ill-advised mercy to the heretic.1"
Henry Charles Lea, History of Inquisition of Middle Ages, vol 1, (first edition 1888) [New York: Harbor Press 1955 ] p. 308
Languedoc under Raymond VI of Toulouse
Although heresy had long been considered a crime and was punished when a heretic became known to ecclesiastical officials, Church officials did not routinely search out heresy until the institution of the Inquisition. The Inquisitors were charged with seeking out and eradicating heresy, initially in Languedoc, in the south of France, at the end of the twelfth century and the beginning of the thirteenth century. Raymond VI was Count of Toulouse, a thriving area with a relatively civilized population. Chivalry and poetry, art and literature, and business and commerce thrived, the land was at peace, the people prospered; Jew, Cathar, Waldensian, and Catholic lived and worked side by side in an area free of religious persecution and dominated by religious tolerance. People were judged on their own merits, not by the religious beliefs to which they subscribed. Secular offices were distributed on the basis of merit, not religion, and powerful offices in the state were open to Jew, Cathar, Waldensian, and Catholic alike2.
The Cathar "heresy" was the old Manichaeism reborn, a religion that explained the existence of evil in the world by claiming that there were two Gods, one good and one evil, who were in eternal conflict for dominance. The Cathars believed the material things of this world emanated from the evil god and only when good men died were they released from the physical desires which separated them from the good god and with whom they were reunited in death. Philosophically different from Christianity, they were nonetheless a moral people, straining to remove themselves from the influence of the material world and the evil god which created it as much as possible3.
The religion was popular, so popular in fact that Cathar ministers openly preached their gospel, even challenging Catholic priests to public debates. Indeed, from the records which survived, when the Catholic priests actually engaged in debates with the Cathar ministers, they often lost the contest. The Cathar ministers were active in the ministry of their faith, attending to the spiritual and physical needs of their flock. The Catholic church, however, had become completely corrupt; Catholic priests were active in the ministry of their own needs, recouping the money they spent purchasing their ecclesiastical position, debauching themselves with women (and sometimes with men and animals), and ruling their temporal possessions as if they were secular feudal lords. For a time there was a true possibility that the Cathar religion would come to be the dominant religion of the region -- that was the great sin of the Cathars and the reason for the beginning of the Inquisition. The Church had always seen tolerance of other religions as persecution, and tolerance for a popular competing religion was considered unbearable4.
In his opening address to the great Lateran Council5, Pope Innocent III (1198 - 1216) himself said, "The corruption of the people has its chief source in the clergy. From this arise the evils of Christendom: faith perishes, religion is defaced, liberty is restricted, justice is trodden under foot, the heretics multiply, the schismatics are emboldened, the faithless grow strong, the Saracens are victorious.6" As a way of dealing with the heretics, the church attempted to reform itself, but as Lea remarks, "Thoroughly to cleanse the Augean stable was a task from which even Innocent's fearless spirit might well shrink. It seemed an easier task and more hopeful plan to crush revolt with fire and sword.7"
Failing to reform itself, the church, then at the zenith of its power, pressed Raymond VI of Toulouse to do something about the heretics in his domains. Raymond, having little reason to destroy the thriving economy and civilization in his domains, and even less reason to take the lives and property of his peaceable subjects, claimed to be a faithful son of the church and obedient to the church in all things, but did little in practice to put an end to his Cathar subjects. But nothing short of the extirpation of the Cathars would satisfy the Church, and Raymond would spend his life balancing between the demands of the Church and his loyalty to his subjects.
In January 1208 either at, or, shortly after, one of the interminable conferences between Raymond and the representatives of the Church, papal legate Pierre de Castelnau was murdered. The details of the Castlenau's death are not clear; some accounts claim that one of Raymond's subjects murdered the legate in Raymond's sight after some angry and unfortunate words passed between Castelnau and Toulouse. Other accounts claim that the legate was murdered after departing from Raymond's castle. Either way, the Church now had a pretext for moving against Raymond8. On March 10, Innocent excommunicated all involved in the murder, including Raymond, who had failed to bring the murderers to justice. Raymond's lands were placed under interdict. "As no faith was to be kept with him who kept not faith with God, all of Raymond's vassals were released from their oaths of allegiance, and his lands were declared the prey of any Catholic who might assail them, while, if he applied for pardon, his first sign of repentance must be the extermination of heresy throughout his dominions.9" Copies of the letter along with a plea for a crusade to exterminate heresy from Languedoc were sent throughout Europe to the leading secular and ecclesiastical authorities of the day.
Throughout Christendom, priests preached a crusade with Holy Land indulgences for those willing to fight against Raymond. Holy Land indulgences were a powerful incentive to become a part of the crusade. For a short six weeks in summer, a man could earn the same pardon of his sins as if he had undertaken part in the dangerous, time-consuming, laborious, and expensive crusade to the Holy Land itself. As further incentive, whatever territory he captured was his to keep, although Phillipe Augustus, Raymond's overlord, claimed the right of final disposition of Raymond's lands10. Backed by the promise of eternal salvation and the wealth derived from a special "donation" (i.e. tax) requisitioned from the population all of western Christendom, nobles and commoners flocked to the Pope's banner. With salvation for the pious, knightly fame for the warrior, and spoil for the worldly, an army of the Cross was recruited from the chivalry and the scum of Europe.
Meanwhile Raymond was awaking to the dangerous position in which he had been placed. Hastening to his uncle, Phillipe Augustus, King of France, Raymond received no promise of protection. Turning to another of his overlords, the Emperor Otho, Raymond's plea for protection was again rebuffed and he only succeeded in incurring the ill-will of his uncle. Finally, Raymond approached the church and asked for absolution. Innocent demanded that Raymond turn over seven of his most valuable strongholds to the church as an act of good faith before he would even consider listening to him. Raymond complied with the demand, rendering the possibility of a future physical defense of his realm almost impossible. Unknown to Raymond, Innocent secretly instructed his legates to amuse him with fair promises, to detach him from the heretics, and when the heretics were defeated by the Crusaders, to deal with him as they should see fit11.
After turning control over the seven fortifications to the papal emissaries and agreeing to several other conditions, Raymond was absolved in the most humiliating of ceremonies. Stripped to the waist, Raymond was brought before Milo, the new papal legate, as a penitent, who placed a stole around his neck in the fashion of a halter and lead him to the church where he was industriously scourged on his naked back and shoulders. Raymond was also required to extirpate heresy from his realm, to obey all of the Pope's commands, to remove all Jews from positions of power and service, to dismiss the mercenaries in his service; to restore all church property which had been despoiled, "to keep the roads safe, to abolish all arbitrary tolls, and to observe strictly the Truce of God12"
Innocent continued his duplicitous game by sending Raymond his congratulations on his absolution. But when Raymond was unable to extirpate heresy in the sixty days during which he was part of the crusade, a demand that was virtually impossible to fulfill even if Raymond had wanted to extirpate heresy from his lands, Innocent again excommunicated Raymond and placed his lands under interdict and a new crusade was preached against him. This cat-and-mouse game continued throughout Raymond's life and the life of his son and successor, Raymond VII. Not until the House of Toulouse was extinguished was the game ended, and a message was made clear to king and commoner alike throughout western Christendom - the church reigns supreme over the secular authorities and whatever religious tolerance still exists in western Europe has come to an end.
Each cycle of absolution, promise, and retribution became deadlier and bloodier for the people of Languedoc. According to the delighted Abbot of Citeaus, twenty thousand cavaliers and more than two hundred thousand foot soldiers, including villeins and peasants, gathered to take part in the second crusade against Toulouse13. Raymond, perhaps believing that he actually could placate the church or ward off the worst excesses of the crusaders, once kept his promise and joined the crusade against his own people. To their credit, the people defied Raymond and defended his realm. Cathar, Catholic, Jew, and Waldensian joined together in a fight that was for them more national than religious in character to fight off the invaders from other realms.
To illustrate the character of the war, let me give but one example. Lea writes:
"Raymond Roger of Béziers had fortified and garrisoned his capital, and then, to the great discouragement of his people, had withdrawn to the safer stronghold of Carcassonne. Reginald, Bishop of Béziers, was with the crusading forces, and when they arrived before the city, humanely desiring to save it from destruction, he obtained from the legate authority to offer it full exemption if the heretics, of whom he had a list, were delivered up or expelled. Nothing could be more moderate, from the crusading standpoint, but when he entered the town and called the chief inhabitants together the offer was unanimously spurned.
Catholic and Catharan were too firmly united in the bonds of common citizenship for one to betray the other. They would, as they magnanimously declared, although abandoned by their lord, rather to defend themselves to such extremity that they should be reduced to eat their children. This unexpected answer stirred the legate to such wrath that he swore to destroy the place with fire and sword -- to spare neither age nor sex, and not to leave one stone upon another. While the chiefs of the army were debating as to the next step, suddenly the camp-followers, a vile and unarmed folk as the legates reported, inspired by God, made a rush for the walls and carried them, without orders from the leaders and without their knowledge. The army followed, and the legate's oath was fulfilled by a massacre almost without parallel in European history. From infancy in arms to tottering age, not one was spared -- seven thousand, it is said, were slaughtered in the Church of Mary Magdalen to which they had fled for asylum-- and the total number of slain is set down by the legates at nearly twenty thousand, which is more probable than the sixty thousand or one hundred thousand reported by less trustworthy chroniclers. A fervent Cistercian contemporary informs us that when Arnaud was asked whether the Catholics should be spared, he feared the heretics would escape by feigning orthodoxy, and fiercely replied, "Kill them all, for God knows his own!" In the mad carnage and pillage the town was set on fire, and the sun of that awful July day closed on a mass of smoldering ruins and blackened corpses -- a holocaust to a deity of mercy and love whom the Cathari might well be pardoned for regarding as the Principle of Evil. To the orthodox the whole was so manifestly the work of God that the Crusaders did not doubt that the blessing of Heaven attended their arms.14 "
Death and devastation swept through Languedoc as the crusaders sacked and pillaged town after town. Eventually, the mayhem became so pronounced that the mere rumor of the crusaders approaching a city were enough to depopulate it as its inhabitants fled to the countryside. Lea continues the story of the subjugation of Languedoc under Raymond VI and Raymond VII for another fifty pages, until, in the end, the once-thriving civilization in Languedoc is destroyed, the country is devastated by generations of plundering and pillaging, and heretics and any one who sheltered, any one, indeed, who refused to turn in, a heretic to the papal authorities, was declared anathema, had his property confiscated, was himself tortured and killed, and whose children lived under the eternal threat of like sentence, for it was widely known that heresy "ran in families". Suffice it to say that every person from the highest nobleman or city magistrate to the meanest villein were made to understand that the battle for religious toleration, indeed, the right to disagree with the Pope and his underlings on any issue whatsoever, had been fought and lost, that any kingdom was open to the first comer if the secular powers refused to obey all church commands, even those not directed at suppressing heresy.
By 1216 most of the crusading was done, but large numbers of heretics, now cowed into public silence, had blended into the population. As sort of a "mopping up" operation, in 1216, Innocent II sent Dominic de Guzman to Toulouse to determine which religious order should be empowered to search out, in Latin, inquisito, the heretics, to question people on their religious beliefs, to determine who was and who was not a true Catholic, to bring the erring faithful back into the bosom of mother church, and to exterminate the unrepentant heretic. Guzman choose the Augustians and his choice was approved by Honorius, the new Pope, in December 121615. Eventually Guzman's followers established their own order, the Dominicans, a name that became synonymous with death.
To understand the momentous changes that occurred in a single generation, recall that "[e]ven as late as 1199, the first measures of Innocent III against the Albigenses [Cathars] only threaten exile and confiscation; there is no allusion to any duty on the part of the secular power beyond enforcing these penalties, and their enforcement is rewarded by the same indulgences as those to be gained by pilgrimage to Rome or to Compostella.16" In November, 1220, Holy Roman Emperor Frederic II made the persecution of heresy a part of the public law in Europe17. Secular laws against heresy would slowly be enacted throughout Europe wherever the Catholic church ruled and would not be repealed in some cases for five centuries, although statutes on heresy stopped being enforced by civic authorities before then. After 1249, the ducal oath in Venice included a pledge to burn all heretics. In France proper, the heretic was not condemned to be burned alive until Louis issued his Établissements in 1270. England, largely free from heresy, did not adopt the writ "de hoeretico comburendo" until 1401 in an effort to combat the Lollards.18"
So began one of the most stupendous chapters in the miscarriage of justice that they world has ever known.
End Notes
References
Henry Charles Lea, History of Inquisition of Middle Ages vol 1, (1888) [New York: Harbor Press 1955 ]
Proceedings of the Fourth Latern Council 1213-1216 (Introduction and translation taken from Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, ed. Norman P. Tanner) at http://www.piar.hu/councils/ecum12.htm
Juan Antonio Llorente, A Critical History of the Inquisition of Spain [Williamstown, Mass.: John Lilburne Company 1967 ] (a reprint of John Lilburne 1823 abridged English edition)