February 1229 A.D. Council of Toulouse--"We prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament"
February 1229 A.D. Council of Toulouse--"We
prohibit laymen possessing copies of the Old and New Testament"
Schaff, Philip. “The Crusades against the Albigenses.” The
History of the Christian Church, Vol. 5. N.d. http://www.ccel.org/ccel/schaff/hcc5.ii.xii.viii.html.
Accessed 16 Dec 2014.
The mediaeval measures
against heretics assumed an organized form in the crusades against the
Albigenses, before the institution of the Inquisition received its full
development. To the papacy belongs the whole responsibility of these merciless
wars. Toulouse paid a bitter penalty for being the head centre of heresy.10961097 to it for Provence and
Languedoc,—brought upon himself the full wrath and punishments of the Apostolic
see for his unwillingness to join in the wars against his own subjects. A
member of the house led one of the most splendid of the armies of the first
Crusade to Jerusalem. At the opening of the Albigensian crusades the court of
Toulouse was one of the gayest in Europe. At their close it was a spectacle of
desolation.
Councils, beginning with the
synod of Toulouse, 1119, issued articles against heresy and called upon the
secular power to punish it. Mild measures were tried and proved ineffectual,
whether they were the preaching and miracles of St. Bernard, 1147, or the
diplomatic address of papal legates. Sixty years after Bernard, St. Dominic
entered upon a tour of evangelism in the vicinity of Toulouse, and some
heretics were won; but in spite of Dominic, and synodal decrees, heresy spread
and continued to defy the Church authorities.
It remained for Innocent
III. to direct the full force of his native vigor against the spreading
contagion and to execute the principles already solemnly announced by
oecumenical and local councils. To him heretics were worse than the infidel who
had never made profession of Christianity. While Christendom was sending
armaments against the Saracens, why should it not send an armament to crush the
spiritual treason at home? In response to papal appeals, at least four distinct
crusades were set on foot against the sectaries in Southern France. These
religious wars continued thirty years. Priests and abbots went at the head of
the armies and, in the name of religion, commanded or justified the most
atrocious barbarities. One of the fairest portions of Europe was laid waste and
the counts of Toulouse were stripped by the pope of their authority and
territory.
The long conflict was fully
opened when Innocent called upon Louis VII. to take the field, that "it
might be shown that the Lord had not given him the sword in vain," and
promised him the lands of nobles shielding heresy.1098ymund VI., who was averse to a policy of repression
against his Catharan subjects, was excommunicated by Innocent’s legate, Peter
of Castelnau, and his lands put under interdict. Innocent called him a noxious
man, vir pestilens,1099 all the
punishments of the future world. He threatened to call upon the princes to
proceed against him with arms and take his lands. "The hand of the Lord
will descend upon thee more severely, and show thee that it is hard for one who
seeks to flee from the face of His wrath which thou hast provoked."
A crisis was precipitated in
1208 by the murder of Peter of Castelnau by two unknown assassins.1100e expulsion of all heretics from his dominions the
condition of withdrawing suspicion against him as the possible murderer of
Peter.1101aymund with
France through his uncle, Louis VII., and with Aragon through Pedro, whose
sister he had married, interposed difficulties. And the crusade went on. The
Cistercians, at their General Chapter, decided to preach it. Princes and people
from France, Flanders, and even Germany swelled the ranks. The same reward was
promised to those who took the cross against the Cathari and Waldenses, as to
those who went across the seas to fight the intruder upon the Holy Sepulchre.
In a general epistle to the
faithful, Innocent wrote: —
"O most mighty
soldiers of Christ, most brave warriors; Ye oppose the agents of anti-Christ,
and ye fight against the servants of the old serpent. Perchance up to this time
ye have fought for transitory glory, now fight for the glory which is
everlasting. Ye have fought for the body, fight now for the soul. Ye have
fought for the world, now do ye fight for God. For we have not exhorted you to
the service of God for a worldly prize, but for the heavenly kingdom, which for
this reason we promise to you with all confidence."1102
Awed by the sound of the
coming storm, Raymund offered his submission and promised to crush out heresy.
The humiliating spectacle of Raymund’s penance was then enacted in the convent
church of St. Gilles. In the vestibule, naked to the waist, he professed
compliance with all the papal conditions. Sixteen of the count’s vassals took
oath to see the hard vow was kept and pledged themselves to renew the oath
every year, upon pain of being classed with heretics. Then holding the ends of
a stole, wrapped around the penitent’s neck like a halter, the papal legate led
Raymund before the altar, the count being flagellated as he proceeded.1103
Raymund’s submission,
however, did not check the muster of troops which were gathering in large
numbers at Lyons.1104ergy. At
their side were the duke of Burgundy, the counts of Nevers, St. Pol, Auxerre,
Geneva, and Poitiers, and other princes. The soldier, chosen to be the leader,
was Simon de Montfort. Simon had been one of the prominent leaders of the
Fourth Crusade, and was a zealous supporter of the papacy. He neglected not to
hear mass every day, even after the most bloody massacres in the campaigns in
Southern France. His contemporaries hailed him as another Judas Maccabaeus and
even compared him to Charlemagne.1105
In spite of the remonstrance
of Raymund, who had joined the army, the papal legate, Arnold of Citeaux,
refused to check its march. Béziers was stormed and horrible scenes followed.
The wild soldiery heeded well the legate’s command, "Fell all to the ground.
The Lord knows His own."1106 legates, Milo and Arnold, the "divine vengeance
raged wonderfully against the city.1107
At Carcassonne the
inhabitants were allowed to depart, the men in their shirts, the women in their
chemises, carrying with them, as the chronicler writes, nothing else except
their sins, nihil secum praeter peccata portantes. Dread had taken hold of the
country, and village after village was abandoned by the fleeing inhabitants.
Raymund was again put under excommunication at a council held at Avignon.1108g them six thousand Germans.1109
Again, in 1211, the count of
Toulouse sought to come to an agreement with the legates. But the terms, which
included the razing to the ground of all his castles, were too humiliating. The
crusade was preached again. All the territory of Toulouse had been overrun and
it only remained for the crusaders to capture the city itself.
Pedro of Aragon, fresh from
his crushing victory over the Moors at Novas de Tolosa, now interceded with the
pope for his brother-in-law. The synod of Lavaur, 1213, appointed referee by
Innocent, rejected the king’s propositions. Pedro then joined Raymund, but fell
at the disastrous defeat of Muret the same year, 1213. It was a strange
combination whereby the king of Aragon, who had won the highest distinction a
year before as a hero of the Catholic faith, was killed in the ranks of those
who were rebels to the papal authority.11101111 land, including Toulouse, was granted to Montfort, and
the titles conferred on him of count of Toulouse, viscount of Béziers and
Carcassonne, and duke of Narbonne.1112
The complications in
Southern France were one of the chief questions brought before the Fourth
Lateran Council, 1215. Raymund was present and demanded back his lands,
inasmuch as he had submitted to the Church; but by an overwhelming majority,
the synod voted against him and Montfort was confirmed in the possession of his
conquests.1113 Raymund’s son made a personal appeal to Innocent for his
father, the pope bade him "love God above all things and serve Him faithfully,
and not stretch forth his hand against others’ territory" and gave him the
cold promise that his complaints against Montfort would be heard at a future
council.1114
The further progress of the
Albigensian campaigns requires only brief notice here, for they were converted
into a war of territorial plunder. In 1218, Montfort fell dead under the walls
of Toulouse, his head crushed by a stone. In the reign of Honorius, whose
supreme concern was a crusade in the East, the sectaries reasserted themselves,
and Raymund regained most of his territory. But the pope was relentless, and
again the sentence of excommunication was launched against the house of
Toulouse.
In 1226, Louis VIII. took
the cross, supported by the French parliament as well as by the Church. Thus
the final chapter in the crusades was begun, a war of the king of France for
the possession of Toulouse. Louis died a few months later. Arnold of Citeaux,
for nearly twenty years their energetic and iron-hearted promoter, had preceded
him to the grave. Louis IX. took up the plans of his royal predecessor, and in
1229 the hostilities were brought to a close by Raymund’s accepting the
conditions proposed by the papal legate.
Raymund renounced two-thirds
of his paternal lands in favor of France. The other third was to go at his
death to his daughter who subsequently married Louis IX.’s brother, and, in
case there was no issue to the marriage, it was to pass to the French crown,
and so it did at the death of Jeanne, the last heir of the house of Toulouse.
Thus the domain of France was extended to the Pyrenees.
Further measures of
repression were directed against the remnants of the Albigensian heresy, for
Raymund VII. had promised to cleanse the land of it. The machinery of the
Inquisition was put into full action as it was perfected by the great
inquisitorial council of Toulouse, 1229. The University of Toulouse received
papal sanction, and one of its chief objects was announced to be "to bring
the Catholic faith in those regions into a flourishing state."1115
The papal policy had met
with complete but blighting success and, after the thirteenth century, heresy
in Southern France was almost like a noiseless underground stream. Languedoc at
the opening of the wars had been one of the most prosperous and cultured parts
of Europe. At their close its villages and vineyards were in ruins, its
industries shattered, its population impoverished and decimated. The country
that had given promise of leading Europe in a renaissance of intellectual
culture fell behind her neighbors in the race of progress. Protestant
generations, that have been since sitting in judgment upon the barbarous
measures, conceived and pushed by the papacy, have wondered whether another
movement, stirred by the power of the Gospel, will not yet arise in the old
domain that responded to the religious dissent and received the warm blood of
the Albigenses, the Waldenses, and of Peter de Bruys and his followers.
The Stedinger. While the
wars against the Albigenses were going on, another people, the Stedinger,
living in the vicinity of Bremen and Oldenburg, were also being reduced by a
papal crusade. They represented the spirit of national independence rather than
doctrinal dissent and had shown an unwillingness to pay tithes to the
archbishop of Bremen. When a husband put a priest to death for an indignity to
his wife, the archbishop Hartwig II. announced penalty after penalty but in
vain. Under his successor, Gerhard (1219–1258), the refractory peasants were
reduced to submission. A synod of Bremen, in 1230, pronounced them heretics,
and Gregory IX., accepting the decision, called upon a number of German bishops
to join in preaching and prosecuting a crusade. The same indulgence was offered
to the crusaders in the North as to those who went on the Church’s business to
Palestine. The first campaign in 1233 was unsuccessful, but a second carried
all the horrors of war into the eastern section of the Stedingers’ territory.
In 1231 another army led by a number of princes completely defeated this brave people
at Altenesch. Their lands were divided between the archbishop of Bremen and the
count of Oldenburg.
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