History of the crusades against the Albigenses, in the thirteenth century

Front matter

DC 83.3 .S58 1826 Sismondi, J.-C.-L. Simonde

de 1773-1842.

History of the crusades

Chap. V

Affairs of the Albigenses, from the death of Louis VIII, 1226, to the Peace of Paris, 1229; and its final ratification, 1242 - 202

INTRODUCTORY ESSAY.

The attention of the public has been, of late, much directed to the character and sufferings of the Albigensian Christians, and to the principles and conduct of the church of Rome, through whose instigation, and by whose authority, they were persecuted and destroyed. The outlines of those persecutions are sufficiently known, having been presented in the pages of general history; and even their particular details have been minutely depicted by those who have vindicated the cause of the sufferers, and by others who were the witnesses and agents of their sufferings. Yet a history was still wanted which should trace the rise and progress of these calamitous events with truth and precision, and at the same time give such a view of the shifting scenes by which they were attended, as to cause them to make an indelible impression upon the mind. This object has been accomplished by M. Simonde de Sismondi, who has, in his history of the French people, now in the course of publication at Paris, bestowed much

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VI pains and research on the subject of the crusades of the Roman church against the Albigenses, and has treated it with so much eloquence and beauty of style, and such a spirit of philosophic (enquiry, as to render it a most interesting episode in that valuable work. The volume here offered to the English reader is an attempt to exhibit that part of M. Sismondi's narrative, with only so much of the general history as may serve for its connexion and illustration. Although, therefore, it is only an extract from a larger work, yet it nevertheless embraces an entire, and, to a considerable degree, an independent subject ; giving a view of a series of interesting events, issuing in a catastrophe, of great importance to the cause of civil and religious liberty, and of lasting influence upon the future destinies of Europe and of the world. It commences with the thirteenth century, and comprises a period of about forty years, detailing the progress in civilization, liberty, and religion, of the fine countries in the south of France, and the destruction of that liberty and civilization, the devastation and ruin of those countries, and the extinction of those early efforts for religious reformation, through the power and policy of the church of Rome. It relates the establishment of the inquisition, and the provisions by which this merciless tribunal was adapted to become, for ages, the grand engine of domination to that ambitious and persecuting power. And vii

it marks the complete establishment of civil and ecclesiastical despotism , by the surrender of all those states, with their rights and liberties, to the dominion and controul of the French monarch, under the direction of the Roman pontiff. When therefore the curtain at last falls upon this sad tragedy, it seems as if the night of ignorance and tyranny had closed upon the nations for ever.

The attentive reader cannot fail to remark, that these events give a very different representation of the principles of the church of Rome, from that which is offered to us by its modern advocates, and especially by that respectable body the English catholics. It becomes, therefore, a proper, and even a necessary, subject of enquiry, whether these are the true interpreters of the principles of the church to which they belong, or whether we are to seek for their interpretation in the recorded acts and authentic documents of the church itself. They represent the authority of the church of Rome as merely spiritual, and extending only to its voluntary subjects, and assert that the natural rights of men, and the authority of civil governments, are equally beyond its controul : yet it must be remarked, on the one hand, that the church of Rome allows of no private interpretation of its dogmas, where the church has decided ; and on the other, that the history of its proceedings by no means justifies their representations. The church may not indeed, in future, ever be able to

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Vlll resume that authority by which it has heretofore trampled on the rights both of subjects and their rulers ; but should it ever again be in a situation to act as its own interpreter of its own claims, it is scarcely to be supposed that it would then recognize the limits which either individuals or bodies in its communion had attempted to place to the exercise of its sovereign will. We are, therefore, under the necessity^ as far as it may be desirable for us to become acquainted with the claims of the church of Rome, to seek them, not from private opinions, but from its own authoritative and deliberate acts.

We are also bound to consider, that the dogmas of the church of Rome are not subjects of mere speculation. She has always claimed a divine right of imposing them on the minds of men, and has, at different times, attained to a power of enforcing these claims, unexampled in the history of mankind. With those religious dogmas by which she still subjugates the souls of her votaries, we, who after two centuries of conflict have withdrawn from her domination, have no concern, any farther than she is amenable for them to the bar of reason and truth ; but, besides the controul which she exercises over those of her own communion, she has ever maintained certain rights towards those whom she is pleased to designate as heretics, and has often exercised those rights with a severity, for which no authority is to be

IX found, except in her own traditions. We have, therefore, on our part, a right to demand a renunciation of those claims, as public and authoritative as the exercise of them has ever been, or to guard ourselves against their repetition, by such prudential and cautionary measures, as the circumstances of the times may require.

The crusades against the Albigenses seem to present one of those occasions by which the rights, claimed by the Roman church towards heretics, may be most fully and accurately ascertained. They were her exclusive and deliberate act. The church of Rome had been then, according to its own principles, established for nearly twelve hundred years. It professed to have been endowed with miraculous powers, and to be guided by the teachings of the infallible spirit of God. All the temporal authorities had submitted to its domination and were ready to execute its orders. If therefore there is any period in which we should seek for its genuine and authentic principles, it must be under the unclouded dominion of Innocent III. Nor can the opponents of all reformation possibly desire any thing more, than to restore that golden age of the church. Should they say, that, civilization and philosophy having then made but small progress, we are to charge the cruelties which were committed against the heretics to the ignorance and barbarism of the times, we would reply, that all these cruelties were

X prompted, encouraged, and sanctioned, by Rome itself, and that an infallible church cannot require the lights of philosophy to instruct her in her duties towards heretics. To an impartial inquirer it would seem rather strange, that under the spiritual illumination afforded by this church to the nations, heresies should have arisen which required such severe measures for their extirpation, and that wich all the powers of heaven and earth on its side, the church could not trust itself in the field of reason and argument against them. But certain it is, that heresies did arise, and that the church of Rome felt itself called upon to shew to that age, and to all succeeding xmes, the full extent of the power, with which it was invested by heaven, for their suppression and extirpation.

The dogma on which all these transactions were founded is — that the church possesses the right to extirpate heresy, and to use all the means which she may judge necessary for that purpose — and to those who are not acquainted with the subtle distinctions of the Roman casuists, this dogma seems to possess all the claims to authority which the church ever makes necessary for an article of faith. It was on this dogma that Innocent III and his legates preached the crusade against the heretics, and promised to those who engaged in it, the full remission of all sins ; it was on this dogma that they excommunicated the civil powers by whom they were, or supposed to be, protected,

XI and disposed of their dominions to those who assisted in this spiritual warfare. This dogma was repeatedly avowed by provincial councils, and finally ratified by an oecumenical or general council, the fourth of Lateran.1 It was received by the tacit — nay by the cordial and triumphant assent of the universal church, and had also the sanction of the civil authorities, who received from the church the spoils of the deposed and persecuted princes. We can therefore conceive of nothing which should be still necessary to constitute this dogma an article of faith, and hold ourselves justified in considering the church of Rome to claim, as of divine authority, the right to extirpate heresy, and for that purpose, if she judge it necessary, to exterminate heretics.

i This council not only determined the spiritual power of the church over heretics, but defined the application of that power to temporal princes. Cap. iii, " Si dominus temporalis requisitus et monitus ab Ecclesia, terram suam purgare neglexerit ab haeretica foeditate, per Metropolitanos et caeteros provinciates Episcopos vinculo excommunicationis innodetur; et si satisfacere contempserit infra annum, significetur hoc Summ. Pontifici, et extunc ipse vassalos ab ejus fidelitate denunciet absolutos, et terram exponet Catholicis occupandam, qui earn, haereticis exterminatis (id est, ex vi vocis expulsis), sine ullo contradictione possideant, salva jure Domini principalis, dummodo super hoc ipse nullum praestet obstaculum, eadem nihilominus lege servata, circa eos qui non habent Dominos principales." — See Delahogue, Tract, de Ecclesia Christi,p. 202. The author adds, " Nonnulli critici dubitant de authenticate hujus canonis." And well they do; for without this doubt, the cause of the Romish church is lost irrevocably. The count of Toulouse and the Albigenses however felt its authenticity. The parenthesis (vi vocis expulsis) does not belong to the original article, but is a gloss of the learned author, by which he would insinuate that the heretics were only to be banished : a miserable attempt to pervert the plainest language and the most notorious facts.

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Nor has this principle, which was evidently avowed and acted upon at the period of these Crusades, been ever renounced by any authentic or official act of that church ; on the contrary, the church has, during the six hundred years which followed these events, invariably, as far as occasions have served, avowed the same principles, and perpetrated or stimulated the same deeds. As soon as the wars against the Albigenses were terminated, the inquisition was brought into full and constant action, and has alwavs been encouraged and supported by the Romish church, to the utmost of its power, in every place where it could obtain an establishment. The civil authorities, finding by experience that some of the claims of the church were more prejudicial than useful to themselves, have denied to it the right of deposing sovereigns, and of freeing subjects from their allegiance : but the church itself has never, generally and explicitly, renounced this claim, and, long after the Reformation in Germany, continued to exercise it. And, notwithstanding the professions made by modern catholics on this subject, history does not furnish an instance of any body of that profession interposing its protest against the persecution of heretics by the church of Rome. The French government under the administration of Cardinal Richelieu did indeed, for the sake of weakening the power of Austria, support the German free states,

Xlll and consequently the protestants, but it joined at the same time with the church in the persecution of the French protestants ; and could it have obtained the ascendancy which it sought for in Germany, would doubtless have exercised the same persecutions there.

One of the rights the most constantly claimed and exercised by the Roman see, throughout its whole history, is that of dissolving oaths. The history of the Italian Republics in the middle ages, by this same M. de Sismondi, contains instances of this, as a recognized, undisputed, and every-day practice, in almost every pontificate. One instance may serve for an illustration, amongst a multitude of others. There were certain reforms in the pontifical government, which were required by the leading persons of the church, but which they could never obtain from the Popes themselves. The cardinals, therefore, when they were going to elect a new Pope, were accustomed to bind themselves, by the most solemn oaths, that whoever of them should be chosen Pope Avould grant those reforms. And, invariably, as soon as the pope was chosen, he released himself from his oath, on the ground of its being contrary to the interests of the church. The power of releasing from the obligation of oaths was also extended, during these crusades especially, to freeing the subjects of heretical princes from their oaths of allegiance : and it xiv was especially sanctioned by the fourth council of Lateran. This practice has, however, become so obnoxious in modern times, that the right has been indignantly disowned by most of the advocates of the Roman Catholic church ; and this disavowal forms a part of the liberties of the Gallican church. And yet a public act has been performed in our own times by the Roman pontiff, in the face of all Europe, which seems to have had no other foundation than the assumption of an absolute power in the church to set aside the most solemn engagements. The case alluded to is the divorce of the empress Josephine, the lawful wife of Napoleon, contrary to the principles of the Christian religion, and the express authoritv of Jesus Christ himself.

An English statesman2 has, in a printed work, called upon the English and Irish Catholics to give an explicit statement of their sentiments upon certain points which are, as he supposes, misapprehended by the protestants ; intimating, at the same time, the hopelessness of attempting to draw such a declaration from the authorities of the church. But this would in no respect affect the grand point at issue between the catholics and protestants. We are sufficiently informed respecting the opinions of the English and Irish catholics and those of many other private bodies in the church of Rome. Our doubts only regard

2 Mr. Wilmot Horton, " Letter to the Duke of Norfolk," pp. 45, 46.

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their authority to make such declarations, as members of a church which prohibits the right of private judgment where the church has determined. And all we apprehend is, that should it ever be within the power of the Roman church, and consistent with her policy, to proceed against the English and Irish heretics, the declarations of the respectable bodies we have mentioned, and even the authority of the most eminent individuals, would not shield us from the fate of the Albigenses in the thirteenth century.

In practice, we are doubtless secure from such a revolution ; but to what are we indebted for this security ? — to any change in the principles of the church of Rome, since the times of the crusades against heretics ; or to our own power, and the progress of public opinion ? If to the former, it belongs to the catholics to show us this magna charta of our rights and immunities. If to the latter, we are then obliged to tell them, that we hold our liberties only by the tenure of our power to maintain them ; and that every concession, made to that church, is a voluntary manifestation of our sense of security, arising from our own efforts, against any future attempts at persecution.

It is also an interesting subject of inquiry, on what grounds modern catholics can justify or palliate the persecutions against the Albigenses ; and they are thus stated by a writer of that perxvi suasion5 in a work published in 1793: "The Albigenses avowed the leading principles of the Manicheans, and differed from them only by adopting the principal errors of other heretics who had been condemned in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. These were distinguished by the names of Cathari, Puritani, Paulieians, Patarini, Bulgari, New Manicheans, New Arians, Vaudois, and many other appellations. Pope Innocent III commissioned several ecclesiastics to preach against the Albigenses of Languedoc who were openly protected by Raymond VI, count of Toulouse. Alanus, a cistertian monk, wrote two books against them in the year 1212. Peter de Vaux Cernai has left a history of them. William de Pui Laurent gives an account of them in his chronicle. All these writers, who were not only contemporary but ocular witnesses of what they relate, and Roger de Hoveden, ascribe the following impious and seditious errors to the Albigenses in general: "That there are twTo Gods, and tw o first principles ; one good, the other bad. That there were two Christs, the one good, the other bad. They united with the other heretics in subverting the hierarchy, by condemning the priesthood, and denying the necessity of ordination ; they despised the Old Testament as the work of the devil. They ridiculed the resurrection of the flesh, and maintained that the soul of

* Review &c. by a Roman Catholic clergyman, London, 1793.

XVll each person was a devil or fallen angel in a state of punishment for his pride, who would return to heaven, after having done penance in seven different terrestrial bodies. They thought it an act of religion to burn the images of the cross and destroy altars and churches, and to defile them by converting them into receptacles for the unhappy votaries of Venus. They condemned all the sacraments, and considered infant baptism in particular as a vain superstitious ceremony. They blasphemed against the dignity and purity of the blessed virgin, by denying the divine maternity; and outraged Jesus Christ himself, sometimes denying his divinity, at other times his humanity, and even his sanctity ; they held marriage to be unlawful without considering chastity as a virtue. They were divided into two classes, the perfect and the believers. The former boasted of their continencv and abstemiousness ; the others were shamefully irregular, and declared their firm assurance of salvation by the faith of the perfect, and their assurance that none of those Avho received the imposition of their perfect hands would be damned. Such were the execrable tenets of the Albigenses, which they propagated like Mahomet, by plunder, rapine, fire, and sword. The blasphemies, seditions, and tumults, of these sects were encouraged by the counts of Foix and Comminges, by the viscount of Bearne, and other feudatory lords ; but principally by count Rayxviii mond of Toulouse who held his domains by investiture from the crown of France."

These are the characters with which the persecutors seek to brand the victims of their cruelty, and on account of which they would represent themselves as the champions of truth, of purity, and of social order. But there is one other character, with which the God of truth has branded every liar, and that is self-contradiction. It is impossible to escape it ; no tale of falsehood can be so artfully framed, as not to contain within itself its own confutation. This is manifestly the case with the stories fabricated respecting the Albigenses. The catholics had persecuted and destroyed them ; they had also destroyed all their documents, and rendered it utterly impossible for them to speak in their own defence. They had excommunicated and dethroned the rulers under whose government they had enjoyed protection, freedom, and happiness ; but though they had done all this, they could not give a consistent justification of their proceedings. The Albigenses were, they say, the most detestable of heretics, — licentious and seditious ; they propagated their execrable tenets by fire and sword, rapine and plunder ; they burned the crosses, destroyed the altars and churches, and desecrated the latter by converting them into brothels. Yet their lawful sovereigns, the counts of Toulouse, of Foix, and Cominges, and the viscount of

Bearne, against whom all these deeds of sedition and violence must have been committed, are represented as not only enduring, but protecting, such miscreants ; and when the Roman church, in its great goodness, offered to purge the land of these pollutions, they became such advocates of plunder, rapine, fire, sword, blasphemy, and sedition, as not only to make common cause with their subjects, but to endure in their defence every calamity which their enemies could inflict.

Supposing, however, that the Albigenses had been all that the catholic writers represent, upon what ground could the Roman church make a war of extermination against them ? The sovereigns of those countries did not seek her aid to suppress the seditions of their subjects, nor even to regulate their faith. The interference was not only without their authority, but absolutely against their consent, and was resisted by them in a war of twenty years continuance. If they refer to the authority of the king of France, as liege lord, he had not, in that capacity, the right of interference with the internal affairs of his feudatories ; and, as will appear from the following history, he had, in fact, no share in these transactions, any farther than to come in at the close of the contest, and reap the fruits of the victory. We are therefore from every point brought to the same conclusion — that the church claims a divine right to extirpate heresy and exterminate

XX heretics, with or without the consent of the sovereigns in whose dominions they may be found.

The author of the following history observes, p. 6, that " the most ancient historian of the persecution affirms, that Toulouse, whose name, says he, ought rather to have been Tota dolosa, had been scarcely ever exempt, even from its first foundation, from that pest of heresy which the fathers transmitted to their children," and that " their opinions had been transmitted, in Gaul, from generation to generation, almost from the origin of Christianity." That is, in other words — that the pure and original principles of Christianity had been handed down. in Gaul, from the first planting of that religion there — that the people had, as far as their opportunities would allow, resisted the usurpations and corruptions of the church of Rome — and that the Albigenses were the inheritors of those principles, mingled doubtless with various errors, which their slender means of true religious instruction would not allow them to escape.4

* The means of religious instruction must, in the early ages of the church, have been very different from what they are in the present. Those churches which used the Greek language, though they had the New Testament scriptures in their original tongue, were still, on account of the great difficulty of procuring manuscripts, able to derive scarcely any advantage from them, except what arose from the public readings in the church. To the Latin Christians, the difficulty was increased by the inferiority of the Latin versions; and when this ceased to be a living language* the people must have been in a state of still greater destitution with regard to scriptural knowledge. As this increased, the corruptions of the church increased in like propor-

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The corruptions of Christianity did not arrive at that height to which they finally attained on the full establishment of the church of Rome, but by slow and gradual steps, and even sometimes by the abuse of what, in its origin and intention, was wjse and good. They originated chiefly with the episcopal order. That order became, in the age which immediately followed that of the apostles, to a great degree the depositary, as well as the interpreter, of Christian truth, and the regulator of Christian practice. But there was a constant tendency in the bishops to magnify their office and extend their authority. This tendency belongs to human nature, and its effects were especially foretold, on various occasions, by the apostle Paul.5 Every innovation in

tion, and when recourse was had to translations into the vulgar tongues, to the difficulty of procuring these was added that of procuring sound and valuable instruction from the regular teachers. It is not therefore a matter of surprise, that heresies should have existed, of various degrees of extravagance, and yet there is abundant testimony, that the sound principles of scriptural truth generally prevailed.

:> Paul says to the elders or bishops of the church at Ephesus, Acts \x, 29, u For I know this, that after my departing shall grievous wolves enter in among you, not sparing the flock. Also of your own selves shall men arise speaking perverse things, &c therefore watch — and remember that by the space of three years I ceased not to warn every one, night and day, with tears." And in his second epistle to the Thessalonians, ch. ii, v. 5, having foretold the rise of the man of sin, be adds, " Remember ye not that when I was yet with you I told you these things? And now you know what withholdeth for the mystery of iniquity doth already work ; only he who now letteth will let until he be taken out of the way.'' From a comparison of these two passages it seems probable, that the mystery of iniquity was the tendency to selfishness and pride which appeared among the Christian teachers, agaiu^t which the apostle struggled at Ephesus, at Corinth,

XXII doctrine, or discipline, or ceremonies, was invariably made to bear on this point. The doctrines taught in the second and third centuries, respecting* the nature and indispensable necessity of baptism and the eucharist — the secrecy adopted with regard to what were called the Christian mysteries — the effects of excommunication — the right asserted by the councils to determine articles of faith and to condemn heresies — the power of ordination and deposition claimed by the bishops— all tended to increase the power of the episcopal order and to give it an influence scarcely to be conceived of in modern times, and especially amongst protestants.

Whilst, however, this general effort was making by the episcopal body towards the attainment of antichristian authority, another power was arising within itself which was destined to complete the " mystery of iniquity." The rich and the great always rise to supremacy both in the world and the church, and the bishops of Rome had abundant opportunity for the attainment and exercise of both these qualities. With a steady and undeviating purpose they pursued their object of becoming the head of the christian body.

and other churches — that he checked its progress during his own life, but foresaw that upon his removal, it would go on with increasing vigour till it should terminate in the full establishment of the man of siu, whom he also calls the son of perdition. This process may be clearly shewn, from the time of Ignatius, to the pontificate of Gregdry VII.

They boldly advanced the most unfounded claims, encouraged and invited all appeals to themselves, arrogantly interfered in all disputes, asserted the right of excommunication, expended their wealth and exerted their influence, till, after a lapse of ages and variorrs political revolutions which they, with consummate policy, turned to their own advantage, the see of Rome attained to a universal and nearly undisputed authority. And such is the mighty influence of long established prejudices and habits, that the greater part of the christian world does still, in some form or other, yield obedience to its despotic sway. Against these usurpations the christians in Gaul made, as appears from various indications in history, a long continued struggle. They were at different times assisted by eminent men6 in their opposition to the Romish innovations ; but when the pope had obtained the victory over the episcopal order, the people were obliged to continue the contest alone, and, under the names of various heresies, given them by their enemies, to maintain their christian liberty and the purity of the christian profession. The Waldenses and Albigenses have become celebrated by the boldness of their resistance, and the extent of their sufferings. The persecutions which they endured scat-

g See the account of Irenaeus, Hilary, Vigilantius, and others in the second to the tenth chapters of Allix's History of the ancient churches of the Albigenses; in which the opposition to the bishop of Rome is traced from the 2nd century to the 10th.

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tered the light of truth more extensively amongst the nations. The reformers of the sixteenth century maintained their cause under happier auspices ; and protestants, freed by their exertions from spiritual bondage, are able now to look back upon those long protracted combats, to which, under God, they owe their present peace and security, and apportion to each of the parties its merited reward.

To fill up and verify this rapid sketch would embody all the principal circumstances* of ecclesiastical history; whilst the object of the present essay is only to give such a view of the origin and character of the Albigenses, as may serve for an introduction to the following history. These have been the subject of many and voluminous controversies, the result of which is summed up by Venema, in his Historia Ecclesiastica, t. vi, § 115 — 126, with so much erudition, judgment, and candour, that it seems impossible to give the reader a juster view of the connexion between the Waldenses and Albigenses, their antiquity and opinions, thau by a translation of that portion of Venema's history which refers to these sects. The passage is as follows : —