Innocent decided to replace his initial legates in the Languedoc — a certain John of St Paul and his companion — with three new recruits in 1203. All of the men were southerners: Arnold Amaury was no less than the Abbot of Citeaux, while his two colleagues were both from the monastery of Fontfroide. Peter of Castelnau had been trained as a lawyer, and, like lawyers both before and after his time, had the habit of being violently disliked, so much so that he was subject to frequent death threats while on his tour of duty in the south. The third Cistercian, Brother Ralph, seems to have been the least troublesome of the three, and had at times to go into diplomatic overdrive to patch up the damage caused by Peter. They were universally loathed, and were to play a crucial role in the unfolding of events. Innocent referred to their undertaking as ‘negotium pacis et fidei — the enterprise of peace and faith.
The trio’s first prong of attack was to try to force the local nobility to swear oaths of allegiance to the Church, in which they would also agree to anti-Cathar legislation. Failure to do so would result in instant excommunication. Toulouse, Montpellier, Arles and Carcasonne all agreed — at least in principle — with the measures the legates were proposing. Raymond VI was not happy, however, as the anti-heretical statutes that the consuls of Toulouse had agreed to effectively diminished his rights as count. For the time being, he did what he had been doing all along when it came to persecuting the Cathars: nothing.
The trio’s second prong of attack was to invite the Cathars to debate with them, in public, on matters of doctrine. Arnold, Peter and Ralph hoped they might be capable of rousing the people as St Bernard had done at Albi, rather than facing the humiliation the saint had endured at Verfeil. The first debate was held at Carcasonne in 1204, with Raymond VI’s brother-in-law, King Peter II of Aragon, acting as the adjudicator as 13 Cathars faced 13 Catholics. The two sides defined their positions eloquently, but the debate ended inconclusively. The papal legates were unable to have the Cathars put in chains or on pyres, and left Carcasonne in a fume of frustration. It looked as though their efforts would echo St Bernard’s defeat at Verfeil after all.
After Carcasonne, things only became more difficult for the legates. No one liked them being there: the Cathars naturally regarded them as the servants of Satan, but the clergy also were uncomfortable with the presence of the three Cistercians, no doubt fearful their cosy lifestyles and riches would disappear overnight. The nobility saw them as foreign meddlers, attempting to bring the ways of Rome to a land that had absolutely no need for them. Peter of Castelnau, already angry at the response he had so far encountered, tendered his resignation in 1205, begging to be allowed to go back to Fontfroide. Innocent refused his request. Although the pope did not know it at the time, he had just signed Peter’s death warrant.
And so the trio plodded on, criss-crossing the Languedoc, haranguing nobles and disputing with the Cathars, but all to no avail — the heresy was too deeply entrenched. In Montpellier in the spring of 1206 the three Cistercians wearily concluded that they had failed. They were indeed in a land of many heresies, heresies that had defeated St Bernard and had defeated — and would probably outlive — the three legates. It was at this point that the luck of the campaign began to change. They were approached by two Spaniards, Diego de Azevedo, bishop of Osma, and his younger sub-prior, Dominic Guzman. Diego and Dominic told the Cistercians that they had seen the Perfect at first hand, and they had been struck by the Cathars’ lives of the utmost simplicity, humility and poverty. The Perfect owned nothing except the clothes they stood up in and their holy books, a sharp contrast to the Cistercians, who travelled in pomp and circumstance with a retinue of lackeys and bodyguards. The Spaniards suggested that Arnold, Peter and Ralph take on the Cathars at their own game, citing the example of the Sending of the Seventy (Luke 10.1—12). The Cistercians were impressed, and agreed to the plan.
The summer of 1206 was a busy one, seeing the men adopting the apostolic model and preaching in poverty across the Languedoc. There were debates in Servian, Beziers, Carcasonne again, Pamiers, Fanjeaux, Montreal and Verfeil. As with the first debate at Carcasonne, these were lively and protracted affairs, sometimes lasting a week or more.58Without the usual Roman regalia to hamper them, they were getting results: 150 Cathar Believers were said to have been converted after the Montreal debate. But it was not enough. The enterprise of peace and faith had been in operation for three years, and the number of souls brought back to the Church was negligible for the amount of effort expended. By the spring of 1207, the preaching and debating seemed to have run its course, and Arnold Amaury left to chair a Cistercian conference. Peter of Castelnau was less easily dissuaded, and spent the rest of the year trying to get various Languedocian nobles to start rounding up the Cathars. Ralph followed in his wake, trying to keep Peter away from the crowds, almost all of whom detested him without reservation. In what debates remained, Fulk of Marseilles took his place. Dominic continued to preach, and even managed to found a convent for former Cathar women at Prouille.
Raymond VI again proved to be the stumbling block in the Church’s path. Peter visited the count of Toulouse at a time when he was conducting one of his wars, this latest one being against his vassals in Provence. Peter wanted Raymond to turn his attention away from conducting private wars using mercenaries — who were a common feature of armed conflict in the Languedoc — and begin actively to persecute heretics. Raymond protested that he couldn’t do without his mercenaries: they were a vital component of his power base. He refused to swear an oath of allegiance, and Peter excommunicated him on the spot. It was Raymond’s second excommunication, but it would not be his last. Peter’s final words on the subject echoed around the hall in which he and Raymond — and numerous other nobles — were gathered: ‘He who dispossesses you will be accounted virtuous; he who strikes you dead will earn a blessing.’59
Raymond moved into diplomatic gear. He agreed to begin persecuting the Cathars and, by the summer, his excommunication had been lifted. By the autumn, having done nothing, he was excommunicated again. By now, patience was fraying on all sides. Innocent wanted action against the Cathars, while Raymond wanted the Catholic Church to stop meddling in his affairs. A new meeting was arranged at Raymond’s castle at St Gilles in early 1208. Exchanges between Raymond and Peter were heated, with the count threatening physical violence against the papal legate. On Sunday, 13 January, negotiations broke down completely. Peter left for Rome at first light next morning. He was never to get there. While waiting for the ferry across the Rhone, a hooded rider galloped up to Peter and put a sword through him. The identity of the assassin remains unknown, but it mattered little: it was now war.
The Albigensian Crusade
When Innocent heard the news, he was said to have buried his face in his hands, before going off to St Peter’s to pray.60 Raymond was not forthcoming with an apology, and, although it could not be proved that he had ordered Peter’s murder, his lack of apology was seen as an admission of guilt. It was a diplomatic blunder of monumental proportions. That Peter had so many enemies in the Languedoc that the list of potential suspects could have included most of the nobility and the clergy was irrelevant.61 Innocent was convinced of Raymond’s complicity in the killing, and, on 10 March, called for a Crusade. The use of force had been in the air ever since the trouble with Markward of Anweiler, and Innocent had been considering a campaign in the south since at least the previous November. The Crusade was to be preached by Arnold Amaury and Fulk of Marseilles, who spent the better part of 1208 rallying support from kings and nobles across Europe. Most were too busy fighting each other to go off and do the pope’s bidding, but Arnold’s and bulk’s persistence paid off and, by the middle of the following year, a ragtag army of nobles, knights and mercenaries were on their way. Innocent had given them the full Crusade indulgence: forgiveness of all sins, cancellation of debts and the promise of booty in the shape of land confiscated from the Cathars and their sympathisers. The Albigensian Crusade — like all Crusades before it — adopted the feudal custom that all who went on it only had to serve for 40 days before being released from their military obligations. The Languedoc also had the advantage of being easier to get to than the Middle East. Crusaders flooded down the Rhone valley in their droves.
Innocent had not given up entirely on diplomacy, but the deaths of Ralph of Fontfroide and Diego of Osma within 18 months of Peter’s assassination had left the Church without two of its most valuable diplomatic assets in the south. Raymond had not given up on his own brand of diplomacy either. After failing to persuade Raymond Roger Trencavel, the 24-year-old viscount of Carcasonne, Beziers and Albi to join him in submitting to the Church — possibly as an attempt to keep the Crusaders off his lands — the count ofToulouse agreed to undergo a humiliating penitential scourging at the church of St Gilles. He was stripped naked and thrashed by a papal legate in front of two dozen bishops and a huge crowd ofToulousains, before being led into the church to swear allegiance to both the Church and the Crusade. He agreed to serve for the required 40-day period, but the demands forced on him did not stop there: he also had to renounce any claims he might have over religious institutions on his lands, and to apologise to all the clergy he had insulted, harassed and extorted money from. Seven of his castles had to be forfeited, as was the use of mercenaries, and all the Jews he employed had to be dismissed. When it came to the Cathars, he was to do as he was told: it was up to the Church, not the count of Toulouse, to decide who was a heretic and who wasn’t. If Raymond stepped out of line, he was to be judged by papal legates. It was harsh treatment, and everyone knew it. The count of Toulouse had been made an example of. It was 18 June 1209, and apocalypse was only weeks away.
Raymond Roger Trencavel knew time was running out, but was confident that, as a Catholic, he would be able to parley with the Church. After all, most of Innocent’s efforts had been directed against Raymond, the Cathars and their supporters who lived on his lands, and he must have thought that he was in a strong position. He was wrong. The Trencavels had a long record of antagonising the Church. In one of their boldest coups, Raymond Roger had kicked out the bishop of Carcasonne and installed a puppet. The new bishop’s mother, sister and three of his brothers were all Perfect. Realising that Raymond VI had played a very canny hand by undergoing his scourging and submission, Raymond Roger also offered to submit to the Church, join the Crusade and take action against the Cathars. Arnold Amaury refused to allow this. The crusading army moved towards Beziers, while Raymond Roger retreated to Carcasonne.
Beziers — which had refused to hand over its Cathars to the Cistercians in 1205 — was annihilated on 22 July, as described in the Prologue above. Such was the scale of atrocity that even Crusade apologists such as Peter of Les Vaux-de-Cernay felt the need to distance themselves from it by blaming the bloodbath on the ribauds, the mercenaries. That such — even by mediaeval standards — appalling cruelty had been authorised by the papal legate, Arnold Amaury, was no doubt felt by some in the Church to have been justified. Arnold certainly thought so, and wrote to Innocent that ‘the workings of divine vengeance have been wondrous.’62This view is echoed by the English writer, Gervase ofTilbury,63 who described the situation in terms of a conversation between a priest and a ghost. The ghost told the priest that God had approved of the death of the Cathars, and that the citizens of Beziers had sinned because they had tolerated the presence of the Cathars in their town.64
The news of the atrocity at Beziers spread like wildfire. The Crusaders marched on Narbonne, which, fearing a similar fate, surrendered at the first sight of the Crusade. Carcasonne was next, and Raymond Roger Trencavel knew it. He implemented a scorched-earth policy around the city to make the land as inhospitable as possible for the Crusaders, who arrived on 1 August. The following day, the suburb of Bourg, which lay outside the city walls, fell. Further progress was halted by the arrival of King Peter II of Aragon, who asked to speak to Raymond Roger, who was his vassal. Peter informed Raymond Roger that he had brought the Crusade on himself by allowing Cathars — ‘a few fools and their folly’ as he described them65 — to live unmolested in his city. Peter urged negotiations, as the size of the crusading army vastly outnumbered Raymond Roger’s men. Talks began, and Arnold Amaury guaranteed Raymond Roger safe passage from the city once the surrender had been effected. The fate of the city’s inhabitants would be left to the discretion of the Crusaders. Peter left in disgust at such terms and went back to Aragon. The siege dragged on. In losing Bourg and its wells, Carcasonne had lost its supplies of fresh water, and the city was soon suffering under a miasma of typhoid and dysentery. Raymond Roger was coaxed out of the city by a relative to negotiate. The precise details of the deal are not known, but Raymond Roger managed to save the lives of all the people of Carcasonne — including all the Cathars — on the condition that they leave the city. On 15 August, they did just that. They were not allowed to take with them anything more than the clothes they were wearing; many emerged from the gates barefoot. Arnold reneged on the promise he had made to Peter of Aragon, and had Raymond Roger clapped in chains in the dungeon of his own castle. He died there on 10 November, allegedly of dysentery. At the end of August, Raymond Roger’s lands, and the leadership of the Crusade, passed to an obscure noble whose name was to become synonymous with ruthlessness and terror on a scale never before seen: Simon de Montfort.
Simon de Montfort
De Montfort was, until Carcasonne, only a minor feature of the Albigensian Crusade. He had distinguished himself during the attack on Carcasonne’s other suburb, Castellar, and also during the Fourth Crusade, when he had refused to take part in the sack of the port of Zara on the Adriatic. This was not due to cowardice on Simon’s part — he was a fearless warrior, almost suicidally so at times — but due to principle: the Crusade was meant to be attacking Muslims, not fellow Christians. He left the Crusade disillusioned. Simon’s family were middling wealthy, with lands in the north, near Paris, and also possessed the earldom of Leicester, with which Simon’s fourth son, another Simon, would become closely associated.
Arnold Amaury began to look for a successor to Raymond Roger after the fall of Carcasonne. He approached the nobles one by one, but all declined on political grounds, fearing a potentially jealous reaction from Philip Augustus, the French king. Simon, with his modest holdings in the north, was deemed a safer choice, especially as his military credentials and piety were beyond reproach. The Trencavel lands had a new viscount, and the Albigensian Crusade a new leader.
Simon’s immediate problems were twofold: with the winter drawing on, most of the northern nobles returned home, and a number of the castles that had submitted to the Crusaders in the wake of Beziers had been retaken by southern forces. Indeed, resistance to the northerners was to be a near permanent feature of the Albigensian Crusade, and at Lombers there was even an attempt on Simon’s life. No doubt such actions reinforced Simon’s belief that he was fighting a just war; the towns and cities of the Languedoc were viewed — unlike Zara — not as Christian,
But heretical, and the only way to bring them to submission was through merciless brutality.
The campaigning season of 1210 got off to just such a start. In early April, Simon had taken the small town of Bram after a siege lasting only three days. He ordered 100 of Bram’s defenders on a forced march. Before setting off, the men were blinded, and had their noses and upper lips cut off. The man at the head of the procession was left with one eye intact, to guide his mutilated comrades to Cabaret, the nearest town 20 or so miles distant, which was known to be sheltering Cathars. It was the most hideous of warnings; Cabaret would fall to Simon within the year.
In June, the Crusaders besieged Minerve, a town perched on rocky cliffs 30 miles to the east of Cabaret. A huge trebuchet nicknamed The Bad Neighbour began bombarding the stone staircase that led to the town’s wells, which lay at the foot of the cliffs. Once the wells were inaccessible, all the Crusaders had to do was wait; it would be Carcasonne all over again. Despite an unsuccessful attempt by the town’s defenders to set The Bad Neighbour alight, the trebuchet continued to bombard the town into July. With their water supply cut off, Minerve’s lord, William, had no other option than to surrender. He offered Simon all of his lands and castles on the condition that everyone within the walls of Minerve be spared. Simon agreed, and was just about to let the exhausted defenders of Minerve leave when the papal legate, Arnold Amaury, arrived.
Arnold, superior in authority to Simon, told William that everyone could go free on the condition that they swore allegiance to the Church. All the townspeople did so, but the Cathars were another matter. Swearing oaths was anathema to the Cathars, swearing one of allegiance to Rome unthinkable. Three Believers went back to Catholicism, but the rest remained unrepentant. On 22 July 1210, exactly a year to the day since the atrocities at Beziers, all 140 Cathar Perfect in Minerve were burnt in the valley below the town. It was the first mass burning of the Crusade. It would not be the last.
After Minerve, the remaining Trencavel castra — fortified towns — of Montreal, Termes and Puylaurens all fell to Simon’s forces. It was while besieging Lavaur in the spring of 1211, that Simon’s tactics reached new extremes of cruelty. No doubt enraged by the fact that reinforcements from Germany had been wiped out by Raymond Roger of Foix at Montgey near St Felix the day before they were expected to arrive at Lavaur, Simon’s forces breached the walls of the town on 3 May. With flagrant disregard for the conventions of mediaeval warfare, all 80 knights defending Lavaur were hanged, as was its lord, Aimery of Montreal, who was suspected of being a Cathar Believer. His sister, Geralda, was famed for her generosity towards Cathars who had been displaced from towns that the Crusaders had taken. She was thrown down a well and stoned to death. All the town’s Perfect — around 400 — were burnt at the stake. It was the largest mass execution of the Crusade. Later in the same month, between 50 and 100 Perfect were burnt outside the town of Les Casses. If one were looking for proof that the world was, according to Cathar belief, evil, one would need to look no further than the events of May 1211.
Toulouse was next in Simon’s sights, and the siege started the month after the bonfires at Lavaur. Within its walls, Raymond VI had not been having an easy time. He had been excommunicated yet again in September 1209 for failing to show enough commitment to the Crusade. The count then journeyed to Rome to bargain with Innocent, who allowed him to remain within the Christian fold, but only just. He then began a frantic diplomatic campaign, making good on all the promises that he had committed to during his scourging the previous June. Toulouse, meanwhile, was being terrorised by its bishop, Fulk of Marseilles, who had organised a vigilante group called the White Brotherhood, whose main occupation was nightly attacks on the homes of Cathars and Jews. In response, the Toulousains formed the Black Brotherhood, who clashed with the Whites on the city’s streets on an almost daily basis. To cap it all, Raymond had been excommunicated for a fifth time at the Council of Montpellier in February 1211 after refusing to obey its directives, which would have restored him to the Church at the cost of abandoning all his possessions and giving up his titles. It was, therefore, a moment of respite when Simon called off the siege of Toulouse after only two weeks.
Peter II of Aragon was particularly sensitive to the threat posed to Toulouse and Raymond’s lands. He attempted to negotiate with Innocent. He knew he was in a strong position: as one of the commanders of the crusading army which had achieved a decisive victory over Moorish forces on 16 July 1212 at the Battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in Andalusia, he was one of the heroes of Christendom. He argued that the Crusade had betrayed its original purpose — that of exterminating the Cathars — as it was now becoming evident that Simon de Montfort had killed as many Catholics as Cathars, if not more, and was also in the process of building up a nice little empire for himself. Peter proposed that he should oversee all of Raymond’s possessions, which would then pass to the count’s son, the future Raymond VII, when he came of age, leaving Peter to mop up the vestiges of Catharism that remained.
Innocent weighed up Peter’s proposition, and was prepared to find in the Aragonese king’s favour. On 17 January 1213, Innocent stunned Church forces in the Languedoc by announcing the end of the Albigensian Crusade, and instructed Simon de Montfort to return lands to the counts of Foix, Comminges and Bearn. Arnold Amaury protested loudly, arguing that the Crusade was still valid, as the Cathars remained very much at large. To make the situation even more tense, the remaining southern nobles — the counts of Toulouse, Foix and Comminges among them — agreed to Peter’s plan to let him rule over all of the Languedoc, at least as long as the Albigensian Crusade was in operation against them. On 21 May, Innocent was finally swayed by Arnold Amaury, and reinstated the Crusade.
Simon de Montfort swung back into action, but, on 12 September, found himself confronted by a huge army of southerners led by Peter outside the town of Muret. Although greatly outnumbered, the Crusaders routed the southern and Aragonese forces. Not only that, Peter himself was killed. It was a disaster for the south, with at least 7,000 men being killed. It was de Montfort’s greatest victory. He was now effectively the lord of all Languedoc.
The Fourth Lateran Council
November 1215 saw the biggest gathering of churchmen for centuries when the Fourth Lateran Council convened. Of its predecessors — the councils of 1123, 1139 and 1179 — only the latter had had any business with heresy, when it had been deemed acceptable to use force against heretics. By the time of the Fourth, that force had been a reality for six bloody and long years. Remarkably, the Fourth Lateran Council saw all of the major figures of the Albigensian Crusade in Rome, with the exception of Simon de Montfort and the Perfect. Even that veteran of excommunication, Raymond VI, was in town, as was the fearsome Raymond Roger of Foix. The southerners clearly had business with Innocent, and meant to be heard.
After a month of dealing with other issues — the preparations for the Fifth Crusade, the forcing of all Jews and Muslims to wear a yellow mark on their clothes to distinguish them from Christians — Innocent finally had time to address the situation in the Languedoc, which was, as ever, grave. Things got off to a bad start with Fulk of Marseilles, bishop of Toulouse, lambasting Raymond Roger of Foix for tolerating Cathars on his lands, and for his role in the massacre of Crusaders at Montgey. Raymond Roger retaliated, hurling abuse at Fulk and saying that he was only sorry he hadn’t killed more Crusaders. It was all too much for Innocent, who had to go out into the gardens of the Lateran
Palace to get away from the poisonous atmosphere inside and try to regain a clear head. When he came back in, he had decided to allow Simon de Montfort to retain all his lands in the Languedoc. Raymond VI’s son, Raymond the Younger, would become heir to various smaller possessions, but Simon would now be officially the count of Toulouse. It seemed to be the final nail in the Languedoc’s coffin.
The Siege ofToulouse
When Toulouse heard the news, there was uproar; the Toulousains were determined to keep de Montfort out of the city. He was, after all, universally hated. Resistance was compounded by the unexpected military victory of the Younger Raymond, who took the Crusader-held town of Beaucaire. Then Innocent died unexpectedly on 16 July 1216. It seemed as though things might be turning in the favour of the south.
Simon de Montfort’s reaction was to hit Toulouse, and hit it hard. He was aided by that most charming of men, Fulk of Toulouse, who persuaded the city’s dignitaries to discuss terms outside the city walls. Either Fulk was remarkably convincing, or the city fathers remarkably forgetful of what had happened to Raymond Roger Trencavel at Carcas-onne, but they took the bait. They left the safety of the city, and were promptly put in chains as soon as they reached Simon’s camp. With no one left to coordinate its defences, Toulouse fell almost immediately to the Crusaders, who then spent a month sacking the city. To cap it all, Simon imposed exorbitant taxes on the beleaguered Toulousains.
At the moment of what was potentially his finest hour, Simon made a fatal mistake. Despite the fact that Arnold Amaury had recently excommunicated him for his bullying tactics in Narbonne, Simon blithely disregarded the excommunication and left Toulouse to harass the nobles of Provence, leaving a garrison to hold the city. The Toulousains immediately began to build up weapons secretly and devised plans to revolt against this most hated of men. On 13 September 1217, Raymond VI re-entered the city under the cover of dawn mist; the populace was ecstatic. Despite the fact that Raymond was an almost notoriously bad military commander — at the battle of Muret he had famously done nothing — the Toulousains felt that salvation was at hand. Raymond immediately ordered the rebuilding of the city’s defences. Simon’s garrison was terminated with extreme prejudice.
When he heard the news, Simon rushed back to Toulouse, intent on atrocity. Much to his surprise, he was thwarted time and time again. Despite the arrival of reinforcements from the north, Simon’s forces could not breach the city walls. The stalemate lasted nine months, until June 1218, when the Crusaders decided, somewhat belatedly, to employ siege engines against the walls of Toulouse. On 25 June, during a defence of his siege engineers, Simon de Montfort’s head was destroyed by a stone launched from a catapult on the walls of Toulouse. According to tradition, the catapult was operated by women and girls. The most hated man in the Languedoc was dead; no revenge was ever sweeter.
De Montfort’s Impact on Catharism
With de Montfort dead, a chapter had closed in the Albigensian Crusade, yet it remains debatable what he had actually achieved. As Malcolm Barber notes: ‘The relationship between Montfort’s unceasing military activity and the actual extirpation of the Cathars is much more complex than the pope’s rhetoric [of his call for a Crusade in 1208] suggests.’66 Out of the 37 places de Montfort is known to have besieged, contemporary chroniclers record only three where Perfect were actually known to be (Minerve, Lavaur and Les Casses). Although Cathars are not actually recorded as being anywhere else during the de Montfort years, ‘it is probable that the Crusaders took it for granted that the defenders of places which resisted them must by definition at least be sympathetic to the heretics and their teaching.’67 Furthermore, there were no fewer than 86 places on the eve of the Crusade where Cathars were known to have been living, of which de Montfort held 23 at one time or another between 1209 and 1218. This leaves 63 places that de Montfort did not attempt to take. It is possible that de Montfort was unaware of the presence of Cathars in some of these places, or besieging them may have been beyond his resources. Despite a crusading tax levied by Innocent, the Albigensian Crusade was not properly financed, and de Montfort had to rely on the support of private bankers and on obtaining booty to keep the Crusade afloat. The accusations that de Montfort, despite his piety, had a keen eye for booty and a desire for personal power are reinforced by the fact that he
Also managed to gain control of another 63 places that had no reputation for heresy whatsoever.
Most of Simon’s campaigns concentrated on Trencavel lands or around Toulouse, and the odds of any given town being attacked were between three or four to one against. The Perfect therefore had plenty of places to hide, and hide they seem to have done, as there were no mass burnings of Cathars after Lavaur and Les Casses. De Montfort was partially successful at breaking up the infrastructure on which the Cathars depended: there were no Cathar bishops of Albi, Carcasonne and Agen during his tenure, and only one deacon (in Carcasonne).68 Cathar bishops seemed to have held office in Toulouse throughout Simon’s years,69 but they only survived by hiding at the Cathar stronghold of Montsegur in the Pyrenees.
One partially successful policy had been the encouragement of crusading settlers in the south. The property of Cathars and their supporters, once abandoned, proved to be virtually impossible to get back, as they had been bequeathed to Crusaders such as Alan of Roucy, who took over Termes, Montreal and Bram, and Bouchard of Marly, who got Saissac and Cabaret.70 Once installed, they were encouraged to marry local women, and thereby eliminate heresy through marriage. (Landed southern widows and heiresses required a licence to marry; Crusaders did not.) However, few of the settlers founded long-term dynasties in the south: they were either killed during subsequent southern uprisings, or went back north while they still had the opportunity to do so.
During the de Montfort years, diplomacy and preaching
Were still being used as weapons against the Cathars: Innocent never tired of trying to check the violence, and was constantly in talks with various ambassadors, legates and lobbyists. That he had to censure Simon in January 1213 shows how much he had come to distrust the military solution, and de Montfort’s execution of it. It was not his military genius that was in question, but the sheer number of extracurricular sieges that he was undertaking, all in the name of increasing his own power base (indeed, after the Fourth Lateran Council, Simon held more land than the king of France, Philip Augustus).
However, the nine years of violence, brutality and terror did have a profound impact on Catharism. Before 1209, the Cathars had been able to pursue their faith quite openly. After that date, they became cautious and secretive, knowing they were hunted and might meet the same fate as the Perfect of Minerve, Lavaur and Les Casses. De Montfort’s other main achievement was to leave a legacy of hatred. The anonymous second author of the Song of the Cathar Wars spoke for many in the Languedoc when he wrote:
The epitaph says, for those who can read it, that he is a saint and martyr who shall breathe again and shall in wondrous joy inherit and flourish, shall wear a crown and be seated in the kingdom. And I have heard it said that this must be so — if by killing men and shedding blood, by damning souls and causing deaths, by trusting evil counsels, by setting fires, destroying men _ seizing lands and encouraging pride, by kindling evil and quenching good, by killing women and slaughtering children, a man can in this world win Jesus Christ, certainly Count Simon wears a crown and shines in heaven above.71
The Changing of the Guard
Simon de Montfort’s death heralded not only the end of one of the darkest eras in the west since the Viking raids, but also a period of change that saw the old figures die off: Dominic Guzman died in 1221 (in 1234 he would be canonized as St Dominic); Raymond VI died in 1222; King Philip Augustus of France died in 1223, the same year as Raymond Roger of Foix, who remained unrepentant and went to his grave wishing he’d killed more Crusaders; Arnold Amaury died in 1225. In their place rose sons and heirs such as Raymond the Younger, who would become Raymond VII upon his father’s death, and Roger Bernard, son of Raymond Roger of Foix. Both men were able warriors, and played key roles in repelling the siege of Toulouse in 1218 and in subsequent southern resistance.
Simon de Montfort’s son, Amaury, however, was not a chip off the old block when it came to military matters. After his father’s death, he faced six years of constant conflict with Raymond theYounger and Roger Bernard. The de Montfort lands began to shrink on an annual basis. Amaury tried in 1221 to found a military religious order dedicated to fighting heresy modelled on the Templars,72 but without success. His incompetence was to undo virtually everything his father had built up.
Innocent had long wanted the French crown to intervene in the south, but it was not until 1215 that Philip Augustus’s son, Louis, finally launched an expedition of his own. Nothing much came of it. In 1219, he tried again, this time getting as far as committing wholesale slaughter at the small market town of Marmande, where all 7,000 inhabitants were killed, before attempting to take Toulouse. He wasn’t able to, and went back to Paris.
The Albigensian Crusade further suffered under Innocent’s successor, Honorius III (1216—27), who had another Crusade to deal with, the official Fifth, which began in the first year of his pontificate. While he saw the need to continue the fight against heresy, he did not put all his faith in crusading. He gave his blessing to Dominic Guzman’s Order of Preachers (better known as the Dominicans) and the Franciscans; both orders were to expand exponentially in the following years, with both Dominic and Francis being canonised between 1228 and 1234.
The Perfect began to re-emerge during this period. Those who had survived Simon de Montfort had done so by hiding in caves, or in the Pyrenean fortresses of Montsegur and Queribus. In 1223, the Cathar bishop of Carcasonne, Peter Isarn, had copies made of the records of the meeting at St Felix so that he could determine and reestablish his diocesan boundaries after the havoc wrought by the Albigensian Crusade. In 1226, there was another major Cathar gathering at Pieusse. It was not as epochal as St Felix, but the fact that it happened at all showed that the Cathar church was far from beaten, and was confident enough to resume as normal a life as was possible: the council even established a new bishopric at Razes. But peace was not to last.
It was Amaury de Montfort who inadvertently brought more grief on the Good Christians. After several years of losing ground to both Raymond VII and Roger Bernard of Foix, Amaury and Raymond agreed a truce in the summer of 1223. In January 1224, Raymond took control of Toulouse, and the following month Amaury admitted that he was beaten. He ceded all his claims to the possessions in the Languedoc to King Louis XIII. The southern nobles now had one overpowering enemy: the French crown.
The Peace of Paris
King Louis was not the only person who wanted to settle matters in the south once and for all. The new papal legate to France and the Languedoc, Romano di San Angelo, was a ruthless and duplicitous man; perfect Vatican material and perfect for harassing the beleaguered nobility of the south, Raymond VII in particular. Raymond was operating under the supervision of the aged Arnold Amaury, who, since excommunicating Simon de Montfort, had — in the greatest irony of the whole saga — become sympathetic to the southern cause. Raymond and Arnold proposed a series of reparation payments to the de Montforts, in addition to Raymond swearing allegiance to the French crown and promising to drive the Cathars out of his lands. Romano, however, wanted the reinstatement of the Crusade, and made sure that Raymond’s and Arnold’s peace plan never
Got off the drawing board by excommunicating Raymond in early 1226.
Louis, for his part, was also keen on crusade rather than diplomacy, after getting the taste for mass murder at Marmande. He was also aware that he could use the Church to bankroll the whole enterprise; it was the start of an era in which French kings would simply appropriate Church wealth for their own ends, and it ultimately led to the waning of Church influence in France. He and Romano haggled and argued over funding, until Romano managed to extract money from wealthy sees such as Chartres, Rheims, Rouen and Amiens.
In the summer of 1226, the Crusaders besieged Avignon. It was an uncomfortable stand-off lasting three months, during which Louis and his army succumbed to serious bouts of dysentery in the August heat. By the time the city finally surrendered, 3,000 Crusaders had died of the disease. But word spread: the great city of Avignon had capitulated. Even had they been able, the Crusaders would not have to do much fighting; the size of their army was such that southern nobles were offering their submission on first sight of it, or even hearing that it was nearby. In the light of potential instant annihilation, former Cathar sympathisers such as Bernard Otto of Niort, the nephew of Aimery of Montreal and Geralda of Lavaur, suddenly became staunch supporters of the Crusade. The only real military challenges the Crusade faced were guerrilla attacks from the forces of Raymond VII and Roger Bernard of Foix, which proved a nuisance more than a real danger. Dysentery, however, would do more damage than the
Forces of Toulouse and Foix: Louis himself was now seriously ill, and died on 8 November in Montpensier.
Louis’s son, the future Louis IX, was only 12 at the time of his father’s death, and his mother, Blanche of Castile, became Regent. She was determined that her husband’s death would not be in vain, and pressed on with the campaign to subdue the southern nobles and eradicate Catharism. With Cardinal Romano as her principal adviser — they were even reputed to be lovers — she ordered her armies to remain in the south and to finish what her late husband had started.
The late 1220s saw not so much a Crusade as a series of intermittent battles between Crusaders and southern nobility. It could have carried on indefinitely, were it not for the fact that, in 1228, the Crusaders began to employ an extreme form of scorched-earth policy. This was much more thorough than the one Raymond Roger Trencavel had ordered at Carcasonne in 1209; it was nothing less than the complete destruction of the countryside around Toulouse. Crops were burnt, orchards felled, sources of water contaminated. The skies were black for a whole year with smoke. By the beginning of 1229, with his lands an endless blasted heath that would take years to recover, Raymond had no choice: he had to sue for peace.
On 12 April 1229, history repeated itself. Raymond VII, like his father before him, was publicly flogged. It was to be known as the Peace of Paris, and the combined strength of Church and king had the count of Toulouse in a vice. Raymond’s lands were seized by the French crown, leaving him with little more than the city of Toulouse and a few minor towns, which he was generously allowed to keep for the rest of his life, after which they would be incorporated into the growing kingdom of France. He was also forced to marry off his only child, a nine-year old daughter, to one of the young Louis’s siblings. In addition, Raymond was instructed to found — and fund — a new university in Toulouse, at which Church-approved doctors of theology would instruct new clerics in the ways of righteousness. It was the end of the Albigensian Crusade. Life would slowly return to normal in the Languedoc after 20 years of war, but St Bernard’s original exhortation to catch the ‘little foxes’ before they ‘ruined the vineyard’ was now profoundly ironic: the vineyard of the Languedoc was indeed ruined, but it had not been the work of the little foxes. Although they did not know it at the time, the war-weary people of the Languedoc — both Cathar and Catholic — had little time to adjust to peace before they had to face a new terror: the Inquisition.
World History
