some pity for the princes and people to whom he had already occasioned so much injury; or whether he at last began to suspect those whom he had rendered too powerful, and thought it more conformable to the policy of the church, to raise from the ground the rival of Simon de Montfort, and oppose him to his conqueror, than to complete his ruin; he entirely changed his language, in the letters, which, at the beginning of the year 1213, he wrote to his legates and to Montfort.

1213. The first of these letters, dated the 18th of January, is addressed to the legate Arnold, archbishop of Narbonne, to the bishop of Riez, and to master Theodise of Genoa. In this letter, Innocent III reproaches them with the murder of the viscount of Beziers, the usurpation of provinces, even where there was no heresy, and with the cupidity they had displayed throughout the whole war. He informs them that Raymond had surrendered himself, with his son and all his states, into the hands of the king of Aragon, declaring that he submitted entirely to the sentence of the church; that this king, in possession of such pledges, announced, on his part, that he was ready to execute the judgment of the church, which he awaited; that he engaged to provide that the son of the count of Toulouse, who had never been suspected of heresy, should be brought up in all the rigor of the catholic faith; and he undertook that the father should proceed to the Holy Land, or to Spain, according as the pope should command, to combat the infidels, for the remainder of his days. Don Pedro, whose letter Innocent III almost entirely copied into his own,

only demanded, that they should cease to preach the crusade against a country which had already submitted; that they should not continue to invite the French, by all their spiritual rewards, to exterminate the Languedocians; that, whatever determination Innocent III should take against the count of Toulouse, they should cease to confound the innocent with the guilty; and that, should they even find Raymond VI in fault, they should not, on that account, punish his son, who was not even suspected, or the counts of Foix and of Cominges, and the viscount of Béarn, who had been involved in the war only for having fulfiled their feudal duties towards the count of Toulouse, their lord. After having inserted in his letter almost the entire contents of that of the king of Aragon, Innocent III reproved his legates in a language which they were not accustomed to hear from him. He reproached them with their cupidity and ambition; he accused them of having shed the blood of the innocent, and of having invaded lands where heresy had never penetrated; he commanded them to restore to the vassals of the king of Aragon, all that they had taken from them, that the king might not be diverted from the war which he was maintaining against the infidels. Two following letters, written by the pope to Simon de Montfort, are not less energetic, and shew no less that the atrocities of the war in Albigeois, were at last known at Rome.*

The king of Aragon obtained equal success in

* Innocentii III Epistolæ lib. xv, ep. 212, 213, 214.-Hist. Gén. de Languedoo liv. xxii, ch. xxxvi, p. 234.-Duchesne Script. tom. v, p. 730, 731.

an embassy that he sent to Philip Augustus. He engaged this king to retain his son Louis, who was ready to set out for the crusade against the Albigenses; he, at the same, announced in the Isle of France, in Champagne and Burgundy, that the pope ceased to encourage this crusade, and exhorted the faithful rather to march to the relief of the Holy Land. The cardinal, Robert de Courçon, legate of the pope in France, declared himself against the continuation of the war; so that the bishops of Toulouse and of Carcassonne, who were again going through the provinces of the North, to arm them against those of the South, found much difficulty in issuing their indulgences. At the same time, a new provincial council was called at Lavaur, either to hear the justification of Count Raymond, or to accept the submission promised by the king of Aragon, and to establish peace in the province.*

1213. But Simon de Montfort had such zealous partisans in the bishops of the province of Narbonne, he had connected his cause so intimately with theirs, he had taken so much care to provide the monks of Citeaux, the principal instigators of the crusade, with all the pontifical sees which had become vacant, that he was sure of gaining his cause before such prejudiced judges as those to whom the pope had referred it. In fact, the authority of the holy see was never more completely set at nought by its agents. Innocent III had repeatedly given positive orders to the bishops of the province, to hear, and to judge of, the

*Petri Vallis Cern. Hist. Albigens. cap. Ixvi, et seq. p. 624.

justifications of count Raymond; and the bishops assembled at the council of Lavaur, in the month of January, 1213, again explicitly refused to hear him, or to admit any of his justifications. They pretended that the count of Toulouse, by not executing all the orders they had given him before, and by causing the murder of nearly a thousand Christians, through the war which he maintained ́against the crusaders, had lost all right of pleading his cause. They even refused to extend the benefits of the pacification to the counts of Foix and of Cominges, and to the viscount of Béarn, whom they declared to be supporters of heretics. Above all, they insisted upon the necessity of destroying the city of Toulouse, and of exterminating its inhabitants, that they might complete the purification of the province. And, as they had this object more at heart than all the others, the fathers of the council first addressed a common letter to the pope, recommending it to him; and then, each prelate wrote to him separately, earnestly to press upon him the entire annihilation of that city, which they compared to Sodom and Gomorrah, and the destruction of all the villains who had taken refuge in it.*

The agreement of all these bishops with Simon de Montfort and his numerous friends, the authority of the crusaders, of all those who had previously marched to the crusade, and of all who still intended to do so, made an impression upon Innocent III. It was he who had, at first,

* Innocentii III, lib. xvi, Ep. 40, 41, 42. 44, 45. Histoire de Languedoc, liv. xxii, ch. xliii, p. 241.

excited the sanguinary spirits which then lorded it over Europe; but he was himself, afterwards, the dupe of their concert. It was but too true, that the whole of christendom then demanded the renewal of those scenes of carnage, that it prided itself on the slaughter of the heretics, and that it was in the name of public opinion that the fathers of Lavaur required new massacres. Those who had contributed to create such a public opinion were, however, on that account, only the more guilty. Innocent III, deceived by the echo of his own voice, thought that he had shewed too much indulgence. He wrote again to the king of Aragon, the 21st of May, 1213, to revoke all the concessions he had made, to accuse him of having taken advantage of the Roman court, by a false statement, and to confirm the excommunication of the counts of Toulouse, of Cominges, of Foix, and of the viscount of Béarn.*

These negociations, at the court of Rome, had on neither side suspended the preparations for war; but the number of the French crusaders had diminished, through the pains which the king of Aragon had taken to announce the pacification of the province, and through the declarations of the pope's legate himself. But the two bishops of Orleans and Auxerre, thought it, on this account, much more their duty to proceed to the

* Innocentii III Epist. lib. xvi, Ep. 48. Petri Val. Cern. Hist. Albigens. cap. lxiv, p. 126 et seq. Concilium Vauriense in Labbei Concilia, t. xi, p. 81, seq. Raynaldi Annal. Eccles. 1213, § xxvi, seq. p. 221. Hist. gén. de Languedoc, liv. xxii, ch. li, p.