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ing year the pope named brother Regnier his legate in the four provinces of Embrun, Aix, Arles, and Narbonne, and enjoined upon the four archbishops, and all the bishops, to execute scrupu lously the orders of this monk. Regnier having fallen sick, Innocent joined to him Peter of Castelnau, archdeacon of Maguelonne, whose zeal, more furious than that of his predecessors, is worthy of those sentiments which the very name of the inquisition inspires.* .*

The mission of the pope's commissaries, or inquisitors, was not however limited to scrutinizing the consciences of the heretics, confiscating their property, banishing, or sending them to the stake; they traversed the province, accompa nied by a number of friars, who arrived successively to their aid; they preached and disputed against those who had wandered from the faith; and especially, when the lord of the place favoured the new opinions, not being able to employ force, they had recourse to the power of their disputations. They caused judges of these intellectual combats, to be named, beforehand, and, if we may believe their own relations, they always came off victorious. Accustomed to the subtilities of the schools, they pressed their adversaries with captious questions, or unlooked for conclusions, and not unfrequently led them to absurd declarations. Diego d' Azebez, bishop of Ozma, and his companion St. Dominic, underprior of his cathedral, who about the year 1204, fixed themselves in the province, to preach

* Hist. Gen. de Languedoc, liv. xxi, p. 131.

the age of thirty eight, had already, at the head of these routiers, of whom he had made himself captain, made war against many of his neighbours. He had disputed with the barons of Baux, and with many of the lords of Languedoc and Provence, as well as with some of his own vassals; and this was apparently the reason of his seeking the alliance of Peter II, king of Aragon, whilst his father and his ancestors had, on the contrary, endeavoured to repress the ambition of that house. Raymond VI married his fourth wife, Eleanor, sister of Peter II, about the year 1200; and in 1205 he promised his son, afterwards Raymond VII, to Sancha daughter, of the same king, who was but just born.

Raymond VI was, in the spring of 1207, upon the borders of the Rhone, occupied with the war which he was carrying on against the barons of Baux, and other lords of those countries, when the legate, Peter of Castelnau, undertook to make peace between them. He first made application to the barons, and obtained their promise, that if Raymond VI would acquiesce in their pretensions, they would employ all their assembled forces in the extermination of the heretics. After having agreed with them upon the form of a treaty, the legate returned to the count of Toulouse, and required him to sign it. Raymond VI was nowise inclined to purchase, by the renunciation of his rights, the entrance into his states of a hostile army, who were to pillage or kill all those of his vassals whom the priests should indicate. He therefore refused his consent, and Peter of Castelnau, in his wrath, excommunicated him, laid

bishops they accused of simony, others of negligence in the fulfilment of their duties; and under such pretences deposed the archbishop of Narbonne, and the bishops of Toulouse and Viviers.. They offended also all the regular clergy; and at the same time tormented the count of Toulouse, and all the lords of the country, by accusations continually renewed. Thus they deprived themselves of the means of kindling so many fires as they could have desired. To gain a little popularity, therefore, they took great pains to confound the heretics with the routiers, or hireling soldiers. The companies of these, generally composed, in a great measure, of strangers, were still known, in the South, by the name of bands of Catalans, as they were, in the North, by that of Brabançons. The routiers were lawless banditti; they pillaged the churches and the priests, but had, in truth, no connexion with the heretics, and took no interest in doctrinal questions and controversies. They, however, were offended with the preachings directed against them, and in their turn avenged themselves against the missionaries and inquisitors.*

The count of Toulouse, Raymond VI, who had cultivated the friendship of the routiers, and who had employed their arms in his frequent wars, shared also their resentments. We know but imperfectly the history of the count of Toulouse before the crusade. Raymond VI, who succeeded to his father, Raymond V, in 1194, at

*Hist. Gen. de Languedoc, liv. xxi, p. 138. Guillelmi de Po dio Laurentii, cap. vi, p. 670.

monk, Peter de Vaux Cernay, tells us, 'the wars which the nobles of Provence carried on against him, through the industry of that man of God, Peter de Castelnau, and the excommunication which he published in every place against the count, compelled him, at last, to accept the same conditions of peace, and to engage himself by oath to their observance, but as often as he swore to observe them, so many times he perjured himself.'*

Neither Peter de Castelnau, nor the pope, knew any other means of conversion than war, murder, and fire. In this same year, 1207, Innocent III thought, for the first time, of preaching a crusade against the sectaries; and since the princes of the country appeared too slow in exterminating them, he projected the calling in of strangers to accomplish this work. On the 17th of November, he wrote to Philip Augustus, exhorting him to declare war against the heretics, the enemies of God and the church; and promising him, in reward, in this life the confiscation of all their goods, and in the other, the same indulgences as were granted to those, who combated the infidels in the holy land. At the same time, he addressed similar letters to the duke of Burgundy, to the counts of Bar, of Nevers, and of Dreux; to the countesses of Troie, of Vermandois, and of Blois; and to all the counts, barons, knights, and faithful, of the kingdom of France. Before, however, these letters had

* Petri Vallis Cernai Hist. Albig. liv. iii, p. 159.
+ Innocentii III Epistolæ, lib. x, ep. cxlix.

produced any effect, a bloody catastrophe redoubled the rage of the pope and the bigots, and kind

led the sacred war.

Count Raymond, when he signed the peace with his enemies, had engaged to exterminate the heretics from his states; but Peter de Castelnau very soon judged, that he did not proceed in the work with adequate zeal. He went to seek him, reproached him to his face with his indulgence, which he termed baseness, treated him as perjured, as a favorer of heretics, and a tyrant, and again excommunicated him. This violent scene appears to have taken place at St. Gilles, where count Raymond had given a meeting to the two legates.

1208. This lord, exceedingly provoked, threatened to make Castelnau pay for his insolence with his life. The two legates, disregarding this threat, quitted the court of Raymond without a reconciliation, and came to sleep, on the night of the 14th of January, 1208, in a little inn by the side of the Rhone, which river they intended to pass the next day. One of the count's gentlemen happened to meet them there, or perhaps had followed them. On the morning of the 15th, after mass, this gentleman entered into a dispute with Peter de Castelnau, respecting heresy and its punishment. The legate had never spared the most insulting epithets to the advocates of tolerance, the gentleman already irritated by the quarrel with his lord, and now feeling himself personally offended, drew his poignard, struck the le

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