The Albigensian Crusade

In 1179 a council at Rome had placed under anathema the heretics of Gascony, Albi and Toulouse, called Cathars among other names (Third Lateran Council) (Third Lateran Council, canon 27). What they believed is told here only by their enemies. Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, a Cistercian monk and the crusade’s historian, says that they held two creators, a good god of things unseen and an evil god of the visible world; that they rejected the Old Testament, baptism, the eucharist and marriage and denied the resurrection of the flesh; that their “perfect”, or “good men”, wore black, ate no meat, eggs or cheese and would not swear; and that “believers” trusted to be saved by a laying on of hands at death, which they called the consolation (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 2, cols 545–548). Other nations, he notes, called the heretics of the region Albigensians (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians dedication, cols 543–544).

In March 1208 Innocent III wrote to the archbishops of the south that his legate Peter of Castelnau had been run through with a lance on the bank of the Rhône by a retainer of Raymond VI of Toulouse, count of Toulouse, who had threatened him in public. The count, already excommunicate, was presumed guilty. His vassals were to be declared free of their oaths, any Catholic might occupy his land, saving the right of the overlord, and those who took up arms were promised remission of their sins (Innocent III, Letters, 11.26 (March 1208), PL 215, cols 1354–1358).

Raymond submitted. Peter tells that he was led stripped to the church door at Saint-Gilles, swore obedience before a legate, was beaten into the church and took the cross himself (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 12–13, cols 564–565). The army turned on the lands of his nephew, the viscount of Béziers, and on 22 July 1209 reached Béziers (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 16, cols 565–568). The legates, Arnaud Amalric, abbot of Cîteaux, and Milo, reported to the pope that the citizens had refused to give up the heretics or to leave them, that camp servants attacked without orders while the barons were discussing how to free the Catholics in the city, and that it fell within two or three hours. “Our men”, they wrote, sparing neither rank, sex nor age, put almost twenty thousand people to the sword; the city was plundered and burnt (Arnaud Amalric and Milo, Report to Innocent III (1209) cols 139–141). Peter says that nearly all were killed, seven thousand in the church of Mary Magdalene (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 16, cols 565–568). The poet William of Tudela says that clergy, women and children were cut down in the church, and that the barons had agreed to put to the sword any town that resisted, to frighten the rest (William of Tudela, Song of the Albigensian Crusade laisse 21 (Meyer, vol. 2, pp. 26–27)).

Caesarius of Heisterbach, a Cistercian in the Rhineland writing a decade or more later, adds a story found in none of these three. Asked how to tell Catholics from heretics, the abbot “is said to have said”: Kill them, for the Lord knows who are his (Caesarius of Heisterbach, Dialogue on Miracles 5.21 (Strange, vol. 1, pp. 301–302)). The last words are Scripture (2 Timothy 2:19).

Carcassonne surrendered, and the army chose Simon de Montfort as lord of the conquered land (Arnaud Amalric and Milo, Report to Innocent III (1209) cols 139–141). At Minerve in 1210 a hundred and forty or more of the “perfect” were burnt (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 37, cols 585–587). In 1213 King Peter of Aragon, besieging Muret with the count of Toulouse, was killed in battle against Simon (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 71–72, cols 667–672). At the council of 1215 the pope, with the approval of the greater part of the council, awarded Toulouse and the other conquests to Simon and reserved the count’s lands in Provence for his son (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 83, cols 700–701). Toulouse, in Peter’s word, apostatized; Simon besieged it from 1217, and after some nine months a stone from a siege engine killed him (Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, History of the Albigensians 85–86, cols 708–711).

The war ended in 1229. Raymond’s son promised to hunt down heretics in his lands and pay for each one captured, and to fund masters of theology at Toulouse (Treaty of Paris (1229) cols 883–887); by the preliminary articles his daughter was to marry a brother of the French king and have Toulouse after him (Treaty of Paris (1229) preliminary articles, cols 879–880). What followed at Toulouse is told under the papal inquisition.