Dialogue on Miracles
A collection of edifying stories told as a dialogue between a monk and a novice, by the novice-master of a Cistercian abbey in the Rhineland. Its chapter on the Albigensians reports, as hearsay, the words ‘Kill them; the Lord knows who are his’.
Caesarius was a monk of Heisterbach, near Bonn, and wrote the Dialogue for the instruction of novices; it is dated to the years 1219 to 1223. He was not in the south of France. His chapter on the Albigensian heresy (5.21) rests on what reached the Cistercian order, whose abbot of Cîteaux, Arnaud Amalric, had led the crusade: he mentions a letter that a papal legate wrote “this year” to the Cistercian chapter.
He tells the story of Béziers as an example of God’s vengeance on heretics, and gives the city more than a hundred thousand inhabitants. The abbot’s answer is introduced with fertur dixisse, “he is said to have said”. Caesarius does not offer it as something he witnessed, and he reports it without blame. See the Albigensian Crusade.
Cited in
- 1209 to 1229, firm date