be married to the son of the French King) Raymond VII., never accused of heresy, received absolution. The same scene took place as with his father. With naked shoulders, bare feet, the son of Raymond of Toulouse was led up the church of Nôtre Dame, scourged as he went by the Legate. "Count of Narbonne, by virtue of the powers entrusted to me by the Pope, I absolve thee from thy excommunication." "Amen;" answered the Count. He rose from his knees, no longer sovereign of the South of France, but a vassal of limited dominions. His father on his penance renounced seven castles, the son seven provinces.1 But though the open war was at an end, the Church still pursued her exterminating warfare against her still rebellious subjects. The death of Simon de Montfort had given courage to the Albigensians. Bartholomew of Carcassonne, who had fled, it was said, to that land (the Bulgurian) where dwelt the Pope of the Manicheans, re-appeared; he called himself the vicar of that mysterious pontiff, he re-organised the churches. Another teacher, William of Castries, was ordained, it was said, Bishop of Rases. The Inquisition continued its silent, but not less inhuman, hardly less destructive crusade. That tribunal, with all its peculiar statutes, its jurisdiction, its tremendous agency, was founded during this period. It is difficult to fix its precise date; but it is coincident with the establishment of a special court, legatine or charged with those peculiar functions which superseded the ordinary episcopal jurisdiction, and appropriated to itself the cognisance, punishment, suppression of heresy. The statutes of the council of Toulouse, framed after Council of the successful termination of the war, in order absolutely to extirpate every lingering vestige of Toulouse. A.D. 1229. b Barran et Darragan. It is to be regretted that this work has preferred to be an historical romance rather than a history. The authors have failed in both; it is neither Walter Scott nor Livy or Tacitus. i See in Vaissette the territories ceded to the King of France. "On voit par ce traité, que les principaux instigateurs de la guerre contre Raymond son geoient bien moins de sa catholicité, CHAP. VIII. STATUTES OF TOULOUSE. 239 neresy, form the code of persecution, which not merely aimed at suppressing all public teaching, but the more secluded and secret freedom of thought. It was a system which penetrated into the most intimate sanctuary of domestic life; made delation not merely a merit and a duty, but an obligation also, enforced by tremendous penalties. The Archbishops, bishops, and exempt abbots, were to appoint in every parish one priest, and three or more lay inquisitors, to search all houses and buildings, in order to detect heretics, and to denounce them to the archbishop or bishop, the lord, or his bailiff, so as to ensure their apprehension. The lords were to make the same inquisition in every part of their estates. Whoever was convicted of harbouring a heretic forfeited the land to his lord, and was reduced to personal slavery. If he was guilty of such concealment from negligence not_from intention, he received proportionate punishment. Every house in which a heretic was found was to be razed to the ground, the farm confiscated. The bailiff who should not be active in detecting heretics was to lose his office, and be incapacitated from holding it in future. Heretics, however, were not to be judged but by the bishop or some ecclesiastical person. Any one might seize a heretic on the lands of another. Heretics who recanted were to be removed from their homes, and settled in Catholic cities; to wear two crosses of a different colour from their dress, one on the right side, one on the left. They were incapable of any public function unless reconciled by the Pope or by his Legate. Those who recanted from fear of death were to be immured for ever. All persons, males of the age of fourteen, females of twelve, were to take an oath of abjuration of heresy, and of their Catholic faith; if absent, and not appearing within fifteen days, they were held suspected of heresy. All persons were to confess, and communicate three times a year, or were in like manner under suspicion of heresy. No layman was permitted to have any book of the Old or New Testament, especially in a translation, unless perhaps the Psalter, a breviary, or the Hours of the Virgin. No one suspected of heresy could practise as a physician. Care was to be taken that no heretic had access to sick or dying persons. All wills were to be made in the presence of a priest. No office of trust was to be held by one in evil fame as a heretic. Those were in evil fame, who were so by common report, or so declared by good and grave witnesses before the bishop.* m But statutes of persecution always require new statutes Council of rising above each other in regular gradations of Melun. rigour and cruelty. The Legate found the canons of Toulouse to be eluded or inefficient. He summoned a council at Melun, attended by the Archbishop of Narbonne and other prelates. The unhappy Count of Toulouse was compelled to frame the edicts of this council into laws for his dominions. The first provision showed that persecution had wrought despair. It was directed against those who had murdered, or should murder, or conceal the murderers of persecutors of heretics. A reward of one mark was set on the head of every heretic, to be paid by the town, or village, or district to the captor. It was evident that the heretics had now begun to seek concealment in cabins, in caves, and rocks, and forests; not merely was every house in which one should be seized to be razed to the ground, but all suspected caves or hiding places were to be blocked up; with a penalty of twenty-five livres of Toulouse to the lord on whose estate such houses or places of concealment of evil report should be found. Those who did not assist in the capture of heretics were liable to punishment. If any one was detected after death to have been a heretic his property was confiscated. Those who had made over their estates in trust, before they became heretics, nevertheless The statutes of Toulouse in Mansi, sub ann. Compare Limborch, Historia Inquisitionis. Among the other decrees of the Council was one which declared the absolute immunity of all clerks from taxation, unless they were merchants or married (mercatores vel uxorati). one succeeded to the inheritance of a lay fief, he was answerable for its burthens. They were likewise free from tolls (péages). Every person was bound to attend church on Sundays and holi If days. The statutes against private wars were in a more Christian spirit, only beyond the age. Every male above 14 was sworn to keep the peace; and heavy penalties denounced against all who should violate it. This was perhaps a law of foreign conquerors in a subjugated land. m Conventus Meldunensis. Statuta Raimondi, A.D. 1233. Labbe Concil. sub ann. CHAP. VIII. · HERESY SURVIVES. 241 A.D. 1233. forfeited such estates. Those who attempted to elude the law by moving about under pretence of trade or pilgrimage, were ordered to render an account of their absence. A Council at Beziers enforced upon the clergy, under pain of suspension, or of deprivation, the denunciation of all who should not attend divine service in their churches, on the appointed days, especially those suspected of heresy. Yet heresy, even the Manichean heresy, was not yet extinguished. Many years, as will appear," must intervene of the administration of the most atrocious code of procedure which has ever assumed the forms of justice; more than one formidable insurrection; the forcible expulsion of the terrible Inquisition; the assassination, the martyrdom as it was profanely called, of more than one inquisitor, before the South of France collapsed into final spiritual subjection. Yet, Latin Christianity might boast at length to have crushed out the life, at least in outward appearance, of this insurrection within her own borders. No language of Latin descent was permanently to speak in its religious services to the people, to form a Christian literature of its own, to have full command of the Scriptures in its vernacular dialect. The Crusade revenged itself on the poetry of the Troubadour, once the bold assailant of the clergy, by compelling it, if not to total silence, to but a feeble and uncertain sound. " See on for the proceedings of the Inquisition. VOL. IV. R CHAPTER IX. rare. NEW ORDERS. ST. DOMINIC. THE progress of the new opinions in all quarters, their obstinate resistance in Languedoc, opinions, if not yet rooted out, lopped by the sword and seared by the fire, had revealed the secret of the fatal weakness of Latin Christianity. Sacerdotal Christianity, by ascending a throne Preaching higher than all thrones of earthly sovereigns, by the power, the wealth, the magnificence of the higher ecclesiastics, had withdrawn the influence of the clergy from its natural and peculiar office. Even with the lower orders of the priesthood, that which separated them from the people in a certain degree, set them apart from the sympathies of the people. The Church might still seem to preach to all, but it preached in a tone of lofty condescension; it dictated rather than persuaded ; but in general actual preaching had fallen into disuse; it was in theory the special privilege of the bishops, and the bishops were but few who had either the gift, the inclination, the leisure from their secular, judicial, or warlike occupations to preach even in their cathedral cities; in the rest of their dioceses their presence was but occasional; a progress or visitation of pomp and form, rather than of popular instruction. The only general teaching of the people was the Ritual. But the splendid Ritual, admirably as it was constituted to impress by its words or symbolic forms the leading truths of Christianity upon the more The Ritual. intelligent, or in a vaguer way upon the more rude and uneducated, could be administered, and was administered by a priesthood almost entirely ignorant, but which had just learned mechanically, not without decency, perhaps not without devotion, to go through the stated observances. Everywhere the bell summoned to |