§ 85. THE CRUSADES AGAINST THE ALBIGENSES. 513
The complications in Southern France were one of the chief questions brought before the Fourth Lateran Council, 1215. Raymund was present and demanded back his lands, inasmuch as he had submitted to the Church ; but by an overwhelming majority, the synod voted against him and Montfort was confirmed in the possession of his conquests.1 When Raynmnd's son made a personal appeal to Innocent for his father, the pope bade him "love God above all things and serve Him faithfully, and not stretch forth his hand against others' territory " and gave him the cold promise that his complaints against Montfort would be heard at a future council.2
The further progress of the Albigensian campaigns requires only brief notice here, for they were converted into a war of territorial plunder. In 1218, Montfort fell dead under the walls of Toulouse, his head crushed by a stone. In the reign of Honorius, whose supreme concern was a crusade in the East, the sectaries reasserted themselves, and Ray mund regained most of his territory. But the pope was relentless, and again the sentence of excommunication was launched against the house of Toulouse.
In 1226, Louis VIII. took the cross, supported by the French parliament as well as by the Church. Thus the final chapter in the crusades was begun, a war of the king of France for the possession of Toulouse. Louis died a few months later. Arnold of Citeaux, for nearly twenty years their energetic and iron-hearted promoter, had preceded him to the grave. Louis IX. took up the plans of his royal predecessor, and in 1229 the hostilities were brought to a close by Raymund's accepting the conditions proposed by the papal legate.
1 Hurter, II. 567 sqq. ; Hefele, V. 881 sq., 902 sq. ; Potthast, Regesta,
I. 439.
2 In a passage recapitulating Innocent's relations to the war, Hurter,
II. 709-711, says that, although it was in part carried on without regard to the principles of humanity and right, and beginning as a religious war, it was turned into a war of aggrandizement, yet Innocent was guiltless, his sole purpose being to purify the land of heresy.
2L
514 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-12S4.
Rayraund renounced two-thirds of his paternal lands in favor of France. The other third was to go at his death to his daughter who subsequently married Louis IX. 's brother, and, in case there was no issue to the marriage, it was to pass to the French crown, and so it did at the death of Jeanne, the last heir of the house of Toulouse. Thus the domain of France was extended to the Pyrenees.
Further measures of repression were directed against the remnants of the Albigensian heresy, for Raymund VII. had promised to cleanse the land of it. The machinery of the Inquisition was put into full action as it was perfected by the great inquisitorial council of Toulouse, 1229. The Uni versity of Toulouse received papal sanction, and one of its chief objects was announced to be "to bring the Catholic faith in those regions into a flourishing state."1 In 1244, the stronghold of Montsegur was taken, the last refuge of the Albigenses. Two hundred of the Perfect were burned.
The papal policy had met with complete but blighting success and, after the thirteenth century, heresy in Southern France was almost like a noiseless underground stream. Languedoc at the opening of the wars had been one of the most prosperous and cultured parts of Europe. At their close, its villages and vineyards were in ruins, its industries shattered, its population impoverished and decimated. The country that had given promise of leading Europe in a renaissance of intellectual culture fell behind her neighbors in the race of progress. Protestant generations, that have been since sitting in judgment upon the barbarous measures, conceived and pushed by the papacy, have wondered whether another movement, stirred by the power of the Gospel, will not yet arise in the old domain that responded to the reli gious dissent and received the warm blood of the Albigenses, the Waldenses, and of Peter de Bruys and his followers.
THE STEDINGER. While the wars against the Albigenses were going on, another people, the Stedinger, living in the vicinity of Bremen and Oldenburg, were also being reduced by a papal crusade. They repre sented the spirit of national independence rather than doctrinal dissent
iPotthast, 9173.