PART III.

A war of a different kind, but which was also styled a crusade, was carried on in the south of France while Innocent was pope. In that country there were great numbers of persons who did not agree with the Roman Church, and who are known by the names of Waldenses and Albigenses. The opinions of these two parties differed greatly from each other. The Waldenses, whose name was given to them from Peter Waldo, of Lyons, who founded the party about the year 1170, were a quiet set of people, something like the Quakers of our own time. They dressed and lived plainly, they were mild in their manners, and used some rather affected ways of speech; they thought all war and all oaths wrong, they did not acknowledge the claims of the clergy, and, although they attended the services of the Church, it is said that they secretly mocked at them. They were fond of reading the Holy Scripture in their own language, while the Roman Church would only allow it to be read in Latin, which was understood by few except the clergy, and not by all of _them_. And so eager were the Waldenses to bring people to their own way of thinking, that we are told of one of them, a poor man, who, after his day's work, used to swim across a river in wintry nights, that he might reach a person whom he wished to convert.

The Albigenses, on whom the persecution chiefly fell, held something like the doctrines of Manes, whom I mentioned a long way back,[80] so that they could not properly be considered as Christians at all. But, although we cannot think well of their doctrines, the treatment of these people was so cruel and so treacherous as to raise the strongest feelings of anger and horror in all who read the accounts of it. Tens of thousands were slain, and their rich and beautiful country was turned into a desert.

[80] Part I., p. 110.

The chief leader of the crusade in the south of France was Simon de Montfort, father of that Earl Simon who is famous in the history of England. Innocent, although he seems to have been much deceived by those who reported matters to him, was grievously to blame for having given too much countenance to the cruelties and injustice which were practised against the unhappy Albigenses.

Among the clergy who accompanied the Crusaders into southern France and tried to bring over the Albigenses and Waldenses to the Roman Church was a Spaniard named Dominic, who afterwards became famous as the founder of an order of mendicant friars (that is to say, _begging brothers_). He also founded the Inquisition, which was a body intended to search out and to put down all opinions differing from the doctrines of the Roman Church. But the cruelty, darkness, and treachery of its proceedings were so shocking, that, although Dominic was certainly its founder, we need not suppose that he would have approved of all its doings.

The Waldenses and Albigenses had been used to reproach the clergy of the Church for their habits of pomp and luxury; and Dominic had done what he could to meet these charges by the plainness and hardness of the life which he and his companions led while labouring in the south of France. And when he resolved to found a new order of monks, he carried the notion of poverty to an extreme. His followers were to be not only poor, but beggars. They were to live on alms, and from day to day, refusing any gifts of money so large as to give the notion of a settled provision for their needs.