organization
arbitrarily devised and imposed upon the judicial system of Christendom
by the ambition or fanaticism of the church. It was rather a
natural--one may almost say an inevitable--evolution of the forces at
work in the thirteenth century, and no one can rightly appreciate the
process of its development and the results of its activity without a
somewhat minute consideration of the factors controlling the minds and
souls of men during the ages which laid the foundation of modern
civilization."[564] In the mind of the age "there was a universal
consensus of opinion that there was nothing to do with a heretic but to
burn him." This was one of those wide and popular notions upon which
mores grow, because the folkways are adjusted to it in all departments
of life as a rule of welfare. The courts of Toulouse at first, not
recognizing the forces against the Albigenses, tried to protect their
subjects, but "to the public law of the period [Raymond II of Toulouse]
was an outlaw, without even the right of self-defense against the
first-comer, for his very self-defense was rated among his crimes. In
the popular faith of the age he was an accursed thing, without hope,
here or hereafter. The only way of readmission into human fellowship,
the only hope of salvation, lay in reconciliation with the church
through the removal of the awful ban which had formed half of his
inheritance. To obtain this he had repeatedly offered to sacrifice his
honor and his subjects, and the offer had been contemptuously
spurned.... The battle of toleration against persecution had been fought
and lost; nor, with such a warning as the fate of the two Raymonds, was
there risk that other potentates would disregard the public opinion of
Christendom by ill-advised mercy to the heretic."[565]

+248.+ An annalist of Worms is quoted about Dorso's operations on the
upper Rhine in 1231. Dorso burned many persons of the peasant class. The
annalist adds, "The people, when they saw this, were favorable to the
inquisitors and helped them; and rightly, since those heretics deserved
death. Confident in the approval of the masses, they went on to make
arrests in towns and villages, as they pleased, and then they said to
the judges, without further evidence, 'These are heretics. We withdraw
our hands from them.' The judges were thus compelled to burn many. That
was not according to the sense of the Holy Scriptures, and the
ecclesiastics everywhere were greatly troub