Castelnau
especially, did not cease to urge amongst the laic princes the
extirpation of the heretics. In 1205 they repaired to Toulouse to demand
of Raymond VI. a formal promise, which indeed they obtained; but Raymond
was one of those undecided and feeble characters who dare not refuse to
promise what they dare not attempt to do. He wished to live in peace
with the orthodox Church without behaving cruelly to a large number of
his subjects. The fanatical legate, Peter de Castelnau, enraged at his
tergiversation, instantly excommunicated him; and the pope sent the count
a threatening letter, giving him therein to understand that in case of
need stronger measures would be adopted against him. Raymond,
affrighted, prevailed on the two legates to repair to St. Gilles, and he
there renewed his promises to them; but he always sought for and found on
the morrow some excuse for retarding the execution of them. The legates,
after having reproached him vehemently, determined to leave St. Gilles
without further delay, and the day after their departure (January 15th,
1208), as they were getting ready to cross the Rhone, two strangers, who
had lodged the night before in the same hostelry with them, drew near,
and one of the two gave Peter de Castelnau a lance-thrust with such
force, that the legate, after exclaiming, "God forgive thee, as I do!"
had only time to give his comrade his last instructions, and then
expired.

Great was the emotion in France and at Rome. It was barely thirty years
since in England, after an outburst of passion on the part of King Henry
II., four knights of his court had murdered the Archbishop Thomas-a-
Becket in Canterbury Cathedral. Was the Count of Toulouse, too, guilty
of having instigated the shedding of blood and the murder of a prelate?
Such was, in the thirteenth century, the general cry throughout the
Catholic Church and the signal for war against Raymond VI.; a war
undertaken on the plea of a personal crime, but in reality for the
extirpation of heresy in Southern France, and for the dispossession of
the native princes, who would not fully obey the decrees of the papacy,
in favor of foreign conquerors who would put them into execution. The
crusade against the Albigensians was the most striking application of two
principles equally false and fatal, which did more than as much evil to
the Catholics as to the heretics, and to the papacy as to freedom; and
they are, the right of the spiritual