with so much greed and so little consideration that of
all the domains of the Count of Toulouse there remains to him barely the
town of that name, together with the castle of Montauban. . . . Now,
though the said count has been found guilty of many matters against God
and against the Church, and our legates, in order to force him to
acknowledgment thereof, have excommunicated his person, and have left his
domains to the first captor, nevertheless, he has not yet been condemned
as a heretic nor as an accomplice in the death of Peter de Castelnau, of
sacred memory, albeit he is strongly suspected thereof. That is why we
did ordain that, if there should appear against him a proper accuser,
within a certain time, there should be appointed him a day for clearing
himself, according to the form pointed out in our letters, reserving to
ourselves the delivery of a definitive sentence thereupon: in all which
the procedure hath not been according to our orders. We wot not,
therefore, on what ground we could yet grant to others his dominions
which have not been taken away either from him or from his heirs; and,
above all, we would not appear to have fraudulently extorted from him the
castles he hath committed to us, the will of the Apostle being that we
should refrain from even the appearance of wrong."

But Innocent III. forgot that, in the case of either temporal or
spiritual sovereigns, when there has once been an appeal to force, there
is no stopping, at pleasure and within specified limits, the movement
that has been set going and the agents which have the work in hand. He
had decreed war against the princes who were heretics or protectors of
heretics; and he had promised their domains to their conquerors. He
meant to reserve to himself the right of pronouncing definitive judgment
as to the condemnation of princes as heretics, and as to dispossessing
them of their dominions; but when force had done its business on the very
spot, when the condemnation of the princes as heretics had been
pronounced by the pope's legates and their bodily dispossession effected
by his laic allies, the reserves and regrets of Innocent III. were vain.
He had proclaimed two principles--the bodily extirpation of the heretics
and the political dethronement of the princes who were their accomplices
or protectors; but the application of the principles slipped out of his
own hands. Three local councils assembled in 1210, 1212, and 1213, at
St. Gi