At Montpellier were performed the first public anatomical demonstrations of Christian Europe. The surgical investigations of the School of Salerno had been principally confined to the lower animals. Moorish and Hebrew operators carried into France the advanced ideas of Mohammedan Spain, which, in defiance of ancient prejudice and mediæval superstition, sought for the knowledge of the location and functions of the human organs in the intelligent and systematic dissection of the human body. In the thirteenth century, the corpse of a criminal was every year given to the Faculty of Montpellier for this purpose. Two hundred years elapsed before similar demonstrations were authorized by the University of Paris.

The Medical Academy of Montpellier inherited the energetic and progressive spirit of its prototype, the University of Cordova. It absorbed all the available learning of antiquity. It adopted the maxims and the methods of the great Arab surgeons and physicians of the Peninsula. Among its most celebrated professors were graduates of the School of Salerno. It utilized the talents and experience of famous practitioners of every country and of every creed. There the works of Hippocrates and Galen were translated from the Arabic, in which idiom they had been preserved, into the Latin, by which they were to be transmitted to posterity. There the learned disquisitions of Averroes, Avicenna, Rhazes, and Abulcasis were enriched with voluminous and invaluable commentaries.

A long and thorough course of study was required to obtain the title of Doctor. The office of Chancellor was one of great dignity, and carried with it many privileges. It may well be imagined that ecclesiastical imposture could not flourish in the shadow of such an institution. Such was its influence, even with a class naturally hostile, that as early as the last half of the twelfth century the First and Second Councils of Montpellier prohibited all members of the clergy from teaching medicine, under severe penalties. The scientific character of the studies pursued in that city, and the success of those who profited by them, discredited the practice of shrine-cure and the imposition of relics. The theological odium attaching to the University was not less than that which had stigmatized kindred seats of learning among the Arabian infidels. Many works of its professors were publicly burned by the Inquisition.

And yet no class of men was more highly esteemed by the orthodox sovereigns of Christendom than the graduates of the University of Montpellier. They were the friends and confidants of popes and kings. Their heretical principles were forgotten at the bedside of the sick and the afflicted. Arnold de Villanova was the physician of Clement V., of Peter III., King of Aragon, of Frederick II., Emperor of Germany. Guy de Chauliac was the regular medical adviser of Clement VI., of Innocent VI., of Urban V. While its greatest reputation is derived from its influence on medicine, the labors of the School of Montpellier were not confined to that science. They gave rise to many valuable contributions to various branches of literature. The astronomical researches of the Spanish Jew, Profatius, in 1300,—his tables of longitude; his calculations, which established the declination of the sun and the inclination of the earth’s axis, by means of which terrestrial motion was conclusively demonstrated, have not lost their authority in our time.

The treatises of Gordonius on Diseases of the Kidneys, of Gerard de Solo on Hygiene, of Raymond de Vinario on the Plague, indicate to the medical scholar the extraordinary accomplishments of the members of the Faculty of Montpellier. The great work of Guy de Chauliac on General Surgery was the main reliance of European operators for two hundred and fifty years.

The mad extravagance of the Provençal nobility, their lavish expenditures, the pomp of their retinues, their efforts to surpass in prodigality and luxury the splendid festivals of imperial Rome, aroused the wonder of Europe. Their chargers were shod with silver. Their dogs wore collars set with precious jewels. It was an ordinary occurrence for a wealthy lord to scatter great sums to be scrambled for by the populace. One sowed like seed thirty thousand gold crowns in the neighborhood of his castle. Another enriched his noble guests by the bestowal of gifts of incalculable value. A third sacrificed upon a funeral pyre, in the presence of an immense assemblage, thirty of his finest horses. There was apparently no limit to the intoxication produced by the pride, the opulence. and the voluptuousness of Provençal society. In that society differences in rank were not so sharply defined as in those of other countries. The serf, indeed, retained his degradation; but the ordinarily intermediate class of burghers were practically the equals of the feudal aristocracy. Many of them boasted a purer and a more distinguished lineage. They used coats of arms. They had their mansions, their embattled castles, their bodies of organized retainers. They excelled in martial exercises, and it was no unusual occurrence for knights who had crossed swords with the infidels of Palestine to be worsted by them in the tournament. The title to noble rank was thus to a considerable extent connected with municipal residence. In the cities all was splendor, gayety, courtesy. Outside of them, the inhabitants were for the most part condemned to villeinage. In the Courts of Love, whose absurdity has caused them to be regarded as mythical by many subsequent writers, judicial decisions were rendered on every point of amorous casuistry. The mock solemnity with which such matters were propounded and determined was only exceeded by the dissolute tendency of the customs that governed the proceedings of these extraordinary tribunals. No greater proof of the prevalent laxity of morals could be desired than that furnished by their canons. They encouraged the violation of the marriage vow. They defined with minute and curious particularity the rules of intrigue. The nature of the questions debated by high-born ladies in the presence of a numerous auditory was such as cannot be even designated, still less described, in a modern book. The brazen coarseness which characterized these ridiculous controversies afforded a remarkable contrast to the refinement of manners otherwise displayed by those who participated in them. The popularity of this unique system of jurisprudence was so great, that, at the time of the Albigensian crusade, it was on the point of being generally established in every part of France. No institution, even in those times of heresy and unbelief, was so fatal to religion. It undermined the vital principles by which society is held together. It defied the injunctions and ridiculed the dogmas of the Church. The Virgin, as the object of adoration, was supplanted by the mistress of the cavalier, often a woman of dissolute character and the recipient of the adulation of a score of favored lovers.

A charming picture of mediæval society is presented by the life of the educated classes of Languedoc and Provence. Everywhere was dispensed the most elegant and lavish hospitality. The table was spread before the open door of the castle. Marked attention was shown to the guest, whether merchant, knight, pilgrim, minstrel, or troubadour. He was welcomed with unaffected cordiality. He was tendered the use of the hot-air bath. A wreath of flowers was placed upon his brow. The ladies themselves ministered to his necessities. In accordance with a custom borrowed from the Arabs, the choicest morsels were placed in his mouth by dainty white and jewelled fingers perfumed with lavender and rose. The diversions of the day were feats of strength and displays of horsemanship, the game of chess, the chase with the falcon, the contest for the prize of knightly dexterity in the lists of the tournament. In winter, the company gathered about the huge fireplace of the banqueting hall; in summer, under the rustling foliage of the park. The evening was spent with song and dance, with the recital of the story-teller, with the improvisations of the poet. The feast was enlivened by wit, by jest, by sparkling repartee. The returned crusader related his adventures in the Holy Land,—the bloody encounters of the siege of Acre; the quarrels of the Christian chieftains; the events in which were displayed the dignity, the valor, the noble generosity of Saladin. The trader, just from the Moorish cities of Spain,—then, indeed, sadly fallen from their first estate, but still exhibiting in their fading splendor no unworthy image of their former grandeur and power,—described in glowing language the beauties of Cordova, Valencia, and Seville. Between cavalier and mistress communication was constantly maintained unobserved, through the silent and pantomimic medium of the language of flowers.

In this brilliant company the troubadour was pre-eminently conspicuous. Although often the butt of the equivocal speeches and practical jokes of his companions of both sexes,—attentions which he did not fail to repay with interest in the cutting satire of his verse,—his opinions, generally authoritative, were always heard with respect. He determined points of precedence and etiquette. He gave wholesome advice to young ladies on the care of their persons, on their behavior at table, on their treatment of lovers. His principal duties were, however, the glorification of the family of his patron and the celebration of the charms of his mistress. All courted his favor. Few were rash enough to provoke his enmity. In the society of Languedoc, whether the dependent of a noble house or a careless wanderer from court to court, he was always the central figure.

Among the inmates of the baronial palace, if an intrigue existed, it was concealed by the mask of decency. The poet, in the burning verses which enumerated the charms of his lady-love, never mentioned her name, or betrayed the slightest indication of her identity. His attachment he regarded in the same light as the tribute paid by a Pagan worshipper to his tutelary goddess. The laws of his code demanded impenetrable reserve. The object of his devotion was, to all appearances, an imaginary personage, an ideal of feminine perfection.

The highest development of splendor, taste, intelligence, and luxury was to be found in the feudal castle. In the cities, it is true, great pomp and extravagance, the results of the accumulation of incredible wealth, were constantly displayed. The mansions of many opulent merchants far surpassed in the magnificence of their interiors the palaces of the King of France. On occasions of festivity priceless hangings of brocade and velvet, of silken tapestry and cloth of gold, were suspended over the streets. The households of these powerful citizens were on a scale commensurate with the dignity of their masters. Hundreds of retainers obeyed their bidding. Their apartments were full of singers, dancers, buffoons, and eunuchs. There was no delicacy not to be found upon their tables; no means of sensual enjoyment which did not contribute to the stimulation of their blunted appetites; no vice with which they were not familiar.

Thus in the courts of the numerous principalities of Southern France, amidst the delights of a society gay, skeptical, licentious, the troubadour was the arbiter of taste, the oracle of the populace, the idol of women. Public opinion was far from discouraging the practice of gallantry in an age which scoffed alike at the maxims of social morality and the ceremonies of religion. The mistress of the vagrant bard was always the wife of a noble, not infrequently a princess of the highest dignity. To her was addressed his passionate homage, often in strains whose expressions are too bold and ardent for translation into a modern language. The adoration they convey, unsurpassed in fervency by any vows ever offered at the shrine of a celestial divinity, affords a key to both the influence of the poet and the relaxation of manners. The life of the latter was passed in an intoxicating atmosphere of music, flattery, and amorous intrigue. His power over society was not less important than that formerly exercised by the repudiated clergy, and was, morally speaking, fully as pernicious. The adulation he lavished upon the object of his affections, represented as the personification of every physical grace and every mental accomplishment, could not fail to fire the romantic imagination of the goddess in whose veins coursed the hot blood of the South, and whose vanity caused her to recognize in this extravagant flattery and devotion the highest tribute to her charms. Around the bard, in the brilliant circles of Arles or Carcassonne, was grouped a mirthful and appreciative auditory,—ladies in brocades and jewels, knights in burnished armor, pages in silk and gold. In that animated assemblage the restraints of rank, never rendered irksome by the exactions of pompous ceremonial, were for the moment entirely suspended. The conversation sparkled with epigram, equivocal allusions, and good-humored satire. Its character, formed by the dissolute customs of the age, often transgressed the rules of propriety which govern modern social intercourse. Inspired by such surroundings, the troubadour arose and began the recital of an impromptu amatory ode. Young, slender, and handsome, his physical appearance alone might well elicit female admiration. His long, dark locks fell in ringlets upon his shoulders. A golden chain hung about his neck. His fingers glittered with gems. From his belt an enamelled poniard was suspended. His picturesque costume of brilliant colors, his silken doublet, his velvet cloak, set off to the best advantage the graces of his person, and revealed the popularity which he enjoyed with his patrons. All eyes were turned upon him, for his talents were of the highest order, and the object of his admiration was present, perchance in the person of the chatelaine herself. As he chanted his verses in accents, now ardent, now pathetic, now humorous, the enraptured audience, swayed by conflicting emotions, broke forth alternately into tears and laughter. His ambiguous expressions, his licentious images,—whose boldness the severity of modern criticism would reject as offensive to decency,—were received with every manifestation of approval by his delighted hearers. The nature of the entertainment was often varied by the performances of the jongleur. That personage, who, as a retainer of the troubadour, occupied a position analogous to that of esquire to knight, united in his calling the office of minstrel, juggler, story-teller, and buffoon. Sometimes he accompanied the song of the poet upon the harp or the guitar; sometimes, with expressive gesticulation, he recounted the legends, the martial exploits, and the popular romances whose relation was a favorite diversion of mediæval society. His rank was ordinarily far beneath that of his companion; yet it was not unusual for the two professions to be combined; and there were instances when their positions were reversed through the vicissitudes of success or misfortune.

The extraordinary privileges enjoyed by these vagrant sonneteers were by no means entirely attributable to the amusement which their talents afforded. Their compositions were the sole medium by which public opinion could be aroused and the abuse of power and the excesses of social depravity restrained. The influence of the pulpit, long omnipotent in the regulation of morals, had declined; in some localities it had wholly disappeared. Centuries were destined to elapse before the press, the most formidable weapon of political censure, could become available. The satire of the poet, whose verses, carried from place to place, in a fortnight became familiar to a hundred communities, was recognized as the instrument of moral correction, the dread of the tyrant, the scourge of the shamelessly dissolute. Its potent effects were feared by wrong-doers of every class, and by none so much as by those of exalted position.

The fierceness and rancor displayed by the troubadours in their attacks upon obnoxious personages, in an age of irresponsible authority, can only be explained upon the hypothesis that they were encouraged and protected by the force of overwhelming public sentiment. Their poems were composed in the Langue d’Oc, the first perfected and the most important of the Romance languages,—an idiom of great compass and power, and beyond the Loire used by the educated and polished members of society alone. The finest of these productions frequently owed their origin to authors destitute of literary culture; many troubadours could not even read. They evinced no admiration of the beauties of nature. The stanzas were isolated, often absolutely without continuity. A common similarity of type and resemblance of ideas pervaded all. It is a singular circumstance, that in form and metrical arrangement the last poem of a troubadour was not, in any important particular, superior to the oldest, at present, known; there was no improvement in two hundred years. In delicacy of sentiment, in vigor of expression, in sweetness of melody, these compositions are not excelled by the lyrics of any nation. Their analogy to those of the Spanish Mohammedans is striking and self-evident. There is the same play of words, the same predominating class of subjects, the same far-fetched and extravagant similes, the same incessant obtrusion of the author’s personality. The Langue d’Oc contains a greater number of rhyming terminations than any other language except Arabic; a coincidence to be attributed to imitation or a common poetic taste, and certainly not the result of accident. In the productions of both idioms the prevailing rhyme is by distichs, and occurs throughout the entire poem, the second verse of every distich always ending with the same sound; and the meaning is often obscured or sacrificed to preserve continuous harmony of versification.

The taste for letters was introduced into France partly as a consequence of the Moslem occupation, but principally by the Jews, who remained after their allies had been driven back over the Pyrenees. The similarity of taste and expression existing between the poets of these two branches of the Semitic race is apparent to every one who has compared the Bible and the Koran. Many of the Hebrew colonists of Narbonne and Marseilles had been educated at Cordova, and all spoke the Arabic language with fluency. Not a few were scholars of marked ability, gifted with poetic talents, the possessors of large libraries. These superior advantages had great weight with a semi-barbarous people steeped in ignorance, with no mental resources except the interchange of gossip, and the exhortations of a priest, who often could not understand his breviary. The ferocious and intolerant spirit with which the Jew was generally regarded, counteracted, in a measure, the effect of his influence, but the power of intellect and culture finally prevailed. The Hebrews familiarized the population of Languedoc and Provence with the art, the science, and the literature of the Arabs. Through their agency an acquaintance with the Arabic language and literature became in Southern France and in Sicily indispensable to the education of a scholar. Another factor of great importance in the intellectual development of Southern Europe was the number of Moslem refugees who sought safety in foreign lands from the influx of African barbarism and from the perils incident to constant revolution. A large proportion of these were philosophers, whose high attainments had made them dangerously conspicuous, and whose heretical doctrines were obnoxious to the stern fanaticism of the Almoravides. Such an immigration could not fail to produce a profound impression upon the mental characteristics and literary habits of any people.

The intercourse of all classes of the population in Southern France was distinguished by every manifestation of courtesy. The degrees of precedence, the style of dress, the order of amusements, the arrangement of the banquet, were governed by established rules of etiquette.

Nor was this life by any means devoted to frivolous pursuits. The great hall of the castle was often the scene of debate between famous scholars and ecclesiastics. There, too, were performed the burlesque miracle-plays of the age. An expensive library was the pride of the count. The philosopher was frequently, the astrologer almost invariably, a member of his household. In the secret vaults of the laboratory, surrounded by crucibles and alembics, the adept sought for the secret of potable gold; from the summit of the keep the astronomer held nightly communion with the stars.

An inclination to dialectical controversy, inherited from their Greek ancestry; the subtle arguments of Arab metaphysicians and natural philosophers; commercial intercourse with the Orient, which familiarized them with the religious theories and principles of various heretical beliefs; and the corrupt and debauched lives of the clergy, which excited the universal abhorrence of all, predisposed the piously inclined to the acceptance of new forms of faith. Among the heterodox sects which arose in the early ages of Christianity, that of the Paulicians was the most numerous, the most popular, and the most enduring. Its tenets were partly borrowed from those of the Gnostics, but largely derived from the ancient Persian doctrine of the two antagonistic Principles of Good and Evil, ever contending for the mastery of the universe and the empire of mankind. The peculiar ideas of this Manichean sect had, from the first, awakened the apprehensions and called forth the anathemas of the Church. The mysticism which characterized them, the ascetic life which they inculcated, appealed powerfully to the superstitions and devout impulses which most strongly influence the human mind. From Armenia the belief of the Paulicians rapidly invaded every province of the Byzantine Empire, and then, following the lines of trade, made innumerable proselytes in Germany, Italy, Spain, and France. It gave rise to the Waldenses and the Albigenses, names of sad and ominous import in the religious annals of Europe. In no country were these false doctrines embraced with such enthusiasm as in Provence and Languedoc. Their adoption was not confined to the ignorant and the obscure, for many personages of the most exalted rank openly avowed their adherence to this dangerous heresy. Simplicity of creed and purity of manners distinguished the new sectaries from the subjects of the ancient hierarchy. They denied the real presence in the Eucharist; the value of baptism as a ceremony; the efficacy of absolution granted by a priest whose calling was not unfrequently dishonored by acts of the most glaring profligacy. Their ministers discarded the splendid vestments of the Roman Catholic priesthood for simple robes of black. They rejected the Old Testament, as inspired by the Spirit of Evil, because of the sanguinary deeds authorized by a superior power, which, by the extermination of populous communities, indicated irreconcilable enmity to the human race. Bells and images of every kind alike shared their animadversion. They advocated benevolence, abstinence, chastity, celibacy. In self-abnegation many of them exceeded the discipline of the most exacting of the monastic orders. They denounced as one of the most grievous offences against morality the practice of every form of lying and deceit. In their creed the sacerdotal office and the ceremonial of the Church were invested with no sanctity, and could confer no benefits, if not associated with honesty of purpose and purity of life. Their very existence was a protest against Papal infallibility and an assertion of the right of individual judgment. Their liberal opinions, their charity, the persuasive eloquence with which they promulgated their doctrines, obtained for them the respect of the nobility and the ardent devotion of the multitude. The name of the obnoxious sect was to every consistent member of the Catholic communion a term of peculiar infamy and reproach.

Throughout the region tainted with this heresy, which derived its name from the diocese of Albi, where its professors were most numerous, the authority of the Vatican was undermined or entirely destroyed. The habits of the clergy had prejudiced all classes against them. The churches were empty. Payment of tithes had ceased. Vassals subject to ecclesiastical jurisdiction refused obedience and withheld their tribute. In certain districts it was unsafe for a priest to appear upon the highway. The public exhortations of friars, whose extraordinary influence was now for the first time disclosed, were interrupted by shouts of derision and flying missiles. At Toulouse, the centre of the Albigensian doctrines, a renegade prelate, usurping the functions of the Pope, convoked at intervals councils of heretic bishops. The recalcitrant sectaries possessed houses of worship, ecclesiastical residences, cemeteries. The piety or fears of the devout bestowed upon their clergy valuable estates and great sums in legacies. That portion of the community which did not accept the new belief—which probably equalled the rest in numbers, and certainly surpassed it in wealth and social importance, infected with the theories of Arabic philosophy—was thoroughly infidel. Against such rebels the thunders of the Vatican availed nothing. Apostolic admonitions were treated with ridicule. Interdicts had lost their power. Even the Papal legate was treated with scant courtesy. The missionary efforts of Dominic, whose fiery zeal now began to raise him to eminence, met with signal and ignominious failure. The Church—menaced at the same time by this serious defection, by rebellion in her own temporal dependencies, and by the aspiring genius of the youthful emperor, Frederick II.—was in great distress. At no time in her history had she been confronted with such powerful enemies or been exposed to more deadly perils. And yet this beautiful land, now under the ban of the Papal See, had scarcely a century before been regarded as one of the bulwarks of the Christian faith. It was at Clermont that the first Crusade was proclaimed by the Languedocian Bishop of Puy, as the representative of the Pope. A hundred thousand persons from Southern France followed Peter the Hermit to Palestine. The famous Order of Hospitallers was a Provençal institution. A large proportion of its Grand Masters were natives of Languedoc. The treasure contributed by its people to the prosecution of these chimerical expeditions of Rome was far from inconsiderable. Such a radical change had increased intelligence and the untrammelled exercise of reason wrought in the minds of the inhabitants of the most civilized country of Christian Europe.

The malignant genius of Innocent III. was, however, equal to the emergency. In spite of the fact that ecclesiastical corruption was principally responsible for the widespread revolt against Papal authority, the Count of Toulouse and his feudatories were, in exquisite irony, appointed the ministers of apostolic vengeance. The mandate was issued by the Vatican that the Provençal nobility should become the persecutors of their vassals and lay waste their own possessions with fire and sword. No family ties, no considerations of friendship or intimacy, no hereditary connections, were exempted from the operation of this atrocious decree. When it had failed, as it was certain to do, as a last decisive expedient, a bull was promulgated announcing a crusade against the infidels of France. Their lands and their lives were declared forfeited for the crime of heresy; all good Catholics were called to arms; and the property of the rebellious sectaries was promised as a reward to the faithful champions of the Holy See. Every resource of Papal ingenuity and power was invoked. From twelve hundred monasteries, bands of fanatics issued to preach the crusade in all the states of Christendom. Plenary indulgence was granted to the warrior who donned his armor in the cause of the Church. Excommunication and the withdrawal of ecclesiastical protection were denounced against any guilty of hesitation or lukewarmness. In addition to the general absolution authorized by the Pope, the Crusaders were during the continuance of this Holy War released from the payment of all pecuniary obligations contracted prior to their enlistment, a concession which was practically equivalent to the repudiation of their debts. The answer to the summons of the Vatican was ready and unanimous. Every absorbing passion and every ignoble impulse—love of fame, religious zeal, national prejudice, desire of novelty, insatiable cupidity, private malice—attracted the roving, the licentious, and the unprincipled to the standard of the Cross. At that time Europe swarmed with military adventurers, some of whom had served in Palestine, in the trains of eminent personages; others, the refuse of disbanded armies, were outlaws and criminals who subsisted by plunder and extortion. To men like these, the announcement of such an enterprise appeared a singular stroke of good fortune. Provence and Languedoc embraced the richest territory, of its dimensions, west of Constantinople. Its luxury and its opulence, its elegant civilization, the magnificence of its cities, the vast treasures of its warehouses, the beauty of its women, were well known to its envious and ambitious neighbors. It was also known that no adequate means of defence existed, and that the hands, which had in the midst of barbarism evoked these marvels, lacked both the power and the resolution to protect them. The frontier was exposed to the invader. No efficient military force could be assembled to successfully resist a hostile advance. The stern qualifications of a soldier were not to be obtained in the effeminate atmosphere of the Provençal court, devoted to dancing, poetry, and amorous indulgence. Physically as well as morally the soft and idle population of the South was not fitted to cope with hardy adventurers accustomed to arms from childhood, tried in a hundred battles, and exercised daily in the broils and contests inseparable from the society of a turbulent and lawless age.

No incentive was wanting to arouse the enthusiasm of every rank,—from the king to the villain, from the archbishop to the monk. The monarchy of France, whose feudal obligations nominally included the powerful states of the Pyrenees and the Mediterranean, was, in fact, unable to enforce its mandates beyond the Loire. The sovereignty of that rich country, now abandoned to conquest, could not fail to immeasurably augment the power and consequence of the crown. Ecclesiastical avarice and revenge looked longingly upon the wealthy benefices usurped and administered by heretics, the prospect of enormous forfeitures, the certainty of a fearful retribution entailed by religious errors and impious defiance of the admonitions of the Pope. Hope of the unbridled indulgence of every brutal passion appealed to the baser and more selfish instincts of the rabble,—the beggars, the robbers, the soldiers of fortune. The popularity of the enterprise is shown by the numbers who assumed the cross. It is estimated that from three hundred thousand to half a million engaged in the war, of whom nearly a hundred thousand were fighting men who had seen military service. There was not a government in Europe at that time able to withstand the onslaught of such a force. Appalled by the frightful prospect of impending destruction, the Count of Toulouse consented to observe unconditionally the requirements of the Holy See, in the delusive hope of averting from his dominions the tempest which must involve all his subjects in one common ruin. His punishment was inflicted with every circumstance of public ignominy and personal degradation. His excommunication, long since pronounced for heretical opinions which he did not entertain, was not revoked. Summoned before an ecclesiastical council at Valence, he acknowledged his sins and promised future obedience. Stripped naked to the girdle, he was conducted, in the presence of a great multitude, to the front of the principal church, where he abjured his errors, and, his hands placed in those of the Legate, he swore allegiance to the Pope. He conveyed to the clergy, as security for his obligations, seven of the strongest castles in his dominions,—a fatal step, which rendered his downfall, hitherto scarcely doubtful, now a matter of absolute certainty. Then, a rope having been passed about his neck, he was dragged through the aisle to the altar, where he was scourged like the vilest criminal. His recantation was repeated, and absolution was finally pronounced under condition of implicit submission, and with the promise that he would assist in the prosecution of a war which involved the devastation of his country and the extermination of his subjects. These humiliating sacrifices, made with the implied understanding that future immunity would be granted his vassals in case they submitted to pontifical authority, proved unavailing. The clergy placed their own construction upon matters in which they were at once prosecutors and judges. Although the Count of Toulouse observed as far as possible the degrading conditions through whose performance he became reconciled to the Church, it was not the policy of Innocent to deal leniently with those who had disobeyed her canons, questioned her inspiration, or intercepted her revenues. Pretexts were easily found under which Raymond was accused of having violated his covenants. His castles were declared escheated to the Papacy. His actions were carefully observed, and it became evident that his presence with the Crusaders was enforced rather than voluntary. The great army which had assembled to vindicate the outraged majesty of the Vicar of Christ now clamored to be led to battle. Their irresistible numbers darkened the plains of Lyons and spread consternation among the peasantry, whose women they insulted and whose substance they consumed. The eminent prelates of the French hierarchy sanctioned by their presence and their example the most awful of outrages on human rights and intellectual liberty. The religious character of the enterprise was indicated by the predominance of the sacerdotal order; by the omnipresence of holy emblems,—crosiers, censers, banners, relics; by the mitre of the metropolitan; by the scallop-shell of the pilgrim; by the cowl and the knotted cord of the friar; by the tattered garb and emaciated form of the hermit. The clergy were headed by Arnold, Abbot of Citeaux, the Papal Legate. Four archbishops and ten bishops, in their official vestments, were conspicuous in the van. Monkish zealots, whose untaught eloquence had inflamed the worst passions of the ignorant populace of Europe, brandishing crucifix and sword, and calling for vengeance against the abhorred sectaries whom divine justice had delivered as a prey to the elect, foaming at the mouth, and uttering maledictions and inarticulate cries, rushed to and fro through the maddened and tumultuous throng. All wore the cross embroidered upon the breast, in contradistinction to the Crusaders of Palestine, who wore it upon the shoulder. In the train of the higher clergy were numerous priests and thousands of dependents and retainers. The Archdeacon of Paris, a distinguished member of the church militant, was present in the capacity of chief engineer. Despite his pacific calling, he proved himself, in the discharge of the seemingly incongruous duties of his new profession, one of the most talented soldiers of the age. The shrewd and politic Philip Augustus, while anxious to secure for the Crown of France the substantial benefits certain to result from the conquest and spoliation of the great feudatories of the South, yet unwilling to share the ignominy attaching to the undertaking, promoted it in secret, but refused to openly employ the resources of his kingdom in such a cause. The French nobility also, for the most part, held aloof; but the names of the Duke of Burgundy and the Counts of Nevers and St. Pol have come down to us as instruments of the apostolic wrath which extirpated the Albigensian heresy.

Of all the leaders, spiritual or secular, Simon de Montfort, Earl of Leicester, was the most zealous and distinguished. An English adventurer, of ancient and illustrious lineage, he had long followed the exciting career of a soldier of fortune, and had won a high reputation for courage and military capacity among the Christian warriors who contended with the infidel in the wars of the Holy Land. In his political and social relations, De Montfort was a man of exceptional probity, courtesy, and honor; but in matters that involved the maintenance of ecclesiastical supremacy, he was a monster of savage brutality, a remorseless persecutor, an incarnate fiend. His bravery, his fanaticism, and his talents for war early secured for him the admiration of the clergy, whose influence eventually raised him to the supreme command of the motley host which their exhortations had assembled. The infamy of the Albigensian crusade is inseparably associated with his name, which has descended to posterity as the synonym of all that is merciless, base, and treacherous in the history of religious persecution. Attendant upon their feudal lords were long retinues of vassals, resplendent in sumptuous armor and gaudy liveries, and the sturdy yeomanry, now beginning to assert their importance in the mailed armies of Europe. The promise of booty and glory, of pardon for past offences and of immunity for future crimes, had, as in former Crusades, drawn from every quarter the dregs of the city and the camp, the footpad and the outlaw, the merciless slaves of rapine, lust, and superstition. This mob was for the most part unarmed, but many were provided with scythes and other implements of husbandry, impotent against the armor of the knight, but amply sufficient for the destruction of those whom age, infirmity, or the disadvantages of sex rendered incapable of defence. Confident in their immense superiority in numbers, this fanatical and disorderly rabble swept like a tornado over the smiling and fertile territory of the Rhone. The authority of the Count of Toulouse, who, incapacitated from hostile action by his humiliating compact with the Pope, was forced to aid the invaders, had been assumed by his nephew, Raymond Roger. The latter, relying upon the strength of his principal cities, Béziers and Carcassonne, two of the best-fortified fortresses in Europe, awaited the approach of the enemy with the calm intrepidity born of the consciousness of right and the resolution of despair. While the Crusaders were pitching their camp, they were surprised by a sally of the besieged. Overwhelmed by numbers, the latter were driven back; the gateways, choked by the fugitives, permitted the ingress of the enemy, and almost in an instant the fate of the populous and thriving city of Béziers was decided. In the horrible butchery that ensued no quarter was shown. The old and the young, the strong and the weak, perished alike under the weapons of the infuriated assailants. Catholics obtained no immunity by reason of their belief, but fell by the side of their Albigensian neighbors. When the soldiers, in the heat of the massacre, demanded of the Papal Legate how they might distinguish the orthodox believer from the heretic, that pious monster replied, “Kill them all; God will know His own!” In the Roman Catholic cathedral seven thousand corpses were counted after the assault. Priests, clad in their sacred vestments, fell at the very foot of the altar. The population of the city had been greatly increased by the neighboring peasantry, who had sought protection behind its ramparts. Of all this multitude, not a single person escaped alive. The estimates of those thus devoted to slaughter are variously given by different writers at from twelve to sixty thousand. The city was pillaged and set on fire, and even the churches and monasteries belonging to the See of Rome disappeared in the indiscriminate destruction. The invading army, flushed with triumph, and not yet satiated with blood, next invested Carcassonne, whose fortifications, still stronger than those of Béziers, offered some hope of successful resistance. Its resources, however, were seriously impaired by the number of refugees who had fled thither for safety. In a few days the water gave out. Defective sanitary conditions, increased by great masses of human beings crowded together in a limited space, produced a pestilence. A surrender was agreed upon, by which the inhabitants were permitted to depart, leaving behind them all their effects. In consequence of these rigorous measures, the entire country was filled with starving beggars, many of whom, but a week before, had been living in affluence and luxury. The Viscount, Raymond Roger, whose safe-conduct had been perfidiously violated, was imprisoned and died suddenly, probably of poison.

The examples of Béziers and Carcassonne were not lost upon the terror-stricken people of Languedoc. Strongholds and villages submitted by the hundred without resistance; the garrisons of those castles which held out were massacred to a man; the lands of the heretic were parcelled out among the crusaders, under the suzerainty of that faithful and consistent servant of the Papacy, the Earl of Leicester. The establishment of the Inquisition, under the auspices of the Dominican order of friars, completed the ruin of the country, whose civilization had long been a shining beacon amidst the intellectual darkness of Christendom. The classic monuments which had escaped the violence of former ages were broken to pieces or defaced. The destruction of great cities, the dread of mysterious tribunals, whose victims, immured in filthy dungeons or devoted, in the name of religion, to awful tortures and a lingering death, never saw again the light of day, the insatiable rapacity of the clergy, the tyranny of alien masters, depopulated entire districts and turned the commerce upon which the prosperity of Southern France principally depended into foreign channels, where the property and person of the merchant could be reasonably secure. The beautiful and melodious language of the troubadours, the parent of the modern idioms of Latin derivation, which seemed about to be adopted by all the people of French extraction, was abandoned, and degraded to a patois which, much corrupted, is still spoken by the Gascon and Catalan peasantry. The gay diversions, the dances, the literary contests, the musical chants of the jongleur, the passionate and satirical verses of the poet, the banquets, the Courts of Love, the hunting parties, the tournaments, disappeared forever.

The Albigensian crusade is one of the darkest blots upon the religious history of Rome. It gave rise to the infamous maxim, then first officially promulgated by Papal authority, that no contract made with heretics was binding upon a member of the Roman Catholic faith. Then the civil power was for the first time employed in the systematic and unrelenting suppression of independent thought. Then was organized and set in motion the most gigantic and effective engine of persecution that the world has ever known. Then was perfected that grand and imposing fabric of government which, begun and improved by the genius of many successive pontiffs, rose to such a towering height during the administration of Innocent III.,—a system in whose policy the religious and the secular powers, while theoretically separate, were, in fact, closely co-ordinated and combined; which, while draining of its revenues every kingdom within its grasp, extolled beyond all virtues the merit of evangelical poverty; which, while discouraging philosophical studies, endeavored to secure a monopoly of learning, thus adding to the superiority attaching to a sacred character and profession the influence derived from mental attainments and unusual erudition; which fastened upon Europe an intolerable despotism, under which it was doomed to suffer for more than three hundred years, and which brought to the prosecution of its ambitious designs every device of intrigue and every method of intimidation, enforced by the infliction of punishments whose ingenious and merciless atrocity had been hitherto unknown to the political oppression of ancient or of mediæval times.

In this way was the absolute power of the Papal system consolidated by one of the greatest of the Supreme Pontiffs, through the extirpation of two grand civilizations which for more than a century had represented the intelligence, the culture, and the science of Christian Europe.

I have thus related—not in their chronological order, but in the order of their importance—the events growing out of the rise, development, and suppression of the intellectual revolutions which, in the thirteenth century, appeared in Sicily and Southern France, for the reason that they were the direct and legitimate results of Arab conquest and the subsequent promulgation of Arab philosophical opinions. A striking analogy exists between the circumstances respectively connected with these two great movements of the human mind. Both arose in regions which had been subject to Moslem domination. In both, after the extinction of Saracen rule, the customs of the vanquished race long maintained their influence over the ruder conquerors, who insensibly adopted and diligently observed them. Commercial relations strengthened the bonds already existing between Christian master and Moslem tributary. In the heyday of their prosperity, the courts of Toulouse and Palermo were, in all but name and costume, Mohammedan. Indeed, one of these exceptions scarcely applied to the Sicilian capital, where the ample robes and spotless turbans of the Moorish philosophers suggested at every step the habits and traditions of the Orient. In Sicily, the Arabic language was almost universally used by the nobility and the mercantile classes; in Provence and Languedoc, intercourse with the Moorish principalities of Spain rendered its adoption necessary to a large portion of the community; in both countries its study formed an essential part of a learned education. The general trend of scientific thought, and its practical adaptation to the intellectual requirements of the people, is disclosed by the establishment of those two great literary foundations, the medical colleges of Salerno and Montpellier. In the curriculums of these magnificent schools, which were by no means confined to instruction in the art of healing, Arabic and Hebrew literature, taught by professors of those nationalities, predominated. The Romance idiom, more widely diffused than any other tongue spoken in Europe since the dissolution of the Roman Empire, has, in a measure, survived the calamities of conquest and revolution; still indicates its Arabic derivation by words daily heard upon the banks of the Seine and the Danube; and forms no inconsiderable portion of the language of the English-speaking world. In Italy, it made greater progress than in any other country, advancing simultaneously through the North from France and through the South from Sicily, superseding the unformed dialects of the Latin Peninsula, and, through its adoption by the potentates of Ferrara and Montferrat, it reached even the Greek principality of Thessalonica; its impress is to-day apparent in Portuguese, in Castilian, and in the numerous soft and guttural dialects of Spain.

From Moorish sources, through intercourse with the Hispano-Arabs and the medium of French and Sicilian conquest, were derived those maxims of chivalry which modified the turbulent barbarism of feudal Europe, the courteous gallantry of the tournament, idolatrous devotion to the female character, a high sense of honor and personal dignity, and the refining amenities of social life.

From these originals sprang the germ of modern literature and the earliest models of modern poetry. The Arabs were unrivalled masters of improvisation, an art which attained an extraordinary degree of popularity in the Middle Ages; and the employment of rhyme, the most important and striking characteristic of modern versification, was familiar to the Bedouin centuries before the appearance of Mohammed. The vagrant bard of the Desert was the literary progenitor of the troubadour, as was the Arabian buffoon and story-teller the prototype of his companion the jongleur, whose broad pleasantry and suggestive antics diverted the appreciative and not over-delicate assemblies of the Provençal and Sicilian courts. Through the schools of Montpellier and Salerno, contemporaneous seats of learning and both dominated by Arabian influence, the philosophy of Averroes, the botany of Ibn-Beithar, the surgery of Abulcasis, the agriculture of Ibn-al-Awam, the histories of Ibn-al-Khatib, became familiar to the benighted and priest-ridden people of Europe.

It was, however, in the impetus it gave to the assertion of the right of private interpretation in religious matters that Moorish influence was most marked and permanent. One of the principal tenets of the Moslem creed was toleration. On the other hand, the first duty of the Christian was unquestioning obedience to his spiritual advisers. The rapid and almost miraculous development of the human mind during the thirteenth century was the inevitable consequence of a policy based upon those principles whose application had promoted the wonderful progress of every nation ruled by the enlightened successors of Mohammed.

The parallel existing between the Sicilian and Languedocian civilizations in origin, in progress, in thought, in education, in skepticism, in the repudiation of ecclesiastical interference, is continued even in the date and the method of their extirpation. Both reached their climax during the pontificate of Innocent III., the exemplar of Papal autocracy, the ruthless foe of religious freedom, the evil genius of the thirteenth century. Each was destroyed by a crusade which under the mask of piety appealed to the most sordid impulses and degrading instincts of humanity. Both were followed by conflicts, seditions, and persecutions which endured for centuries. But the fires, while apparently quenched, still smouldered under the ashes of their victims. The principles advocated by philosophical thinkers at the courts of Raymond and Frederick formed the basis of the creeds of Lollard, Huguenot, Puritan. All of the blessings of civil and religious liberty now enjoyed by the enlightened nations of the earth, all of the wonderful mechanical contrivances which lighten toil, diminish suffering, facilitate communication, encourage commerce, promote manufactures, and conduce to the general happiness of the human race, are indirectly derived from the impulse given to philosophical inquiry and scientific progress by the Norman kings of Sicily, the Emperor Frederick II., and the Counts of Provence, animated by the spirit and emulous of the achievements of Arab civilization. These inestimable benefits are inseparable from the innate right of every individual to freely exercise and profit by his mental faculties. That right the Church has always denied as subversive of her alleged prescriptive title to universal sovereignty over the opinions of mankind. In Europe it was first publicly asserted upon the banks of the Guadalquivir, and the advantages its untrammelled practice affords the present generation are a priceless legacy of the founders of the Moslem empire in Spain.