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At Carcassonne, the bulk of the inhabitants escaped in the night by a subterranean passage. But the pious legate "thought it proper, for the honour of the holy Church, not to let it be supposed that all the heretics had escaped him. His scouts had collected in the fields a certain number of prisoners, and amongst the fugitives from Carcassonne some had been overtaken and brought to the camp. He had in his hands, besides, the three hundred knights who had accompanied the viscount. Out of all these, he made choice for execution of four hundred and fifty men and women, who might be suspected of heresy. Four hundred he caused to be burned alive, and the remaining fifty to be hanged." Thus ended the first campaign. :

"Desolation had been carried into the bosom of the country where the reformation had commenced. Two large cities had been destroyed, and thousands of victims had perished by the sword; whilst thousands of others, driven from their burning houses, were wandering in the woods and mountains, and sinking each day under the pressure of want. Amongst the princes who had wished to maintain in their dominions a certain liberty of conscience, one had perished in prison, and had been replaced by the most pitiless of persecutors. Two others had submitted, and, to make their peace, refused not their tribute to the fires of the inquisition; so that, every day, the church celebrated the sacrifice of numerous human victims." 2

But the appetite of the harlot of the seven hills for blood was not yet satiated. "The monks of Citeaux spread themselves through all the states of Europe, occupied all the pulpits, appealed to all the passions to convert them into one, and showed how every vice might be expiated by crime, how remorse might be expelled by the flames of their piles, how the soul, polluted with every shameful passion, might become pure and spotless by bathing in the blood of heretics. After the conquest of the suspected country had been accomplished, after peace had been granted to the princes, and a safeguard to the submissive people, the monks of Citeaux continued, in every church, to preach a war of extermination." 3

The second campaign began. "The Castle of Brom was taken by assault the third day of the siege, and Simon de Montfort chose out more than a hundred of its wretched inhabitants, and having torn out their eyes, and cut off their noses, sent them, in that state, under the guidance of a one-eyed man, to the castle of Cabaret, to announce to the garrison of that fortress the fate which awaited them. The castle of Alairac was not taken till the 2 Ibid. p. 50. 3 Ibid. p. 54.

1 Sismondi, pp. 42, 43.

eleventh day, and even then a great part of its inhabitants were able to escape from the ferocity of the crusaders. Montfort massacred the remainder. Farther on he found castles abandoned and absolutely empty; and, not being able to reach the men, he sent out his soldiers to destroy the surrounding vines and olivetrees." The castle of Minerva fell soon after, and one hundred and forty men and women were burnt alive on one pile. The next castle taken was that of Lavaur, whence "they dragged out Aimery, Lord of Montreal, and other knights to the number of eighty. The noble count immediately ordered them to be hanged upon the gallows; but, as soon as Aimery, the stoutest among them, was hanged, the gallows fell; for, in their great haste, they had not well fixed it in the earth. The count, seeing that this would produce great delay, ordered the rest to be massacred; and the pilgrims, receiving the order with the greatest avidity, very soon massacred them all upon the spot. The lady of the castle, who was sister of Aimery, and an execrable heretic, was, by the count's order, thrown into a pit, which was filled up with stones; afterwards, our pilgrims collected the innumerable heretics that the castle contained, and burned them alive with the utmost joy."

Four hundred persons were thus burned on one pile. The castle of Cassero soon after surrendered on capitulation, and “the pilgrims (crusaders) seizing nearly sixty heretics, burned them with infinite joy." Again, at Maurillac, says the Monk Peter, the chronicler of these crusades, "we found seven heretics, who were seized by our pilgrims, and burned with unspeakable joy." This is the language constantly used by this pious monk.

Thus, in two campaigns, the heresy seemed to have been completely extirpated. "The slaughter had been so prodigious, the massacres so universal, the terror so profound, and of so long duration, that the Church appeared to have completely attained her object. The worship of the reformed Albigenses had every where ceased. All teaching was become impossible. Almost all the doctors of the new church had perished in a frightful manner; and the very small number of those who had succeded in escaping the crusaders, had sought an asylum in the most distant regions, and were able to avoid new persecutions only by preserving the most absolute silence respecting their doctrines and their ancient destinies. The private believers, who had not perished by the fire and the sword, or who had not withdrawn by flight from the scrutiny of the inquisition, knew that they could only save their lives by burying their secret in their own bosoms. For them there

Petri Vall. Cern. c. lii. p. 598.

were no more sermons, no more prayers, no more Christian communion, no more instruction; even their children were not made acquainted with their strictest sentiments."

This ruthless war continued for several years, until "hundreds of villages had seen all their inhabitants massacred, with a blind fury, and without the crusaders giving themselves the trouble to examine whether they contained a single heretic. We cannot tell what credit to give to the numbers assigned for the armies of the cross, nor whether we may believe that in the course of a single year five hundred thousand men were poured into Languedoc. But this we certainly know, that armies, much superior in number, much inferior in discipline, to those which were employed in other wars, had arrived, for seven or eight successive years, almost without interruption, upon this desolated country; that they entered it without pay, and without magazines; that they provided for all their necessities with the sword, that they considered it as their right to live at the expense of the country, and that all the harvests of the peasants, all the provisions and merchandize of the citizens, were, on every occasion, seized with a rapacious hand, and divided at discretion, amongst the crusaders. No calculation can ascertain, with any precision, the dissipation of wealth, or the destruction of human life, which were the consequences of the crusade against the Albigenses. There was scarcely a peasant who did not reckon in his family some unhappy one, whose life had been cut off by the sword of Montfort's soldiers; not one but had repeatedly witnessed the ravaging of his property by them. More than three-fourths of the knights and landed proprietors had been spoiled of their castles and fiefs, to gratify some of the French soldiers-some of Simon de Montfort's creatures. Thus spoiled, they were named Faidits, and had the favour granted them of remaining in the country, provided they were neither heretics, nor excommunicated, nor suspected of having given an asylum to those who were so."2

There only remained one more curse to be inflicted, and this was accordingly added:-the establishment of a permanent tribunal, in order to search after, and to put to death in detail, such stray Albigeois as might have hitherto succeeded in concealing themselves. Of this, the atrocious Inquisition, it is not necessary for us to speak. We shall merely give one or two of its acknowledged rules of action, as they are printed by Labbe; and no word of condemnation need be added.

"Take particular care, in conformity with the discerning will of

1 Sismondi, p. 115.

2 Sismondi, pp. 128, 129.

the apostolic see, not to publish by word or sign the names of the witnesses; and if the culprit pretends, that he has enemies and that they have conspired against him, ask the names of those enemies, and the cause of that conspiracy, for thus you will provide for the safety of the witnesses, and the conviction of the accused. On account of the enormity of this crime, you ought to admit, in proof of it, the testimony of criminals, of infamous persons, and of accomplices. He who persists in denying a fault, of which he may be convicted by witnesses, or by any other proof, must be considered, without hesitation, as an impenitent heretic."

A system of this kind, worked by agents wholly devoted to the object, and invested with despotic authority, could not prove otherwise than completely effective. The whole church of the Albigenses was entirely exterminated.

There exists not, in the whole annals of the human race, a blacker page. A flourishing province desolated; thousands of men, women, and children massacred, often in the most cruel manner; and for no other offence than that of loving the pure truth of God, and refusing submission to the Man of Sin. We have already seen, by the admissions of both lay and ecclesiastical writers, writers, too, themselves belonging to the Roman Church, -that it was for no moral, political, or religious offence, that these poor people were thus frightfully massacred. As with Daniel, so with the Albigenses, those who hated them for their real piety, were constrained to confess, "We shall not find any occasion against these men, except we find it concerning the law of their God." In fact, the extreme fury with which Satan seems to have raged against the poor Albigois, warrants our estimating their purity of life and doctrine at a very high rate. But "the beast "that ascended out of the bottomless pit made war against them, "and overcame them. But we may not regret their earthly lot; for "they were redeemed from among men, being the first-fruits unto God and the Lamb."

1 Labbei Concil. tom. xi. p. 501.

SHORT NOTICES.

A PRACTICAL EXPOSITION OF THE EPISTLE OF ST. PAUL TO THE ROMANS AND THE FIRST EPISTLE TO THE CORINTHIANS, intended to assist Domestic Instruction and Devotion. By JOHN BIRD SUMNER, D.D., Lord Bishop of Chester. 8vo. London: Hatchard. 1843.

We may be permitted, sometimes, to wonder how peculiar indiviWE duals are able to do so much. One of the most efficient of the bishops whom God in mercy has raised up to our country, and who has been eminently successful in every good work for which episcopacy was appointed, and that, from the extent of its overgrown population, in the most burdensome diocese in the kingdom, yet continues to furnish our families with valuable domestic expositions. This is the sixth octavo volume of Expositions, besides eight other volumes of divinity, furnished by his lordship. After all that has been published of the kind, this volume has also much freshness of thought and of practical application. Long may he be spared to bless his own diocese and the families of our land.

The following extract from the preface may show our readers the evangelical spirit of this work :—

"It may seem a nice distinction, to allow that a man is not saved without good works, and yet to deny that his works contribute to his justification. But though a nice distinction, it is perfectly intelligible and reasonable. Above all, it is scriptural. It is that conclusion from the whole volume of antecedent revelation which St. Paul was empowered to indite for the instruction and guidance of that world for which Christ died. Whereas, to unite together two things so distinctly separated in the Christian scheme, as man's JUSTIFICATION and his SANCTIFICATION, is, in effect, to devise a scheme of salvation for ourselves. It confounds the new state in which we are placed, with the new nature which we are to receive. It removes the distinction between what is and what is not inherent in us: between what Christ has done, and what he enables us to do. Man's condition, without the satisfaction of Christ, may be illustrated by that of Peter, when, being cast into prison by Herod, he was sleeping between two soldiers, bound with two chains; and the keepers before the door kept the prison. An angel came, raised him up, released him from his fetters, opened the prison doors, and set him free. In all this Peter had no more part than man has in his justification. It is the Lord our righteousness,' who delivers us from the wrath to come.' But man being thus delivered, is 'sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise,' and walks before God in righteousness and holiness; just as Peter gave proof of the liberty which he had attained by the angel's power, when in his own power he hastened to the house of Mary the mother of John, and joined the assembly of the disciples."

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