CHAPTER XXI.

DOMINIC.

(1170-1221.)

DOMINIC DE GUZMAN was born at Calaroga,1 near Osma, in Old Castile, in 1170. His birth and childhood were attended with the usual miraculous portents common to all mediæval saints, and at the age of fifteen he proceeded to the University or Maestrescuela at Palencia, an institution which afterwards attained so great a reputation in the more famous city of Salamanca. After an uneventful academic career of nearly ten years, Dominic returned to Osma, where he enjoyed the protection of the bishop of the diocese; and, having entered into religion under the rule of St. Augustine, he was soon raised to the dignity of sub-prior.

At length, after ten years more of earnest work at Osma, Dominic was introduced to the great world beyond the frontiers of Spain, having been chosen by his patron the bishop, to accompany him as his secretary on a diplomatic mission to Limoges, to negotiate the marriage of Alfonso VIII. of Castile with a princess of the house of Hugues de Lusignan, Count de la Marche.2 And it was on his way through Languedoc, struck, it is said, by the very scant respect that was paid to the clergy, compared with the homage to which he was accustomed in Castile, that the young ecclesiastic found his true mission, which was not that of negotiating foreign marriages, but of preaching to foreign heretics.

Up to the time of the election of Innocent III., in 1198, the suppression and persecution of ecclesiastical heresy had occupied but a small share of the attention of the leaders of

1 Not at Calahorra, in Aragon, as is sometimes said. Calaroga was only a village, some sixty miles due north of Madrid, in an out of the way part of Castile. Calahorra, the Roman Calagurris, the birth-place of Quintillian and Prudentius, has always been a busy and important little town.

2 It is sometimes said, but on very doubtful authority, that this mission was to Copenhagen. It would have been hard to have accomplished the three journeys which the envoys undertook, had their road extended from Castile to Denmark, in less than a year. Père Jean de Rechaac, Baillet, Fleury, Touron, and Miss Drane, are all in favour of the more manageable journey to Limoges, in the Marches of the Limousin. The double or doubtful signification of the word Marches has no doubt puzzled the chroniclers.

the Catholic world. For as yet ecclesiastical heresy can hardly be said to have existed. A Council, indeed, had been convoked at Lerida, in 1194, by Cardinal Gregory of Saint Angelo, as legate of Pope Celestine III.; and Alfonso II. of Aragon, yiedling to the solicitations of the ecclesiastics, had given orders for the banishment of heretics from his kingdom, for the confiscation of their goods, and the infliction of severe penalties upon all who should shelter them. Three years later Peter II., at the Council of Gerona, confirmed and reiterated the decrees of Lerida; yet no serious steps seem to have been taken to put them into execution in Spain.

But with the accession of Innocent the policy and temper of the Papacy became aggressive and uncompromising in the highest degree; and the commission that was granted by this most vigorous of Pontiffs on the 29th of May, 1204, to Arnold of Citeaux, with Pierre and Raoul de Castelnau, is generally considered to be the origin of the Inquisition in Europe. These apostolic legates were to take measures for the restoration of heretics to the Catholic faith. They were to hand over to the secular power-after preliminary excommunication-those who failed to submit themselves; and they were to enter into possession of all the worldly goods of such obstinate heretics, in the name of the Church. Their authority was made independent of the local bishops. take their instructions direct from Rome. France, moreover, and all the princes and realm were ordered to render active assistance to the three legates or Inquisitors of the Faith, whenever and howsoever it should be demanded.2

They were to The King of barons of the

But in spite of these tremendous powers, the legates met with but little success. The heretics were obstinate. The bishops were unfriendly. The princes were indifferent. Yet one stranger was found to attach himself devotedly to the cause of the disappointed Abbot of Citeaux. The young enthusiast from Osma became at once his disciple and his critic, his friend, his champion and his supercessor. Aroused, not only to thought, but to action, by the storm that he saw brewing around him, the sub-prior of the quiet monastery in Castile perceived the gravity of the situation, while bishops and legates were too blind or too careless to see the danger that was looming in the distance. To bring the World back again within the pale of the Church; this was the dream of Dominic. And his zealous indignation was stirred up at the sight of the lordly prelates and the luxurious Legati pro Pontifice, too proud to approach the common people save with 1 Llorente, Hist. de la Inquisition, &c., I. ch. ii.

2 Manrique, Annales de Citeaux (1204), liv. 2. no. 6, and (1205, chaps. 1, 2).

fire and sword, no less than as the contemplation of the idle and useless monks hidden in the seclusion of their cloisters. The work of Dominic was to be done by a complete reversal of the practice of the older monasticism, by the enlisting of an army of spiritual soldiers who should sally forth to meet the foe on his own ground. Least of all were the heretics to be converted by legates in silk attire, rich, luxurious, epicurean, faithless. Their splendid retinues, their pomp of priestly power were indeed most distasteful to the Spanish ascetic, who, in the humble guise of a poor brother in Christ, addressed himself at once to the work of his life, observing at least the letter, if he failed to perceive the true spirit, of the Gospel injunctions to the first missionaries of Christianity.

Nothing could be more unlike the splendour of a Pontifical legate than the conversation of the bare-footed apostle who begged his daily bread as he preached his religion from door to door. But even thus, devoted, earnest, self-denying, sincere, enthusiastic, Dominic failed to convert the early Protestants of Languedoc. The people were as heedless of the strange sub-prior as they had been of the teaching of their own clergy. They had become impatient, not only of their local priests, but of the control of Innocent at Rome. A tempest was, indeed, brewing over religious Europe; and the first mutterings of the storm were heard in Languedoc. But if Dominic was unable to shake the faith of the Albigensian heretics, his visit to Languedoc had results which shook the world. Before the Sub-Prior of Osma had been a year in the South of France he had established at Prouille, between Fanjeaux and Montreal, near Carcassonne, a convent for nuns (1206); and shortly afterwards, a brotherhood or company of preaching friars, who were spoken of as "the companions of Dominic."1

Yet were the results not immediately felt; and the assassination of Pierre de Castelnau by the over-zealous Provençals, resenting his denunciations of their sovereign Raymond VI. of Toulouse, brought the earliest stage of the Papal intervention to a disastrous conclusion. But Rome had not said its last word. The dead legate was beatified as a martyr.2 Raymond of Toulouse was excommunicated as a heretic. His subjects and his territories were given over to the secular arm. In March, 1208, Pope Innocent called upon the faithful in Europe to undertake a crusade, for the conversion, by fire and sword, of those unhappy dwellers in Languedoc,

1 The first religious house actually founded by Dominic was in 1214 at Toulouse. The building was presented by Pierre Cellain, a citizen of the town. 2 Manrique, tom. iii. (1208), chap. 2.

whose dreadful fate has made their name famous in history as that of the Albigenses.1

Peter of Aragon, as the nearest neighbour of the unfortunate Raymond of Toulouse, was called upon at once by Simon de Montfort the Commander of the Papal troops, and by the unhappy heretics whom he threatened with destruction, to carry his forces across the Pyrenees. But Peter maintained a timid neutrality which pleased neither the persecutor nor the persecuted. He had, indeed, affianced his more distinguished son, James of Aragon, to a daughter of Simon de Montfort. But he had himself married (in 1204) Maria, the daughter and heiress of the Count of Montpellier; and wishing, perhaps, like the Scottish nobles of the eighteenth century, to have a relation in either camp, he had also given his sisters, Doña Leonora and Doña Sancha, in marriage to two Counts of Toulouse, Raymond VI., and his son, who succeeded him in 1222, as Raymond VII. Desirous, no doubt, of withdrawing from the neighbourhood of so embarrassing a contest, he offered his services to Alfonso of Castile in his expedition against the Infidel, and turned his steps towards Andalusia, while his more distinguished countryman took his place in the van of the Crusaders as the spiritual delegate of Arnold of Citeaux.

Disappointed at the failure of his personal efforts for the conversion of the heretics, Dominic was content to hand over to the material sword of Simon de Montfort and his pitiless Papal troops, the unhappy people who were unconvinced by the moral sword of his preaching. But not even then did he relax his own personal efforts. The cross and the sword moved side by side. The tongue and the lance should each be in the service of the Faith. If Dominic was merciless, he was sincere; if he was bigoted, he was enthusiastic; if his methods were odious, his aims were noble; if his religion was inhuman, he was yet a true man. Of such are the rulers of the world.

Lacordaire and other admirers of the great founder of the

1 Inhabitants of the district of Albigeois, South of the Cevennes, and ccn. demned at the Council of Lombes or Albi, in Languedoc, in 1176. Albi is capital of the modern department of the Tarn.

2 Simon de Montfort was not chosen leader of the Papalini until June 18, 1209, after the massacre of Beziers and Carcassonne. The Duke of Burgundy must share with the Papal Legate, Milo, the honours of those memorable acts of faith. It is uncertain whether Dominic was present on either occasion. But he certainly approved of what was done. Drane's Life of St. Dominic (1891), 78, 79.

3 Manrique, Annales de Citeaux, tom. iii. (1210), ch. 4. It is true that Calaroga is many miles from the frontier of Aragon. But Peter and Dominic were, at least, both of them Spaniards.

* Le glaive materiel . . . le glaive moral.

p. 122.

Lacordaire, Vie de St. Dominique,

Dominicans are much concerned to prove that the saint was not present either at Beziers or at Carcassonne, and that he had nothing whatever to do with the wholesale slaughterings that were ordered or approved by Innocent. The preacher, it is said, was never an executioner. This tenderness for the bodies of heretics is very modern; this indirect censure of a Pope is hardly orthodox; nor is it possible to acquit Dominic of active participation in the Papal work of what he believed to be praiseworthy destruction. His hands, no doubt, were stained with no Christian blood. He may not even like Arnold of Citeaux 1 have shouted to the massacre. But his chosen work was the "examination and conviction" of the heretics, in cold blood, before they were handed over to the executioner. And his parting words to the people among whom he had so long laboured for the Faith, tell, at least, of no tenderness for the bodies of the obstinate heretics "For many years," said he to the unconverted Albigenses, "I have spoken to you with gentleness, with prayers, with tears, but according to the proverb of my country, where the Benediction has no effect, the Rod may have much. Behold now I rouse up against you princes and prelates, nations and kingdoms, and many shall preach by the sword." 2 And by the sword assuredly did many preach, aye, and by the faggot too, under the patronage of Santo Domingo, in the days that were yet for

to come.

Peter of Aragon, in the South of Spain, was at once bolder and more fortunate than he had been in his own dominions; and in the great Christian victory at las Navas de Tolosa, he may claim an honourable share. Inspired apparently by this great success, he returned to Aragon, and abandoning his neutral attitude as regards his persecuted neighbours in Languedoc, he boldly took the field against Simon de Montfort, and fell, sword in hand, outside the bloodstained walls of Muret. Thus it was that the king who began his reign with a most servile self-abasement before the ecclesiastical power, for which his memory even in Spain has justly been held in contempt, gave his life for the unhappy victims of ecclesiastical tyranny, slain by the emissaries of the self-same Pope who had received his tribute and his homage, and had even honoured him with the title of The Catholic, less than ten years before.

1 Fertur dixisse, "Cadite Cadite, novit Dominus qui sunt ejus!" See an article by Lord Acton in Eng. Hist. Review (1888), p. 738. Such sayings are rarely authentic, and can never, of course, be proved.

MSS. de Prouille Monuments du Couvent de Toulouse, par. P. Percin,

p. 20, no. 47, and Drane, Life, &c., p. 181.

3 Simon de Montfort was killed at the siege of Toulouse in 1218.