heresies which had disturbed Christendom from the second century to the
ninth, had crept in and spread abroad. In it there were Arians,
Manicheans, Gnostics, Paulicians, Cathars (the pure), and other sects of
more local or more recent origin and name, Albigensians, Vaudians, Good
People and Poor of Lyons, some piously possessed with the desire of
returning to the pure faith and fraternal organization of the primitive
evangelical Church, others given over to the extravagances of imagination
or asceticism. The princes and the great laic lords of the country, the
Counts of Toulouse, Foix, and Comminges, the Viscount of Beziers, and
many others had not remained unaffected by this condition of the people:
the majority were accused of tolerating and even protecting the heretics;
and some were suspected of allowing their ideas to penetrate within their
own households. The bold sallies of the critical and jeering spirit, and
the abandonment of established creeds and discipline, bring about, before
long, a relaxation of morals; and liberty requires long time and many
trials before it learns to disavow and rise superior to license. In many
of the feudal courts and castles of Languedoc, Provence, and Aquitaine,
imaginations, words, and lives were licentious; and the charming poetry
of the troubadours and the gallant adventures of knights caused it to be
too easily forgotten that morality was but little more regarded than the
faith. Dating from the latter half of the eleventh century, not only the
popes, but the whole orthodox Church of France and its spiritual heads,
were seriously disquieted at the state of mind of Southern France, and
the dangers it threatened to the whole of Christendom. In 1145
St. Bernard, in all the lustre of his name and influence, undertook, in
concert with Cardinal Alberic, legate of the Pope Eugenius III., to go
and preach against the heretics in the countship of Toulouse. "We see
here," he wrote to Alphonse Jourdain, Count of Toulouse, "churches
without flocks, flocks without priests, priests without the respect which
is their due, and Christians without Christ; men die in their sins