After the not very effectual mission of St. Bernard, who died in 1153,
and for half a century, the orthodox Church was several times occupied
with the heretics of Southern France, who were before long called
Albigensians, either because they were numerous in the diocese of Albi,
or because the council of Lombers, one of the first at which their
condemnation was expressly pronounced (in 1165), was held in that
diocese. But the measures adopted at that time against them were at
first feebly executed, and had but little effect. The new ideas spread
more and more; and in 1167 the innovators themselves held, at
St. Felix-de-Caraman, a petty council, at which they appointed bishops
for districts where they had numerous partisans. Raymond VI., who, in
1195, succeeded his father, Raymond V., as Count of Toulouse, was
supposed to be favorably disposed towards them; he admitted them to
intimacy with him, and, it was said, allowed himself, in respect of the
orthodox Church, great liberty of thought and speech. Meanwhile the
great days and the chief actors in the struggle commenced by St. Bernard
were approaching. In 1198, Lothaire Conti, a pupil of the University of
Paris, was elected pope, with the title of Innocent III.; and, four or
five years later, Simon, Count of Montfort l'Amaury, came back from the
fifth crusade in the East, with a celebrity already established by his
valor and his zeal against the infidels. Innocent III., no unworthy
rival of Gregory VII., his late predecessor in the Holy See, had the same
grandeur of ideas and the same fixity of purpose, with less headiness in
his character, and more knowledge of the world, and more of the spirit of
policy. He looked upon the whole of Christendom as his kingdom, and upon
himself as the king whose business it was to make prevalent everywhere
the law of God. Simon, as Count of Montfort l'Amaury, was not a powerful
lord; but he was descended, it was said, from a natural son of King
Robert his mother, who was English, had left him heir to the earldom of
Leicester, and he had for his wife Alice de Montmorency. His social