The Accidental Pope

Jacques Fournier (c.1285 - 25 April 1342) was born in Foix, a county in the southern part of France. He earned a Doctor of Philosophy at the University of Paris, joined the Cistercians, and became abbot of the Cistercian Fontfroide Abbey in 1311. His organizational ability and intelligence brought him attention, and he was made Bishop of Pamiers in 1317.

As bishop he focused on rooting out Catharism, a heresy that was hanging on in his area. He helped Bernardo Gui and the Inquisition in this matter; the result was the Fournier Letters, records of the questioning that six centuries later became a best-seller. His efforts in fighting heresy brought him a promotion to Bishop of Mirepoix in 1326, and a cardinal a year later. While in Avignon, Pope John XXII—who was particularly concerned about magic—charged him with examining the works of William of Ockham, German mystic Meister Eckhart, Michael of Cesena, and others, looking for heresy.

Pope John died 4 December 1334; the Conclave was opened nine days later. The majority were ready to elect Cardinal Jean-Raymond de Comminges, but he had to promise not to return the papacy to Rome. Comminges would not make any prior commitments. The Conclave called his bluff by declaring their newest cardinal, Fournier, as a candidate. Because he was new, it was assumed he would not win an election. The Conclave should have planned more carefully: the vote was taken and Fournier won, surprising everyone who assumed they could vote for him but surely the majority would not, right?

Too late. The vote was legitimate, causing Fournier to exclaim "You have elected an ignoramus!" He took the name Benedict XII at his investiture on 8 January 1335. He worked hard to reform and standardize practices and expectations of the religious orders.

He died in his mid-50s, in 1342, but in his seven years as pope he accomplished a lot, and had a failure that led to one of the most defining events of the Middle Ages. We're going to take a look at the rest of his résumé tomorrow.

The Story of Montaillou

When French historian Emmanuel Le Roy Ladurie (1929 – 2023) set out to write an account of a typical French medieval village, based on certain records of the time, he and his publisher had no idea that its 1975 publication would turn into a best-seller. Montaillou, village occitan de 1294 à 1324 ("Montaillou, an Occitan Village from 1294 to 1324"). Ladurie wanted to make accessible to a modern audience the lives and beliefs of this small village in the Pyrenees (near the border with the Iberian Peninsula) at the beginning of the 14th century. (The illustration is a much more recent view of Montaillou.)

It is a social history, also called "history from below," trying to understand the past through research into regular living rather than political or military history, or the lives of prominent figures at the top of the social-political pyramid.

He had a very specific reason for examining that particular place and time. The book was translated into English in 1978 with the subtitle "The Promised Land of Error / Cathars and Catholics in a French Village." The "certain records" mentioned in the first paragraph were those made by the Inquisition, specifically a group of documents called the Fournier Register. This was made by Jacques Fournier, the Bishop of Pamiers, in whose diocese Montaillou lay. This area was one of the last holdouts of the heresy Catharism, and Fournier was determined to eliminate it.

The Inquisition was quite careful in its procedures. During questioning of a subject, a scribe would take short notes. These would then be expanded more fully with the help of the Inquisitor, and the result shown to the questioned for review and edits. The Occitan language would also be translated into Church Latin. The result was a record of hundreds of commoners and their day-to-day observations and opinions.

One example of beliefs is his questioning of Guillemette of Ornolac, who was said to have doubted the existence of the soul. She offered the opinion that the "soul" was really blood, and that death is the end. When asked who taught her this, she replied "No, I thought it over and believed it myself." She was sentenced to wear a cross of yellow on her back for the rest of her life. Of the hundreds questioned—578 sessions, mostly with peasants—his inquisition resulted in only five capital sentences (being burned at the stake).

His thoroughness impressed his superiors, and he quickly advanced through the ranks. And that is why we have these early records so carefully preserved so that Ladurie could comb through them six and a half centuries later: Fournier took them with him when he went to Avignon. Why Avignon? He became pope. Let's take a look at Pope Benedict XII tomorrow.

The First Mass Murderer

I have mentioned the 12th century heresy called Catharism. The attempts to stamp it out are called the Albigensian Crusade (and sometimes the Cathar Crusade). One prominent Crusader was Arnaud Amalric.

Arnaud was a Cistercian (a branch of Benedictines), who became abbot of Cîteaux from 1202 to 1212. In 1204 he was sent by Pope Innocent III to attempt the conversion of the Albigensians who followed Catharism. His attempts to convert them to mainstream Catholicism did not work, and so his preaching turned to speaking out against them to those who would listen. This was followed by leading a Crusade against Catharism, the first major military operation of which was a 22 July 1209 attack on the town of Béziers in southern France.

In a letter to Innocent in August 1209, he describes the attack:

...while discussions were still going on with the barons about the release of those in the city who were deemed to be Catholics, the servants and other persons of low rank and unarmed attacked the city without waiting for orders from their leaders. To our amazement, crying "to arms, to arms!", within the space of two or three hours they crossed the ditches and the walls and Béziers was taken. Our men spared no one, irrespective of rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people. After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt...

The number 20,000 is clearly an exaggeration, but his description of the wholesale slaughter "irrespective of rank, sex or age" is likely to be more or less accurate. Because the sack of Bèziers apparently did not distinguish between Cathars and Catholics, Arnaud is reported to have said at the time "Kill them. For the Lord knows who are His."

This is considered the origin of an oft-repeated line: "Kill them all and let God sort them out." Arnaud's line was recorded 13 years later by Caesarius of Heisterbach, prior of a Cistercian abbey. Caesarius was not an eyewitness, never met Arnaud, and we have no proof that Arnaud actually said this, but some use the incident to refer to Arnaud Amalric as the first proponent of mass murder.

Arnaud was named archbishop of Narbonne in 1212, after which we hear little about him. He died on 29 September 1225.

As for his imaginative chronicler, Caesarius of Heisterbach, I'll tell you a little more tomorrow, as well as his identification of a particularly unhelpful demon.

Louis the Saint

Louis IX of France (1214 - 1270) was crowned at the age of 12 after his father Louis VIII "The Lion" died of dysentery coming back from fighting the Albigensian Crusade against the Cathars. His mother, Blanche of Castile, acted as his regent and made sure he was educated, having him taught Latin, rhetoric, writing, and the arts of war and government. Part of his reading instruction was through the Psalter of St. Louis. Through her influence he became very devout. His mother's influence was strong, but when he reached the age of 20 she seems to have become more a counselor than a regent.

Louis' devotion led him to go on two Crusades. He could not convince any of the rulers of Europe to go on Crusade, so he organized and funded the 7th Crusade himself; it did not go very well. The 8th Crusade went even more poorly, and he died while on it.

His failure at Crusading enhanced rather than tarnished his reputation, however, since it showed his religious devotion to one and all. He also built the Sainte-Chapelle ("Holy Chapel") solely to house the Crown of Thorns, which he had received from Baldwin II by paying off a debt of Baldwin for 135,000 livres.

Louis also presided over the Disputations of Paris (parts one and two) in which Jewish leaders were forced to respond to charges of anti-Christian passages in the Talmud, copies of which he would have collected and destroyed. Along with this, he expanded the Inquisition.

Part of his devotion was because he considered French to be foremost in protecting the Church, since the first Christian named "Holy Roman Emperor" was Charlemagne of the Franks. He though France had an obligation as the "eldest daughter of the Church" to lead in Christian behavior, proselytizing, and freeing the Holy Land.

He died in 1270 at Tunis, and the body to be transported from the north coast of Africa to Sicily, thence through Italy, across the Alps, and most of France until they reached St.-Denis. He was declared a saint in 1297 by Pope Boniface VIII.

Here's a question: if someone dies while traveling, what s done with the body? A person of no status might be buried right there. Maybe they'd be wrapped in canvas, or a coffin would be procured. What about a royal personage, though, one for whom you have great respect? How do you prepare a body? Let's talk about that tomorrow.

The Waldensian Movement

The Waldensians are a Christian protestant group that originated in the Middle Ages and still exists, having survived—sometimes through severe persecution—for 800 years.

There was a time when they claimed to be older, claiming that they were established when St. Paul traveled to Spain. (Romans 15:15:23-28: “But now that there is no more place for me to work in these regions , and since I have been longing for many years to visit you,  I plan to do so when I go to Spain.") Some Waldensian groups believed they were founded in the tome of Constantine. Others claimed their origin with certain known reformers such as Claudius of Turin (a Carolingian reformer and iconoclast) or Berengarius of Tours, an intellectual at the cathedral school of Chartres in the 11th century. These have been debunked in favor of the real founder, Peter Waldes (although there are questions about him, as well).

Waldensians started in the 1170s in Lyon in France, supposedly when Waldes, a wealthy merchant, had a personal conversion moment and decided to give away all his personal property and started preaching "apostolic poverty" as the true way to perfection in Christianity. The Church agreed with their choice of poverty, but did not like that Waldensians rejected the authority of local bishops. Nor did Waldensians care for the Church's opinion on who was fit to preach. They also rejected many of the trappings of the Church not found in the Bible: indulgences, the Mass, purgatory, and the papacy.

The Waldensians were declared heretical by 1215 at the Fourth Lateran Council (Canon 3 of the Council was about them and the Albigensians and Cathars). Persecution had already: more than 80 of the sect had been burned in Strasbourg. Pope Innocent III offered them (and the Cathars) to return to the Church's good graces by giving up some of their more radical ideas; those who did were renamed "Poor Catholics." Those who did not were subject to persecution, along with any other reform-based movement that did not conform.

1251 saw Waldensians in Toulouse massacred and the town burned down. Twenty-two villages in Provence were massacred when King Francis I of France decided to punish religious dissenters.

Later centuries saw worse treatment of the Waldensians. Pope Innocent VIII issued a bull for their extermination in 1487. The archdeacon of Cremona organized a crusade in the Piedmont that devastated the area and caused many to flee, until the Duke of Savoy intervened to prevent the further turmoil in his lands.

Besides persecution, however, they also embodied perseverance. These "proto-Protestants" are distinguished from the Protestant movements o the Renaissance because they did not record formal arguments against established Church doctrine, choosing to keep their practices simple and Bible-based. They persisted, and the 16th century found them most closely aligned with Calvinism.

Even after that, in January 1655, a less-admirable Duke of Savoy tortured and killed hundreds of Waldensians in what is called the Piedmont Easter. Twenty years later Louis XIV of France began a campaign to force Waldensians to become Catholics. A few years later, three days of combat resulted in 8000 surviving Waldensians (2000 were killed) thrown into prison.

It was not until 1848 that the Edict of Emancipation gave the Waldensian Church legal and political freedom. Pope Francis visited the Waldensian Church in Turin, Italy and apologized for the past actions of the Church.

Their logo (shown here) has a Latin motto that means "a light shining in darkness."

Tomorrow I want to tell you more about their origin, and their founder.

Predestination

Ephesians 1:11 says "In him we have obtained an inheritance, having been predestined according to the purpose of him who works all things according to the counsel of his will." The Old and New Testaments as well have other passages that declare God's will as the driving force behind all actions and events.

Augustine of Hippo (354 - 430 CE) was fine with this. He maintained that God had foreknowledge of whether individuals would deserve heaven or hell. If God is omniscient, and omniscience includes knowledge of what is to come, then God knows what people will do. He also explained the sin of Pride as thinking that we are the ones who choose God rather than God's grace that empowers the initial act of faith. Some scholars claim that Augustine believed in "double predestination," the term that is used to explain that God chooses those who will be saved and those who will be damned.

(This seems to argue against the doctrine of Free Will, that human beings choose to do good or do bad, and hence are responsible for the ultimate fate of their souls. In my (Roman Catholic) youth, we were taught that God's knowledge does not "lock us in" to a certain path. It was explained as foreordination: God simply knows ahead of time the choices we will make.)

Of the three main Jewish sects in the 1st century CE, the Romano-Jewish historian Josephus (c.37 - c.100) wrote that the Sadducees did not have any thoughts on predestination, but the Essenes and Pharisees felt God's providence ordered all human events. The Pharisees still believed that man could choose between right and wrong. We don't know how scholarly an interpretation this was by Josephus.

Pope Clement I (d.99 CE) wrote a letter to the Corinthians in which he appeared to express a predestinarian view of salvation.

Valentinus (c.100 - c.180 CE) believed it depended on what kind of nature you were born with, either good or bad or a mix of the two. A person born with good nature will be saved, with a bad nature will never be saved, with a mixture can go either way.

St. Irenaeus believed Valentinus' view was unfair, and that humans were free to choose salvation or not.

After Augustine, most arguments for or against predestination were based on agreeing with or refuting his explanations.

When the Middle Ages got well and truly underway, people like Gottschalk of Orbais (c.808 - 868) believed in the above mentioned double predestination. (I will say more about him tomorrow.)

Thomas Aquinas believed in free will, but also taught that God predestines certain people to a special closeness to God (called the beatific vision) based solely on God's own goodness.

William of Ockham (c.1287 - 1347) taught free will, but God predestines based on people's good works that He foresees.

The Cathars denied free will.

This is a subject on which there is likely never to be universal agreement.

That Gottschalk of Orbais really stirred things up when he weighed in. Stay tuned.

The Siege of Montségur

The Cathars, mentioned yesterday, were a largely peaceful group that attempted to lead lives of Christian simplicity, rejecting the material world as much as possible. Their beliefs challenged official Church doctrine, and the Inquisition and the Albigensian Crusade were chief instruments in suppressing them. They were not completely successful, however.

The remains of a later structure on Montségur

In May 1243, over 200 Cathars took refuge in a stone chateau on a peak called Montségur in southern France, surrounded by French military. Montségur wasn't a last resort of fleeing Cathars, however: it had been granted to them as the headquarters of their Cathar Church by its sympathetic owner, the Occitan nobleman Raymond de Péreille. (For his trouble, he was interrogated by the Inquisition after the Siege concluded.)

The Siege took nine months. The usual tactic is to outlast the besieged while their food and water runs out. Montségur was well-provisioned, however, and sympathetic locals snuck in with supplies. Also, the Cathars were accustomed to deprivation, so emergency rations were no hardship for them. For these reasons, the 10,000 royal troops waited in vain until the decision was made to attack. After much difficulty, a position was established on the eastern side of the peak, where a catapult was constructed. The bombardment enabled the attackers to take control of the chateau's defensive gateway, the barbican, and therefore move the catapult closer in order to do more damage to the walls and interior.

The besieged were given two weeks to depart safely, on the condition that they renounced Catharism. Death by burning was the alternative. The Cathars spent the two weeks fasting and praying in preparation for departing from a world they considered sinful anyway. On 16 March, 1244, over 200 of them marched downhill to the pyre that had been prepared and of their own volition climbed onto the stacks of wood. The place is now known as Prats de Cremats [Occitan: "Field of the Burned"].

Catharism survived in southern France, but not in any organized fashion. The presence of the Inquisition caused many Cathars to emigrate to more hospitable regions, such as Spain and Italy.

Catharism

The Cathar symbol

The Cathars were a heretical sect that first appeared in historical records of Europe about 1143. In truth, the term was used earlier: the first Council of Nicaea in 325 discussed allowing "Cathars" to convert to the approved Christianity, and the 8th century St. John Damascene's book on heresies mentions Cathars, but the group of which we know more in the Middle Ages was probably not related to those earlier groups.

The confusion would come from the name itself. "Cathar" comes from the Greek katharoi, meaning "the pure ones." The later medieval Cathars were a dualist movement: they believed that there were two opposing forces of equal power, good and evil. The good was represented by a single God (no Trinity for them!) and the spiritual side of life; the material world was the result of a god of evil, Satan. They therefore rejected (as much as possible) the material world., since it was all tainted with sin by its connection to Satan. One aspect of the material world that they rejected was sex and its partner, marriage, as this blog discussed here.

Groups of Cathars flourished in the 12th century in the Rhineland, France, and northern Italian cities. Their lifestyle was a radical departure from the norm, but it was not objectionable to many. Bernard of Clairvaux, one of the strongest voices in Christianity of his day) said of them:

If you question the heretic about his faith, nothing is more Christian; if about his daily converse, nothing more blameless; and what he says he proves by his actions ... As regards his life and conduct, he cheats no one, pushes ahead of no one, does violence to no one. Moreover, his cheeks are pale with fasting; he does not eat the bread of idleness; he labours with his hands and thus makes his living. Women  are leaving their husbands, men are putting aside their wives, and they all flock to those heretics! Clerics and priests, the youthful and the adult among them, are leaving their congregations and churches.... [Sermon 65]

They were ascetic Christians living the Christian life, harming no one. They rejected, however, the trappings of Roman Catholicism. Pope Innocent III tried to bring them back "into the fold" by sending missionaries to preach to them. One of these, Pierre de Castelnau, was murdered on 15 January, 1208, during one such attempt, supposedly by Count Raymond of Toulouse, whom he was accusing of being too lenient with the Cathars. After this act, Innocent abandoned his attempts to win over the Cathars, and instead decided to wipe them out with the action known as the Albigensian Crusade.

Curbing the Pope

19th century bust of Arnold.

For those in the Middle Ages who thought the pope should be solely a spiritual leader and not wield temporal authority, Arnold of Brescia was their most ardent spokesperson. A short-lived 12th century Christian sect even named themselves "Arnoldists" after him; they lost credibility—condemned in 1184 at the Synod of Verona along with Cathars and Waldensians—when they also dared to preach against baptism and communion.

Arnold was born about 1190, in Lombardy in northern Italy. He joined the Augustinians, whose frugal ways clashed with the activities of the increasingly powerful popes. He supposedly studied at the University of Paris under Peter Abelard. Arnold and Abelard both were outspoken about the temporal power of the papacy, but they lost the debate at the Synod of Sens in 1141. Abelard gave in, but Arnold kept up his vocal condemnation of the popes. He was condemned by Pope Innocent II (mentioned here and here), and fled to Zurich.

After Innocent's death, Arnold reconciled with Pope Eugene III, but when he returned to Italy and found that Rome had changed its political structure and refused to allow Eugene to return, Arnold sided with Rome and quickly rose to a position of authority (rather counter to what he objected to about the papacy). He preached that priests who owned property gave up their qualifications to administer the sacraments.

Eugene in exile excommunicated Arnold, but even when Eugene managed to return to Rome, Arnold continued to wired political power in opposition to papal policies.

The next pope, Adrian IV, was not as mild-mannered and easily pushed around as Eugene: he took control of Rome in 1155 with the help of Holy Roman Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and forced Arnold into exile, where he was picked up by Barbarossa's forces and forced into a trial. He refused to renounce any of his positions—even when faced with execution—and he was hanged for rebellion (not heresy, curiously) in June 1155. His body was burned and the ashes thrown into the Tiber River to prevent his tomb from becoming a focal point for sympathizers who would consider him a holy martyr.

Simon de Montfort

Plaque on the site of Montfort's death

Simon de Montfort has been mentioned before, opposing Henry III, but that was the 6th Earl of Leicester. The Simon de Montfort we want to talk about today was his father, the 5th Earl.

Simon was born in 1160, succeeding his father as Baron de Montfort in 1181. In 1199, while taking part in a tournament, he heard Fulk of Neuilly preaching the 4th Crusade and decided to "take up the Cross" along with his brother, Guy (who had been on the 3rd Crusade already), and Count Theobald de Champagne.

Certain actions of the 4th Crusade were not to his liking, however. For one thing, on behalf of Venice and at the direction of Doge Enrico Dandolo, the Crusade was diverted to attack the city of Zara—a Christian city—on the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea. Montfort was opposed to this, and the "mismanagement" of the Crusade; he chose to break away from the main Crusading body. In the words of a contemporary chronicler who was with the 4th Crusade:

Then there befell an adventure which weighed heavily upon the host; for one of the great barons of the host, by name Simon of Montfort, had made private covenant with the King of Hungary, who was at enmity with those of the host, and went to him, abandoning the host. With him went Guy of Montfort his brother, [...], and the abbot of Vaux, who was a monk of the order of the Cistercians, and many others. And not long after another great lord of the host, called Enguerrand of Boves, joined the King of Hungary, together with Hugh, Enguerrand's brother, and such of the other people of their country as they could lead away.
These left the host, as you have just heard; and this was a great misfortune to the host, and to such as left it a great disgrace. [Chronicle of the Fourth Crusade, Geoffrey de Villehardouin]

Geoffrey probably had personal reasons for declaring this a disgrace (some of the mismanagement of the Crusade can be laid squarely at his feet), but Montfort clearly could not countenance a Crusading army attacking Christians. Neither could Pope Innocent III, who excommunicated the attackers' actions.*

Montfort was a supporter of the new Dominican order, having known its founder Dominic Guzman, and a devout Christian. After returning to Europe, Montfort was instrumental in the Albigensian Crusade in 1209, a war against the Cathars. (The Cathars were considered heretics for some of their unorthodox ideas.) He was a good tactician and a ruthless leader, willing to carry out orders from the Church no matter how harsh, such as when in 1210 he had 140 Cathars burned alive at Château de Minerve, a Cathar stronghold.

For his efforts, King Philip Augustus granted him the lands of Raymond of Toulouse, who was in Aragon. The difficulty was that Toulouse did not want to be handed over to someone else, so Montfort needed to besiege Toulouse in order to take control. After nine months of siege, Montfort was killed by a rock to the head thrown by a type of catapult called a mangonel.

He died on 25 June 1218, 796 years ago today.

*We will look at the 4th Crusade a little more tomorrow.

The Sacrament of Marriage

A medieval marriage, from a British Library ms.

The Christian churches that have survived until the modern era (Roman Catholicism, Eastern Orthodoxy, Oriental Orthodoxy) consider marriage a sacrament; that is, one of the seven

efficacious signs of grace, instituted by Christ and entrusted to the Church, by which divine life is dispensed to us. The visible rites by which the sacraments are celebrated signify and make present the graces proper to each sacrament. [Catechism of the Catholic Church]

Not everyone saw it that way. A Christian movement that was declared heretical, Catharism, had an entirely different view. (We call the movement "Catharism," but they called themselves Perfecti, "the perfected.") The Perfecti saw sexual reproduction as sinful, and wanted nothing to do with it. This meant they avoided anything that was the product of sexual reproduction, including animals that others would consume as food. They were opposed to marriage completely; so completely, that proof of legal marriage was enough to get a charge of heresy dismissed, if one was accused of being a Cathar.

It is due to the Cathars that marriage is considered a sacrament. The Synod of Verona in 1184 (during the pontificate of Pope Lucius III) was convened to discuss and condemn heresy. It declared marriage a sacrament in opposition to what was being said by Cathars and other heretical groups like the Waldensians.

This was despite the fact that marriage does not fulfill a goal in the same way as the other sacraments. There are sacraments of Christian initiation: Baptism, Confirmation, Communion. There are sacraments that "confer a character": Baptism, Confirmation, Holy Orders. Penance/Confession and Anointing of the Sick help to purify the soul. The sacrament of marriage puts a "stamp of approval" on the start of a new phase in a couple's lives and reminds them of their place in the community of Christians. In the words of one scholar:

Like the other sacraments, medieval writers argued, marriage was an instrument of sanctification, a channel of grace that caused God's gracious gifts and blessings to be poured upon humanity. Marriage sanctified the Christian couple by allowing them to comply with God's law for marriage and by providing them with an ideal model of marriage in Christ the bridegroom, who took the church as his bride and accorded it highest love, devotion, and sacrifice, even to the point of death. [source]

One of the most interesting aspects of marriage in the Catholic Church is that it relies on "free consent": two people choose to marry each other, and the Church only officiates, it does not give or deny approval to a marriage.