was in her nature none of the tenderness which alone
can ensure domestic love, nor yet enough force to enable her to make
herself a great queen.

Even before the death of their patroness the glories of the troubadours
were fading. There was an angry murmur, growing ever stronger, against
the immorality of the troubadours, and particularly against a new and
formidable heresy which had gained ground rapidly in the south of
France. With the doctrines of the Albigenses we are not concerned; it is
difficult to discover the exact truth about them, since we must rely
chiefly upon the testimony of their enemies. It is sufficiently well
established, however, that the Albigenses believed in a form of
Manichseism which asserted the existence of two Eternal powers,
equipotent, the one a power of Good, the other a power of Evil. Since
Evil ruled the world on equal terms with Good, might not man feel
utterly relieved of moral responsibility? Certainly, such is the
tendency of this species of Dualism.

Whether the Albigensian heresy be responsible or not, it is
unquestionable that the troubadours were in nearly all cases
indifferent, and in very many cases sceptical or utterly rebellious, in
their attitude toward the Church and its teachings. Among the nobility
the sacrament of marriage, so carefully hedged about by the canons of
the Church, could hardly have been regarded with much respect, since a
venal clergy was ready to sanction a union which their own Church
pronounced incestuous or to dissolve one which their own Church
pronounced indissoluble. Political and racial antipathy, the old
ineradicable and inexplicable hatred of north for south, helped on the
religious quarrel. Count Raymond of Toulouse, who seems to have been
merely an easy-going man, inclined rather to religious liberty and
freedom of conscience than to positive heresy, was assailed as a monster
of vice. At length, in 1208, Pope Innocent III. authorized the
Cistercian monks to preach a crusade against the Albigenses: "Arise! ye
soldiers of Christ! exterminate this impiety by every means that God may
reveal to you. Stretch forth your arms and smite the heretics, making
upon them war more relentless than upon the Saracens." So ran the papal
letters. The new crusade was preached far and wide over France, Germany,
and Italy, and a host of crusaders, promised greater indulgences than
those who went to the Holy Land, assembled to destroy Provence. Among
their leaders w