oice lay in his own hand. An
extraordinary poem by Peire Cardinal--not by any means a
heretic--breathes this spirit. He confronts God not with the customary
humility, but as one power confronts the other. "I will write a new
poem, and on the day of the Last Judgment I will read it to Him who has
created me from nothing. If He should condemn me to everlasting
damnation, I will say to Him: Lord, have mercy on me, for I have always
striven against the wicked world," (the troubadour here alludes to his
many polemic poems) "and save me from the torments of hell. The heavenly
host will marvel at my speech. And I shall say to God that He sins
against His creatures if he delivers them into the hands of the devil.
Rather let Him drive away the devils, for then He will win more souls
and all the world will be blessed.... I will not despair of Thee and
therefore Thou must forgive my sins and save my soul and my heart. If I
had not been born I should not have sinned. It would be a great wrong
and a sin if Thou didst condemn me to burn in hell everlastingly, for
truly I may accuse Thee of having sent me a thousand evils for one
blessing."

Most terrible was the punishment inflicted upon Provence by Innocent
III. That highly intellectual pope realised that he was faced by a
revival of the true religious instinct from which the authority of the
Church had far more to fear than from all sultans and emirs put
together. The system of absolute, immutable values was threatened with
destruction. In the year 1208 the Spanish nobleman Dominicus Guzman
founded the order of the Dominicans and the Inquisition, which invaded
Provence together with the papal army supported by France for political
reasons. Half a million men were butchered in order to crush the spirit
understood by a few hundreds at most; one stake was kindled by the
other; in the memory of man no greater sacrifice to tradition and dogma
had ever been made. Simon de Montfort, the head of the expedition, sent
the following laconic report to the pope: "We spared neither sex nor age
nor name, but slew all with the edge of the sword."

The troubadours bewailed the desolate country, the beauty that was no
more. Montanhagol, although greatly intimidated by the Inquisition,
wrote a long poem on the subject, and the otherwise unknown Bernard
Sicard de Marvajols laments:

Oh! Toulouse and Provence,
And thou, land of Agence,
Carcassonne and Beziers!
As once I behel