of
the children put to shame the coldness of their elders, whom he was
still labouring, with little success, to enlist in the cause of the Holy
Land.

PART III.

A war of a different kind, but which was also styled a crusade, was
carried on in the south of France while Innocent was pope. In that
country there were great numbers of persons who did not agree with the
Roman Church, and who are known by the names of Waldenses and
Albigenses. The opinions of these two parties differed greatly from each
other. The Waldenses, whose name was given to them from Peter Waldo, of
Lyons, who founded the party about the year 1170, were a quiet set of
people, something like the Quakers of our own time. They dressed and
lived plainly, they were mild in their manners, and used some rather
affected ways of speech; they thought all war and all oaths wrong, they
did not acknowledge the claims of the clergy, and, although they
attended the services of the Church, it is said that they secretly
mocked at them. They were fond of reading the Holy Scripture in their
own language, while the Roman Church would only allow it to be read in
Latin, which was understood by few except the clergy, and not by all of
_them_. And so eager were the Waldenses to bring people to their own way
of thinking, that we are told of one of them, a poor man, who, after his
day's work, used to swim across a river in wintry nights, that he might
reach a person whom he wished to convert.

The Albigenses, on whom the persecution chiefly fell, held something
like the doctrines of Manes, whom I mentioned a long way back,[80] so
that they could not properly be considered as Christians at all. But,
although we cannot think well of their doctrines, the treatment of these
people was so cruel and so treacherous as to raise the strongest
feelings of anger and horror in all who read the accounts of it. Tens of
thousands were slain, and their rich and beautiful country was turned
into a desert.

[80] Part I., p. 110.

The chief leader of the crusade in the south of France was Simon de
Montfort, father of that Earl Simon who is famous in the history of
England. Innocent, although he seems to have been much deceived by those
who reported matters to him, was grievously to blame for having given
too much countenance to the cruelties and injustice which were practised
against the unhappy Albigenses.

Among the clergy who accompanied the Crusaders into southern France and
trie