Now when we consider what these Albigensian "perfect" men were, and how dangerous they were to the well-being of society, by their influence over superstitious and ignorant peasants, urging them to self-murder, and thus causing the death of very many persons, we do not think that the Inquisition at Toulouse deserves all the odium that has been cast upon it. Many of those whom it condemned to death would probably have received a sentence of transportation for life in England at the present day; and though the execution of from two to three persons a year is certainly to be deplored, it is not just to denounce the Inquisition as bloodthirsty, when it sentenced to death those who had caused many innocent and ignorant persons to immolate themselves. We do not for a moment pretend to justify the Albigensian war; but we can understand the alarm caused to the Pope and to Christian France by the heathen reaction in Provence, Narbonne, and Toulouse. Nor were the Albigenses free from blame in other particulars. They exhibited their contempt for Christian churches and sacraments in a peculiarly offensive manner, likely to exasperate Catholics to the uttermost. One instance shall suffice, and that is so gross that it must be given in Latin:--
"Erat quidam pessimus hæreticus apud Tolosam, Hugo Faber nomine, qui quondam lapsus est in dementiam, quod juxta altare cujusdam ecclesiæ purgavit ventrem, et in contemptum Dei, cum palla altaris tersit posteriora sua ... quæ omnia cum vir venerabilis abbas Cistercii.... Comiti retulisset, et eum moneret ut puniret qui tantum faciens perpetrarat, respondit comes quod nullo modo propter hoc puniret in aliquo cives suos."
Peter of Castelnau, of whom we have now to speak, sprang from an illustrious family in the diocese of Montpellier, and was archdeacon of Maguelonne, when he was appointed by the Pope to be one of his legates in the southern provinces infected with heresy. But the desire of a higher perfection led Peter to renounce the honours of the world, and in 1200, to receive the Cistercian habit in the abbey of Fontfroide.
In 1203, he was again obliged to resume his labours as legate, together with Brother Raoul, his colleague, a Cistercian monk like himself. He visited Toulouse, where his efforts to repress heresy met with indifferent success. In 1204, he met the leaders of the Albigenses in conference at Carcassonne.