Two years butchery of men, women, and children had not yet broken the spirit of the Albigensians, and at the beginning of 1213, the Legates and Simon were dismayed to hear from Innocent that the crusade was over, and the troops had better proceed against the Saracens; that Raymond had not yet been legally convicted of heresy and murder, and had not therefore forfeited his fief; that, in any case, Raymond's sons, rather than Simon de Montfort, were his natural successors. Two Bulls (January 17 and 18, 1213) and four letters in quick succession apprised the miserable group that Innocent--largely owing to the intervention of Pedro of Aragon--at length appreciated their misconduct or had the courage to consult his better feelings. Unhappily, his courage did not last long. They stormed Rome with their remonstrances, and Innocent yielded. As, moreover, the King of Aragon failed in his attempt to reduce them by arms, the cause of Raymond was utterly lost and his territory was made over to Rome. To the end Innocent wavered between his more humane feeling and the policy he had so long countenanced. He refused to confirm the appointment of Simon as sovereign (under Rome) of the whole territory, and when Arnold (who was now Archbishop of Narbonne) quarrelled with Simon over the title of Duke of Narbonne, he supported Arnold. At the Lateran Council, which was to decide the issue, he made a plea for leniency to Raymond and justice to his heirs, but he yielded to the truculent priests, and the unhappy prince was cast aside with an annual pension of four hundred marks. Innocent did not live to see the arrogant Arnold excommunicate de Montfort, and the two Raymonds return and win back much of their estate.
_Causa causæ est causa causati_, the schoolmen used to say. The Pope who maintained Arnold of Citeaux, Foulques of Marseilles, and Simon de Montfort in their positions when their characters were fully revealed, and the whole of Europe knew the atrocities they committed, bears the guilt of the massacre of the Albigensians.
The fourth Lateran Council was his last work, and one of the most important Councils of the Middle Ages. He summoned all the bishops, abbots, and priors of Christendom to come, on November 1, 1215, to discuss the reform of the Church, the suppression of heresy, and the recovery of Palestine. A vast audience listened to his opening sermon on November 11th, and for nineteen days they framed laws against heretics, Jews, and schismatics: vainly thundered against the vice, sensuality, and rapacity of the clergy: reduced the forbidden degrees of kindred (in marriage) to four--since there were only four humours in the body: imposed on all Christians a duty of confessing at least once a year: and fixed the next Crusade for June 1, 1216. But Innocent, if he marked with pride the contrast of that gorgeous assemblage to the little group of Christians who had met in an inn in the Transtiberina a thousand years earlier, cannot have been content. Not a single Greek had responded to his summons: grave murmurs at his hard policy and despotic action arose in the Council itself: half the prelates, at least, were unfit to impose reforming measures on their priests: and the ghastly mockery of his last Crusade gave little hope for the future. He did not even appreciate the new forces for good which were rising. He had coldly received, if not actually discouraged, Dominic and Francis. His ideal was power: of love he knew nothing. He flung himself ardently into the preparation for the new war on the Saracens, and died, on June 16, 1216, with the call to arms on his lips. He sacrificed himself nobly in the interest of his high ideal, and was one of the greatest makers of the Papacy, but he sacrificed also much that men inalienably prize, and he began the unmaking of the Papacy.