I had chapter and verse for it. A learned controversialist had denounced the Three Nail view as unworthy of Catholics and Christians.
"And for that they killed and racked and tortured----"
In truth it was for that among other errors of doctrine. It is difficult to find out what the Albigenses really believed, for they were so calumniated. Baring-Gould contends that they had revived the ancient paganism of the country.
They believed in two forces, a good and an evil: the nine-lived Manichæan heresy.
But that belief is represented in our good old friend the Devil, who, indeed, is probably a remnant of Pagan ideas. They rejected the Trinity, refused to worship saints, and discouraged marriage. They seemed very much like any other enthusiastic sect that breaks off from the main body of believers, and is ready to die for Three Nails instead of the orthodox Four. Will the history of religious persecution never cure people of their Three-Nail controversies?
"Aigues Mortes is a dead town! Maguelonne is the ghost of one."
The name has an aroma of romance, and a sort of tender melancholy which penetrates to the imagination before one knows whether it is a city or a mountain or some gloomy castle in an old fairy tale.
Once it was a splendid city spreading along the shores of the lagoon; now there remains but a solitary church, one of the characteristic fortress-churches of the Midi, a bare, primitive-looking building, closely protected on three sides by a grove of dark trees, in the centre of a little island formed by the sea and the lagoons which run, like an enamelled chain, all along these mournful coasts.
One can reach the island by boat across the lagoons from the little cardboard town of Palavas where the people of Montpellier go in summer for sea-bathing. In very calm weather it is possible to approach the isle by sea. The church is a most singular piece of early Christian architecture, without a window in the white, thick walls; and above, one sees the curved machicolations, as in a fortress, whence boiling lead and oil could be poured down on the heads of Saracen assailants, those terrible enemies of whom the ancient church builders stood in such dread.
Of the original Mother Church of St. Peter there has survived only the principal nave, "flanked before the destruction of the city with several towers."