Crusade Against the Grail - Rennes-le-Chateau Research and ...

118 PART THREE
burghers imitated the customs of the nobility and competed with them in bravura
and palatial spirit; like them, they dabbled in poetry, and if they wished to, they
could easily become "knights." Jealous of their independence, they rejected the
influence of the clergy and temporal authorities, although they shared the latter's
antipathy for the Church and its clerics.
On one occasion, the Bishop of Albi was called to the deathbed of a dying
relative. He asked him in which monastery he wished to be buried. "Don't worry. I
want to die together with the 'bonshommes' and to be buried by them." The Bishop
declared that he would not allow it. "The more you try to hinder me," declared the
dying man, "I will drag myself on all fours to them." And so it was: The
bonshommes took care of, consoled, and buried the relative of the Bishop of Albi.
Without any doubt, the rampant corruption in the Church was primarily
responsible for the anti-Rome movement in Occitania. Many bishops visited their
diocese only to collect arbitrary taxes, and for this purpose they retained entire
armies of tax collector-robbers. The disorder that reigned among the clergy was
indescribable. They fought and excommunicated one another. To avoid
recognition, priests hid their tonsures and wore lay clothing. If they managed to
escape the glares and taunts of the people in the street, they could not silence the
revilement of the troubadours:
Soon the day will come When the world will be completely
reversed. The priest will go to the tournament And the women will
preach.
PEIRE CARDINAL 6
When a heretic preached, people came in throngs and listened enthusiastically.
If by chance a Catholic priest spoke, the crowd would ask him ironically how he
could dare to preach the Word of God.
The Church recognized that the heresy's progress was stimulated by the
clergy's depravity and failure at their duties. Pope Innocent III declared "that the
responsibility for the depravity of the people's customs belongs fundamentally to
the clergy, and that from there flowed all