blood, he—laying blood-stained hands most cruelly on his own mother,¹ crushing the dignities of the apostolic see—strove to extract by violence her own possessions from her. ⊗Oh how insatiable is the gluttony of ambition which, to the extent that it devours greater things, the more it always howls demands⊗for new things to devour, gaping with inextinguishable hunger. Oh how shameless is the greed for earthly rank which, nowhere heeding the limits of decency, drives sacrilegious hands to stretch yet further against God, always promising its supporters that it is possible to ascend to the summit of higher authority, but secretly casting them down beneath the filth of every vice. These and similar things can easily be ascertained, not only in the aforementioned case, but indeed in all those who presumptuously raise violent hands against the possessions of holy mother church. What more? The apostolic sentence was passed publicly and in an entirely open way against him and, as a consequence of the proclamation, a new emperor was declared by the decree of the lord pope to have taken his place. But by what resolution this excessively obdurate legal case will have been broken off, or by what law it will have been determined, the following succession of years will reveal more plainly. In this same year it also happened that—while for five years and more now the Albigensians, a savage // disapproved by God, had opposed the religion of the catholic faith in an open attack, driving away God’s justice by themselves,² intending to establish their own justice—no mean crowd of the faithful mustered with one accord in Toulouse against the aforesaid mockers of divine law, on account of the persuasion of apostolic admonition and the strength of divine preaching of the word, but principally by the inspiration of divine grace—who, separated into battle-lines by the direction of divine strength, inflicted slaughter on the infidels by combat in open countryside such as the present age cannot recall. And this happened, however, in September in the one thousandth two hundredth and eleventh year, four days after the feast of Mary, under the most Christian leader and most invincible earl Simon, called of Montfort or of Rochefort, who, from the beginning, had most vehemently hunted down these people with passion. Yet hardly had this disturbance been quashed and ended, but behold!, a fresh persecution of Christians creeps up on another place. For just then a violent and despicable crowd of pagans landed on the coast of Spain with no mean fleet, who provoked Christians into military combat. Among the Christians a great-hearted king, whose by-name nevertheless was ‘the little king’, attacking with his retinue of knights, with divine strength shattered almost all of them. The king and leader of the pagans, called king of Morocco, only just escaped alive with the greatest dishonour.³ ¶The king of France shed not a little blood subjugating the land of the king of England in overseas regions to himself. The king of England effected a comparable slaughter in subjugating Ireland and Wales to himself. And what is more, the king of Scots, in proceeding against the son of MacUilleim, namely Gofraid, and destroying those who had personally betrayed him, left the lifeless corpses of many.⁴




In the 1212^th year a general order was issued by Innocent, the supreme pontiff, to the whole territory professing Christ, that all pastors of churches should, quashing every excuse, assemble in Rome at a prearranged date, namely 1 November 1215, for a general council to be celebrated there, excepting a bare minimum who should, by common consent, remain in each country for the care of souls. In the meantime, however, the pastors were themselves to preach the word of life with every urgency, and strengthen those who were weak in the faith, incite the strong, and what is more, seal them with the sign of the cross in support of the holy Promised Land, which at that time the Saracens had man-handled far too shamelessly and disgracefully. ¶Many great luminaries—.'. , that is, of most holy intercourse and most excellent doctrine—were sent a latere by the lord pope to every climate. Two of them were sent, one to England, the remaining one to France: to England