Blessed Pierre de Castelnau

Toulouse was one of the chief centers of the Albigensian sect, and it was important that this great city should set the example of a return to the Catholic faith. The mission of the legates did not remain without fruit; they obtained from the principal inhabitants of the city a promise, by oath, to abjure heresy; in return, the legates hastened to confirm in the name of the Pope the liberties and franchises of the city. The Church, which does not tolerate the license of error, has always highly favored the legitimate liberties of peoples; she has never ceased to preach this word of the Gospel: "It is the truth that makes you free."

However, this initial success was not of long duration. The heresy, momentarily suppressed in Toulouse, became more threatening there than ever; and as, moreover, it spread its ravages in the surrounding regions, the legates moved away from Toulouse and began to evangelize all the places where the fervor of the sect most urgently solicited their zeal. Thus, in 1204, they went to Carcassonne to confer with the heretics, and there they had no difficulty in convincing them of the most appalling blasphemies.

But, as the legates applied themselves more to cultivating the Lord's vineyard, they could also better understand to what extent the foxes had known how to demolish, ruin, and sack it. The bishops, the princes, the barons, those very ones whom God had raised up to be the guardians of His vineyard, were leagued against the Church. Berengar, Archbishop of Narbonne, had been threatened by the legates with being deprived of his jurisdiction; and this prelate had, in turn, publicly registered his opposition to the power of the legates.

So many combined obstacles frightened Pierre de Castelnau. He asked the Pope to be relieved of a burden that was too heavy, and begged him to allow him to return to his monastery.

The S overeign Pontiff souverain Pontife Pope who commissioned Pierre de Castelnau against the Albigensians. was careful not to renounce the eminent services that his legate could render to the Church. The beautiful letter he wrote to him revived his courage. "To Brother Pierre de Castelnau, legate of the Apostolic See: The debt of charity, which does not seek its own interest, demands that he who rises by embracing Rachel on the heights of contemplation should not reject the embraces of Leah, even if her eyes are weak, when necessity calls him to active ministry. Since, therefore, in the presence of this necessity, we have deemed it good to tear you away, for a time, from the rest of contemplation that you had chosen, and have charged you for us, or rather for Christ, with the heavy ministry of the apostolic legation, so that you may one day succeed in reconciling to the Lord those whose spirits the angel of darkness has blinded, you must not refuse the work, even though the people to whom you are sent appear hard and incorrigible; for you are not unaware that the Lord can, from the very stones, raise up children to Abraham. Do not expect a lesser reward for not having, until now, succeeded according to your desires. It is the work that God rewards, and not the success. Hoping therefore firmly in the Lord who gives increase to the labor, we exhort and conjure your piety, and we even command you by this apostolic writing, to be instant with the peoples in season and out of season, to reprove, to entreat, to instruct, without ever tiring, to finally fulfill faithfully your charge as an evangelist and to accomplish to the end the ministry that we have entrusted to you."

Nevertheless, in 1206, we find him in Montpellier, lamenting with Brother Raoul, his colleague, the sterility of their common efforts.

The unfortunately numerous scandals that heresy was entitled to reproach the clergy for added one more difficulty to the work undertaken by the legates.

Heresy exerted a great influence on the clergy. By breaking all the bonds of morality, it had necessarily loosened those of ecclesiastical discipline. We do not wish to deny, certainly, that in the 12th and 13th centuries, so glorious, moreover, for the Church and above all so fruitful in great saints, the freedom of feudal morals and the abuse of wealth had caused serious damage to the purity of the priesthood; but we maintain that the immoral customs of heresy, infiltrating through the cracks of the sanctuary at the same time as they overflowed into the world, could act upon a great number of clerics with very pernicious influences; a fatally vicious circle where heresy accused the clergy, and where the clergy grew weak from the dissolving emanations of a corrupted atmosphere.

Be that as it may, the legates felt themselves failing again, when the Lord, says an old historian, "who always knows how to keep arrows in reserve in the quiver of His Providence, sent them from the depths of Spain two holy and valiant athletes."

In the month of July 1206, the venerable Bishop of Osma, Diego of Acebes, accompanied by a regular canon, sub-prior of his Church, came to knock at their door with the pilgrim's staff. The sub-prior was Saint Dominic.

The legates did not fail to confid saint Dominique Founder of the Order of Preachers and mission companion of Peter. e the cause of their sorrow to the bishop, and shared their failings with him. The bishop did not approve of the pusillanimous thoughts of the legates; on the contrary, he urged them to pursue the preaching of the Word more ardently than ever. However, he added that, to heal the ills of the Church, the Word was not enough, that the authority of example was necessary; that as apostles of the Gospel, they must live the life of the Apostles, walk barefoot, carry neither gold nor silver, and preach, in a word, the language of Christian poverty, at the same time as that of Catholic truth.

Saints understand each other easily, because their conversation, which is in heaven, is unanimous regarding heavenly things. The advice of the holy bishop was approved by the legates. They only asked that the prelate and his companion consent to join them; and our four missionaries, Pierre de Castelnau, F. Raoul, the Bishop of Osma, and Dominic de Guzman, left Montpellier one morning, walking barefoot and giving the first example of the apostolic poverty that the mendicant Orders of the 13th century would soon imitate.

But, while Saint Dominic, through the persevering labors of his zeal, advanced the cause of the Church in our regions, Pierre de Castelnau pleaded it even more effectively by giving his life for it.

Raymond of Toulouse, despite his promises, so often reiterated by oath, had never ceased to favor heresy and seemed occupied only with undoing, in the shameful secret of his politics, the work that the legates accomplished with so much labor in the name of the Sovereign Pontiff.

Pierre, revolted by so much deceit, had to launch a first excommunication against him; and, to support the authority of his legate, Innocent III had written a threatening letter to the Count.

It was not necessary for Raymond to be able to treat his threats as illusory, and Pierre de Castelnau, immediately after the conference of Montréal, had set out in all haste toward Provence. There, his skillful negotiations had determined the Provençal lords to arm themselves against the Count of Toulouse for the defense of the Catholic faith; and Raymond, frightened at once by the Pope's sentence and by war, had hastened to resort to his usual expedient, the oath; Innocent III, for his part, had lifted the sentence of excommunication; but, as always, barely absolved, the Count had perjured himself again.

It is then that historians present to us "the most holy brother Pierre de Castelnau, animated by great courage, presenting himself at the court of the tyrant, reproaching him for his numerous perjuries and daring to resist him to his face, because he was no longer only reprehensible, but truly worthy of damnation."

However, enlightened by a higher light, the man of God already understood that, to save the Church, martyrdom was worth more than all human efforts, and, around the same time, he pronounced this prophetic word: "The affairs of Jesus Christ will not succeed in these regions until one of us who preaches in his name dies for the defense of the faith; and may I myself be the first to perish under the sword of the persecutor!"

This prediction and this desire were soon to be realized.

Pierre had just, for the second time, excluded the Count of Toulouse from the communion of the Church, when the latter, who always trembled when he was struck, begged the legate to meet him at Saint-Gilles Saint-Gilles Site of the martyrdom and burial of Pierre de Castelnau. , on the banks of the Rhône where he himself would be, promising in advance an entire submission to the Holy See.

Pierre was faithful to the appointment. He entered into negotiations with the Count, whom he found, as always, both compliant and false at the same time, promising what he did not intend to keep, evading what he did not want to promise, procrastinating and uncertain between the Pope, who frightened him, and the heresy he wished to spare. The legate soon realized that the interview was merely another trap; and he was preparing to leave when the Count forbade him from departing Saint-Gilles, under pain of death. Violence replaced cunning, and the fox became a wolf.

Let us recall that with unparalleled perspicacity and invincible firmness, Pierre had known how to watch and thwart all of Raymond's plots. As an advanced sentinel of the Church, he had never ceased to sound the alarm: "Watchman, what of the night?" As a vigilant dog of the flock of Jesus Christ, he had never remained silent. The Count saw in him his most indomitable adversary; and willingly, like Henry II speaking of Thomas Becket, he could have said of Pierre de Castelnau "that this priest, alone, prevented him from living in peace in his own home."

Unfortunately, like the King of England, the Count of Toulouse found among his own people unworthy sycophants to carry out the crime.

On January 15, 1208, Pierre had said Mass in the morning and was preparing to cross the river with his companions, when two men approached him, and one of them pierced him with a lance thrust in the lower ribs. Pierre fell, crying out: "Lord, forgive him as I forgive him..." He spoke for a few moments with his mission companions and died while praying with fervor.

The following year, the Count of Toulouse reconciled with the Church—at Saint-Gilles—at the hands of Milo, the Pope's legate (1209). Having been unable to leave the church because of the crowd, it was necessary to lower him through a window on the side of the cloister, where the tomb of Bl. Pierre was located, to which he paid homage while passing, which was regarded as a reparation of honor, for the fierce count was disarmed. After receiving absolution, he went to place himself at the head of the crusaders against the Albigensians. The same year, the body of Bl. Pierre was transported fr om this cloister into abbaye de Saint-Gilles Site of the martyrdom and burial of Pierre de Castelnau. the very church of the Abbey of Saint-Gilles, which was later secularized after having successively followed the Rule of Saint Benedict and that of Cluny. His memory was formerly honored at Saint-Gilles and in the houses of the Order of Cîteaux.

We have borrowed this life from a circular letter of the Bishop of Carcassonne.