It would be a great wrong
and a sin if Thou didst condemn me to burn in hell everlastingly, for
truly I may accuse Thee of having sent me a thousand evils for one
blessing."
Most terrible was the punishment inflicted upon Provence by Innocent
III. That highly intellectual pope realised that he was faced by a
revival of the true religious instinct from which the authority of the
Church had far more to fear than from all sultans and emirs put
together. The system of absolute, immutable values was threatened with
destruction. In the year 1208 the Spanish nobleman Dominicus Guzman
founded the order of the Dominicans and the Inquisition, which invaded
Provence together with the papal army supported by France for political
reasons. Half a million men were butchered in order to crush the spirit
understood by a few hundreds at most; one stake was kindled by the
other; in the memory of man no greater sacrifice to tradition and dogma
had ever been made. Simon de Montfort, the head of the expedition, sent
the following laconic report to the pope: "We spared neither sex nor age
nor name, but slew all with the edge of the sword.
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