Arnaud Amaury

Arnaud Amaury or Arnaud Amalric († 1225), abbot of Poblet, abbot of Large Selve, then abbot of Cîteaux (1200 - 1212), archbishop of Narbonne (1212 - 1225), it is charged, as a Légat of the Pape, to repress the Hérésie cathare during the Albigensian Crusade.

Biography

Abbot of Poblet, Arnaud Amaury, was designated by the Pape Innocent III as spiritual leader of the Croisade against the Albigensians, at the sides of Simon de Montfort which was the military chief.

“It was an abbey of the Ordre of Cîteaux

close to Leira, and called Poblet,

and a good good man was the abbot.

Then God made of it the chief of any Cîteaux,

And this saint man, with others, left ground

heretics, and well informed them”.

(Guillaume de Tudèle, the Song of the Crusade )

Taking the head of the crusade, it takes part the July 22nd 1209 in the Sac of Béziers. According to a single and not very sure source, he would have said, after the catch of the city, whereas it was asked him how to distinguish the Catholique S from the heretics: “ Kill to them all, God will recognize to them his ”. (See examination further.)
He took part in the side of the kings Alphonse VIII Large the king de Castille (1155-king 1158-1214), Pierre II of Aragon king d' Aragon - Catalonia (1148-count-king 1196-1213), and Sanche VII the Fort, king de Navarre (1152-king 1172-1221) with the Bataille of Mow Navas de Tolosa, Monday July 16th 1212, before facing with the battle of Low wall (Mureth in Gascon) in 1213 this same Pèire d' Aragon, come to support his ally the count of Toulouse Raimond VI.

“Kill to them all, God will recognize to them his. ”

The only author by whom one knows this word (in Latin: “Cædite eos. Novit enim Dominus which sunt eius. ”) is the monk German cistercian Césaire d' Heisterbach, which lends it to the legate in his book Dialogus miraculorum ( Of the miracles ), written between 1219 and 1223. Césaire was rather close to the event in time (ten years), but it is not very good sign that in connection with a fact to Béziers, a German is alone with knowing what the local sources all seem to be unaware of.

PH. Tamizey de Larroque notes that this silence particularly deserves to be taken into account in five works which have the Albigensian Crusade for principal subject: the History of the war of the Albigensians , written by the monk Pierre de Vaulx-Cernay, who scrupulously records the acts and the words of the legate and who was close to him the day of the bag of Béziers; another History of the war of the Albigensians , anonymity that one; the History of the forwarding of the French against the Albigensians , of Guillaume de Puylaurens, the Chronic of Simon de Montfort and the History of the Crusade written in worms occitans.

In addition to the witnesses best placed do not mention the sentence in question, their account seems to contradict it. Césaire d' Heisterbach says that after the catch of the city, the victorious soldiers, as taken of a scruple, would have asked how to recognize the catholics of the heretics. However, according to the contemporary local sources of the events, there was not a catch followed by a pause then of a massacre, the soldiers of a lower nature (“ribauds”, “gangsters”) took at the same time the initiative of the attack and the extermination, without the agreement of the chiefs.

Lastly, of the consent even of ecclesiastical scientists of the 17th century, good number of the miracles that Césaire d' Heisterbach tells for truths indicate at his place a great weakness of the critical direction.

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