In Toulouse, the centre both of heresy and persecution, in spite of mutterings and menaces, open opposition to the Inquisition was postponed longer than elsewhere. Although Count Raymond is constantly represented by the Church party as the chief opponent of the Holy Office, it was probably his influence that succeeded in staving off so long the inevitable rupture. Hard experience from childhood could scarce have rendered him a fervent Catholic, yet that experience had shown him that the favor and protection of the Church were indispensable if he would retain the remnant of territory and power that had been left to him. He could not as yet be at heart a persecutor of heresy, yet he could not afford to antagonize the Church. It was important for him to retain the love and good-will of his subjects and to prevent the desolation of his cities and lordships, but it was yet more important for him to escape the stigma of favoring heresy, and to avoid calling down upon his head a renewal of the storm in which he had been so nearly wrecked. Few princes have had a more difficult part to play, with dangers besetting him on every side, and if he earned the reputation of a trimmer without religious convictions, that reputation and his retention of his position till his death are perhaps the best proof of the fundamental wisdom which guided his necessarily tortuous course. Pierre Cardinal, the Troubadour, describes him as defending himself from the assaults of the worst of men, as fearing neither the Frenchman nor the ecclesiastic, and as humble only with the good.[18] He was always at odds with his prelates. Intricate questions with regard to the temporalities were a constant source of quarrel, and he lived under a perpetual reduplication of excommunications, for he had been so long under the ban of the Church that no bishop hesitated for a moment in anathematizing him. Then, one of the conditions of the treaty of 1229 had been that within two years he should proceed to Palestine and wage war there with the infidel for five years. The two years had passed away without his performing the vow; the state of the country at no time seemed to render so prolonged an absence safe, and for years a leading object of his policy was to obtain a postponement of his crusade or immunity for the non-observance of his vow. Moreover, from the date of the peace of Paris until the end of his life he earnestly and vainly endeavored to obtain from Rome permission for the sepulture of his father’s body. These complications crippled him in multitudinous ways and exposed him to immense disadvantage in his fencing with the hierarchy.