Innocent confirmed Montfort’s acts and titles, and enlarged upon the crushing successes in fulsome letters to Otto of Brunswick whom the Pope himself had just crowned Emperor. But, with a bad situation in Palestine on his hands, his definite financial support of the Albigensian Crusade left something to be desired. The most fruitful of his measures was to empower de Montfort to confiscate all valuables which heretics had deposited for safe keeping with Churchmen throughout Languedoc. Meanwhile, the Church’s activities were not confined to the Crusade. St. Dominic with his little band of followers continued going up and down Languedoc preaching. Early in September the future saint met de Montfort, and a warm friendship sprang up between them. At the same time Durand of Huesca and his “poor Catholics” were also active. Innocent had to write and reassure the Languedocian bishops, scandalized because Durand and his followers had clung to certain outward marks of their former Waldensianism; at the same time warning the poor Catholics to cooperate with the regular clergy and not try to act independently of them. The Pope understood clearly that orthodox propaganda must be carried on more strongly than ever, if possible, in the existing state of war. Meanwhile, far from the jealousies and violence of Languedoc, Francis of Assisi was putting on his brown habit to mark himself the joyous bridegroom of poverty. During the martial summer of 1209, diplomacy had been silent. Now she came out of cover and became active once more; indeed, for the next four years the struggle is as much diplomatic as military. On the one hand the fair-spoken, shifty, and unstable Count Raymond and behind him (and more formidable) the chivalric sportsman King Peter of Aragon sought to check, or at least to limit, the Crusade. On the other, the legates, de Montfort, and the newly-imported, irreconcilable, Languedocian clergy, all completely absorbed (as the Pope was not) by the struggle, were out for the destruction of the house of Toulouse.