No country in those days offered a more favourable soil to the growth of heresy than the south of France. Its wealth, its practical independence from the central power of the French kings, and the natural spirit of its inhabitants, had fostered a degree of local freedom all but unequalled in other parts of feudal Europe. Particularly the citizens of the large towns showed a remarkable spirit of pride and political ambition. As early as the thirteenth century, we hear of a legally constituted ‘_tiers état_,’ consisting of delegates of the towns, at the provincial assemblies of the county of Toulouse. A population of this kind was not likely to bow in silent awe to a priesthood, the vices and weaknesses of which were notorious, and formed a favourite butt for the satire of the troubadours. The step from antagonism to the representatives of the Roman Church to the rejection of its doctrine was easy, and hence we are not surprised to see the south of France described as the brood-nest of foulest heresy; nay, even the Provençal language, or _langue d’oc_, was harsh and repulsive to orthodox ears, and, as was mentioned before, Pope Innocent IV., in a bull dated 1245, forbade its use to the students. The chief sect existing in the county of Toulouse and its dependencies derived its name from the town or diocese of Albi. But it must be remembered that Albigenses, or, in its French form, Albigeois, is a collective name used by the Catholics almost synonymously with heretics, and without regard to the most important doctrinal and moral variations. The Vaudois or Waldenses, for instance, although frequently mixed up with the Albigenses, seem to have had little in common with them beyond their opposition to Roman supremacy.[26] My task being a purely literary consideration of the subject, I must deal with the Albigeois doctrine in the briefest fashion. Our knowledge of that doctrine is, moreover, anything but satisfactory or complete, being mainly derived from the statements of Catholic controversialists, the confessions of heretics preserved amongst the documents of the Inquisition, and the decrees of councils and provincial synods. The fanaticism of mediæval monks seems to have been fatal to the utterances of their adversaries. We do not indeed possess a single authentic document from an Albigeois source, and the celebrated embodiment of the Vaudois creed, called ‘The Noble Lesson.’ which Raynouard dated from the eleventh century, is now generally acknowledged to belong to a much later period, when the sect was cooped up in its Alpine recesses, and had lost its real importance and vitality. It seems at any rate doubtful whether this curious document contains the pure doctrine of the original ‘Poor Men of Lyons.’