ms. 854
fol. 61.Bishop Foulques had tumultuous relations with his diocese, in part due to his support of the
Albigensian Crusade, which was popularly perceived as a war of foreign aggression against the region. But he also took sides in factional disputes among the Toulousians, and between them and the Count, which predated the crusade and coloured how he was perceived. He had gone to Rome to advise
Pope Innocent III about the situation in his diocese in March 1208 when the pope decided to call the crusade and excommunicate the Count Raymond VI of Toulouse for the assassination of the papal legate
Pierre de Castelnau. As the Count worked to lift his excommunication and avoid losing his land to the crusaders, Bishop Foulques supported a faction of Toulousians known as The White Confraternity, which led to armed conflict within Toulouse. He also worked with the papal legate
Arnaud Amalric to lift restrictions on Toulouse, and to preach against usury in the surrounding countryside. He traveled in the North of France
preaching the crusade. After it became clear in 1211 that the Count of Toulouse would not be able to protect his lands from the crusade, or get the excommunication of himself lifted, Count Raymond confronted the bishop, threatening to kill him if he did not leave Toulouse. He fled and joined the crusading army at
Lavaur. After that town was taken by the crusaders, he demanded that the Toulousians break with their count or suffer the same fate. When they declined, he ordered all the clergy to leave the city and the crusading army attacked. After the crusaders failed to take Toulouse, he spent the next three years "in exile." He traveled through the North of France preaching the Crusade in 1211 with
Guy of les Vaux-de-Cernay . and later to Paris and the Low Countries in 1213. He also traveled with the crusading army in the South, participated in several church councils, and supported the nascent nunnery of
Prouille which he had founded and which received many grants of appropriated land from crusaders.] He took a highly visible and prominent role when the crusaders confronted the much larger army of the King of Aragon at
Muret in 1213, blessing the crusaders and offering up prayers for their success. The Toulousians violently rejected his offers to negotiate a surrender and even after they were defeated in battle, would not reconcile with the church . He finally returned to his see after the Council of Montpellier in January 1215 gave him the Toulousian residence of the count, the
Château Narbonnais, and assigned seculat rule to
Simon de Montfort. He began rebuilding the catheral and installing the supports for what became the
Dominican Order. But he, and Simon de Montfort, faced resistance. After an unsuccessful revolt by the Toulousians in 1216, he tried to relinquish his position, claiming that it was impossible to manage the diocese, but his requests to the pope were refused. In 1217 the Toulousians successfully rebelled when both he and Simon de Montfort were away, and welcomed their former count, Raymond VI into Toulouse. In October 1217, when Simon was besieging Toulouse once more, he sent a group of sympathisers to Paris to plead for the help of king
Philippe-Auguste. This group included Simon's wife, the countess
Alix de Montmorency, as well as Foulques. They began their journey clandestinely, "through the forest", to avoid attacks by
faidits (knights dispossessed by the Crusaders) They returned more flamboyantly, in May 1218, bringing a party of new Crusaders including the dashing
Amaury de Craon. When, on 25 June 1218, Simon de Montfort was killed on the battlefield, Foulques was among the clerics who received his body. Foulques spent much of the following decade outside his diocese, assisting the crusading army and the Church's attempts to bring order to the region. He was at the Council of
Sens in 1223. After the Peace of Paris finally ended the crusade in 1229, Foulques returned to Toulouse and began to construct the institutions that were designed to combat heresy in the region. He helped to create the
University of Toulouse and administered the newly created Episcopal Inquisition. He died in 1231 and was buried, beside the tomb of
William VII of Montpellier, at the abbey of
Grandselves, near Toulouse, where his sons, Ildefonsus and Petrus had been abbots. ==Notes==