Page:A book of the Cevennes (-1907-).djvu/85

Rh allotted to that Church, for of their successors none could lay claim to much holiness, and many were a disgrace to their order. But Le Puy was one of the richest sees in France, as the bishop was count as well as prelate. The volcanic soil was extraordinarily fertile, and the Black Virgin acted as a magnet, attracting to it an inexhaustible stream of gold; and this made the see to be coveted by ambitious and appropriated by unscrupulous prelates. Add to this that the bishop was under the jurisdiction of no archbishop, and was responsible to the Pope alone, who was too far off and too busy with affairs of greater importance to trouble himself about the misdeeds of the prelate princes of Le Puy.

It is open to debate which does most harm to the Church, the occasional torrential rush through the ranks of the episcopate of some wild blood, whose life is conspicuously at variance with his profession, or a continuous and unabating flood invading every see of smug, smooth, and colourless nonentities, who dilute the quality, abate the force, and lower the temperature of the Church to insipidity, lukewarmness, and inertia.

Some instances will suffice to show what manner of men they were who now and then were bishops of Le Puy.

Adhelmar (1087-98), who died at Antioch as a Crusader, was succeeded by Ponce de Tournon, who was an assassin. Bertrand de Chalençon's hands were also stained by blood; he exasperated his flock to madness by his exactions, heavily fining widows who remarried, and levying exorbitant fees on burials. When Innocent III. proclaimed a holy war against the Albigenses, and promised pardon for all sins to such