Kill 'Em All!

If there were one quote from the Albigensian Crusade which could be said to be instantly recognizable to modern audiences, I'm sure it would be this one:  "Kill 'em all!  Let God sort 'em out".  The past 800 years have seen remarkably few changes to it.  It has gone from Latin into the vernacular and, strangely, back again in a new rendition.  It has had the variations of wording and emphasis which are inevitable in translation.  But the phrase is, in essence, an easily identifiable trope even to those who do not know it stems from the events of the Albigensian crusade.

Here it appears, apparently without irony, as a U.S. Special Forces patch:

CAESARIUS OF HEISTERBACH

The phrase appears to originate from the Dialogus miraculorum ("Dialogue on miracles") by the Cistercian monk Caesarius of Heisterbach.  The text is presented in the form of a dialogue between a novice (a foil character who exists to ask leading questions) and a learned monk who recounts and elucidates miracles (746 of them, in fact).  In due course, they come to discuss the Albigensian Crusade and the sack of Beziers.  The learned monk says:

"When they came to the great city of Beziers; which is said to have contained more than a hundred thousand men, they laid siege to it ; and in the sight of them all the heretics defiled in an unspeakable manner the book of the sacred gospel; and then cast it from the wall towards the Christians, and sending arrows after it, cried: " There is your law, miserable wretches!" But Christ, the author of the gospel, did not suffer such an insult to be hurled at Him unavenged. For some of His followers, burning with zeal for the faith, placed ladders against the wall, and like lions, after the example of those of whom we read in the book of the Maccabbees (2 Macc.xi.ii), fearlessly climbed the walls, and while the heretics were stricken with panic from on high and fled, they opened the gates to the others, and so gained possession of the city.

When they [the crusaders] discovered, from the admissions of some of them [the residents of Beziers], that there were Catholics mingled with the heretics they said the the abbot [Arnau Amalric] "Sir, what shall we do, for we cannot distinguish between the faithful and the heretics." The abbot, like the others, was afraid that many, in fear of death, would pretend to be catholics, and after their departure, would return to their heresy, and is said to have replied "Kill them all for the Lord knoweth them that are His" (2 Tim. ii. 19) and so countless number in that town were slain.

By the Divine favour, they also gained possession of another large town, near Toulouse, called The Beautiful Valley, from its position. When the people there were examined, and all the rest had professed themselves willing to return to the faith, there remained four hundred and fifty, whom the devil hardened in their obstinacy; and of these four hundred were burnt at the stake, and the others hanged on the gallows. The same thing took place in other cities and forts, the wretched folk often giving themselves up to death of their own accord. When the people of Toulouse were brought into the same straits, they promised all satisfaction, but not honestly as was afterwards clear. For the treacherous count of S. Egidius, the prince and leader of all the heretics, after surrendering all his property to the Lateran Council, to wit his lands and his farms, his towns and castles, and after most of them had been occupied by right of war by the good Catholic Simon de Montfort, betook himself to Toulouse, from which City he still harasses and attacks the faithful even to this day."

(translation thanks to http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/caesarius-heresies.html)

It must be noted that the biblical reference in 2 Timothy 2:19 is only "The Lord knoweth them that are his" (KJV) or in the Latin Vulgate bible "Cognovit Dominus qui sunt eius".  The command to "kill them all" being the part famously attributed to the papal legate Arnau Amalric.

In my recent exploration of the phrase online, there seems to be a frequent misquote of the original Latin "Caedite eos.  Novit enim Dominus qui sunt eius" as "neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet".  This is odd, since this similar Latin version of the same phrase does not come from our source, Caesarius of Heisterbach.  Here is his version, in the original Latin:

http://gahom.ehess.fr/relex/dialogusmiraculorum1/CdH-Dialog.mir.-Vol1/

What is even stranger about the incorrect version ""neca eos omnes, deus suos agnoscet", is that it is clearly reconstructed from the modern vernacular and translated back into Latin, presumably by someone who didn't know the original source but wanted the respectability of a Latin reference.  The invented version lacks the biblical allusion present in Caesarius' version of the second phrase and adds omnes ("all") to the first phrase to bring it more in line with the usual "Kill them all!" rendition in English.

Caesarius of Heisterbach's book was intended for the instruction of novices in the Cistercian order, which was, at the time of Caesarius' composition, still the greatest of the monastic orders.  The Dialogus Miraculorum was highly successful, becoming very popular and widely disseminated.  We do not know exactly when the Dialogus was written, although there are some clues in the text itself.  He states that the Count of S. Egidius (that is, Raymond VI of Toulouse) continues to occupy Toulouse even after the Fourth Lateran Council.  That puts his writing in the comparatively narrow timeframe between Fourth Lateran in 1215 and Raymond VI's death in 1222.  This means that Arnau Amalric, the former head of Caesarius's order, was still alive at the time of his writing and presumably Caesarius would have been reluctant to attribute something to him which would incur his displeasure.

It is unlikely that Caesarius could have anticipated the notoriety which these two sentences would eventually enjoy.  Much has been made of the fact that he does not put the words directly into the mouth of the Arnau Amalric, using the phrase fertur dixisse ("is reported to have said").  However, he also does not seem to be at pains to distance the papal legate from the quotation either.  It is a modern sensibility which attempts to avoid responsibility for indiscriminate slaughter rather than seeing it as a glorious demonstration of divine wrath.  Immediately after recounting Arnau Amalric's remark, Caesarius states that it was as a result of the legate's response that an innumerable number were slain.  Indeed Arnau Amalric himself had no qualms about the indiscriminate slaughter, writing to the pope that the crusaders had "spared no order of persons (whatever their rank, sex, or age) and put to the sword almost twenty thousand people.  After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt, as divine vengeance raged marvellously". (translation by Mark Gregory Pegg in "A Most Holy War").  Certainly, neither of the Cistercians (the legate himself or the author recounting his actions) were troubled by the carnage.

Nonetheless, the attribution of the phrase to Arnau Amalric does arouse considerable contention.  Some people are eager to put the words in the legate's mouth in order to demonstrate the brutality of the crusade; others are vehemently opposed to the attribution and would rather see the phrase excluded from the story and forgotten.  As we shall see, in order to make their case, some will ignore information they could include; others will misrepresent when they ought to know better.

YAHOO! ANSWERS

I begin my examination of the historiographical controversy with a typical example of modern Internet wisdom, from Yahoo! Answers:  http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20070708133535AAkgxav

This account, interestingly, puts the question in the mouth of Simon de Montfort, the leader of the crusade.  As we have seen, Caesarius does not do so.  He makes it a general question from "they", i.e. the crusaders.  Also, Simon de Montfort did not become the leader of the crusade until after the next city, Carcassonne, also fell after another siege.  A few sentences later, we come across the statement that "a monk present at the siege recorded the answer of the Papal Legate...."  Now, there is no indication at all that Caesarius was present at the siege of Beziers.  He was a contemporary, about 29 at the time, but he does not claim to have been present and I have not seen this claimed about him elsewhere.

Jack P., the author of the Yahoo! Answers entry, clearly knows the story.  He has placed it correctly chronologically and geographically and identified the speaker and his position.  The figure of 20,000 casualties, although likely inaccurate, comes from Arnau Amalric himself.  When the actual phrase is quoted, it is the Latin recreation of the statement which is used, rather than the original, which shows some distortion in the transmission of the story from Caesarius to Jack.

What is interesting to me is what Jack P. has added to the story -- the presence of Simon de Montfort as interlocutor and of Caesarius of Heisterbach as witness.  Why has this story changed to become a personal conversation between Simon and Arnau witnessed by Caesarius?  Possibly additional historical figures have been introduced to the scene in order to better capture the mood of the moment or to give it a better appearance of historicity.  Certainly, some will argue that this is why Arnau Amalric originally appeared as a speaker in the story.  Yahoo! Answers now lists the original context of the phrase as a "resolved question" but we shall see that in the community of historians, it is not.

WIKIPEDIA

The debate has, predictably, spilled onto the many Wikipedia pages which mention the infamous phrase.  A typical critic of the attribution explains his removal of it in the discussion page for the entry on Beziers:

I have removed the text - see the debate on the Albigensian Crusade. The original text read: 

The commander of the crusade was the Papal Legate Arnaud-Amaury (or Arnald Amalaricus, Abbot of Citeaux). When asked by a Crusader how to tell Catholics from Cathars once they had taken the city, the abbot supposedly replied, "Kill them all, God will know His own" - "Neca eos omnes. Deus suos agnoscet". (This phrase can only be found in one source, Caesarius of Heisterbach along with a story of some Cathars who desecrated a copy of the Old Testament and threw it from the town's walls.)

Firstly, the Legate was not leader of the Crusade, but its spiritual director: the leadership appears to have been collegiate at the time, but was taken in hand by de Montfort after the massacre. Moreover, as Abbot of Citeaux Amaury was Head of the Cistercian Order, and therefore influential in the military Orders as well, which is why he was important - the attribution is therefore incorrect. Secondly, the Sisley and Sisley edition of Vaux de Cernay quotes correspondance between Amaury and the Vatican demonstrating the massacre was the result of a command breakdown. The leadership were in conference working on another attempt to negociate the removal of the town's catholics when the camp followers, angered by the mutilation of one of their number, unexpectedly broke into the town: there was consequently no possibility Amaury could have replied as quoted, because he was in a meeting actively planning the exact opposite. The main crusading force then attempted to stop the rabble looting, which resulted in the camp-followers setting fire to the town, causing huge loss of life. Thirdly, Heisterbach was writing forty years after the event, was not supported by any primary source, and would fail our test of NPOV.

It is interesting that, rather than examining Caesarius' credibility, the writer here doubts the event because it "can only be found in one source".  There are many, many events of the Albigensian crusade which are only attested to by a single source.  This writer then goes on to insist that Arnau Amalric was not the leader of the Albigensian crusade at the time, which is inaccurate.  In addition to being the "spiritual director", Arnau Amalric commanded the crusade militarily until he passed that burden on to Simon de Montfort.  That was after the fall of Carcassonne, of course, not after the massacre at Beziers.  William of Tudela, for example, describes the army approaching Beziers thus:  "On the feast of St Mary Magdalen the abbot of Citeaux [Arnau Amalric] brought his huge army to Beziers and encamped it on the sandy plains around the city."
 
The statement that as head of the Cistercian order, Arnau was "influential in the military Orders" is similarly odd.  The Cistercians were certainly not a military order, nor were the Hospitallers or Templars ever involved in the Albigensian crusade.

The writer then refers to the letter from Arnau Amalric to Pope Innocent III as providing Arnau with an alibi.  This is a thought-provoking claim and worthy of greater attention than historians have usually given it.  Here is what Arnau's letter says (in Appendix A of the Siblys' translation of William of Puylaurens' Chronicle):

"The city seemed to be so well defended, by virtue of its location, its strength in men and an adequate supply of provisions, that its citizens believed it would be able to resist an army of whatever size for a long time.  However, no courage, no counsel can avail against the Lord, and whilst discussions were still going on with the barons about the release of those in the city who were deemed to be Catholics, the ribauds and other persons, of low degree and unarmed, attacked the city without waiting for orders from their leaders.  To our amazement, crying 'to arms, to arms!', within the space of two or three hours they crossed the ditches and the walls and Beziers was taken.  Our men spared no one, irrespective or rank, sex or age, and put to the sword almost 20,000 people.  After this great slaughter the whole city was despoiled and burnt, as Divine vengeance raged marvellously."

While the capture of the walls by the camp followers was quite fortuitous, then, it was not sudden.  Arnau Amalric describes the assault as taking "two or three hours."  It is true that the legate was in meetings regarding the possible separation of inhabitants of Beziers into those to be killed and those who might be released under certain conditions, but he does not say what the discussion centred on, nor what his own contribution to that discussion was.  Mere claims to orthodoxy would have appeared to be insufficient to save a resident, in light of the ominous phrasing "the release of those in the city who were deemed to be Catholics".  Certainly, the loot to be gained from taking the city was likely a primary concern.  Earlier in the letter, Arnau writes: "Clear warnings had been conveyed to the citizens of that city [Beziers], through ourselves and their own Bishop, and we had threatened them with excommunication if they failed to hand over the heretics in the city with their possessions ...."  Later in the same letter, describing the siege of Carcassonne, Arnau appears to describe a similar discussion with the barons to that which had occurred at Beziers:  "Since, to a greater extent than our men expected, the citizens were suffering from a serious shortage of food, they offered themselves, their possessions and their city to the crusaders, on condition that their lives would be mercifully spared and that they would be led out from the city to safety, even for a single day.  Discussions were held on our side and the leaders of the army were led by necessity to show mercy in the manner proposed; firstly, because it seemed clear that the city could not be taken easily ... secondly, because we greatly feared that if the city were to be captured, then, as had already happened in other places, everything would be destroyed by fire ...."  Note that it is necessity which leads to a merciful decision in these discussions and that the two stated reasons are tactical in nature and not concerned with matters of faith or human sympathy.  Considering this, the earlier discussions at Beziers could also be understood to have concerned themselves with the disposition of the property of the inhabitants of Beziers and how it could best be seized.   On this understanding, one could well imagine that news of the unexpected taking of the walls of the city would have forestalled further planning and that the leader of the crusade would be asked just such a question as how the crusaders were now to attempt to tell the good from the bad as the crusading forces began to rush into the city.

Thirdly, and finally, in a final attempt to discredit Caesarius of Heisterbach, the Wikipedia author transports our monk thirty years forward in time to "forty years after the event" and nine after his own death.  As we have seen, he wrote this section of the Dialogus miraculorum between six and thirteen years after the sack of Beziers and was a contemporary.  He is moved from being a primary source, to being "not supported by any primary source".  Lastly, and most confusingly, it is supposed that our Cistercian abbot would fail Wikipedia's test of "Neutral Point of View".  It would be difficult for any medieval ecclesiastical author to pass it, but if we are to exclude Caesarius, we must certainly exclude Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay, whose propagandist Historia Albigensis is the main primary source for many of the events of the Albigensian crusade.

The attempts here to condemn or exculpate Arnau Amalric as the origin of the phrase are not the inventions of Jack P. or the Wikipedia contributor.  They stem from generations of historians whose differing interpretations have appeared in print.  The historians whose works appear on my shelf and who mention this supposed utterance, are listed below with my commentary.

THE HISTORIANS

Zoe Oldenbourg in "Massacre at Montsegur" (1959):

"'Kill them all; God will look after His own.'  The famous, too famous, remark, attributed to Arnald-Amalric by the German, Caesar von Heisterbach, is not so much a genuine historical mot as a critical comment on the nature of this episode.  It might serve as the motto for any ideological or supposedly ideological war.  Whether Arnald had sufficient imagination to coin a phrase of this sort, or whether he in fact never said the words at all, it remains true that the Crusaders' instructions at the sacking of Beziers do indeed seem to have been 'Kill them all' -- with or without the rider concerning itself over how God might treat the souls of their victims.

William of Tudela is quite specific on the matter:

"The nobles of France, clergy and laity, Princes and Marquises, were agreed amongst themselves that whenever a chateau they invested refused to surrender, and had to be taken by force, the inhabitants were to be put to the sword and slain; thinking that afterwards no man would dare to stand out against them by reason of the fear that would go abroad when it was seen what they had already done."

If 'the nobles of France' really did take such a decision, they calculated with some accuracy. In his subsequent letter to the Pope, Arnald-Amalric preened himself on this unexpected and miraculous victory, announcing triumphantly that 'nearly twenty thousand of the citizens were put to the sword, regardless of age and sex.' 

It would be useful, nevertheless, to know if the Crusaders' intentions were, in fact, what William of Tudela supposed them to be -- and even if so, whether events did not go rather further than they intended.  Normally if there was any quesiton of putting a city's inhabitants to the sword after a siege, this referred solely to the male population.  Women and children were only subject to such hazards of war as a measure of reprisal or when the fighting got completely out of hand; it was very rare for commanders to issue a decree of this sort in cold blood.  However bloodthirsty he might have been, Arnald-Amalric would never have authorized the massacre of priests.  With the routiers, however, it was another matter entirely.  As the Chanson so picturesquely puts it, they had no fear of death and killed all who stood in their way.  They were the first attackers into the city, and their lust for slaughter was notorious; it was they who were chiefly responsible for this massacre, and indeed they had neither the means nor the inclination to send a message asking the Commander-in-Chief what action they should take.  There was no need to tell these men to 'kill them all'; they made not the slightest distinction between Catholic and heretic.

Those historians who favour the Crusade will, therefore, be tempted to place all responsibility for the massacre of Beziers on these bands of ruffians, these 'Basques and Aragonese' and other professional criminals, Godless men by definition and therefore possessing nothing in common with the Crusaders proper."

 Oldenbourg's suggestion that the phrase would serve any suitably ideological military chillingly anticipated the adoption of the motto by the U.S. Special forces in the following decade.  She was also quite accurate in her historiographical prediction that historians wishing to minimize the responsibility of Arnau Amalric would cast him as unconsulted or helpless during the massacre.

Jacques Maudale in "The Albigensian Crusade" (1967):

"Whether or not Arnaud-Amalric uttered the notorious words since attributed to him, "Kill all of them; God will know his own", he bears responsibility for this incredible massacre which he certainly had the power to stop.  But he wanted to hold it up as an example so that terror might spread throughout the land and other citadels fall more easily.  If he did not order the massacre he certainly did not oppose it, and he obtained the hoped-for result...."

Maudale here continues the tradition of neutrality about the correctness of attributing the phrase, but insists on Arnaud Amalric's control of the army during the massacre.  This latter is a contentious point.

Jonathan Sumption in "The Albigensian Crusade" (1978):

"A German monk repeated a story that Arnald-Amaury, when asked in the middle of the slaughter how the catholics could be distinguished from the heretics, replied 'Kill them all; God will recognize his own'; and this motto has passed into history as the epitome of the spirit which had brought the crusaders to the south.  Whether Arnald-Amaury was consulted, or ever uttered any such sentiment, remains unclear.  But it is not important.  The legate reported the massacre without comment to Innocent III, remarking only that 'neither age, nor sex, nor status had been spared'.  Neither he nor his clerical colleagues had any sympathy even for the catholic victims."

 Sumption takes caution a step further than Oldenbourg or Maudale, suggesting that Arnaud Amalric might not even have been consulted.  He sees the legate witnessing, reporting and failing to feel sympathy -- as passive rather than active in events.  He is also the earliest source I have found who places the incident "in the middle of the slaughter", rather than before it.  Caesarius of Heisterbach portrayed events in a sequence:  the walls are taken, the residents questioned, the legate consulted, and the slaughter subsequently carried out.  Sumption removes responsibility from Arnau Amalric by suggesting that the slaughter had already begun before the legate was consulted, if he was at all.

 Malcolm Lambert in "The Cathars" (1998):

"Amaury, as legate and spiritual leader accompanying the army, was asked what should be done with the the inhabitants and replied in a tradition reported by the Cistercian chronicler, Cesarius of Heisterbach: 'Massacre them for the Lord knows his own.'  Cesarius liked to give his sources and it may be significant that in this case he introduces the mot with the words 'he is reported to have said', on the other hand, Amaury's words incorporate a quotation from the second epistle of Paul to Timothy dealing with the question of heresy, which the Glossa Ordinaria treated as a reference to predestination.  This makes it a little more likely that these words from the mouth of an educated member of the hierarchy were authentic."

Lambert is the first of the sources I have on hand who examines the reliability of Caesarius of Heisterbach, noting that the author gives no source for the story and that the phrase is introduced as hearsay.  However, he sees the biblical reference as an authenticating element.

Malcolm Barber in "The Cathars" (2000):

"The notorious phrase, 'Kill them all, God will know his own' derives originally from the Dialogue on miracles by the Cistercian Caesarius of Heisterbach and is usually (although not invariably) discounted by serious historians.  However, the quotation is frequently used by those wishing to promote the idea of northern brutality intent upon crushing southern civilisation.  The passage in question reads as follows: 'Knowing from confessions of these Catholics that they were mixed up with heretics, they [the crusaders] said to the abbot [Arnauld Amalric]: What shall we do, lord?  We cannot tell the good from the bad.  The abbot, as well as others, fearing that as they were in such great fear of death they [the heretics] would pretend to be Catholics, and after they had left again return to their perfidy, is said to have said (fertur dixisse): Kill them.  For God knows who are his.  Thus innumerable persons were killed in that city' ....  It is noticeable that most commentators insert 'all' for the sake of emphasis and omit fertur dixisse by which Caesarius makes clear that this is hearsay.  On the other hand, Caesarius was, like Arnauld Amalric, a Cistercian, and therefore may have had some knowledge of this, particularly as his reference to the role of Conrad of Urach as legate (1220-24) shows that he was not writing later than 1224."

Barber notes that opinions on the phrase fall on opposing sides of a deeper historiographical conflict in the portrayal of the crusaders generally.  It is hard to know who he means by "serious historians" as I have in my possession only one (Marvin, below) who actually discounts the phrase.  Barber seems to take exception to translations which include the word "all", but the inclusion does not alter the phrase's meaning at all, while allowing it to stand without the context of the preceding question.  Barber also suggests that Caesarius's use of fertur dixisse is ignored by "most commentators".  I have not been able to find one in print who presents Caesarius of Heisterbach as directly quoting Arnau Amalric.  As you can see in the other examples, it is usually portrayed as an "anecdote", "tradition", or "attribution".  Perhaps Barber had just been reading authors less careful than those on my shelf.

Elaine Graham-Leigh in "The Southern French Nobility and the Albigensian Crusade" (2005):

"Caesarius appears to have been particularly interested in the capture of Beziers, devoting more attention to it than to the question of heresy generally.  Since he had no discernible connection to either Beziers or to Languedoc, it would be easy to dismiss his account, in comparison with more local sources of information, as inaccurate and ill-informed.  However, Caesarius' account of the sack of Beziers can be extremely valuable for the history of the Albigensian crusade, as it represents the Cistercian viewpoint, that of the Cistercian papal legates and, in particular, of Arnauld Amaury.
The originality of Caesarius' two anecdotes concerning Beziers, Arnauld Amaury's comment and the casting of the Gospel from the walls of the town by the heretics, suggests that he had different sources of information from the other authors who described the sack, and makes it unlikely that he used a written account, such as that of Pierre des Vaux, as his exemplar.  It has been recognised that Caesarius did not use exclusively written sources for the Dialogus Miraculorum, but also made use of anecdotes and stories which were told in his monastery.  For any Cistercian house, the annual Cistercian General Chapter was a major source of information and gossip, the 'meeting place for stories from all over Europe'.  It does not seem unreasonable to assume that the Abbot of Heisterbach would have brought back such stories from the Chapter, and, indeed, at various points in the Dialogus Caesarius refers to the General Chapter as the source of a story.  While he makes no such acknowledgement in his passage about Beziers, it is possible that either the account given by Arnauld to the Chapter of his activities in Languedoc, or general gossip among the Abbots, was the source of Caesarius' unique version of events.

Caesarius's work, like that of Pierre des Vaux, can be seen as a particularly legatine source, but there is a distinct difference between the approach of the two accounts.  Pierre des Vaux, as has been discussed, was presenting the official legatine version of the crusade, designed to show the crusade and the Church in as good a light as possible.  His approach to such unfortunate episodes as the sack of Beziers was to both justify and minimise, to ensure the exculpation of the Church.  Caesarius's value lies in the fact that his version of the sack of Beziers is the Cistercian legatine version uncorrupted by such considerations.  Caesarius was using a peculiarly Cistercian source of information, not intended for those outside the order, and his use of it was also internal.  Caesarius was the master of novices at Heisterbach, and the Dialogus seems to have been intended for use in educating Cistercian novices, rather than for any circulation outside the order.

Caesarius's account of the sack of Beziers can be used as a companion piece to that given by Pierre des Vaux, as these two sources represent the same viewpoint in two different guises.  Pierre des Vaux`s account was constructed for external consumption, to justify the Cistercian legatine version of the crusade.  Caesarius's was the Cistercian version, unaffected by any justification and intended for purely internal consumption.  Despite its lack of geographical or temporal proximity to the events it describes, Caesarius's account of the sack of Beziers brings the historian the closest, out of all the narrative sources for the Albigensian crusade, to the real thoughts of the initial leader of the crusade."

In this analysis, Graham-Leigh comes the closest I have found to concluding that the quote legitimately belonged to Arnau Amalric. Rather than arguing from the biblical reference or from Arnau's personality, as historians had done a generation or two earlier, she makes the link between the Cistercian author and the Cistercian former legate to whom he attributes the phrase.  She does not mention that Arnau Amalric was still alive, and the former head of Caesarius's Order, but underlines instead the methods by which the phrase could have traveled from the who may have said it to the one who recorded it.

Christopher Tyerman in "God's War" (2006):

"In a later, possibly apocryphal, anecdote, when asked by priests how they could distinguish whom to kill, Abbot Arnauld Aimery, worried lest the heretics escaped by pretending to be Catholics, ordered, 'Kill them.  The Lord knows who are his own.'  Even the crowds who sheltered in the main churches were not spared.  The legates estimated that 20,000 died in the carnage and called it a miracle.  The true figure was almost certainly far less.  The massacre may have been premeditated.  Rumours suggested that discussions in the papal Curia in 1208 had authorized the destruction of any who resisted the crusade.  The Navarrese cleric William of Tudela (d. c. 1213), who composed a Provencal verse account of the early stages of the Albigensian crusades, noted that the crusade leaders decided to make examples of the inhabitants of any town taken by storm pour encourager les autres.  'They would then find no one daring to resist them, so great would be the terror produced ... that is why the inhabitants of Beziers were massacred; they were all killed, it was the worst they could do to them.'"

Tyerman is hesitant to portray the quotation as definite, referring to it as "possibly apocryphal".  This is odd in light of his lack of hesitation in reporting as fact a much less credible story from another Cistercian, Peter of les Vaux-de-Cernay.  He also refers back to the premeditation of the massacre to which William of Tudela attested.  His mention of "rumours" of discussions in the papal curia the previous year are intriguing and I wish he had included a footnote explaining where he found these rumours.  Strangely, Tyerman casts the posers of the question as "priests" rather than crusaders, although Caesarius never mentions "priests".
 
Mark Gregory Pegg in "A Most Holy War" (2008):

"A decade after the immolation of Beziers, Caesarius of Heisterbach encapsulated the murderous eschatology of the crusaders in an exemplum praising the wisdom of Arnau Amalric.  The soldiers of Christ, though exulting in the capture of Beziers, worried that they could not sort out the faithful from the heretics among the men and women of the city.  "Lord," the crusaders asked the abbot of Citeaux, "what shall we do?"  The abbot, thinking for a moment, replied, "Kill them!  Truly, God will know his own!"  Whatever the truth of this anecdote -- and there is only the report of Caesarius -- it nevertheless lauded a homicidal ethic that, while shifting and changing through the decades, was an essential principle of the holy war on heresy.  "If it can be shown that some heretics are in a city," lectured the Bolognese legal scholar Johannes Teutonicus (in a commentary on Gratian) around 1217, "then all the inhabitants can be burnt."

Like Graham-Leigh, Pegg notes the purpose of Caesarius of Heisterbach's writing.  However, although referring to the controversy over "the truth of this anecdote" he comes the closest to earning Barber's criticism about commentators omitting the "hearsay" caveat which Caesarius includes.

Laurence Marvin in "The Occitan War" (2008):

"Much of what has been written about the crusade since the nineteenth century has tended to be anti-church or pro-Occitan, and the events of the year 1209 provide easy fodder for these agendas.  The legate Arnaud-Amaury's apocryphal remarks, supposedly made at the height of the sack of Beziers, will never go away, and they have to be dealt with in any discussion of what happened there.  No matter who gets the blame, undoubtedly 1209 ushered in a time of troubles for the people of the south."

[...]

"Most famous of all is the story that supposedly at the height of the fighting, as the crusaders forced their way into the town, someone asked the legate Arnauld-Amaury how they would separate the good Christians from the heretics.  His apocryphal words, 'Kill them, God knows who are his," reported by a Cistercian monk with a fanciful imagination, have become a byword for religious intolerance, placing what happened at Beziers on the top rung of pre-modern atrocities.  Though Arnauld-Amaury was not above executing heretics, in 1210 this inflexible and unyielding man gave Cathars who surrendered a fair chance to abjure their heresy and so avoid execution, which heaps more doubt on the credibility of Caesarius' report.  The speed and spontaneity of the attack indicates that the legate may not have actually known what was going on until it was over."

Marvin is the only historian I have found who takes a firm stand on the accuracy of the attribution, stating flatly that the "remarks" (not "commands") were apocryphal.  Now, "apocryphal" can either mean "untrue" or "of doubtful authenticity" and it is not perfectly clear which Marvin means, although his description of Caesarius of Heisterbach as "a Cistercian monk with a fanciful imagination", and his counter-example of Arnau's tolerance suggest the former.  Like Sumption, Marvin shifts the timing of the phrase.  Sumption put it "in the middle of the slaughter"; Marvin puts it "at the height of the sack of Beziers" and later "at the height of the fighting".  Going a step further than Sumption, who suggested that Arnau Amalric might have been powerless to stop the massacre, he suggests that the legate may not even have known about it until afterward.  Marvin's estimation of Arnau Amalric's tendency for mercy does not accord well with the legate's conduct at other massacres, nor with his cynical comment about the "fair chance" he was giving heretics in 1210.  That topic will deserve its own post later. 

CONCLUSION

What we can conclude is that the fairness of attributing the phrase to Arnau Amalric is still contested, 800 years after Caesarius of Heisterbach first did so.  Doubtless, the question will never be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.  Like many of the contentious topics of the Albigensian crusade, historians are free to place importance on different factors depending on the outcome which best agrees with their sensibilities.

What I note is that the Dialogus miraculorum is not a history, but a hagiography.  It is an account of 746 miracles, none of which can be considered an accurate historical event, unless it is a misunderstanding of one.  Caesarius's work must be understood in the context of an author passing along hundreds of small, edifying stories, all of which were at least partly invented.  We cannot know whether the phrase passed accurately from Arnau Amalric's mouth to Caesarius's text, but we can speculate on why Caesarius included the anecdote and what he intended to achieve by it.  He seems to have presented the former head of the Cistercian order's handling of the situation as laudable and a good example for the novices who formed his intended audience.  Certainly, he did not expect the controversy which would arise from our reactions so many centuries later.

In my next post, I explore the reliability of another Cistercian whose "history" contains a combination of historical events and ahistorical miracles.