ABSTRACT
Until the twelfth century the crown had rarely any real authority beyond the duchy of France. The main anxiety of Hugh Capet was to keep aloof from feudal wars. Robert the Pious blundered through a long reign and Henry I was twice defeated by the Duke of Normandy. Roughly the royal domain of the first Capetians, from which they derived their revenues and which alone they could enfeoff to procure vassals, was the small block of territory known as the Ile de France. In the eleventh century we find the sect in many scattered groups in Lombardy, eastern and central France, the Rhine lands and Flanders, where the votaries were mostly drawn from the lower classes. The Greek word catharos was the maxim of the sect and gave it its name Catharism. Philip Augustus himself took no part in the expedition against the Albigensians, and there is some evidence that he disapproved of the participation of his son Louis.
