e in June, 1231, urging
the bishops and archbishops to further his plans. He did not meet
with much success, however, although the Dominicans and the Friars
Minor did their best to help him. Still some cities like Milan,
Verona, Piacenza and Vercelli adopted the measures of persecution
which he proposed. At Milan, Peter of Verona, a Dominican, on
September 15, 1233, had the laws of the Pope and the Senator of Rome
inscribed in the city's statutes. The _animadversio debita_ was
henceforth interpreted to mean the penalty of the stake. "In this
year," writes a chronicler of the time, "the people of Milan began to
burn heretics." In the month of July, sixty heretics were sent to the
stake at Verona. The podesta of Piacenza sent to the Pope the
heretics he had arrested. Vercelli, at the instance of the
Franciscan, Henry of Milan, incorporated in 1233 into its statutes
the law of the Senator of Rome and the imperial law of 1224; it,
however, omitted in the last named law the clause which decreed the
penalty of cutting out the tongue. In Germany, the Dominican, Conrad
of Marburg, was particularly active, in virtue of his commission from
Gregory IX. In accordance with the imperial law, we find him
sentencing to the stake a great number of heretics.

It may be admitted, however, that in his excessive zeal he even went
beyond the desires of the sovereign pontiff. Gregory IX did not find
everywhere so marked an eagerness to carry out his wishes. A number
of the cities of Italy for a long time continued to punish obstinate
heretics according to the penal code of Innocent III, i.e., by
banishment and confiscation.

That the penalty of the stake was used at this time in France is
proved by the burning of one hundred and eighty-three Bulgarians or
Bugres at Mont-Wimer in 1239 and by two important documents, the
_Etablissements de Saint Louis_ and the _Coutumes de Beauvaisis_.

"As soon as the ecclesiastical judge has discovered, after due
examination, that the suspect is a heretic, he must hand him over to
the secular arm; and the secular judge must send him to the
stake."[1] Beaumanoir says the same thing: "In such a case, the
secular court must aid the Church; for when the Church condemns any
one as a heretic, she is obliged to hand him over to the secular arm
to be sent to the stake; for she herself cannot put any one to
death."[2]

[1] _Etablissements de Saint Louis_, ch. cxxiii.

[2] _Coutumes de Beauvaisis_, xi, 2; cf. xx