supported.

[Footnote 78: See Cantu, _Gli Eretici d'Italia_, vol. i. Discorso 5, and
the notes appended to it, for Frederick's edicts and letters to Gregory
IX. upon this matter of heresy. The Emperor treats of _Heretica
Pravitas_ as a crime against society, and such, indeed, it then appeared
according to the mediaeval ideal of Christendom united under Church and
Empire. Yet Frederick himself, it will be remembered, died under the ban
of the Church, and was placed by Dante among the heresiarchs in the
tenth circle of Hell. We now regard him justly as one of the precursors
of the Renaissance. But at the beginning of his reign, in his peculiar
attitude of Holy Roman Emperor, he had to proceed with rigor against
free-thinkers in religion. They were foes to the mediseval order, of
which he was the secular head.]

[Footnote 79: Sarpi, 'Discorso dell'Origine,' etc. _Opere_, vol. iv. p.
6.]

This Apostolical Inquisition was at once introduced into Lombardy,
Romagna and the Marches of Treviso. The extreme rigor of its
proceedings, the extortions of monks, and the violent resistance offered
by the communes, led to some relaxation of its original constitution.
More authority had to be conceded to the bishops; and the right of the
Inquisitors to levy taxes on the people was modified. Yet it retained
its true form of a Papal organ, superseding the episcopal prerogatives,
and overriding the secular magistrates, who were bound to execute its
biddings. As such it was admitted into Tuscany, and established in
Aragon. Venice received it in 1289, with certain reservations that
placed its proceedings under the control of Doge and Council. In
Languedoc, the country of its birth, it remained rooted at Toulouse and
Carcassonne; but the Inquisition did not extend its authority over
central and northern France.[80] In Paris its functions were performed
by the Sorbonne. Nor did it obtain a footing in England, although the
statute 'De Haeretico Comburendo,' passed in 1401 at the instance of the
higher clergy, sanctioned the principles on which it existed.

The wide and ready acceptance of so terrible an engine of oppression
enables us to estimate the profound horror which heresy inspired in the
Middle Ages.[81] On the whole, the Inquisition performed the work for
which it had been instituted. Those spreading sects, known as Waldenses,
Albigenses, Cathari and Paterines, whom it was commissioned to
extirpate, died away into obscurity during th