and Pedro II. were directed, towards the close of the twelfth century.[1]
After this, for a while, persecution seems to have slept. The sympathies and ambition of King Pedro were enlisted with Ray- mond of Toulouse, and after his fall at Muret, during the minority of Jayme I., the Aragonese probably awaited the results of the Albigensian war with feelings enlisted in favor of their race rather than of orthodoxy. As it drew to a close, however, Don Jayme, in 1226, issued an edict prohibiting all heretics from entering his kingdom, doubtless moved thereunto by the numbers who sought escape from the crusade of Louis VIII., and he followed this, in 1228, with another, depriving heretics, with their receivers, fautors, and defenders, of the public peace. The next step, we are told by the chroniclers of the Inquisition, was taken in consequence of the urgency of Raymond of Pennaforte, the Dominican confessor of the young king, who prevailed on him to obtain from Gregory IX. inquisitors to purge his land. This is based on the bull Decli- nante, addressed, May 26, 1232, to Esparrago, Archbishop of Tar- ragona, and his suffragans, instructing them to make inquest in their dioceses after heretics, either personally or by Dominicans or other fitting persons, and to punish such as might be found, according to the statutes recently issued by him and by Annibaldo, Senator of Rome. This doubtless gave an impulse to what followed, but as yet there was no thought of a papal or Dominican Inquisi- tion, or of adopting foreign legislation. In the following year, 1233, Don Jayme issued from Tarragona, with the advice of his assembled prelates, a statute on the subject, showing that the matter was regarded as pertaining to the State rather than to the Church. Seigneurs who protected heretics in their lands forfeited them to the lord, or, if allodial, to the king. Houses of heretics, if allodial, were to be torn down; if held in fief, forfeited to the lord. All defamed or suspected of heresy were declared ineligible to office. That the innocent might not suffer with the guilty, no one was to be punished as a heretic or believer except by his bishop or such ecclesiastic as had authority to determine his guilt.
Bishops were ordered, when it might seem expedient to them in
- ↑ Matt. Paris ann. 1234 (p. 270, Ed. 1644).--Reinerii Summa (Martene Thesaur. V. 1767-8).
