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DOMINICANS AS INQUISITORS. 201 hit upon the final and successful experiment of confiding to the Order the suppression of heresy as part of their regular duties. A fresh impulse was felt all along the hne. The Church suddenly found that it could count upon an unexpected reserve of enthusi- asm, boundless and exhaustless, despising danger and reckless of consequences, which in the end could hardly fail to triumph. A new class of men now appears upon the scene— San Piero Mar- tire, Giovanni da Yicenza, Eolando da Cremona, Eainerio Sac- cone— worthy to rank with their brethren in Languedoc, who devoted themselves to what they held to be their duty with 'a sin- gleness of purpose which must command respect, however repul- sive their labors may seem to us. On one hand these men had an easier task than their Western colleagues, for they had not to contend with the jealousy, or submit to the control, of the bish^ ops. The independence of the ItaHan episcopate had been broken down m the eleventh century. Besides, the bishops naturaUy belonged to the Guelfic faction, and welcomed any alhes who promised to aid them in crushing the antagonistic party in their turbulent cities. On the other hand, the poHtical dissensions which raged everywhere with savage ferocity increased enor- mously the difficulties and dangers of the task. In Italy, as in France, the organization of the Inquisition was gradual. It advanced step by step, the earlier proceedings, as we have seen both in Florence and Toulouse, being characterized by little regularity. As the tribunal by degrees assumed shape, a defimte code of procedure was established which was virtually the same everywhere, except with regard to the power of confis- cation, the apphcation of the profits of persecution, and the ac- quittal of the innocent. To these attention has already been called, and they need not detain us further. The problems which the founders of the Inquisition had to meet in Italy, and the methods m which these were met, can best be illustrated by a rapid glance at what remains to us of the careers of some of the earnest men who undertook the apparently hopeless task. The earhest name I have met with bearing the title of Inquis itor of Lombardy is that of a Fra Alberico in 1232. The Cardinal Legate Goffredo, whom we have seen busy in Milan, undertook to qmet civil strife in Bergamo, with the consent of all factions bv appointing as podesta Pier Torriani of Milan; and at the slme