is intended. Innocent III, although adding nothing essential to these regulations yet gave them fuller scope and clearer definition. In his Decretals he precisely speaks of accusation, denunciation, and inquisition, and it is obvious that these measures were necessary in the face of a great secret society aiming at nothing less than the destruction of the established order, for all the sectaries were engaged upon the most zealous propaganda, and their adherents had spread like a network over the greater part of Europe. The members bore the title of “brother” and “sister,” and had words and signs by which the initiate could recognize one another without betraying themselves to others.41 Ivan de Narbonne, who was converted from this heresy, in a letter to Giraldus, Archbishop of Bordeaux, as quoted by Matthew of Paris, says that in every city where he travelled he was always able to make himself known by signs.42
It was necessary that the diocesan bishops should be assisted in their heavy task of tracking down heretics, and accordingly the Holy See had resource to legates who were furnished with extraordinary powers to cope with so perplexing a situation. In 1177 as legate of Alexander III, Peter, Cardinal of San Crisogono, at the particular request of Count Raymond V, visited the Toulouse district to check the rising tide of Catharist doctrine.43 In 1181, Henry, Abbot of Clairvaux, who had been in his suite, now Cardinal of Albano, as legate of the same Pope, received the submission of various heretical leaders, and, so extensive were his powers, solemnly deposed the Archbishops of Lyons and Narbonne. In 1203 Peter of Castelnau and Raoul were acting at Toulouse on behalf of Innocent III, seemingly with plenipotentiary authority. The next year Arnauld Amaury, Abbot of Citeaux, was joined to them to form a triple tribunal with absolute power to judge heretics in the provinces of Aix, Arles, Narbonne, and the adjoining dioceses. At the death of Innocent III (1216) there existed an organization to search out heretics; episcopal tribunals at which often sat an assessor (the future inquisitor) to watch the conduct of the case; and above all the legate to whom he might report. The legate, from his position, was naturally a prelate occupied with a vast number of urgent affairs—Arnauld Amaury, for example, was absent for a considerable
