With the exception of bishops, of whom more hereafter, the secular clergy were equally at the mercy of the Holy Office. Even when, as we have seen, in the bitter quarrels between the tribunal of Majorca and the clergy of the islands, the latter obtained the protection of special papal briefs, these exempted them only from the royal jurisdiction of the Inquisition and did not affect their liability in matters of faith, against which they raised no protest. The regular clergy, however--the members of the religious Orders--made long and persistent struggles to escape subjection, preferring the milder discipline of their own prelates. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the monastic establishments had, for the most part, obtained exemption from episcopal jurisdiction and were amenable only to the Holy See. When the Mendicant Orders were organized, in the thirteenth century, they were likewise subject immediately to the pope. It is true that, in 1184, Lucius III, in his Verona decree, had abolished this immunity in matters of faith and had remanded, in so far, the regulars back to episcopal jurisdiction, for as yet the Inquisition had not been thought of,[90] but, when the Mendicants claimed that this did not apply to their subsequently founded Orders, Innocent IV, in 1254, subjected them to the Inquisition, which by that time was in full operation. Boniface VIII emphatically confirmed this, even declaring that for heresy they were to be punished more severely than laymen, as the Spiritual Franciscans found to their cost under John XXII.[91] As inquisitors acted under delegation from the pope, there would be no question as to their jurisdiction over the regulars, but, in the case of the Dominican Master Eckart, tried, in 1327, by the Archbishop of Cologne, it was settled that the episcopal Inquisition also had cognizance.[92] Yet, about 1460, Pius II granted to the Franciscans the privilege of being tried only by the vicar-general of their Order and, in 1479, Sixtus IV, in view of the inveterate hostility between Franciscans and Dominicans, from which Orders nearly all inquisitors were drawn, prohibited those of one Order from prosecuting members of the other.[93] [Sidenote: _FLUCTUATING POLICY_]