consecrated with the sign of the cross was regarded as holy by their disciples. Notwithstanding the strength and organization of the sect, the Waldenses were evidently looked upon by Pierre Cella with a less unfavorable eye than the Cathari, and the penances imposed on them were habitually lighter.[164] From Lyons the Waldensian belief had spread to the North and East, as well as to the South and West. It is a curious fact that while the Cathari never succeeded in establishing themselves to any extent beyond the Romance territories, the Waldenses were already, in 1192, so numerous in Lorraine that Eudes, Bishop of Toul, in ordering them to be captured and brought to him in chains for judgment, not only promises remission of sins as a reward, but feels obliged to add that if, for rendering this service, the faithful are driven away from their homes, he will find them in food and clothing. In Franche Comté, John, Count of Burgundy, bears emphatic testimony to their numbers in 1248, when he solicited of Innocent IV. the introduction of the Inquisition in his dominions, and its discontinuance in 1257 doubtless left them to multiply in peace. In 1251 we find the Archbishop of Narbonne condemning some female Waldenses to perpetual imprisonment. It was, however, in the mountains of Auvergne and the Alpine and sub-Alpine regions stretching between Geneva and the Mediterranean that they found the surest refuge. While Pierre Cella was penancing those of Querci, the Archbishop of Embrun was busy with their brethren of Freyssinières, Argentière, and Val-Pute, which so long continued to be their strongholds. In 1251, when Alphonse and Jeanne, on their accession, guaranteed at Beaucaire the liberties of Avignon and the Comtat Venaissin, the Bishop-legate Zoen earnestly urged them to destroy the Waldenses there. There were ample laws on the municipal statute-books of Avignon and Arles for the extermination of “heretics and Waldenses,” but the local magistracy was slack in their enforcement and was obliged to swear to extirpate the sectaries. The Waldenses were mostly simple mountain folk, with possessions that offered no temptation for confiscation, and persecuting energy was more profitable and more usefully directed against the richer Cathari. We hear, indeed, that from 1271 to 1274 the zeal of Guillaume de Cobardon, Seneschal of Carcassonne, urged the inquisitors to active work against the Waldenses, resulting in numerous convictions, but among the far more populous communities near the Rhone the Inquisition was not introduced into the Comtat Venaissin until 1288, nor into Dauphiné until 1292, and in both cases we are told that it was caused by the alarming spread of heresy. In 1288 the same increase is alluded to in the provinces of Arles, Aix, and Embrun, when Nicholas IV. sent to the nobles and magistrates there the laws of Frederic II., with orders for their enforcement, and to the inquisitors a code of instructions for procedure.[165]