These were brave words, though the political condition of Lombardy rendered them ineffective. Nearer home, however, Gregory had fairer opportunity of enforcing his will, and we have already seen how promptly he recognized the utility of the Order of Dominic and laid the foundations of the Inquisition by his tentative action in Florence. While this was taking shape his zeal was stimulated by the discovery, in 1231, that in Rome itself heresy had become so bold that it ventured to assert itself openly, and that many priests and other ecclesiastics had been converted. Probably the first _auto de fé_ on record was that held by the Senator Annibaldo at the portal of Santa Maria Maggiore, when these unfortunates were burned or condemned to perpetual prison, and Gregory took advantage of the occasion to issue the decretal which became the basis of inquisitorial procedure, and to procure the enactment of severe secular laws in the name of the senator. The details I have already given (Vol. I. p. 325), and they need not be repeated here; but Gregory did not content himself with what he thus accomplished in Rome. His aid just then was desirable to Frederic II. in his Lombard complications, and to Gregory’s urgency may doubtless be attributed the severe legislation of the Sicilian Constitutions, issued about this time, and the Ravenna decrees of 1232. Shortly afterwards, indeed, we find Frederic writing to him that they are like father and son; that they should sharpen the spiritual and temporal swords respectively committed to them against heretics and rebels, without wasting effort on sophistry, for if time be spent in disputation nature will succumb to disease. It is not probable that Gregory counted much on the zeal of the emperor, but he sent the edict of Annibaldo to Milan, with instructions that it be adopted and enforced there. Already, in 1228, his legate, Goffredo, Cardinal of San Marco, had obtained of the Milanese the enactment of a law by which the houses of heretics were to be destroyed, and the secular authorities were required to put to death within ten days all who were condemned by the Church; but thus far no executions seem to have taken place under it.[222]