to inveigh against heresy, the nobility and gentry all rose up and left the church, and the people followed them. The preacher came down and proceeded to the market-place, where he attempted to harangue on the same subject; but the populace, wiser than the preacher, refused to hear him, and raised such a clamour as drowned his voice, and compelled him to desist. Only one expedient remained. Bernard recollected that Jesus had ordered his apostles, in certain cases, to shake off the dust of their feet, and, as though he were an apostle, and had received the same command, he affected to imitate the example. He left the city, shook his feet, and exclaimed, "May the Almighty punish this city with a drought." Thus far went the rage of Catholicism at the beginning of the twelfth century, and here its proud waves were stayed; but at the commencement of the thirteenth, about the year 1215,[2] Dominic broke down the dam, and covered Toulouse with a tide of despotism stained with human blood. Posterity will scarcely believe that this enemy of mankind, after forming a race like himself, first called preaching, and then Dominican friars, died in his bed, was canonized as a saint, worshipped as a divinity, and proposed as a model of piety and virtue to succeeding generations." The Inquisitors, at first, had no tribunals; they simply inquired after the number, strength, and riches of heretics, and gave information of all these particulars to the bishops, who at that time had the sole power of judging in ecclesiastical matters; urging them to anathematize, or otherwise to punish, such heretical persons as they brought before them. Sometimes they excited princes to arm their subjects against those whom they denounced as heretics, and at other times they inflamed the populace to take up arms and unite in extirpating them. Nay, in his zeal for the Popish faith, Dominic, amidst a vast concourse of people, in one of his sermons openly declared, "That he was raised to a new office by the Pope; that he was resolved to defend with all his power the doctrines of the faith; and that, if spiritual and ecclesiastical weapons were not sufficient for this purpose, it was his fixed determination to call on princes to take up arms against heretics, that their very memory might be entirely destroyed. Nor was this an empty threat. Instigated by this inhuman monk, and by his adherents, armies were raised, styled cross-bearers, or crusaders, who massacred thousands of the Albigenses, laid their cities in ruins, and compelled the few who escaped to seek refuge in other parts of the world."