When the Holy Office for the universal Church was set up in Rome in 1542, it was in many respects distinct both from the first medieval type and from the later Spanish type. In the Middle Ages the headquarters were in the south of France, and the legislation was carried out by Councils at Toulouse, Narbonne, and Beziers. The Popes controlled them through their legates, and issued their own orders to the Dominicans. But it was not one of the institutions of the Court of Rome, and did not always act in harmony with it. It now became part of the Roman machinery and an element of centralisation. A supreme body of cardinals governed it with the Pope at their head. The medieval theory was that the Church condemned, and the State executed, priests having nothing to do with punishment, and requesting that it might not be excessive. This distinction fell away, and the clergy had to conquer their horror of bloodshed. The delinquent was tried by the Pope as ruler of the Church, and burnt by the Pope as ruler of the State. Consequently, this is the genuine and official Inquisition, not that of the Middle Ages, which was only partly in the hands of Rome; not that of Spain, which was founded but not governed by Rome, and for the developments of which the Papacy is not directly responsible. Originally the business of the Inquisitor was to exterminate. The Albigenses delighted in death, and they were disappointed when it was put off. But now it was directed against opinions not very clearly understood or firmly held, that often resembled a reformed Catholicism more than Protestantism. The number of victims was smaller. At Venice, where the Holy Office had a branch, there were 1562 trials in the sixteenth century, 1469 in the seventeenth, 541 in the eighteenth. But executions were frequent only in Rome. There, in many recorded cases, the victim was strangled before burning. It is doubtful whether death by fire was adopted as the most cruel; for boiling had been tried at Utrecht, and the sight was so awful that the bishop who was present stopped the proceedings. Roman experts regard it as a distinctive mark of the new tribunal that it allowed culprits who could not be caught and punished in the proper way, to be killed without ceremony by anybody who met them. This practice was not unprecedented, but it had fallen into disuse with the rest during the profane Renaissance, and its revival was a portentous event, for it prompted the frequent murders and massacres which stain the story of the Counter-Reformation with crimes committed for the love of God. The laws have not been repealed, but the system continued in its force for no more than a century; and before the death of Urban VIII the fires of Rome were quenched. At that time persecution unto death was not extinct in England; the last instance in France was in 1762, and in Spain still later. The immediate objects were obtained in the first thirty years.