How, then, did it happen that whereas heresy had become a formidable danger in the twelfth century, the institution of the special tribunal did not take place until the thirteenth? The suggestion appears plausible that there must have been some other cause besides the mere spread of heresy to account for the birth of the Inquisition at that date.[284] The answer is that it took time for heresy to be recognized as sufficiently serious to warrant the creation of an entirely new organization, and before the magnitude of the task of repressing religious error was fully apprehended.[285] In the second place, the papacy during this period was much preoccupied with more pressing concerns, particularly the investiture question, which involved the supreme issue as to the pre-eminence of secular or spiritual authority in Christendom. When once attention had been thoroughly arrested by the problem, the deficiencies of the existing spiritual courts for the new work became apparent. Overwork was by no means the only drawback. The character of the judges was at fault. Even after the Hildebrandine reforms, bishops still remained feudal barons with many inevitable secular distractions; archdeacons and other lesser officials were often venal and incapable.[286] In any case the very nature of diocesan authority militated against success. It was too purely local to be effective against offenders who could easily migrate from one part of the country to another. Even more serious was the lack on the part of the existing officials of special training and knowledge, especially in theology, which were found necessary, since heretics often evinced diabolical familiarity with the text of Scripture.[287] Lacking such special equipment and being badly pressed for time on a diocesan visitation, the bishop was apt to come to a hurried and arbitrary judgment, frequently falling back upon the device of the ordeal when the defendant pleaded ‘not guilty.’ Both the Councils of Rheims of 1157 and of Verona of 1184 ordered that suspects of heresy should be submitted to this test. But the method was never felt to be satisfactory, was strongly condemned by Ivo of Chartres and Alexander III, and so emphatically denounced by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 that it disappeared from the practice of lay as well as spiritual courts.