This Apostolical Inquisition was at once introduced into Lombardy, Romagna and the Marches of Treviso. The extreme rigor of its proceedings, the extortions of monks, and the violent resistance offered by the communes, led to some relaxation of its original constitution. More authority had to be conceded to the bishops; and the right of the Inquisitors to levy taxes on the people was modified. Yet it retained its true form of a Papal organ, superseding the episcopal prerogatives, and overriding the secular magistrates, who were bound to execute its biddings. As such it was admitted into Tuscany, and established in Aragon. Venice received it in 1289, with certain reservations that placed its proceedings under the control of Doge and Council. In Languedoc, the country of its birth, it remained rooted at Toulouse and Carcassonne; but the Inquisition did not extend its authority over central and northern France.[80] In Paris its functions were performed by the Sorbonne. Nor did it obtain a footing in England, although the statute 'De Haeretico Comburendo,' passed in 1401 at the instance of the higher clergy, sanctioned the principles on which it existed. The wide and ready acceptance of so terrible an engine of oppression enables us to estimate the profound horror which heresy inspired in the Middle Ages.[81] On the whole, the Inquisition performed the work for which it had been instituted. Those spreading sects, known as Waldenses, Albigenses, Cathari and Paterines, whom it was commissioned to extirpate, died away into obscurity during the fourteenth century; and through the period of the Renaissance the Inquisition had little scope for the display of energy in Italy. Though dormant, it was by no means extinct, however; and the spirit which created it, needed only external cause and circumstance to bring it once more into powerful operation. Meanwhile the Popes throughout the Renaissance used the imputation of heresy, which never lost its blighting stigma, in the prosecution of their secular ambition. As Sarpi has pointed out, there were few of the Italian princes with whom they came into political collision, who were not made the subject of such accusation. [Footnote 80: See Christie's _Etienne Dolet_, chapter 21.] [Footnote 81: Visitors to Milan must have been struck with the equestrian statue to the Podesta Oldrado da Trezzeno in the Piazza de'Mercanti. Underneath it runs an epitaph containing among the praises of this man: _Catharos ut debuit uxit_. An Archbishop of Milan of the same period (middle of the thirteenth century), Enrico di Settala, is also praised upon his epitaph because _jugulavit haereses_. See Cantu, _Gli Eretici d Italia_, vol. i. p. 108.]