These are evidently rather sporadic and exceptional cases than indications of any systematic introduction of the practice. A more significant allusion, however, is found in the reproof administered, about 1125, by Hildebert, Bishop of le Mans, to one of his priests, who had been concerned in the torture of a suspected thief, for the purpose of extracting a confession. Hildebert argues that the infliction of torture for confession is a matter for judicial decision and not of Church discipline, and therefore not fit for a clerk to be engaged in.[1517] This would seem to show that it occasionally was a recognized means of proof in the lay tribunals of the period, though as yet not favored by the Church. If so, no record of its introduction or evidence of its customary use has been preserved to us, though there is abundant evidence of its employment as a punishment and for the extortion of money. As a punishment legally inflicted, we find it prescribed, in 1168, by Frederic Barbarossa in cases of petty thefts,[1518] and in the next century by Frederic II. as a penalty for high treason.[1519] Special cases, too, may be instanced, where its infliction on a large scale shows that the minds of men were not unfamiliar with its use. Thus when, in 1125, the inhabitants of Erfurt were guilty of some outrages on the imperial authority, and the town was besieged and captured by the Emperor Lothair, the chronicler relates that large numbers of the citizens were either killed, blinded, or tortured in various ways by the vindictive conqueror,[1520] and in 1129 he treated the citizens of Halle in the same manner.[1521] Even towards the close of the thirteenth century, we find Rodolph of Hapsburg interfering in favor of a prisoner whom one of his nobles was afflicting with cruel torments. The Emperor, however, does not venture to command, but merely entreats that the tortures be suspended until he shall have an interview with the aggressor.[1522]