About this time we also find, in the increasing rigor and gradual systematizing of the Inquisition, an evidence of the growing disposition to resort to torture, and a powerful element in extending and facilitating its introduction. The Church had been actively engaged in discountenancing and extirpating the ordeal, and it now threw the immense weight of its authority in favor of the new process of extorting confessions. When Frederic II., from 1220 to 1239, published his three constitutions directed against heresy, cruel and unsparing as they were, they contained no indication that torture was even contemplated as a mode of investigation. In conformity with the provisions of the Lateran Council of 1215, parties suspected on insufficient evidence were directed to prove their innocence by some fitting mode of purgation, and the same instructions were given by Gregory IX. in 1235.[1545] In 1252, however, when Innocent IV. issued his elaborate directions for the guidance of the Inquisition in Tuscany and Lombardy, he ordered the civil magistrates to extort from all heretics by torture not merely a confession of their own guilt, but an accusation of all who might be their accomplices; and this derives additional significance from his reference to similar proceedings as customary in trials of thieves and robbers.[1546] It shows the progress made during the quarter of the century and the high appreciation entertained by the Church for the convenience of the new system. At first the canons of the Church, which prohibited ecclesiastics from being concerned in such matters, or even from being present, under pain of “irregularity,” rendered it necessary for inquisitors to call in the secular executioners; but this interfered with promptness and secrecy, and the difficulty was removed with characteristic indirection. A series of papal bulls from 1256 to 1266 authorized inquisitors and their assistants to grant mutual absolution and dispensation for irregularities,[1547] and thus they were able to take the business of inflicting torture into their own hands—an opportunity of which they availed themselves fully. As yet, however, this did not extend beyond Italy. There is extant a tract, written not long after this time, containing very minute instructions as to the established mode of dealing with the Waldensian sectaries known as the “Poor Men of Lyons.” It gives directions to break down their strength and overcome their fortitude by solitary confinement, starvation, and terror, but it abstains from recommending the infliction of absolute and direct torture, while its details are so full that the omission is fair negative evidence that such measures were not then customary.[1548]