The responsibility for the discovery and the control of heresy had from the earlier years of the Church rested in the hands of the bishops. For many years after the central authorities undertook to exercise a direct control over heresy and heretics by means of inquisitors appointed from Rome, the bishops continued to enforce their own jurisdiction in the matter of the trial of heretics, sometimes apart from the inquisitors and sometimes in conjunction with them. The spiritual courts which came to be attached to their episcopates, and which exercised exclusive jurisdiction over a constantly widening jurisprudence, arose gradually during the troubles that followed the division of the Carlovingian empire. All errors of faith and charges of heresy necessarily came within the purview of these spiritual courts.[95] Following in the traces of the civil law, there were in these spiritual courts three forms of action in criminal cases: _accusatio_, _denunciato_, and _inquisitio_. In _accusatio_ there was an accuser who formally inscribed himself as responsible and who in case of failure was subject to the _taglio_. _Denunciatio_ was the official act of a public officer, such as the archdeacon, who summoned the court to take action against the offenders coming within his official knowledge. In _inquisitio_, the Ordinary arrested the suspected criminal, imprisoning him if necessary. The indictment, or _capitula inquisitionis_, was communicated to him and he was interrogated thereupon with the proviso that nothing extraneous to the indictment could be subsequently brought into the case to aggravate it. The verdict was finally given by the Ordinary. The first inquisitors may be considered as in a measure successors to the _Missi Dominici_ of Charlemagne, officials commissioned to traverse the empire making inquisition into all cases of disorder, crime, and injustice. We find in Verona, in 1228, “inquisitors” and “manifestors” employed by the State for the “detection and punishment of blasphemy.”[96] Under Clement, the bishops were ordered to make diligent visitations throughout their dioceses investigating all offences, and with the growth of ecclesiastical jurisdiction, this inquisitorial duty was perfected and organised. In 1227, the Council of Narbonne commanded all bishops to institute in every parish _testes synodales_ who should investigate heresy and other offences.