The commission issued in 1227 by Gregory IX may be conveniently accepted as constituting the foundation of the papal Inquisition. From this date, the policy of the Church in the great work of the suppression of heresy was pushed forward with a consistency on the part of the central organisation that had not before been possible. In April, 1233, Gregory IX issued two Bulls making the persecution of heresy the special function of the Dominicans. The plan, arrived at by Gregory, for the selection by the provincial churches of certain brethren who exercised within their several provinces the delegated authority of the Holy See in searching out and examining heretics, was accepted as a permanent basis of the Inquisition. The bishops continued from time to time to protest against the invasion by these papal inquisitors of their territories and of their responsibilities, but the power of the Inquisition continued to strengthen itself through the centuries. The germ of the Inquisition lies in the duty of searching out and correcting error. It was, therefore, natural that when the new art of printing had largely increased the risk of the spread of error, the Inquisition should have claimed and should have secured a large share of the responsibility for the control of the printing-press. The chief original authority for the system of the earlier Inquisition is the _Directorium Inquisitorium_ of Nicholas Eymeric, who was Inquisitor-General for Castile in 1316. Eymeric left, among other works, the manuscript of a _Liber Sententiarum_, or Book of Judgments, which presents the early rules of procedure. In 1252, Innocent IV issued the Bull _Ad Extirpanda_, addressed to the potentates and rulers of Italy, which presented an elaborate law for the establishing of machinery for systematic persecution in every city and in every State. In 1265, Urban IV renewed an order, originally issued in 1257 by Alexander IV, under which the local authorities were forbidden to interfere in any way with the action of the Inquisition. The Inquisition was made supreme in all lands and it became an accepted maxim of law that all legislation interfering with its free action was void and that all who enacted such laws were to be punished. When a monarch like Philip the Fair undertook to protect his subjects against inquisitorial processes, he risked incurring Divine vengeance. Under the canon law, any one, from the meanest to the highest, who opposed, or who impeded in any way, the functions of the inquisitor, or who gave aid or counsel to others so acting, became at once, _ipso facto_, excommunicate. In England, the statute _de haeretico comburendo_, enacted in 1400, for the first time secured for that country the penalty of death as a punishment for heresy. It was under this statute that dissemination of heretical opinions by preaching or by books was prohibited and controlled. In 1262, Urban IV instituted the office of