It is a question whether this legislation is merely the codification of the custom introduced by popular uprisings against heresy and by certain royal decrees, or whether it owes its origin to the law of Frederic II which Gregory IX tried to enforce in France, as he had done in Germany and Italy. This second hypothesis is hardly probable. The tribunals of the Inquisition did not have to import into France the penalty of the stake; they found it already established in both central and northern France. In fact, Gregory IX urged everywhere the enforcement of the existing laws against heresy, and where none existed he introduced a very severe system of prosecution. He was the first, moreover, to establish an extraordinary and permanent tribunal for heresy trials--an institution which afterwards became known as the monastic Inquisition. . . . . . . . . The prosecution and the punishment of heretics in every diocese was one of the chief duties of the bishops, the natural defenders of orthodoxy. While heresy appeared at occasional intervals, they had little or no difficulty in fulfilling their duty. But when the Cathari and the Patazins had sprung up everywhere, especially in southern Italy and France and northern Spain, the secrecy of their movements made the task of the bishop extremely hard and complicated. Rome soon perceived that they were not very zealous in prosecuting heresy. To put an end to this neglect, Lucius III, jointly with the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa and the bishops of his court, enacted a decretal at Verona in 1184, regulating the _episcopal inquisition_.