When there was a strong presumption, but no conclusive proof, against a prisoner who obstinately refused to confess, the Inquisitor was in difficulties. His responsibility was even more than that of a modern judge because only the germ of a jury system as yet existed. The Inquisitor could, and usually did, summon experts (periti) or “good men” (boni viri) to deliberate with him, and it was the custom for him to follow their verdict, except when he thought it too harsh. This rudimentary jury was made up of men learned in the civil or canon law, usually mendicant friars. Its weakness was that it was extremely difficult to get together qualified persons often enough to give real consideration in each individual case. Indeed it was physically impossible to do so when a large number of cases required review, as would happen in the centres of heresy where the peril to the Faith was greatest. Ignorance of the prisoners’ names lessened their usefulness, for, as Vacandard ably puts it, “... tribunals are to judge criminals and not crimes, just as physicians treat sick people and not diseases in the abstract.” Therefore, to ease the conscience of the judge in deciding doubtful cases, torture was introduced to force confession when the evidence was not conclusive. References to the use of torture are rare in the abundant records of the Inquisition. Whether this is because its use was so repugnant to the spirit of Christianity (and so unreliable a means for the discovery of truth) that the recorders shrank from mentioning it on paper, will never be known. Mediæval men in general were nothing if not frank, and yet the verbal equivocations of the Inquisition were many, as we shall see. Unfortunately, Roman precedents were in its favour, although the Roman law forbade torture to be used except against slaves. Roman freemen were liable to torture only in the case of a crime against the Emperor. The men of the Middle Ages seem to have thought of it as a substitute for the ordeal, which was going out of fashion, as we have seen. Torture was introduced late. Lea finds it mentioned in secular law, “... in the Veronese code of 1228 and in the Sicilian Constitutions of Frederick II in 1231,” and thinks that “... the references to it show how sparingly and hesitatingly it was employed.” In the Inquisition it was first recognized by Innocent IV in 1252.