Delation was an indispensable and certainly very useful feature of the Inquisition’s procedure. A woman of Toulouse in 1254 furnished a list of 169 persons incriminated by her, and all the names, with addresses, were carefully noted for later use. Each of these persons would be persuaded to supply further names, and so the Inquisition’s net was constantly growing larger. To give information against others was the truest sign of repentance, and the Inquisitors were untiring in their efforts to secure it. In order to elicit confession every conceivable means were employed: if kindness seemed to promise the best results, kindness would be shown; an emissary would visit the prisoner’s cell urging confession and promising mercy--with the mental reservation that severity was the truest mercy to a heretic. Sometimes a man’s wife and children were permitted in his dungeon that they might work upon his feelings. On occasion protracted delay was used to break the prisoner’s spirit; he would be tried, receive no definite sentence, and be left in gaol perhaps for many years. Thus a woman who was imprisoned and confessed in 1297 was not formally sentenced for thirteen years, while at Carcassonne a man made his confession in 1321 after an imprisonment of thirty years. If, on the other hand, it was thought desirable to hasten the sinner’s repentance, the confinement was made so terribly harsh that it frequently brought about the result desired. Torture had not been greatly employed in the earlier half of the thirteenth century, but Pope Innocent’s Bull of 1252 expressly authorized its use by the secular authorities to discover heresy. The secular courts were slow to adopt it, but its rapid extension by the Holy Office showed how useful it was. Although not frequently mentioned in the records, various indications prove that it was freely employed. Not only accused persons, but witnesses whose statements appeared doubtful or unsatisfactory, were put to the torture; and the Inquisition had an ingenious way of manufacturing witnesses, for a person who had confessed his own offence would be treated as a witness to the guilt of others, and was tortured to betray them. Confessions made under torture were subject to confirmation; if they were not confirmed, but denied, the accused was treated as an obstinate impenitent and perjurer, and handed over to the secular arm. _Evidence._