Page:John Wycliff, last of the schoolmen and first of the English reformers.djvu/77

 encourage them. The fiery fanatic himself undertook to wrestle with the ill-fated adherents of Pierre de Vaud, and the other heretics of Languedoc; and, when his preaching had failed to reach their souls, the Inquisitors were called in to deal with their bodies. It was a system beautiful in its simplicity; but to do it justice required a subtle and keenly tempered mind.

Innocent III. found it possible in the thirteenth century to set up in parts of Italy, France, and Spain, these irregular courts of divine vicarial justice, having the power of life and death, yet denying the very semblance of legality to the accused. Not only could he create them by his own fiat, but he was also able to call in the aid of the executive arm, and to throw the expenses of his tribunal on the State. In 1233, Gregory IX. expressly assigned the control of the Inquisition to the Dominican Order, which was declared to be in every country exclusively responsible to the Holy See. A generation later, the Franciscans were associated with the Dominicans in this control; but the Black Friars never ceased to be the leading spirits of the campaign inaugurated by their founder.

England was not a soil in which the exotic Inquisition could flourish. The Interdict had not long been removed, and the Fair of Lincoln was but four years passed, when the first Dominicans found their way to this country in 1221. As a matter of course they betook themselves at once to the universities. They had powerful backers, and soon acquired houses and land. Their influence grew rapidly, and,