Page:The history of medieval Europe.djvu/498

 448 THE HISTORY OF MEDIEVAL EUROPE and killing those whom it could not convince. For the time being this harsh policy had an apparent success ; the Cathari soon disappeared forever and the Waldensians ceased to be at all dangerous. Innocent did not establish the papal inqui- sition, although he took a step or two in its direction. But by the cruel crusade which he turned upon a Christian land he started the policy of forcible extermination of heresy of which the inquisition was the logical outcome. The inquisitors did not visit all the lands of Latin Chris- tendom. Scandinavian countries were entirely free from them and they appeared in England on only one occasion. In the Spanish peninsula they were limited to Aragon until the notorious Spanish Inquisition began at the close of the fifteenth century. In the Low Countries we hear of them only in Flanders and Brabant. The men chosen by the popes to act as inquisitors were the Dominican and Franciscan friars. The founders of these two new religious orders, St. Francis of Assisi in central Italy and St. Dominic, a prior of Osma in north central Spain, had already begun their work in the pontificate of Innocent, although their orders were not com- pletely established and did not spread over Europe until after his death. Many legends grew up about both these saints and have been preserved in paintings as well as in literature. About Dominic we know little with certainty; concerning Francis we are better informed by contempora- ries. St. Francis has always been regarded as one of the most beautiful characters in the Middle Ages. As a boy he had St. Francis plenty of money to spend and led a gay life of of Assisi pleasure, until a serious illness wrought a great change in him just about the time that he was coming of age. The life of the apostles, whom Christ sent out to preach the coming of the kingdom of heaven, telling them not to take money, food, or extra clothing with them — this ideal of apostolic poverty came to appeal to Francis as it had done to so many others in the Middle Ages, and he deter- mined to put it into practice. His angry father, when he