Innocent iii. at first employed against the heretics of Southern France only spiritual and legitimate weapons.  Before proscribing, he tried to convert them; he sent to them a great number of missionaries, nearly all taken from the order of Citeaux, and of proved zeal already; many amongst them had successively the title and power of legates; and they went preaching throughout the whole country, communicating with the princes and laic lords, whom they requested to drive away the heretics from their domains, and holding with the heretics themselves conferences which frequently drew a numerous attendance.  A knight “full of sagacity,” according to a contemporary chronicler, “Pons d’Adhemar, of Rodelle, said one day to Foulques, Bishop of Toulouse, one of the most zealous of the pope’s delegates, ’We could not have believed that Rome had so many powerful arguments against these folk here.’  ‘See you not,’ said the bishop, ‘how little force there is in their objections?’ ‘Certainly,’ answered the knight.  ‘Why, then, do you not expel them from your lands?’ ‘We cannot,’ answered Pons; ’we have been brought up with them; we have amongst them folk near and dear to us, and we see them living honestly.’” Some of the legates, wearied at the little effect of their preaching, showed an inclination to give up their mission.  Peter de Castelnau himself, the most zealous of all, and destined before long to pay for his zeal with his life, wrote to the pope to beg for permission to return to his monastery.  Two Spanish priests, Diego Azebes, Bishop of Osma, and his sub-prior Dominic, falling in with the Roman legates at Montpellier, heard them express their disgust.  “Give up,” said they to the legates, “your retinue, your horses, and your goings in state; proceed in all humility, afoot and barefoot, without gold or silver, living and teaching after the example of the Divine Master.”  “We dare not take on ourselves such things,” answered the pope’s agents; “they would seem sort of innovation; but if some person of sufficient authority consent to precede us in such guise, we would follow him readily.”  The Bishop of Osma sent away his retinue to Spain, and kept with him only his companion Dominic; and they, taking with them two of the monks of Citeaux, Peter de Castelnau and Raoul,—­the most fervent of the delegates from Rome,—­began that course of austerity and of preaching amongst the people which was ultimately to make of the sub-prior Dominic a saint and the founder of a great religious order, to which has often, but wrongly, been attributed the origin, though it certainly became the principal agent, of the Inquisition.  Whilst joining in humble and pious energy with the two Spanish priests, the two monks of Citeaux, and Peter de Castelnau especially, did not cease to urge amongst the laic princes the extirpation of the heretics.  In 1205 they repaired to Toulouse to demand of Raymond vi. a formal promise, which indeed they obtained; but Raymond was