In spite of opposition, the Papal institution took root and flourished.  Philip Augustus responded to the appeals of Innocent; and a crusade began against the Albigenses, in which Simon de Montfort won his sinister celebrity.  During those bloody wars the Inquisition developed itself as a force of formidable expansive energy.  Material assistance to the cause was rendered by a Spanish monk of the Augustine order, who settled in Provence on his way back from Rome in 1206.  Domenigo de Guzman, known to universal history as S. Dominic, organized a new militia for the service of the orthodox Church between the years 1215 and 1219.  His order, called the Order of the Preachers, was originally designed to repress heresy and confirm the faith by diffusing Catholic doctrine and maintaining the creed in its purity.  It consisted of three sections:  the Preaching Friars; nuns living in conventual retreat; and laymen, entitled the Third Order of Penitence or the Militia of Christ, who in after years were merged with the congregation of S. Peter Martyr, and corresponded to the familiars of the Inquisition.  Since the Dominicans were established in the heat and passion of a crusade against heresy, by a rigid Spaniard who employed his energies in persecuting misbelievers, they assumed at the outset a belligerent and inquisitorial attitude.  Yet it is not strictly accurate to represent S. Dominic himself as the first Grand Inquisitor.  The Papacy proceeded with caution in its design of forming a tribunal dependent on the Holy See and independent of the bishops.  Papal Legates with plenipotentiary authority were sent to Languedoc, and decrees were issued against the heretics, in which the Inquisition was rather implied than directly named; nor can I find that S. Dominic, though he continued to be the soul of the new institution until his death in 1221, obtained the title of Inquisitor.

Notwithstanding this vagueness, the Holy Office may be said to have been founded by S. Dominic; and it soon became apparent that the order he had formed, was destined to monopolize its functions.  The Emperor Frederick II. on his coronation, in 1221, declared his willingness to support a separate Apostolical tribunal for the suppression of heresy.  He sanctioned the penalty of death by fire for obstinate heretics, and perpetual imprisonment for penitents—­forms of punishment which became stereotyped in the proceedings of the Holy Office.[78] The tribunal, now recognized as a Dominican institution, derived its authority from the Pope.  The bishops were suffered to sit with the Inquisitors, but only in such subordinate capacity as left to them a bare title of authority.[79] The secular magistracy was represented by an assessor, who, being nominated by the Inquisitor, became his servile instrument.  The expenses of the Court in prosecuting, punishing and imprisoning heretics, together with the maintenance of the Inquisitors and their guards, were thrown upon the communes which they visited.  Such was the organization which the Popes, aided by S. Dominic, and availing themselves of the fanatical passions aroused in the Provencal wars, succeeded in creating for their own aggrandizement.  It is strange to think that its ratification by the supreme secular power was obtained from an Emperor who died in contumacy, excommunicated and persecuted as an arch-heretic by the priests he had supported.