²²⁸ Velly’s Hist, of France, vol. 3, p. 430, 468.
It is not Without an object that this pope is applauded for the establishment of the inquisition. In fact, Lucius III. from the year 1184, had ordered the bishops to seek ont heretics, to subject them to Spiritual, and deliver them over to secular punishments; but this first germ of so formidable an institution was developed before the time, when Innocent III. thought of sending into Languedoc two Oistertian monks, charged to pursue the Albigenses, to excommunicate them, and denounce them to the civil authority, which was to confiscate their wealth, or proscribe them, under pain of incurring itself ecclesiastical censures. Friar Raynier, friar Guy, and the archdeacon Peter of Castelnau, are the first inquisitors named and known in history. Innocent enjoined the people and their rulers, to obey them; the sovereigns, to proceed against the heretics denounced by these missionaries; the people, to take up arms against disobedient princes, or those who evinced too little zeal. Those first ministers of pontifical vengeance had soon fellow helpers, among whom St. Dominick is distinguished; and from the year 1215, their functions had acquired sufficient consistence and splendour to be solemnly approved in the Lateran council.²²⁹ Without doubt, the inquisition, a kind of permanent crusade, had not been perfected or consolidated, save under the successors of Innocent: but, without the memorable experiment he had the honour of making, it is doubtful if it had so tremendously flourished or brought forth its fruits.
²²⁹ Concilior, vol. 11, p. 142,—Director. Inquis. part 1,c. 2.
Among three hundred popes, or anti-popes, of which history presents us with the names, we know none of them more imposing than Innocent III; his pontificate is most worthy the attention and study of European monarchs: there they may learn to what extent temporal power, united with ecclesiastical functions, amplifies and perverts them; to what universal supremacy was the papacy destined; in fine, what tyranny did it not exercise over princes, and over people, whenever political circumstances, even in a small degree, favoured sacerdotal ambition. A pope, said Innocent, the vicar of Christ, is superior to man, if he be inferior to God—_minor Deo, major homine_; he is the light of day; the civil authority is but the pale planet of the night. It was Innocent III. who discovered in the chapter of Genesis this celestial theory of the two powers, and it was by similar allegories, proofs of the ignorance of the age and of his own, that he subjugated the West, troubled the East, and governed, and deluged the world with blood.: