All bishops and archbishops were commanded to visit personally once or twice a year, or to empower their archdeacons or other clerics to visit, every parish in which heresy was thought to exist. They were to compel two or three trustworthy men, or, if need be, all the inhabitants of the city, to swear that they would denounce every suspect who attended secret assemblies, or whose manner of living differed from that of the ordinary Catholic. After the bishop had questioned all who had been brought before his tribunal, he was empowered to punish them as he deemed fit, unless the accused succeeded in establishing their innocence. All who superstitiously refused to take the required oath (we have seen how the Cathari considered it criminal to take an oath) were to be condemned and punished as heretics, and if they refused to abjure they were handed over to the secular arm.[1] This was an attempt to recall the bishops to a sense of their duty. The Lateran Council of 1215 re-enacted the laws of Lucius III; and to ensure their enforcement it decreed that every bishop who neglected his duty should be deposed, and another consecrated in his place.[2] The Council of Narbonne in 1227 likewise ordered the bishop to appoint synodal witnesses (_testes synodales_) in every parish to prosecute heretics.[3] But all these decrees, although properly countersigned and placed in the archives, remained practically a dead letter. In the first place it was very difficult to obtain the synodal witnesses. And again, as a contemporary bishop, Lunas de Tuy, assures us, the bishops for the most part were not at all anxious to prosecute heresy. When reproached for their inaction they replied: "How can we condemn those who are neither convicted nor confessed?"[4]
[1] Lucius III, Ep. clxxl, Migne, P.L., vol. cci, col. 1297 and seq.
[2] The Bull _Excommunicamus_, Decretals, cap. xiii, in fine, _De hæreticis_, lib. v, tit. vii.
[3] Can. 14, Labbe, _Concilia_, vol. xi, pars i, col. 307, 308.
[4] Lucas Tudensis, _De altera vita fideique controversiis adversus Albigensium errores_, cap. xix, in the _Bibliotheca Patrum_, 4 ed. vol. iv, col. 575-714. Lucas was Bishop of Tuy in Galicia, from 1239 to 1249.