Inasmuch as the inquisitors in 1246 still expected the bishops to defray their expenses, they recognized themselves, at least in theory, as merely an adjunct to the episcopal tribunals. The bishops, moreover, were expected to build the prisons for the confinement of converts, and though they eluded this and the king was obliged to do it, the Council of Albi, held in 1254 by the papal legate, Zoen of Avignon, assumes that the prisons are under episcopal control. The same council drew up an elaborate series of instructions for the treatment of heretics, which marks the termination of episcopal control of such matters, for all subsequent regulations were issued by the Holy See. Even so experienced a persecutor as Bernard de Caux, notwithstanding his neglect of episcopal jurisdiction in his sentences, admitted in 1248 his subordination to the episcopate by applying for advice to Guillem of Narbonne, and the archbishop replied, not only with directions as to special cases, but with general instructions. Indeed, in 1250 and 1251 the arch-bishop was actively employed in making an inquisition of his own and in punishing heretics without the intervention of papal inquisitors ; and a brief of Innocent lY. in 1251 alludes to a previous intention, subsequently abandoned, of restoring the whole business to the bishops. In spite of these indications of reaction the intruders continued to win their way, with struggles, bitter enough, no doubt, in many places, and intensified by the hostility between the secular clergy and the Mendicants, but only to be conjectured from the scattered indications visible in the fragmentary remains of the period. There is an effort to retain vanishing authority in the offer made in 1252 by the bishops of Toulouse, Albi, Agen, and Carpentras to give full authority as inquisitors to any Dominicans who might be selected by the commissioners of Alphonse of Poitiers, only stipulating that their assent must be asked to all sen-
d'lnnocent IV. No. 2043, 3867, 3868.— Arch, de I'lnq. de Carcass. (Doat, XXXI. 68, 74, 75, 77, 80, 152, 182).— Potthast No. 12744, 15805.— MSS. Bib. Nat., fonds
latm, No. 9992. — Concil. Valentin, ann. 1248 c. 10. — Baluz. Cone. Narbonn. "App.
p. 100.
The system devised by the councils of Languedoc became generally current. In 1248 Innocent IV. ordered the Archbishop and Inquisitor of Narbonne to send a copy of their rules of procedure to the Provincial of Spain and Raymond of Pennaforte, to be followed in the Peninsula (Baluz. et Mansi I. 208) ; and their canons are frequently cited in the manuals of the mediaeval Inquisition,
