The first inquisitors appointed by Gregory IX took up office in Charité-sur-Loire, a major heretical centre in the 13th century. They conducted their investigations and interrogations from Burgundy and in the provinces in the centre and north of France: Besançon, Reims, Rouen and Tours, in addition to which they were also assigned Flanders, Paris and the surrounding areas, and Champagne.

Robert le Bourge turned out to be a particularly efficient inquisitor. In particular, he destroyed the whole of the ancient Cathar community at Mont-Aimé in Champagne, with 50 or so heretics being burnt to death, and sending some 187 other infidels to the stake in Mont-Wimer. However, his excesses soon provoked the indignation of his fellow inquisitors. Not content with sending heretics to the stake, the inquisitor indulged in much more appalling forms of death, sometimes burying his victims alive. Following several denunciations, the Pope sent a commission of enquiry and the bloodthirsty Robert was removed from office and then thrown in prison.


  
   


"May each of you buckle on his sword and spare neither his brother nor his closest parent ", announced the papal bull of 1219. Torture - the spiked chair, the wheel, hot irons - was quickly perceived as being the most effective way of obtaining a 		   
penitent's recantation.    
This practice became widespread throughout the Christian West and was recommended in most of the procedure manuals, which rapidly became practical guides for torture-based interrogation. The most famous guide was drawn up by Bernard Gui, an inquisitor in the Toulouse region between 1307 and 1324.
 
 
The atrocities committed by the inquisitors represented a short break in the heretical witch hunt. The system received the moral and financial backing of the King of France. The procedure underwent a few changes, with the inquisitor for Paris then sending out groups of 2 to 6 inquisitors into the French provinces.

Travelling tribunals were especially prevalent in the north of France, which was not scene to the major cases of heresy witnessed in the Toulouse region. The tribunals moved from town to town, ruling on the handful of individuals denounced for their lack of religious convictions or the cases of witchcraft that increased during the 15th and 16th centuries. The interrogations took place in the monastery of the order to which the inquisitor belonged (if available in the town), the town's episcopal palace, the local church or the municipal buildings.
 
 
             
 
In Paris, the Temple, which belonged to the Templars until they were arrested in 1307 by Guillaume de Paris, General Inquisitor for France, was used as a prison for the dissenters arrested by the judges. This is where Maurice de Saint-Paul, Inquisitor for Paris, imprisoned Sire de Parthenay in 1323. Nevertheless, all civil and episcopal prisons were of use to the inquisitors, and heretics could undoubtedly be found in most of the prisons in Paris.
 
       
 
Heretics were sentenced to death by burning at the stake, an act which symbolised the redemption and cleansing of the accused's soul.

As soon as the Inquisition was created, and encouraged by the religious intolerance of Saint Louis, stakes began cropping up throughout France.

In Paris, even the king attended the execution of heretics, as can be seen in this engraving. The Bastille is clearly visible in the background on the left and the gallows from which people were hung on the right. In most cases, irreligious people were burnt at the Place de Grève, which today is the Place de l'Hôtel de Ville (home to the mayor of Paris).
 
It should be reiterated that the northern half of France was the area for individual cases of heresy, whereas the southern half was confined to Cathar and Waldensian heresy. After the Cathar and Waldensian heretics were wiped out through the various crusades and wars of religion, the Inquisition, finding itself at bit of a loose end, focused its attention on astrologers, alchemists, warlocks and witches, sorcerers, enchanters, magicians and fortune tellers, whose practices were compared to demonology. This was a veritable war that the Inquisition waged during the 15th and 16th centuries. France increasingly resorted to torture and burnt a considerable number of these representatives of the devil.