Notaries documented, validated and formally ‘published’ the inquisitor's acts and instruments, but his decisions and their consequences still had to be communicated to the public at large. Pursuing heretics also often required contact – by letter or orally – with colleagues in other parts of Italy and beyond, and with the papal Curia. The group of staff whose main function it was to be the inquisitor's public mouthpiece – the nuncii, precones, couriers and messengers – have barely been considered by historians. In two excoriating paragraphs, Lea lumps this ‘lowest class’ of inquisition functionaries together with spies and bravos, wrongly calls all of them familiars, and brands the whole group a ‘social scourge’. This is both unduly pejorative and a misunderstanding of their role. Although nuncii do not rate an entry in the Dizionario storico dell'Inquisizione, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (and perhaps in Italy more than in Languedoc) they played a significant part in the functioning of the inquisition team as a legal tribunal. Like the notaries, they were a bridge between the inquisitor, the commune and the bishop, and they linked the inquisition firmly into secular legal practices.

The tendency to translate nuncius as ‘messenger’ has contributed to the undervaluing of this group of staff. Although some were indeed specialised couriers (cursores), and in that capacity were essential in maintaining inquisition communications across Italy, the inquisition nuncius himself was not primarily a message carrier except in the sense that in all his actions he was ‘his master's voice’. His principal function was as a sworn officer of the court, similar to modern-day bailiffs and beadles. Alongside the nuncii of other courts, he ensured that all stages of a legal process were announced in due form both to those affected and to the community at large. He delivered public summonses to those required to appear before the ‘tribunal of the Faith’. He called on witnesses and other interested parties to make themselves known. He arrested suspects and delivered them to detention. He declared property confiscated on suspicion of heresy and took possession of it for the court. He publicised convictions and prepared the way both for the inquisitor's formal preaching and for the announcement of mass excommunications (as for instance against the Colonna cardinals, or the followers of Ludwig of Bavaria), by summoning the public and ensuring that no disturbances occurred.