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The Theophylacti were powerful secular noblemen in the area surrounding Rome during the 10th - 12th century. They, in fact, had a few popes come from their ranks. Their reign was known as the "pornocracy," a period wherein powerful female members of the family were able to influence papal decisions. One of the things they came up with was the Gregory Reform, which stated that the Pope was the supreme ruler on Earth as a representative of God, thereby setting up a whole new level of oppression.

Later they latched on to various anti-heresy crusades and inquisitions as a way of making inroads into and establishing authority over pagan or quasi-pagan regions of Europe, ostensibly to spread Christianity but there were rumors they had an ulterior motive. The Albigensian Crusade is thought to be a cover story used by the Theophylacti to justify the destruction of a crypto-pagan organization and the seizure of their religious artifacts.

During the 1230s, Pope Gregory IX issued a series of papal bulls formally instituting what became known as the Papal Inquisition, a much more systematic and centralized version of the localized inquisitions that had existed previously. The inquisitors, mostly Dominicans, were specifically trained and reared to travel throughout Europe, conducting interrogations and rooting out heresy. The Theophylacti inserted their best and brightest young men into this organization. By the following decade, several of them had risen to positions of great authority in the Papal Inquisition and are actively pursuing investigations into various organizations including, presumably, the Ordo Militum Vindicis Intactae.