The Beginning of the Inquisition (1000–1300)

I – The Albigensian Heresy

At the end of the twelfth century opposition to the clergy became a devastating flood. In the age of faith, in every corner, there existed groups of mystics and people with refined religious sentiments who escaped the grasp of the Christian priestly institution and came into conflict with it. New waves of Eastern mysticism, probably brought back by the Crusaders, spread from the East to the West. From Iran came echoes of Manichaean doctrines and the communal faith of Mazdak through Asia Minor and the Balkans to Europe; from the Islamic world came opposition to image and idol worship, a vague belief in predestination, and hatred of priests; and as a result of the Crusaders’ defeats in their struggles with the Islamic world, doubt arose about the divine origin of the Church and God’s support for the faith of Jesus.

The Paulicians, driven westward by the persecutions of the Byzantine emperors, carried with them their hatred of image worship, the sacraments, and the priestly class from the Balkans to Italy and Provence. This group divided the world of creation into two realms—spiritual and material—believing the former was made by God and the latter by the Devil, and identifying the Devil with the Yahweh of the Old Testament. The Bogomils (“Friends of God”) were a sect that became prominent in Bulgaria and, especially in the region of Bosnia, spread widely. During the thirteenth century this group was attacked several times and put to the sword, but in the midst of these events they defended themselves with great stubbornness, and finally (1463) they submitted to Islam rather than to Christianity.

Around the year one thousand, in the region of Toulouse and Orléans a sect appeared that denied the reality of miracles, the life-giving property of baptism, the real presence of Jesus in the Eucharistic sacrifice, and the efficacy of prayers to the saints. For a time no one paid attention to the beliefs of this group, then they were condemned, and in 1023 thirteen of them were burned alive. Gradually similar heresies appeared, leading to revolts in Cambrai and Liège (1025), Goslar (1052), Soissons (1114), Cologne (1146), and the like. Berthold of Regensburg in the thirteenth century estimated that the number of heretical sects must have reached one hundred and fifty. Some of these were harmless groups that gathered together to read the Bible in their native language without a priest and to interpret passages that were disputed among the people according to their own view. Several of these sects, such as the Humiliati in Italy and the Beguines and Beghards in the Low Countries of northern Europe, believed firmly in everything except that priests should live in poverty, and their insistence on this point caused shame to the clergy. The Franciscan movement was also a movement with similar ideas, with the difference that the arrow of the charge of heresy passed by its ear.

The Waldensians did not escape this arena unscathed. In 1170, a certain Peter Waldo, a wealthy merchant of Lyon, hired several scholars to translate the Bible into the language of the people of southern France or Langue d’Oc (the Occitan language). Waldo himself studied the translation with great zeal and concluded that Christians should live like the apostles of Christ, that is, without individual property. He gave part of his wealth to his wife and distributed the rest among the poor, and according to the teachings of the Gospel began to preach about poverty.

Peter Waldo gathered a small group of “Lyon beggars” around him who dressed like monks, lived in chastity, wore sandals or went barefoot, and pooled all their income in a communal way. For a time the clergy raised no objection and allowed these people to participate in the worship services of the churches. But when Peter Waldo applied the teachings of the Gospel literally and began to preach, the archbishop of Lyon sharply rebuked him and reminded him that only bishops were permitted to preach. Waldo went to Rome (1179) and asked Alexander III to grant him permission to preach. The pope agreed to this request on condition that preaching be done with the approval and under the supervision of the local clergy; apparently Waldo continued his preaching without obtaining permission from the local clergy. His followers became devotees of the Gospel and memorized large portions of the Bible. Gradually this movement took on an anti-Church character, came into conflict with every form of antiquity, denied the validity of sacraments performed by a sinful priest, and considered every pure and chaste believer to possess the power to forgive sins. Some followers of this sect considered the buying and selling of indulgences a vain practice and denied purgatory, “transubstantiation,” and prayer to the saints. One group preached that “everything should be held in common.” Another group regarded the Church as the scarlet woman mentioned in the Book of Revelation of the apostle John. The Waldensian sect was condemned in 1184.

Innocent III accepted part of it, known as the “Poor Catholics,” into the Church in 1206, but most members of this sect remained steadfast in their heretical beliefs and spread from France to Spain and Germany. A religious council at Toulouse, probably to prevent the increase in the number of followers of this sect, decreed in 1229 that no layperson should possess any religious or sacred book except the Book of Psalms; moreover, since up to that time none of the translations of the Bible into vernacular languages had been examined and approved by the Church, it was stipulated that the Bible should be read only in Latin. In the suppression of the Albigensians, thousands of followers of the Waldensian sect were burned at the stake. Peter Waldo himself apparently died a natural death in 1217.

By the middle of the twelfth century a vast network of heretical sects had formed in the cities of Western Europe, so that a bishop in 1190 declared that “the major cities are full of these false prophets.” In the city of Milan alone there were seventeen new religions. The most important heretical sect in this city was the Patarenes, a name derived from a poor quarter of the city called Pataria. Apparently the Patarene movement began as a protest by the poor against the rich, but gradually took on the character of hostility toward the clergy and turned into a struggle against the buying and selling of ecclesiastical offices, wealth, marriage, and priests taking concubines. The aim of the Patarene sect, according to one of its leaders, was “that the wealth of the priests should be confiscated, their goods put up for auction, their houses opened for the people to plunder, and they themselves and their bastards driven out of the city.” Other sects in Viterbo, Orvieto, Verona, Ferrara, Parma, Piacenza, Rimini, and the like raised the banner of opposition to the clergy. Sometimes these movements seized public assemblies, took control of city governments, and taxed the clergy to pay for municipal expenses. Innocent III instructed his legate in Lombardy to bind all civil officials by oath to refrain from appointing followers of heresy to offices and to prevent their infiltration into government positions. In 1237, a group of people in Milan “while insulting the sacred things and uttering curses,” defiled several churches with “indescribable filth.”

The most powerful heretical sects became known by several names—they were called Cathars, derived from a Greek word meaning “pure”; in some cases the term Bulgars was applied to them because their origin was from the Balkan region. They were also called Albigensians, derived from the name of the city of Albi in France where many of them lived.

Montpellier, Narbonne, and Marseille were the first centers of heresy in France. Perhaps this arose from the fact that communications between the French and Muslims and Jews were very frequent in this region, and groups of merchants regularly traveled from centers such as Bosnia, Bulgaria, and Italy—the centers of growth of heretical movements—to these areas. Merchants caused the spread of the movement in Toulouse, Orléans, Soissons, Arras, and Reims, but Languedoc and Provence remained two strong fortresses of heretics. There medieval French civilization reached its peak of perfection; in a friendly urban environment, followers of the great religions mingled with one another; women were proudly beautiful; no one was very bound by moral principles, troubadours were busy spreading joyful ideas; and, like Frederick’s Italy, the preliminaries of the Renaissance were prepared. In those days (1200) southern France consisted of a handful of almost independent principalities that were all formally loyal to the king of France in a precise manner. In this region the counts of Toulouse were the most powerful of all lords and princes, and their lands were far more extensive than the territories directly administered by the king. The doctrines and customs of the Cathar sect were partly a sign of a return to the beliefs and customs of primitive Christians, partly the result of a vague memory of the Arian heresy that had been prevalent in southern France during the rule of the Visigoths, and partly the product of Manichaean ideas and other Eastern doctrines. This group had priests and bishops dressed in black robes; upon entering the clerical circle, they swore to abandon father and mother, friends, and their children and to devote themselves to “the Lord and the Gospel … never to touch a woman, never to kill an animal, never to taste meat, eggs, or dairy products, and to eat nothing but fish and vegetables.” The “believers” were persons who promised to later undertake such a vow, and until they had formally made such a vow they were allowed to eat meat and marry, but they were obliged to separate from the Catholic Church, move toward the “perfect” life, and upon encountering any of the Perfecti, bow three times with respect.

The theology of the Cathars divided the world of creation in the Manichaean manner into good—God, spirit, heaven—and evil—the Devil, matter, the material world; the world that was seen with the eye was made by the Devil, not by God. All material things, including the cross on which Jesus died, and the sacred name of the Eucharistic sacrifice, were considered part of evil. When Jesus pointed to it at the Last Supper and said “This is my body,” he had spoken only figuratively. Every flesh was material and any contact with it was impure. Every kind of sexual matter was sinful, and the sin of Adam and Eve was that they had had intercourse with each other. Opponents claimed that the Albigensians denied religious rites, the sacraments, respect for images of the saints, the Trinity, and the birth of Jesus from the Virgin Mary; they said that these people did not consider Jesus and God to be one, but claimed that Jesus was an angel. In the works of these same opponents we read that these heretics had trampled the basis of private property underfoot. Their desire was that everyone should equally enjoy the things of the world. This group made the Sermon on the Mount the basis of their ethics. They taught their followers that they should love their enemies, care for the sick and the poor, never curse, and always make peace with people; recourse to force, even against unbelievers, was never considered a praiseworthy act. Killing a person for committing a crime was one of the mortal sins.

A person was obliged to believe wholeheartedly that ultimately God, without resorting to evil means, would overcome evil. In this theology there was neither hell nor purgatory; everyone, even if his soul returned several times by the command of reincarnation for purification, would ultimately attain eternal salvation. For a person to go to heaven, he had to pass from the world pure, and for this purpose it was necessary to receive the last sacrament or, in the terminology of this sect, the consolamentum from a Cathar priest, and this last sacrament was what completely cleansed the human soul from the stain of sin.

The Cathar believers (like some early Christians who did the same with baptism) usually postponed this sacrament until, in their own opinion, they fell into the deathbed. Those who recovered ran the risk of becoming defiled again and leaving the world without the sacrament; therefore recovery of a patient after receiving that sacrament was considered a great misfortune; and opponents of this group have documented that Albigensian priests, to avert this calamity, encouraged many recovered patients to abstain completely from eating in order to go to heaven. Some chroniclers of the age say there is no doubt that sometimes a priest, in order to make a person’s salvation certain, with the patient’s permission, suffocated him.

If the Cathar sect had not seriously come into protest and criticism of the Church, it is probable that the Church would have left its followers alone and allowed them to bring about their own destruction. But the Cathars denied that the Church belonged to Jesus; and they believed that the apostle Peter had never set foot in Rome and had never founded the papal institution and that the popes were successors of the emperors, not of the apostles of Christ. Jesus did not have a few inches of land to sleep on, but the pope lived in a palace. Jesus owned nothing from the world, not even a penny, whereas Christian bishops were wealthy people; the Cathars also said to the people, “Do you not have eyes of truth? These arrogant and lordly archbishops and bishops, these worldly priests, these fat and plump monks are the same Pharisees or sanctimonious people of the Old Testament who have come back to the stage of existence!” In the eyes of the Cathars the Roman Catholic Church was undoubtedly the scarlet whore of Babylon, the class of priests belonged to the synagogue of Satan, and the pope himself was the Antichrist. The preachers accused the Crusades of being a band of murderers. Many members of this sect mocked the indulgences and relics attributed to the saints. Also, according to opponents, some of this group drew a picture of the Virgin Mary that was ugly in appearance, with one eye and a badly formed face, and claimed that they had performed miracles; first they convinced many people of these false miracles and then revealed the groundlessness of those claims to everyone. Much of the ideas of the Cathars were spread through the songs of the troubadours. These lyric singers, without having accepted the moral principles of the new sect, were opposed to the morals of the Christian faith, and for this reason all the prominent troubadours, except two, were considered supporters of the Albigensians. These troubadours mocked pilgrimage, confession of sins, holy water, and the cross; they called churches “dens of thieves,” and in their eyes Catholic priests were a group of “traitors, liars, and hypocrites.”

For a time the religious and secular powers of southern France showed considerable tolerance toward the Cathar heretics. Apparently the people were allowed to choose between the old faith and the new religion, whichever they preferred. Public debates and discussions were held between Catholic theologians and the Cathars; one of these meetings took place in Carcassonne (1204) in the presence of one of the pope’s legates and Peter II, king of Aragon. In 1167 the various branches of the Cathars held a council with their own priests in which representatives from several countries participated. In this council discussions were held on their administration, discipline, and religious principles, regulations were established, and the council was closed without anyone disturbing the participants. In addition, the noble class found it expedient to weaken the position of the Church in Languedoc; the Catholic Church had great wealth and vast lands; the nobles, who were relatively poor, began to confiscate the properties of the Church. In 1171 Roger II, viscount of Béziers, plundered a monastery; he imprisoned the bishop of the city of Albi and assigned one of the supporters of heresy to guard him. When the monks of Alès elected a person to the headship of their monastery who was not to the viscount’s liking, he set the monastery on fire and imprisoned its head; when the old man died in prison, the viscount joyfully placed his body on the pulpit of the monastery and encouraged the monks to elect a successor who would please him. Raymond Roger, count of Foix, expelled the head of the monastery and the monks of Pamiers from that monastery; he turned its altar into a stable for his horses; his soldiers used the hands and feet of a wooden crucified Christ as pestles for grinding wheat and made the face of Christ the target of their shooting. Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, destroyed several churches, persecuted the monks of Moissac, and was excommunicated (1196). But the sentence of excommunication had become a commonplace matter among the nobles of southern France.

Many of them either openly considered themselves followers of the Cathar movement or, out of liberal-mindedness, supported the movement.

Innocent III, who ascended the papal throne in 1198, realized that these developments were dangerous both for the Church and for the government. He admitted that some actions of the Church deserved reproach, but he believed that when a heretical sect strikes at the root of this institution, plunders the properties of the Church, destroys the reputation of this organization, and insults the position of the saints, he could not stand by and do nothing. Innocent considered the Church the most important stronghold against human aggression, social chaos, and the unjust actions of kings, and he cherished high hopes and plans for the advancement of that institution. Of course the government had also committed sins and nurtured corrupt and unworthy agents in its bosom, but only fools wanted to destroy the government; how was it possible to build a lasting social system on principles that prohibited marriage and encouraged suicide? Could any economy flourish and prosper on the basis of a doctrine of poverty and without the incentive of property? Was it possible to save the sexual relations of individuals and the upbringing of children from the quagmire of chaos and disorder except with the help of an institution like marriage? In the view of Innocent, the Cathar doctrine was nothing but a bunch of nonsense and nonsense, and it was the simplicity of the people that made these absurdities poisonous. When in the heart of the Christian world these Albigensian heretics were constantly increasing, what meaning did the Crusade against the infidels in Palestine have? Two months after ascending the papal throne, Innocent wrote in a letter to the archbishop of Auch in Gascony:

The little boat of Saint Peter has been tossed about many times in the midst of the sea and has seen many storms. But what grieves me more than anything else in these days … is that we observe a crowd of devilish wanderers who, far more unbridled and mischievous than before, ensnare simple people. This crowd, with their superstitions and fabrications, distort the meanings of the words of the “Holy Scripture” and set out to destroy the unity of the Catholic Church. Since this harmful error has increased in Gascony and the neighboring lands, we want you and your fellow bishops to resist it with all the power you have … We strictly command you to destroy all these heretics with whatever means you have at your disposal, and to drive out of your territory all the people who have been contaminated by them … . If necessary, you may incite kings and people to trample them under the sword.

The archbishop of Auch, who was a tolerant man toward himself and others, apparently took no action after receiving the pope’s letter; the archbishop of Narbonne and the bishop of Béziers resisted the pope’s legates who had come to carry out his commands. At the same time, six noblewomen led by the sister of the count of Foix publicly converted to the Cathar faith in a ceremony attended by a large number of nobles. Innocent recalled his legates who had achieved no success and appointed a stronger-willed representative, named Arnauld, who was the head of the Cistercian monks, to carry out this important task (1204). The pope gave Arnauld extensive powers to establish an inquisitorial apparatus throughout France and allowed him to issue a general decree absolving all the sins of the king and those French nobles who assisted in the suppression of the Cathar heresy. The pope suggested to Philip Augustus that, in return for this help, he could take for himself the lands of those who refused to participate in a crusade against the Albigensians.

Philip hesitated to accept the proposal. He had just conquered Normandy and wanted time to digest that rich morsel. Raymond VI, count of Toulouse, agreed to encourage the heretics to accept the pope’s views but refused to go to war against them. Innocent excommunicated him. Raymond, seeing the situation this way, promised to obey the pope’s orders; he was absolved but again evaded. A knight who had been ordered by one of the pope’s legates to expel the Cathars from their homes and lives asked: “How can we undertake such an action? We have grown up with these people, we have relatives and kin among them, and we see with our own eyes that they do not step outside the path of chastity and piety.” In the meantime Saint Dominic came from Spain to southern France, preached with peace and gentleness, and because he was a pious and abstinent man, persuaded some of them to follow the correct doctrines of the Christian faith. It was possible that the problem could be resolved through such paths and with the help of Church reforms, and unity among the believers restored, but the murder of one of the pope’s legates named Peter of Castelnau by a knight who thereafter received the protection of Raymond turned the page.

Innocent, who for nearly ten years had patiently witnessed the fruitlessness of his efforts to suppress heresy, now resorted to severe measures. He excommunicated Raymond and all his assistants, prohibited religious ceremonies throughout his territory, and declared that any Christian who conquered these lands would have them as lawful property. The pope also called upon Christians of all countries to participate in a crusade against the Albigensian heretics and their supporters. Philip Augustus allowed many lords of his realm to participate in such a struggle, and groups of German and Italian soldiers also joined them. All participants in this crusade were promised, like those who set out on the Crusades, that they would be covered by a general indulgence. Raymond asked for pardon, publicly, with his body half-naked, received lashes from the hands of the priests in the church of Saint-Gilles, and formally joined such a crusade (1209). Most of the inhabitants of Languedoc, both nobles and commoners, who saw that the lords and a group of poor people from the north had turned religious zeal into a means to seize their property, rose in resistance against the crusaders. Even the orthodox Christians of the southern regions rose to confront the northern invaders. When the crusaders approached the city, they sent a message that if the inhabitants of the city handed over all the individuals whose names were listed in the bishop’s register, they would be spared all the hardships of war. The leaders of the city refused to accept such a request and replied that submitting to a siege and even eating their children would be far preferable in their view.

The crusaders climbed over the city walls, captured it, put twenty thousand men, women, and children to death without any consideration, and even put to the sword those who had taken refuge in the church.

Caesarius, a Cistercian monk from Heisterbach, who twenty years after these events wrote down his memories, is the only reliable source that says when Arnauld, the pope’s legate, was asked whether one should refrain from killing Catholics or not, he replied: “Kill them all, for God knows who is on the right side.” Perhaps Arnauld feared that all the defeated had temporarily become believing Catholics to escape death. After Béziers was set on fire and leveled to the ground, the crusaders, led by Raymond, advanced and attacked the fortress of Carcassonne. It was here that Raymond’s nephew, Roger, count of Béziers, made the last stand against the invaders. Finally the fortress was captured and Roger died of dysentery.

The bravest commanders in this siege were Simon de Montfort. Simon, born around 1170 in France, was the eldest son of the lord of the Montfort region near Paris; and because his mother was one of the noblewomen of England, through this connection he received the title Earl of Leicester. Simon, like many men of that age who excelled in swordsmanship and boasting, could at the same time be a very pious man and show skill in the fields of war. He attended Mass every day, was famous for chastity and purity, and had served with full honor in Palestine. Now he, with his small army of 4,500 men, at the urging of the pope’s legate, attacked the cities, overcame all opponents, and gave the people of the conquered cities the choice of either binding themselves by oath to follow the Catholic faith or putting their heads under the sword as heretics. Thousands chose the first option, and hundreds accepted death. For four years Simon continued his struggles and destroyed almost all the lands of Count Raymond except Toulouse. In 1215 the city of Toulouse itself surrendered, and a council composed of bishops in Montpellier deposed Count Raymond from his position. Simon received the title and became the owner of most of his lands.

Innocent III was not entirely in agreement with these events. He was extremely horrified to realize that the crusaders, like a band of predatory robbers, had engaged in theft of people’s property and murder and had seized the properties of people who had never been accused of heresy. For this reason he took pity on Raymond and stipulated that as long as he lived he would regularly receive a stipend from the papal treasury, and he placed part of his lands in the custody of the Church so that Raymond’s son would not become destitute. When Raymond VII came of age, he recaptured Toulouse. In the second siege of Toulouse (1218) Simon died. Now that Innocent III had also passed from the world, the Albigensian Crusade came to a halt; and those Albigensian devotees who had escaped the arena with their lives came out of their corners of seclusion to engage in preaching and performing their religious rites under the shadow of the moderate government of the new count of Toulouse.

In 1223 Louis VIII, king of France, suggested to Pope Honorius III that he was ready to depose Raymond VII from his position and completely uproot heresy from his territory on condition that he annex all of Raymond’s lands to his own realm. It is not known what the pope’s reply to this proposal was, but we know that a new crusade began; when Louis died in Montpellier (1226), he was close to achieving a decisive victory.

Raymond took advantage of this opportunity for peace with Blanche of Castile, the regent of Louis IX, and proposed that he was ready to give his daughter Jeanne in marriage to Alphonse, brother of Louis, and when he himself passed from the world, to transfer his lands to his daughter and son-in-law. Blanche, who was weary of the rebellious nobles, accepted the proposal, and Pope Gregory IX, after obtaining a commitment from Raymond to eradicate every type of heresy in his territory, showed agreement with this arrangement. In 1229 a peace treaty was concluded in Paris, and the Albigensian wars, after thirty years of fighting and destruction, came to an end.

The official Catholic faith triumphed, tolerance disappeared, and the Council of Narbonne (1229) issued a strict order that no part of the Bible should be in the possession of laypeople. Feudalism developed, urban freedom declined, and the age of the cheerful troubadours in southern France came to an end. In 1271 Jeanne and Alphonse, who had inherited Raymond’s possessions, died without heirs, and the vast province of Toulouse passed to Louis IX and the French dynasty. Now central France had obtained free commercial ports on the Mediterranean and had taken a great step toward unity. This matter, and the Inquisition, were two important results of the struggles that were undertaken with the aim of destroying the Albigensian heretics.

II – The Background of the Inquisition

The Old Testament gave believers a simple and straightforward instruction for dealing with heretics, meaning that it said these people should be carefully examined, and if three credible witnesses testified that they “have gone and worshiped other gods and bowed down to them” then the believers were obliged to “stone that man or woman with stones until he dies.” (Deuteronomy 17:5)

If there arises among you a prophet or a dreamer of dreams, and he gives you a sign or a wonder, and the sign or the wonder comes to pass, of which he spoke to you, saying, ‘Let us go after other gods which you have not known, and let us serve them,’ you shall not listen to the words of that prophet or that dreamer of dreams; for the Lord your God is testing you to know whether you love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul. You shall walk after the Lord your God and fear Him, and keep His commandments and obey His voice; you shall serve Him and hold fast to Him. But that prophet or that dreamer of dreams shall be put to death, because he has spoken in order to turn you away from the Lord your God, who brought you out of the land of Egypt and redeemed you from the house of bondage, to entice you from the way in which the Lord your God commanded you to walk. So you shall put away the evil from your midst. If your brother, the son of your mother, your son or your daughter, the wife of your bosom, or your friend who is as your own soul, secretly entices you, saying, ‘Let us go and serve other gods,’ which you have not known, neither you nor your fathers, of the gods of the people who are all around you, near to you or far off from you, from one end of the earth to the other end of the earth, you shall not consent to him or listen to him, nor shall your eye pity him, nor shall you spare him or conceal him; but you shall surely kill him; your hand shall be first against him to put him to death, and afterward the hand of all the people. And you shall stone him with stones until he dies … (Deuteronomy 13:1-9). You shall not permit a sorceress to live (Exodus 22:18).

The Gospel of John (15:6) indicated that Jesus Christ himself had accepted this ancient Old Testament tradition, for he said: “If anyone does not abide in Me, he is cast out as a branch and is withered; and they gather them and throw them into the fire, and they are burned.” Medieval Jewish communities accepted the Old Testament ruling on heresy in theory but almost never followed it in practice. Maimonides accepted this ruling without question.

According to Greek laws, whoever committed asebeia or worshiped gods other than the authentic gods of the Greek pantheon, his act was considered a great sin. It was on the basis of such a law that Socrates was forced to drink the cup of hemlock. In ancient Rome, where there was complete harmony between the government and the gods, heresy and disrespect for the gods was considered a great treason, and the punishment for such a crime was death. In every case where there was no private accuser to report a guilty person, the judge of the Roman court summoned the suspect and himself investigated the charge. It was from this ancient Roman judicial practice that an inquisitorial apparatus came into existence in the Middle Ages and was given the name “Inquisition.” The Eastern emperors, who applied Roman law in the Byzantine Empire, condemned Manichaeans and other heretics to death. During the Dark Ages, since it rarely happened in Western Europe that one of the followers of the Christian faith rose in opposition to that religion, tolerance increased, and Leo IX believed that in the case of heresy only the punishment of excommunication should suffice.

In the twelfth century, as the market for heresy flourished, some clergy came to believe that in addition to the issuance of an excommunication sentence by the Church, the government should also exile or imprison such people. In the twelfth century, with the revival of Roman law in Bologna, the conditions, methods, and motivation for a religious inquisition came into existence and the ecclesiastical law on heresy was copied word for word from the fifth law known as “Heretics” or contained in Justinian’s code. Finally in the thirteenth century the Church, imitating the law of its greatest enemy, Frederick II, stipulated that the punishment for heresy should be death.

In the view of most Christians—even in the view of many heretics—the Church had been founded by the Son of God. On the basis of this assumption, whoever attacked the Catholic faith had committed an insult against God; with these premises, a stubborn heretic, in the eyes of orthodox believers, was nothing but a representative of the Devil who wanted to nullify everything Jesus Christ had done; and whoever or whatever government showed tolerance toward heretics was helping the work of the Devil. At this time, since the Church considered itself an inseparable part of the political and religious government of Europe, it viewed heresy with the same eye that the government viewed treason; in other words, heresy was in fact an axe at the root of the social system. Innocent said: “Civil law, by confiscating property and executing, brings traitors to the punishment of their deeds. … For this reason we have even more right to excommunicate those who betray the faith of Jesus Christ and to confiscate their property, for disrespect toward the divine court is a crime far greater than insult to the royal position.” In the view of religious statesmen like Innocent, a heretic was far worse than a Muslim or a Jew; Muslims and Jews lived outside the Christian world or if they lived among Christians they were subject to completely strict regulations.

The foreign enemy was a soldier whom one faced in open war; the heretic was a traitor who held a position inside the camp and undermined the unity of the Christian world that was engaged in a great struggle with the Islamic world. In addition, theologians claimed that if every person interpreted the Bible according to his own view (no matter how vague) and created his own separate version of Christianity for himself, the religion on which the weak moral principles of the people of Europe were based would soon be divided into various and numerous sects and would lose its property as a social bond that had served as a means of uniting barbaric individuals in one society and the emergence of a civilization.

Whether because people shared these views with the Church without themselves being responsible for establishing such ideas; whether because simple-minded people naturally fear anything different or unfamiliar; whether because when individuals are placed among a crowd and no one knows their identity, they enjoy revealing instincts that in normal conditions are suppressed by the pressure of individual responsibility—for whatever reason—the people themselves everywhere except southern France and northern Italy with great willingness and enthusiasm engaged in the persecution and torment of their fellow human beings; and according to a historian, “long before the Church took any action, the crowd itself, without trial, put heretics to death in public.” Orthodox believers complained that the Church behaved with excessive tolerance toward heretics. Sometimes “they snatched heretics from the hands of priests who were guarding them.” A priest from northern France wrote to Innocent: “In this kingdom the religiosity of the people is to such a degree that they are always ready not only to burn those who are openly from the group of heretics, but also those who are merely suspected of heresy, in fire.” In 1114 the bishop of Soissons imprisoned some heretics; while he was away from his seat, the people, “for fear that the priests would behave too leniently,” broke the prison doors and dragged the heretics to the foot of a pyre and burned them alive. In 1144 in the city of Liège the crowd insisted on burning some heretics whom Bishop Adalbero still hoped to lead to the correct doctrines of the faith. When Pierre de Bruys declared that in the Eucharistic sacrifice “the priests lie when they pretend to transubstantiate into the body of Jesus” and burned a group of crucifixes on Good Friday, the people immediately killed him. The government also participated with some reluctance in the persecution and destruction of heretics with the people, because it feared that without the assistance of the Church which forcibly replaced uniform religious beliefs in the minds of the common people, the administration of the affairs of the kingdom would be disrupted. In addition, the government suspected that heresy in political matters might be a pretext for sweeping political reforms, and perhaps it was. It is probable that material considerations were also effective, because whenever heresy had a religious or political aspect and a riot broke out, the properties of the Church and the government were endangered. Public opinion of the upper classes—and again Languedoc or southern France was an exception to this general rule—dictated that the root of heresy should be uprooted at any cost. Henry VI, emperor of Germany (in 1194) ordered that heretics be severely punished and their property confiscated. Similar decrees were issued by Otto IV (1210), Louis VIII king of France (1226), Florence (1227), and Milan (1228). The harshest laws approved for crushing heretical groups were the laws enacted by Frederick II between 1220 and 1239. According to these laws it was stipulated that whoever was condemned by the Church for the crime of heresy should be handed over to the local government to be burned in fire. If such people repented of their act, instead of being burned in fire they were condemned to lifelong imprisonment. All the property of heretics was confiscated; and their heirs were deprived of the right of inheritance; their children had no right to hold sensitive jobs and high positions unless by introducing other heretics they atoned for the sins of their father and mother. Government authorities were obliged to destroy their houses and prevent their relatives from repairing and renewing the building.

The mild-tempered and merciful king of France, Louis IX, also approved similar laws for his subjects. In reality it was the kings who competed with the people in taking the lead in starting the persecution and killing of heretics. Robert, king of France, in 1022 burned thirteen heretics in Orléans. From the year 385 AD, when Priscillian was executed by the government, this was the first time in history that people were condemned to death for the crime of heresy. In 1051 Henry III, emperor of Germany, hanged several Manichaeans or Cathars in Goslar, although Wazo, bishop of Liège, strongly protested that issuing a sentence of excommunication about them was sufficient. In 1183 Philip, count of Flanders, with the assistance of the archbishop of Reims, “burned alive a large crowd of nobles, clergy, knights, peasants, maidens, married women, and widows and confiscated their property and divided it among themselves.” Normally, before the thirteenth century, the work of investigation and inquiry into heresy was assigned to the bishops. The action of this group cannot be called an inquisition, because usually the bishops waited until the people made a noise and accused some people openly of heresy. Then when the bishops summoned the accused, they found extracting confessions from them a very difficult task, and since torture was a shameful act, to prove guilt or innocence of the accused they resorted, according to medieval tradition, to the ordeal, because it was believed that God reveals His power through miracles to protect the lives of the innocent. Saint Bernard considered this method of trial expedient, and a council composed of bishops in Reims (1157) approved it as a rite for the trial of heretics, but Innocent III prohibited following this practice. In 1185 Pope Lucius III, who was dissatisfied with the negligence of the bishops in pursuing heretics, instructed that group to visit their dioceses at least once a year, arrest all suspects, consider anyone who was not willing to take a complete oath to the Church guilty (the Cathars were not willing to participate in any kind of oath-taking), and hand over these kinds of opponents to the secular army. The pope’s legates everywhere were authorized to depose bishops who were negligent in crushing heretics. In 1215 Innocent III instructed all civil authorities to formally swear that they would “destroy in their subject territories all heretics whom the Church has condemned to the prescribed punishment,” otherwise they themselves would be condemned for the crime of heresy. In addition, the pope warned all princes and kings that if they neglected this duty of theirs they would be deposed from their position, and he would free all their subjects from their oath of allegiance. At this time the purpose of the “prescribed punishment” was still only confiscation of property and exile.

When Gregory IX ascended the papal throne (1227), he realized that, despite the persecution and punishment of heretics by bishops, government authorities, and the common people, the market for heresy was warming up. The entire Balkan region, most of the soil of Italy, and most of the regions of France had become so turbulent with heretical movements that, not long after the powerful and glorious reign of Innocent, the Church apparently saw itself condemned to schism and division. From the viewpoint of that aged religious caliph, the Church’s war at the same time with Frederick and the heretics was tantamount to a vital struggle, and from this standpoint the Church had the right to adopt the same moral principles and actions that a country at war adopts. At the same time news arrived that Bishop Filippo Paternon, whose diocese extended from Pisa to Arezzo, had converted to the Cathar faith. Gregory was extremely horrified by this news and sent a group of inquisitors to Florence, led by a monk of the Dominican order, to hold a court and bring heretics to trial (1227).

Although in this case the inquisitors were formally subject to the orders of the local bishop, in reality this action was the prelude to the papal inquisition. In 1231 Gregory added to the ecclesiastical decrees the laws that Frederick had enacted in 1224 concerning dealing with heretics. From then on both the Church and the government agreed that if a person joined the heretics and did not repent, his act was tantamount to treason and deserving of death. In this way the Inquisition was officially established under the supervision of the popes.

III – The Inquisitors

After 1227 Gregory and his successors dispatched an ever-increasing number of special “inquisitors” to various parts to engage in the pursuit of heretics. Gregory preferred to send members of the new orders of the poor of Christ for this important task. This preference was partly due to the unadorned life and sincerity of this group which neutralized the scandals of worldliness and luxury of the clergy and partly due to the lack of trust that the pope had in the bishops; however no inquisitor could condemn a heretic to severe punishment without obtaining the consent and approval of the bishops. The number of monks of the Dominican order (Dominicans) who were assigned to this work was so great that the common people jokingly, by distorting their name, called them canes Domini (“the hounds of the Lord”). Most of them were very strict in morals, but a few of them had the virtue of mercy. This group did not consider themselves judges whose work was to impartially separate evidence and proofs, but considered themselves warriors in pursuit of the enemies of Christ. Some of them, like Bernard Gui (Bernardus Guidonis), were cautious people obedient to the commands of conscience, and others were bloodthirsty men who took pleasure in tormenting their fellow human beings, like “Robert the Dominican,” one of the heretics of the Patarene sect who had repented and converted to the Catholic faith. In 1239 in the course of one day he issued the order to burn 180 prisoners, including a bishop who in his opinion had granted too much freedom to heretics. Finally Gregory deposed Robert from his position and imprisoned him for life.

The jurisdiction of the inquisitors was limited only to Christians. Jews and Muslims were not summoned to these courts unless after accepting the Christian faith they had returned to their own religion. The Dominicans made special efforts to encourage Jews to accept the Christian faith, but these kinds of actions in no way indicated recourse to violence. In 1256, when Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children during the performance of their religious rites, the monks of the Dominican and Franciscan orders risked their lives to save them from the hands of the crowd. The main purpose and field of operation of the inquisitorial apparatus is well evident from the lines of a decree issued by Nicholas III in 1280:

By this means, we excommunicate and curse all heretics the Cathars, Patarenes, Poor of Lyon … and the like, by whatever name and title they are called. When these kinds of people are condemned by the Church, they must be handed over to the secular judge … . If anyone after arrest repents and desires the punishment of atonement, he must be imprisoned for life. … All those who give shelter to heretical people, or defend or help them; must be excommunicated and cursed as heretics. Whoever remains in a state of excommunication and curse for one year and one day must be exiled. … Those who are suspected of heresy, if they cannot prove their innocence, will be excommunicated and cursed. If the yoke of excommunication and curse remains on their necks for one year, they will be considered heretics and will receive the prescribed punishment. These kinds of people will have no right of appeal. … Whoever allows them burial according to Christian rites will be condemned to the sentence of excommunication until he fully satisfies the pleasure of the Church. Such a person will not be pardoned unless with his own hand he digs up the bodies of those buried dead from under the earth and throws them away … . We hereby forbid all laypeople from discussing matters related to the Catholic faith; and if anyone violates this command, we will excommunicate him. Whoever has knowledge of the existence of heretics or people who secretly hold meetings, or those who in all respects do not follow the correct principles and doctrines of the Catholic faith, must reveal these matters to the priest to whom he goes for confession of sins or to someone else so that they may inform the bishop or the religious inquisitor. If a person neglects this duty, he will be excommunicated. Heretics and all those who shelter them, support them, or help them, and all their children up to two generations, will have no right to hold ecclesiastical positions. … By this means we deprive all these kinds of people forever of their benefits.

The course of proceedings of the inquisitorial courts could begin with the immediate arrest of all heretics, and sometimes with the arrest of all suspects. Or the inquisitors could summon all male individuals of a region for a preliminary interrogation. Initially a “grace period” of approximately thirty days was set, during which whoever confessed to heresy and repented was usually imprisoned for a short time or assigned to devotion or charitable works. Heretics who did not confess their sin during this period, but during this preliminary interrogation, or by the efforts of the spies of the inquisitorial apparatus or by other means, their secret was revealed, were summoned to the presence of the judges of the inquisitorial court. Usually this court had twelve members who were selected by the governor, prince, or local ruler from the list of names of people that the bishop and inquisitors had provided to him. In addition, the court had two notaries and several “servants.” If the guilty refused this second opportunity to confess their sins, they were imprisoned. The guilty could be tried in absentia or after death. To issue a sentence of guilt, the presence of two witnesses was necessary. The testimony of confessed heretics against others was admissible. The testimony of women and children against their husbands and fathers was accepted, but not in their favor. All the accused of one place, upon request, were allowed to examine the list of names of all the individuals who had accused them, but the issue of which of these individuals had accused which person or persons was kept hidden, because there was fear that if this matter was revealed, the friends of the accused person would set out to kill the accusers; according to Henry Charles Lea, “in reality some of the witnesses were killed solely on the basis of suspicion.” Normally the accused was asked to name his enemies, and then no testimony from these kinds of people against the accused person was admissible. Whoever falsely accused another of heresy was severely punished. Before the year 1300 the accused was not allowed to seek help from anyone to defend his rights. After the year 1254, according to the pope’s decree, the inquisitors were obliged to present the documents not only to the bishop but also to the notables and dignitaries of the place and with their agreement of opinion to issue a verdict on the accused.

Sometimes a committee of experts was invited to present the evidence to the competent authorities. In general, the inquisitors were instructed that the escape of the guilty from the grasp of justice was preferable to condemning an innocent person, and the inquisitors either had to have obtained a confession from the accused person or had to have a solid proof.

According to Roman law, extracting a confession with the help of torture was permitted. In episcopal courts and during the first twenty years of the Inquisition, no use was made of torture, but Innocent IV stipulated (1252) that wherever the judges considered the guilt of the accused person certain, they could subject the accused to torture. All the successors of Innocent showed approval for the use of this means. The popes recommended that, in the matter of the Inquisition, recourse to torture should be the last resort, used only once, and should not be carried out in such a way as to lead “to the uprooting and destruction of limbs and danger of death.” The inquisitors interpreted the phrase “only once” to mean that the purpose was one session of torture for each interrogation. Sometimes they stopped the torture to continue the interrogation, then considered themselves permitted to begin the torture again. In several cases torture was used to force witnesses to give testimony or to compel a confessed heretic to reveal other heretics. Usually in these kinds of cases torture consisted of whipping the accused, burning, drawing the limbs from the sides, or solitary confinement in narrow and dark dungeons. The feet of the accused could be slowly roasted on burning coals, or it was possible to tie him to a tripod and pull his hands and feet with ropes that were wound around a winch. Sometimes the food of the imprisoned person was deliberately limited so much that his body and will became weak and susceptible to such psychological tortures that sometimes he imagined that they would have mercy on him, forgive his sins, or hand him over to the executioner.

The inquisitorial courts did not attach much value to confessions extracted from the accused by force of torture, but they removed these difficulties by forcing the accused person three hours after the torture to confirm his confessions. If the accused refused to accept such a thing, they resumed the torture. In 1286 the government authorities of Carcassonne sent a complaint letter to King Philip IV of France and Pope Nicholas IV and complained about the violence of the tortures that were carried out under the supervision of the inquisitors. Some prisoners were kept for long periods in solitary and completely dark prisons; some were chained in such a way that they were forced to sit on their own excrement and could only lie on their backs on the cold ground. Some were stretched so much on the instrument of torture that they lost the ability to use their hands and feet; and some died under torture. Philip condemned this kind of savagery, and Pope Clement V made efforts to moderate the use of torture (1312), but it was not long before the inquisitors of the Inquisition ignored these kinds of warnings.

Prisoners who had refused to accept two preliminary opportunities to confess their sins and were later condemned, and also those who after repentance had again turned to heresy, were imprisoned for life or put to death. Lifelong imprisonment was alleviated with some freedom of action, visits with relatives and acquaintances, and entertainments; or it was possible to refuse to give food and water to the prisoner or to keep him in chains and in this way intensify his punishment. Confiscation of the property of the guilty was an additional fine that was usually used in the case of stubborn guilty parties. Usually part of the confiscated property belonged to the secular ruler of the local province and part to the Church. In Italy one-third of the guilty person’s property was given to the informer who informed the authorities of his crime. In France the king confiscated all the guilty person’s property. These financial considerations were what united individuals and the government in the pursuit of heretics and finally even led to the trial of the dead. At any moment it was possible to confiscate the property of innocent people on the grounds that it was the inheritance of heretical people. This matter was one of the many abuses that the popes suffered in vain in condemning them. The bishop of Rodez boasted that in one struggle against the heretics of his diocese he had gained one hundred thousand coins in profit.

Every so often the inquisitors in the course of a terrifying ceremony known as the “sermo generalis” announced the sentence of death and punishment of the guilty. The repentant individuals were placed on benches in the middle of a church, their confessions were read aloud, and they were asked to confirm their confessions and repeat phrases that condemned and denied heresy. Then the inquisitor who was the master of ceremonies of this assembly absolved the repentant from the sentence of excommunication and announced the various sentences that had been issued against the guilty. Those who were to be handed over to the secular army were given one more day to abandon heresy and convert to the true faith; those who confessed and repented, even if the repentance took place at the foot of the pyre, were condemned to lifelong imprisonment. Those who persisted until the last moment and remained steadfast in their belief were burned on a pyre in the public square of the city. In Spain the entire process of announcing the sentence and burning the guilty was called “auto-da-fé” and was interpreted as a sign of faith, because the purpose of all the ceremonies was to strengthen the foundation of the orthodox faith of the people and to confirm the faith of the Church. The Church never issued a sentence of death against anyone. The ancient motto of the Church was this sentence: “The Church avoids blood”; shedding blood was forbidden for all clergy. Therefore when the Church handed over the guilty whom it had condemned to the secular army, in reality it limited its own action to asking the government to carry out the “prescribed punishment” against the condemned, and incidentally advised that they should refrain from “any kind of bloodshed and any danger of death.” After Gregory IX both the government and the Church agreed that this recommendation should not be interpreted literally by the government authorities, and the purpose of the Church was that blood should not be shed, so they were permitted to burn the guilty alive in fire.

IV – Results

The medieval Inquisition had arisen for purposes that it achieved without any waste of time. It completely eradicated the Cathar heresy in France, turned the Waldensian community into a few scattered fanatics, re-established the Catholic faith in southern Italy, and delayed the division of Western Christianity for three centuries. The cultural leadership of Europe passed from the hands of France to Italy, but the royal government of France with the seizure of the Languedoc region was strengthened and became so powerful that it subjugated the papal government during the reign of Boniface VIII and made it a prisoner during the reign of Clement V.

In Spain before the year 1300 the inquisitorial apparatus played no important role. Raymond de Penyafort, the same priest to whom James I king of Aragon confessed, in 1232 encouraged James to promote the inquisitorial apparatus. Perhaps so that the zeal of the supporters of the inquisitorial apparatus would not lead to excess, a law dated 1233 stipulated that all the property of heretics belonged to the government. But this very factor was what in later centuries gave a tool to a group of greedy kings who considered the Inquisition one with the acquisition of revenues.

In northern Italy large numbers of heretics continued to remain. Most of the people of these regions, who outwardly followed the correct principles of the Catholic religion, did not attach much importance to this matter and were not willing to actually participate in the persecution and torment of heretics. Independent and tyrannical princes like Ezzelino in Vicenza and Pallavicino in Cremona and Milan secretly or openly supported the heretics. In Florence a monk named Rodger set about forming a military order composed of orthodox nobles in support of the foundation of the Inquisition. The Patarenes fought bloody battles with the members of this group in the streets and were defeated by them (1245); from then on the heresy of the Florentines hid its face under the veil of seclusion and anonymity. In 1252 a monk from the inquisitors of the Inquisition named Piero da Verona was killed by a group of heretics in Milan; the Church canonized this person and gave him the title of martyr Piero; this act was far more effective in preventing the heresy of the people of northern Italy than the zeal and fervor of all the inquisitors who engaged in the Inquisition in those regions. The papal government prepared crusades against Ezzelino and Pallavicino, the former being destroyed in 1259 and the latter defeated in 1268. Apparently the victory of the Church in Italy was complete.

In England the Inquisition never gained dominance. Henry II in the heat of his dispute with Thomas à Becket, in order to prove his orthodoxy, ordered that twenty-nine heretics be whipped and branded in Oxford (1166). Apart from this, before Wycliffe there was little trace of heresy visible in England. In Germany the market for the Inquisition flourished with the emergence of a short period of mad violence and then calmed down. In 1212 Henry, bishop of Strasbourg, in the course of one day put eighty heretics to death. Most of these people were followers of the Waldensian sect; their leader, the priest John, declared the lack of belief of his followers in the buying and selling of indulgences, purgatory, and the celibacy of the clergy and believed that priests should not own any property. In 1227 Gregory IX made Conrad, who was one of the priests of Marburg, the head of the inquisitorial apparatus of Germany and assigned him the mission not only to uproot heresy but also to rise for the reform of the clergy, who in the pope’s opinion were the main cause of the decline of religion. Conrad with utmost cruelty set about carrying out both important tasks. He suggested to all heretics that they should choose one of two options: either confess and submit to punishment or deny and be burned in fire. When he set out with equal force to reform the clergy, the orthodox people joined hands with the heretics in opposition to him. Conrad was killed by the friends of the people he had put to death (1233), and the German bishops themselves took charge of the Inquisition and made it more just. Many sects, some of which were heretics and some mystics, remained steadfast in Germany and Bohemia and prepared the ground for the appearance of Hus and Luther.

To judge the Inquisition one must keep in mind the characteristics of an age in which people were accustomed to savagery. Perhaps understanding this phenomenon in our own age—which in war, and without any observance of legal regulations, the number of people who were killed and the innocents who fell to the ground is far greater than all the wars and persecutions that occurred from the time of Caesar to the age of Napoleon—is better comprehensible. Intolerance is naturally a requirement of firm faith. Tolerance only increases when faith loses certainty. Certainty and conviction are murderous.

Plato in his book The Laws permitted intolerance. In the sixteenth century the great reformers of Europe prescribed it, and some critics of the Inquisition in our age defend the same methods of the medieval Inquisition that have been used by modern governments. The methods of the inquisitors of the Inquisition, including torture, have been adopted by many states as part of their judicial procedure, and it is probable that the secret torture of suspects in our own age is more an imitation of the method of the Inquisition than an adoption from Roman law. The persecution and torment of Christians in the Roman Empire during the first three centuries of the spread of Christianity, in comparison with the torment that the heretics of Europe suffered from 1227 to 1492, was a moderate and merciful action. With all the considerations that must be expected from a historian, and as far as a Christian can observe the conditions of others, the author’s view is that the Inquisition plus the wars and persecution of holders of different opinions of our own age should be considered among the blackest stains of shame on the pages of human history, for all this represents a kind of savagery whose like has never been seen from any predatory animal.