Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition

by Arthur Stanley Turberville

CHAPTER II - THE BEGINNINGS OF THE INQUISITION

Originally jurisdiction over heresy belonged to the ordinary ecclesiastical courts, heresy being classed with such other offences as adultery and breach of contract, which came under ecclesiastical purview.[283] The special tribunal of the Inquisition came into being because these courts proved defective for the trial of heresy. In the first place, the new offence became so frequent that the ordinary courts were unable to support the large additional burden without impairing their efficiency in the performance of their original duties.

How, then, did it happen that whereas heresy had become a formidable danger in the twelfth century, the institution of the special tribunal did not take place until the thirteenth? The suggestion appears plausible that there must have been some other cause besides the mere spread of heresy to account for the birth of the Inquisition at that date.[284] The answer is that it took time for heresy to be recognized as sufficiently serious to warrant the creation of an entirely new organization, and before the magnitude of the task of repressing religious error was fully apprehended.[285] In the second place, the papacy during this period was much preoccupied with more pressing concerns, particularly the investiture question, which involved the supreme issue as to the pre-eminence of secular or spiritual authority in Christendom.

When once attention had been thoroughly arrested by the problem, the deficiencies of the existing spiritual courts for the new work became apparent. Overwork was by no means the only drawback. The character of the judges was at fault. Even after the Hildebrandine reforms, bishops still remained feudal barons with many inevitable secular distractions; archdeacons and other lesser officials were often venal and incapable.[286] In any case the very nature of diocesan authority militated against success. It was too purely local to be effective against offenders who could easily migrate from one part of the country to another. Even more serious was the lack on the part of the existing officials of special training and knowledge, especially in theology, which were found necessary, since heretics often evinced diabolical familiarity with the text of Scripture.[287] Lacking such special equipment and being badly pressed for time on a diocesan visitation, the bishop was apt to come to a hurried and arbitrary judgment, frequently falling back upon the device of the ordeal when the defendant pleaded ‘not guilty.’ Both the Councils of Rheims of 1157 and of Verona of 1184 ordered that suspects of heresy should be submitted to this test. But the method was never felt to be satisfactory, was strongly condemned by Ivo of Chartres and Alexander III, and so emphatically denounced by the Fourth Council of the Lateran in 1215 that it disappeared from the practice of lay as well as spiritual courts.

Another disadvantage under which the episcopal courts laboured in dealing with heresy was their procedure, that of Roman Law. There were two systems—those of denuntiatio and accusatio. In the former some person in authority—in ecclesiastical cases the archdeacon—brought forward a charge founded upon his own personal knowledge. In the latter the charge was based on information tendered by a private individual to the authorities. Owing to the fact that the archdeacon was a very busy man, the Church was largely dependent on the second method in the prosecution of heresy. But the average person had no inducement to lodge a charge. He was in danger of private vengeance if he did so; equally important, by Roman Law he was expected to prove his case, being in the event of failure liable to the same penalty which he had himself alleged against the accused. Seeing that, should he prove his case, he was entitled to the property of the prisoner either in whole or in part, this stipulation was a salutary and indeed necessary check, not only on malice but cupidity.[288] This mode of procedure, which though indicative of its origin in the rudimentary idea of private justice was certainly equitable, did not commend itself to the Church, once it had become determined upon the extirpation of heresy. The difficulty of obtaining convictions greatly increased when, instead of small isolated communities, the Church was faced by a great organization like Catharism, widespread and secret in its movements. It was clear that episcopal jurisdiction must be strengthened. The Edict of Verona was an attempt in this direction. It was resolved to make use for prosecution of common report, the public opinion of the locality. Archbishops and bishops were to visit in person, or through their archdeacons, once or even twice a year every parish in which heresy was supposed to exist, and were to compel men whom they thought of trustworthy character or, if they thought fit, all the inhabitants of the neighbourhood, to denounce those whose manner of living differed from that of good Catholics. Such bad characters were to purge themselves by a solemn oath on the gospels before the bishop (purgatio canonica); if they refused—and Cathari were likely to be unwilling owing to their views regarding oaths—their refusal was to be construed as tantamount to a confession of heresy.[289]

We have here a method of enforced delation, the bishop proceeding upon the evidence so obtained (diffamatio) without the formalities of the accusatio. In other words the bishops are to make an inquest, so that from this date, 1184, we have in existence an episcopal inquisition.[290] The decree does not appear to have been very effective, and after the Albigensian Crusades—it being necessary to follow that success by the institution of systematic prosecution of heresy for fear of the recurrence of trouble[291]—similar regulations were made by Councils, sitting at Avignon in 1209 and at Montpellier in 1215, also in the Fourth Council of the Lateran of the latter year. There was a new feature in the introduction of a priest in addition to a trustworthy layman as informer against heretics.[292] The Council of Narbonne (1227) went a step further in ordering the bishops to appoint in each parish testes synodales, to make diligent enquiry concerning heresy and other matters and give information to their bishops.[293] The phrase ‘synodal witness’ is new, though it may easily designate the same persons as those nominated by the previous councils. However this may be, the ‘synodal witnesses’ are entrusted with a new duty. They are not merely to inform, but to search out. This advance was to be anticipated; the informer easily blossoms out into the detective. Here we have a system of local Inquisition, which is enjoined again by a Council sitting at Toulouse two years later, which requires the synodal witnesses to visit all suspected houses and hiding-places.[294]

It is doubtful whether the orders of these two Councils were ever acted upon. In any case, not even the most well-intentioned reform of their procedure could make the episcopal courts satisfactory for the trial of heresy. The bishops are repeatedly urged to bestir themselves even on pain of deprivation.[295] The fact was that some special machinery had to be devised. On the other hand, the authorization of the system of Inquisition was of the utmost importance. It was fully recognized by Innocent III, who in his Decretals carefully distinguished it from the two other judicial methods of accusatio and denuntiatio.[296] Innocent was not thinking only, or perhaps mainly, of heresy in introducing a new judicial method—but of clerical reform. Even when the offence of a prelate was a matter of common notoriety it was difficult to bring the crime home to him when the system of accusatio required the concurrence of seventy-two witnesses. That system sheltered the high in office; and it was therefore, from the reformer’s point of view, defective. The greatest of the popes had given his imprimatur to a system, which beginning in the ecclesiastical courts, was, owing to its manifest advantages, destined to make a triumphal progress in the temporal courts also, eventually supplanting the system of accusatio altogether.

The definite starting-point of the Inquisition has been attributed to many dates. One enthusiast went as far back as Creation, finding the first inquisitor in the Almighty Himself, and successors to Him in Jacob, Saul, David, Eli, Jesus Christ, John the Baptist and St. Peter among others.[297] Less ambitious authorities, content to go no further back than the Middle Ages, have discovered the starting-point in the legatine commission entrusted by Innocent III to Pierre de Castelnau, Arnaud of Citeaux and their colleagues.[298] Whether they, with their lieutenant St. Dominic, were inquisitors or not turns on the interpretation of the word.[299] In the loose general sense of searchers out, certainly they were—as others had been before them. The plain fact is, there were inquisitors before the Inquisition existed. But in the strict technical sense of officers of a tribunal specifically set apart for jurisdiction over heresy, they clearly were not.[300] The tribunal of the Inquisition was not in existence in the pontificate of Innocent III. On the other hand, we have by this time advanced a considerable distance on the road to the formation of a new tribunal. Heresy has been recognized as so dangerous as to justify the organization of a crusade against it. The bishops’ courts have been found so defective in dealing with heresy that the device has been adopted of sending special commissioners to try to do what they have failed to do. The method of judicial procedure by inquisitio in place of accusatio has been officially approved. It wants but one other step to bring us to the foundation of the permanent delegacy for the prosecution of heretical pravity, which is the Inquisition.