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Murray, Alexander, “The medieval inquisition: an instrument of secular politics? [Denis Bethell Memorial Lecture IV]”, Peritia 5 (1986): 161–200.

  • journal article
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Article
“The medieval inquisition: an instrument of secular politics?”
[additional details: Denis Bethell Memorial Lecture IV]
Periodical
Volume
5
Pages
161–200
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Abstract (cited)
As a clerical court the medieval Inquisition could not impose the death penalty. So it relied on the ‘secular arm’ to do so. How far did this reliance lead to the subordination of the heresy court to secular purposes? A Tuscan inquisitor, in 1332–34, is seen systematically threatening rich victims with prosecution so that he can sell them immunity. Such ‘rackets’, possibly common in northern Italy, betray that flexibility in the Inquisition which invited adaptation to communal purposes, at a time when friars, who ran the Inquisition, were on good terms with city governments. This mechanism was born in the early fourteenth century, from the twin facts that the Inquisition had perfected its judicial techniques at the very moment of its victory over the heresy for which it had been invented, Albigensian Catharism. So it had to turn to minor unorthodoxy. But this was so common – and ‘heresy’ now so narrowly defined – that unorthodoxy alone was not practicable as a trigger for prosecution. Other reasons therefore came into play, reasons amply provided by the struggles of clerical and secular powers, wrestling towards new relationships. This is most precisely illustrated in those cases in which single politicians are threatened. Ghibelline Italy offers notorious examples. More representative is that of Hugues Aubriot, prévôt of Paris (1367–81). As prévôt he had trespassed on university jurisdiction, and when matters came violently to a head in 1381 – only then – the university checkmated Aubriot by a trial for heresy. Medieval heresy and the Inquisition should be treated as two subjects, not one: their fortunes obey different sets of impulses, and in those governing the Inquisition, at least, politics play a big part.
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C. A., Dennis Groenewegen
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April 2012, last updated: June 2020
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