bishops on their own initiative and authority. The trial of the gnostic cultists at Orléans in 1022 was conducted by a panel of French bishops, and the so-called episcopal inquisition—a term that is used to refer collectively to the inquisitions conducted by bishops—coexisted (and sometimes competed) with the Inquisition even after the popes arrogated to themselves the leading role in the enterprise of finding and punishing heretics. Thus, for example, the celebrated medieval German mystic Meister Eckhart (1260–ca. 1327) was tried twice for heresy, once by a tribunal of bishops in Germany, which acquitted him, and later by the Inquisition, which convicted him posthumously. Indeed, the episcopal inquisition proved to be insufficiently fierce for the papal war on heresy that began in earnest in the thirteenth century—one reason that the Inquisition was called into existence in the first place.
A tale told about the bishop of Besançon illustrates how benighted an otherwise pious cleric might turn out to be. Troubled by rumors of a small band of wonder-workers said to be capable of performing authentic miracles, the bishop felt obliged to determine whether they had acquired their powers from God or Satan. And so, remarkably, he called on the services of a clerk reputed to be a practitioner of the black arts, apparently overlooking the fact that sorcery, too, was an act of heresy and thus punishable by death. “The cunning clerk deceived the devil into a confidential mood and learned that the strangers were his servants,” reports Henry Charles Lea with tongue in cheek. “[T]hey were deprived of the satanic amulets which were their protection, and the populace, which had previously sustained them, cast them pitilessly into the flames.” 5
On other occasions, even the most pious bishops and popes were so flummoxed by the mere sight of flesh-and-blood heretics that they simply did not know what to do with them. When a few Cathars were rounded up in Flanders in 1162, the archbishop of Reims shipped them off to Pope Alexander III (ca. 1105–1181) for punishment, and the pope promptly shipped them back to the archbishop with the admonition that “it was better to pardon the guilty than to take the lives of the innocent.” Such bleeding-heart liberalism seems quaint and even poignant when compared with the bloody-mindedness that would soon characterize the Inquisition, and it helps to explain why a corps of inquisitors was later called into existence. 6
When Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216) resolved to root out Catharism once and for all in the opening years of the thirteenth century, he was not willing to rely on the bishops scattered across Europe, many of whom he regarded as corrupt, or inept, or too comfortable with their Cathar neighbors, and sometimes all three at once. Instead, he started by recruiting a few churchmen of his own choosing to serve as his personal emissaries (or “legates”). They became a kind of flying squad of heretic hunters, and various popes dispatched them to hotspots all over Europe where the smoke and fire of heresy had been detected. Here begins the so-called legatine inquisition, an early phase of the war on heresy and the first stirrings of the Inquisition.
The very first man to carry the official title of Inquisitor haereticae Pravitatis (inquisitor into heretical depravity) was Conrad of Marburg (ca. 1180–1233), a legatine inquisitor who was sent first to Languedoc by Pope Innocent III and later to the Rhineland by Pope Gregory IX. A rabid ascetic and an apparent sadist, Conrad is also credited with slapping the label of “Luciferanism” on the Waldensians, whom he wrongly regarded as Devil worshipers rather than Christian rigorists, and tantalizing his superiors with near-pornographic tales of their imagined sexual and theological excesses.
Conrad is a good example of the kind of human being who is temperamentally suited for the career of a professional persecutor. An
A tale told about the bishop of Besançon illustrates how benighted an otherwise pious cleric might turn out to be. Troubled by rumors of a small band of wonder-workers said to be capable of performing authentic miracles, the bishop felt obliged to determine whether they had acquired their powers from God or Satan. And so, remarkably, he called on the services of a clerk reputed to be a practitioner of the black arts, apparently overlooking the fact that sorcery, too, was an act of heresy and thus punishable by death. “The cunning clerk deceived the devil into a confidential mood and learned that the strangers were his servants,” reports Henry Charles Lea with tongue in cheek. “[T]hey were deprived of the satanic amulets which were their protection, and the populace, which had previously sustained them, cast them pitilessly into the flames.” 5
On other occasions, even the most pious bishops and popes were so flummoxed by the mere sight of flesh-and-blood heretics that they simply did not know what to do with them. When a few Cathars were rounded up in Flanders in 1162, the archbishop of Reims shipped them off to Pope Alexander III (ca. 1105–1181) for punishment, and the pope promptly shipped them back to the archbishop with the admonition that “it was better to pardon the guilty than to take the lives of the innocent.” Such bleeding-heart liberalism seems quaint and even poignant when compared with the bloody-mindedness that would soon characterize the Inquisition, and it helps to explain why a corps of inquisitors was later called into existence. 6
When Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216) resolved to root out Catharism once and for all in the opening years of the thirteenth century, he was not willing to rely on the bishops scattered across Europe, many of whom he regarded as corrupt, or inept, or too comfortable with their Cathar neighbors, and sometimes all three at once. Instead, he started by recruiting a few churchmen of his own choosing to serve as his personal emissaries (or “legates”). They became a kind of flying squad of heretic hunters, and various popes dispatched them to hotspots all over Europe where the smoke and fire of heresy had been detected. Here begins the so-called legatine inquisition, an early phase of the war on heresy and the first stirrings of the Inquisition.
The very first man to carry the official title of Inquisitor haereticae Pravitatis (inquisitor into heretical depravity) was Conrad of Marburg (ca. 1180–1233), a legatine inquisitor who was sent first to Languedoc by Pope Innocent III and later to the Rhineland by Pope Gregory IX. A rabid ascetic and an apparent sadist, Conrad is also credited with slapping the label of “Luciferanism” on the Waldensians, whom he wrongly regarded as Devil worshipers rather than Christian rigorists, and tantalizing his superiors with near-pornographic tales of their imagined sexual and theological excesses.
Conrad is a good example of the kind of human being who is temperamentally suited for the career of a professional persecutor. An
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