aristocrat by birth and the beneficiary of a university education at Paris, he cultivated a reputation for piety and self-denial, and he fasted himself into pallor and emaciation. At the height of his fame, he rode from place to place on a donkey in imitation of Jesus, attracting adoring crowds who welcomed him with candles and incense. Once charged by the pope with the task of burning heretics, he allied himself with a couple of “self-appointed inquisitors”—a “one-eyed, one-armed rogue” named Johannes and a Dominican lay friar called Hans Torso—and the three of them set up operations “on papal license.” They shaved the heads of the accused to mark them as suspected heretics and questioned them so brutally that the archbishop of Mainz complained to the pope about the false confessions that were being extracted from innocent men and women under the threat of the stake. 7 “We would gladly burn a hundred,” boasted an unapologetic Conrad, “if just one among them were guilty.” 8
Conrad sought victims among the gentry as well as among the common folk, perhaps because of his zeal in the pursuit of heresy or perhaps because the wealth of a convicted heretic was subject to confiscation. In 1233 his eye fell on Count Henry II of Seyn, a wealthy nobleman who had demonstrated his own Christian piety by endowing churches and monasteries and even going on crusade. Conrad produced a witness who claimed to have seen Henry riding on a monstrous crab on his way to a sex orgy. But Henry, unlike Conrad’s humbler victims, was not cowed into confession. Rather, the count insisted on confronting the inquisitor and putting him to his proof.
Conrad’s fate provides a cautionary example of both the excesses of the legatine inquisitors and the defiant response that a papal legate might encounter from local clergy and gentry. Count Henry demanded a trial before a tribunal consisting of the king, the archbishop, and various other clergymen. Questioned in the presence of these judges, Conrad’s witnesses revealed that they had given evidence only to spare themselves from the stake, and the tribunal refused to convict Count Henry. When Conrad fled the city of Mainz, frustrated and disgusted, he was tracked by a hit squad whose orders were to put an end to both Conrad and his little crew. Set upon and slain on the road to Marburg five days after the acquittal of their last victim, they thus suffered the same fate as that of another papal legate, Peter of Castelnau, whose confrontation with Count Raymond at Toulouse had sparked the Albigensian Crusade.
Yet another inquisitor was dead, but his ominous title and function survived for another six centuries. When it came to heresy hunting, the weakness of the legatine inquisitors, as far as the papacy was concerned, was their inefficiency rather than their brutality. “Conrad’s lack of scruple over evidence may well have brought as many innocent as guilty to the fire,” observes historian Malcolm Lambert, “and still let the heretics, Cathar or Waldensian, escape.” But Conrad’s wild-eyed sexual slanders were wholly plausible to Pope Gregory IX, who imported them into an influential papal bull titled Vox in rama (A voice on high) and thus “gave Conrad’s poisonous stories a vogue they might not otherwise have had.” The inquisitor himself may have suffered a sudden and violent death, but his leering notion that heresy is invariably and inevitably wedded to sorcery and sexual excess enjoyed a much longer life. 9
Still, a practical lesson had been learned. Neither the episcopal inquisition nor the legatine inquisition was sufficient to the task of achieving a final solution to the problem of religious diversity within the realm of the Roman Catholic church. A kind of perfect storm of zeal, paranoia, and hubris inspired the Church to design a wholly new weapon for deployment in the war on heresy. The ancient Roman legal procedure of inquisitio would be entrusted to an army
Conrad sought victims among the gentry as well as among the common folk, perhaps because of his zeal in the pursuit of heresy or perhaps because the wealth of a convicted heretic was subject to confiscation. In 1233 his eye fell on Count Henry II of Seyn, a wealthy nobleman who had demonstrated his own Christian piety by endowing churches and monasteries and even going on crusade. Conrad produced a witness who claimed to have seen Henry riding on a monstrous crab on his way to a sex orgy. But Henry, unlike Conrad’s humbler victims, was not cowed into confession. Rather, the count insisted on confronting the inquisitor and putting him to his proof.
Conrad’s fate provides a cautionary example of both the excesses of the legatine inquisitors and the defiant response that a papal legate might encounter from local clergy and gentry. Count Henry demanded a trial before a tribunal consisting of the king, the archbishop, and various other clergymen. Questioned in the presence of these judges, Conrad’s witnesses revealed that they had given evidence only to spare themselves from the stake, and the tribunal refused to convict Count Henry. When Conrad fled the city of Mainz, frustrated and disgusted, he was tracked by a hit squad whose orders were to put an end to both Conrad and his little crew. Set upon and slain on the road to Marburg five days after the acquittal of their last victim, they thus suffered the same fate as that of another papal legate, Peter of Castelnau, whose confrontation with Count Raymond at Toulouse had sparked the Albigensian Crusade.
Yet another inquisitor was dead, but his ominous title and function survived for another six centuries. When it came to heresy hunting, the weakness of the legatine inquisitors, as far as the papacy was concerned, was their inefficiency rather than their brutality. “Conrad’s lack of scruple over evidence may well have brought as many innocent as guilty to the fire,” observes historian Malcolm Lambert, “and still let the heretics, Cathar or Waldensian, escape.” But Conrad’s wild-eyed sexual slanders were wholly plausible to Pope Gregory IX, who imported them into an influential papal bull titled Vox in rama (A voice on high) and thus “gave Conrad’s poisonous stories a vogue they might not otherwise have had.” The inquisitor himself may have suffered a sudden and violent death, but his leering notion that heresy is invariably and inevitably wedded to sorcery and sexual excess enjoyed a much longer life. 9
Still, a practical lesson had been learned. Neither the episcopal inquisition nor the legatine inquisition was sufficient to the task of achieving a final solution to the problem of religious diversity within the realm of the Roman Catholic church. A kind of perfect storm of zeal, paranoia, and hubris inspired the Church to design a wholly new weapon for deployment in the war on heresy. The ancient Roman legal procedure of inquisitio would be entrusted to an army
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