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The Medieval Inquisition
This study traces the evolution of the Inquisition in the centuries before the Reformation, discussing its foundations in the medieval church; heresy, punishment, and penance; and sorcery and reform. Without mitigating its many cruelties and injustices, the author assesses the Inquisition, showing that the original intention of the inquisitors was to convert heretics into religious conformists through spiritual penances rather than to torture and kill them. Examines the period from the growth of Catharism in the late 12th century to the trials of Joan of Arc and Gilles de Rais in the 15th.
- GenresHistory
Paperback
First published January 1, 1981
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About the author
Bernard Hamilton
27 books8 followersBritish Historian (born 1932) Professor Emeritus of Crusading History at University of Nottingham.
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September 1, 2025
The book serves as an introduction, synthesizing research from prior to the 1980s on the medieval inquisition. It examines how the later Spanish and Roman inquisitions evolved from the medieval model, which was established in the 13th century by Pope Gregory IX. The medieval inquisition, however, was not a centralized institution.
Contra to its later Spanish and Roman counterparts, the medieval inquisition was decentralized with each inquisitor’s authority deriving from a personal commission from the pope to examine cases of heresy in a particular village, city, or region with no central department to coordinate these efforts.
Heresy came to mean rejecting religious doctrines accepted by the Church or inventing religious doctrines not accepted by the Church. Heresy came in an intellectual and popular form. Typically intellectual heresy happened between theologians, motivated by a desire to reform some aspect of the church or doctrine, and ended when some other theologian challenged the ideas and showed their errors. Popular heresy involved heresies believed by the lay people and everyday villagers.
In popular imagination, the Middle Ages were a time of extreme religiosity. While many people were nominally Catholic, religious doubt was prevalent and lukewarm Christians abounded, with many laypeople receiving little religious education due to isolation of towns and poorly educated parish priests. For this reason Church councils had to repeatedly remind people of basic religious duties in their canons. Intellectual heretics, though few in number, were often theologians challenging specific beliefs. More broadly, heresies such as Catharism often claimed the Orthodox Church was illegitimate and false church, attacking the very structure of society and the church’s role in it. The church viewed its primary role as saving souls, which meant heresies like Catharism that had its own rites for the deathbed threatened the main mission of the church. Catharism became a threatening alternative to Orthodox Catholicism as it had an organized hierarchy. In contrast, other heretical movements, often led by charismatic leaders, collapsed after the death of their founder.
The Albigensian Crusade, launched in 1209, was aimed at eradicating Catharism in Southern France. Pope Innocent III’s legates were assassinated, prompting the Pope to sanction a crusade, which sought to replace heretical southern lords with loyal Orthodox northern lords. This period marked a shift in the Church’s strategy from mere preaching to armed conflict.
The church of the 11th and 12th century typically didn’t approve of capital punishment for heresy, which was the usual response of secular rulers such as King Robert the Pious during a heretical case involving Canons of Orleans, while in 1114 in Soissons and Cathars in Cologne in 1143 death penalties were acts of mob violence. Clergy usually urged restraint and typical punishments were excommunication and withholding sacraments from accused heretics, but this proved ineffectual against people already disbelieving in the authenticity of the church and its doctrines.
Initially bishops were given the role of inquisition into heresy, but they were ineffective as they were too busy managing their estates and fulfilling their other duties to seek out and conduct trials of suspected of heresy across their dioceses on a frequent basis. Lay officials also took on the task of seeking out heretics and punishing them, but they were at a disadvantage of not being theologians and struggled to discover concealed heretics, and generally they turned to capital punishment as the only means for dealing with heretics. The issue was not just what was the right way to punish heresy, but also the best way to detect it. To address these shortcomings in dealing with heresy the church created professional full-time investigators with theological training, no local ties to the regions they were performing their investigations, and no other responsibilities. Pope Gregory IX turned to the new mendicant orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans.
The process of the inquisition was not public, and trials were conducted behind closed doors. When an inquisitor first arrived he would typically preach a sermon against heresy as a grave sin in the local church and invite everyone in town the opportunity to confess for a light penance. He would use this to gain information about other potential heretics and two witnesses were required for an accusation of heresy. Afterwards, as the investigations unfolded accused heretics were deposed and asked to confess, with slightly more severe penances at this point, but a failure to recant or cooperate with the inquisitors led to harsher penalties, including imprisonment or execution. The Inquisition initially did not use torture until 1252 when Pope Innocent IV authorized it, though only under specific conditions.
Inquisitors used a system of penance for those who recanted their heresy, which ranged from fasting and pilgrimages to public scourging or wearing a yellow cross, which ostracized the penitent. Imprisonment was introduced as a widespread punishment during this period for more serious cases of heresy. Heretics who refused to recant or heretics who relapsed were sent to the secular authorities that would carry out the death penalty. Despite popular imagination, most heretics were not killed or burned at the stake. The goal of the inquisition was to discover heretics, determine guilt, and then get them to recant and return to orthodoxy. They wanted to convert heretics, not convict and punish them.
Later chapters deal with individual inquisitors who were particularly controversial such as Robert Le Bougre who was a former Cathar turned Orthodox inquisitor whose zeal led to his removal from office and imprisonment until his death possibly for condemning innocent people as heretics. Another example was Conrad of Marburg who didn’t follow the highly legalistic inquisitor procedures of southern France, preferring to use mob violence and the immediate threat of burning unless an accused heretic recanted. Eventually he lost his position when he attempted to prosecute a nobleman and was murdered. Other slated chapters deal with the slow spread of the inquisition in places like Germany and Italy in light of resistant of local rulers such as Frederick II who either had political fights with the Pope or in the case of the Lombard cities guarded their independence vigorously.
The final chapters deal with the role of the inquisition with the decline of Catharism. After Catharism was suppressed, the inquisition focused on other kinds of heresies like the Knights Templar, individuals who followed mystical ideas about the free spirit exemplified by the writings of Marguerite Porete, Spiritual Franciscans (particularly its splinter group the Fraticelli), beguines and beghard communities who had become accused of following the free spirit doctrines, and Waldensians. By the 15th century, the inquisition began to prosecute a new threat of sorcery and witchcraft, which had been linked to heresy by theologians at the university of Paris.
The Spanish Inquisition, established by Isabella of Castile in 1478, differed from the medieval papal inquisition. It was a centralized institution and inquisitors were appointed by the Spanish crown rather than the Pope. The Spanish Inquisition focused on the authenticity and sincerity of Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity. Meanwhile the medieval inquisition was revived by Pope Paul III as the Roman Inquisition during the Counter-Reformation, using the Spanish Inquisition as a model and had a central office in Rome itself.
Contra to its later Spanish and Roman counterparts, the medieval inquisition was decentralized with each inquisitor’s authority deriving from a personal commission from the pope to examine cases of heresy in a particular village, city, or region with no central department to coordinate these efforts.
Heresy came to mean rejecting religious doctrines accepted by the Church or inventing religious doctrines not accepted by the Church. Heresy came in an intellectual and popular form. Typically intellectual heresy happened between theologians, motivated by a desire to reform some aspect of the church or doctrine, and ended when some other theologian challenged the ideas and showed their errors. Popular heresy involved heresies believed by the lay people and everyday villagers.
In popular imagination, the Middle Ages were a time of extreme religiosity. While many people were nominally Catholic, religious doubt was prevalent and lukewarm Christians abounded, with many laypeople receiving little religious education due to isolation of towns and poorly educated parish priests. For this reason Church councils had to repeatedly remind people of basic religious duties in their canons. Intellectual heretics, though few in number, were often theologians challenging specific beliefs. More broadly, heresies such as Catharism often claimed the Orthodox Church was illegitimate and false church, attacking the very structure of society and the church’s role in it. The church viewed its primary role as saving souls, which meant heresies like Catharism that had its own rites for the deathbed threatened the main mission of the church. Catharism became a threatening alternative to Orthodox Catholicism as it had an organized hierarchy. In contrast, other heretical movements, often led by charismatic leaders, collapsed after the death of their founder.
The Albigensian Crusade, launched in 1209, was aimed at eradicating Catharism in Southern France. Pope Innocent III’s legates were assassinated, prompting the Pope to sanction a crusade, which sought to replace heretical southern lords with loyal Orthodox northern lords. This period marked a shift in the Church’s strategy from mere preaching to armed conflict.
The church of the 11th and 12th century typically didn’t approve of capital punishment for heresy, which was the usual response of secular rulers such as King Robert the Pious during a heretical case involving Canons of Orleans, while in 1114 in Soissons and Cathars in Cologne in 1143 death penalties were acts of mob violence. Clergy usually urged restraint and typical punishments were excommunication and withholding sacraments from accused heretics, but this proved ineffectual against people already disbelieving in the authenticity of the church and its doctrines.
Initially bishops were given the role of inquisition into heresy, but they were ineffective as they were too busy managing their estates and fulfilling their other duties to seek out and conduct trials of suspected of heresy across their dioceses on a frequent basis. Lay officials also took on the task of seeking out heretics and punishing them, but they were at a disadvantage of not being theologians and struggled to discover concealed heretics, and generally they turned to capital punishment as the only means for dealing with heretics. The issue was not just what was the right way to punish heresy, but also the best way to detect it. To address these shortcomings in dealing with heresy the church created professional full-time investigators with theological training, no local ties to the regions they were performing their investigations, and no other responsibilities. Pope Gregory IX turned to the new mendicant orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans.
The process of the inquisition was not public, and trials were conducted behind closed doors. When an inquisitor first arrived he would typically preach a sermon against heresy as a grave sin in the local church and invite everyone in town the opportunity to confess for a light penance. He would use this to gain information about other potential heretics and two witnesses were required for an accusation of heresy. Afterwards, as the investigations unfolded accused heretics were deposed and asked to confess, with slightly more severe penances at this point, but a failure to recant or cooperate with the inquisitors led to harsher penalties, including imprisonment or execution. The Inquisition initially did not use torture until 1252 when Pope Innocent IV authorized it, though only under specific conditions.
Inquisitors used a system of penance for those who recanted their heresy, which ranged from fasting and pilgrimages to public scourging or wearing a yellow cross, which ostracized the penitent. Imprisonment was introduced as a widespread punishment during this period for more serious cases of heresy. Heretics who refused to recant or heretics who relapsed were sent to the secular authorities that would carry out the death penalty. Despite popular imagination, most heretics were not killed or burned at the stake. The goal of the inquisition was to discover heretics, determine guilt, and then get them to recant and return to orthodoxy. They wanted to convert heretics, not convict and punish them.
Later chapters deal with individual inquisitors who were particularly controversial such as Robert Le Bougre who was a former Cathar turned Orthodox inquisitor whose zeal led to his removal from office and imprisonment until his death possibly for condemning innocent people as heretics. Another example was Conrad of Marburg who didn’t follow the highly legalistic inquisitor procedures of southern France, preferring to use mob violence and the immediate threat of burning unless an accused heretic recanted. Eventually he lost his position when he attempted to prosecute a nobleman and was murdered. Other slated chapters deal with the slow spread of the inquisition in places like Germany and Italy in light of resistant of local rulers such as Frederick II who either had political fights with the Pope or in the case of the Lombard cities guarded their independence vigorously.
The final chapters deal with the role of the inquisition with the decline of Catharism. After Catharism was suppressed, the inquisition focused on other kinds of heresies like the Knights Templar, individuals who followed mystical ideas about the free spirit exemplified by the writings of Marguerite Porete, Spiritual Franciscans (particularly its splinter group the Fraticelli), beguines and beghard communities who had become accused of following the free spirit doctrines, and Waldensians. By the 15th century, the inquisition began to prosecute a new threat of sorcery and witchcraft, which had been linked to heresy by theologians at the university of Paris.
The Spanish Inquisition, established by Isabella of Castile in 1478, differed from the medieval papal inquisition. It was a centralized institution and inquisitors were appointed by the Spanish crown rather than the Pope. The Spanish Inquisition focused on the authenticity and sincerity of Jewish and Muslim converts to Christianity. Meanwhile the medieval inquisition was revived by Pope Paul III as the Roman Inquisition during the Counter-Reformation, using the Spanish Inquisition as a model and had a central office in Rome itself.
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