German Inquisition

[2] Burgundy and Lorraine, and until 1515 also southern Netherlands, although part of the Holy Roman Empire, were subject to French inquisitors appointed by the provincial of the Dominicans in Paris.

[3] The first mention of heretics in late medieval Germany dates back to 1051 when Emperor Henry III, against the protests of Catholic clergy, ordered the hanging of several individuals in Goslar who were deemed Manicheans due to their refusal to kill animals and consume meat.

[4] A much greater role in the history of German heterodoxy before the Reformation was played by the Waldensian movement, which from the end of the 12th century gained an increasingly wide following, particularly in the Rhineland, Austria, and Bavaria, and later also in Brandenburg and Pomerania.

In 1212, Bishop Heinrich Veringen of Strasbourg discovered Waldensians in his diocese and, as a result of the investigation conducted, identified as many as 500 suspects, 80 of whom were burned at the stake.

[6] In March 1232, Emperor Frederick II officially ordered that all people guilty of heresy in Germany should be punished by death by burning at the stake unless they submitted to the Church.

Based on these reports, the pope issued the papal bull Vox in Rama in June 1233, repeating in it the fantastic accusations made by Konrad against German heretics.

Slightly earlier in Germany, hunts for alleged adherents of the so-called Brethren of the Free Spirit began, condemned by the decree of the Council of Vienne, Ad nostrum.

[21] Despite the emperor's support, the activities of the inquisitors against the Beghards and Beguines faced numerous protests from clergy and laity who believed the accusations against these communities were unjust.

In response to these protests, Pope Gregory XI issued papal bulls in 1374 and 1377, recommending great caution in trials against members of these associations, emphasizing that most of them were good and devout Catholics, with only a few falling into doctrinal errors.

[23] However, in the persecution of the Waldensians in eastern and southern Germany during Boniface IX's reign, papal inquisitors hardly participated, except for the trials in Mainz in 1389 and Strasbourg in 1400.

Trials against alleged followers of the Brethren of the Free Spirit sporadically occurred until 1458, but they only concerned individual religious eccentrics, not larger groups or communities.

[31] Furthermore, in 1425, for several years, the inquisitorial office in the Archbishopric of Mainz was taken away from the Dominicans for reasons unknown, and Pope Martin V appointed John Lagenator, a professor at the Heidelberg University, as inquisitor.

Although the authorities of the Dominican Order regularly made appointments, and the number of inquisitors even increased compared to the previous period, most of them treated the inquisitorial office solely as an honorary distinction and did not engage in any anti-heretical activities.

Kramer, who had previously distinguished himself in polemics with conciliarists, defending the authority of the Apostolic See, managed to obtain the support of Pope Innocent VIII (papal bull Summis desiderantes affectibus of 5 December 1484), and in 1486/1487, he wrote and published the book Malleus Maleficarum, a handbook for witch hunters.

[35] Martin Luther's appearance in 1517 occurred at a time when the papal inquisition had, for over half a century, essentially not been prosecuting heretics, and its prestige in the German lands, in connection with the trial of the humanist Johannes Reuchlin, was close to zero.

These investigations covered several thousand suspects, who were generally treated fairly leniently, although in Erfurt in 1391 and in Steyr, Austria, in 1397, many Waldensians were burned at the stake.

In the 1420s, in Regensburg, Magdeburg, Wurzburg, and Speyer, several Hussite missionaries were captured and burned, but generally, this movement did not gain broader support in Germany.

On the other hand, German Waldensian communities established friendly contacts with Czech Hussites, as evidenced by the proceedings conducted by the bishops' inquisitors in Würzburg (1446), Brandenburg (1458 and 1478/1480), Strasbourg (1458), Eichstätt (1460), the Naumburg diocese (1462), and Vienna (1468).

Conversely, in Catholic countries (Austria, Bavaria), repression against heretics by the late 1520s shifted to secular courts, replacing the weak and inefficient ecclesiastical judiciary.

The transfer of heresy cases to secular courts initially led to a significant increase in the intensity and brutality of persecutions of heretics in some German territories, on a scale unknown in previous centuries.

Although the repression utterly failed against the major currents of the Reformation, which gained the support of many princes and cities, many members of the radical Anabaptist sect fell victim to persecution.

[48] However, the papal inquisition had no involvement in this, and in the 17th century, the Roman Holy Office even intervened to mitigate these processes in Catholic German countries and Switzerland.

Information about the activity of the first inquisitor, Konrad von Marburg, is almost exclusively vague, mentioning a "great number burned", and that many falsely confessed to avoid the death penalty.

The only specific numerical data refers to four heretics burned in Erfurt in May 1232 and about 50 individuals absolved and rehabilitated by the synod in Frankfurt in 1234, who had previously been sentenced by Konrad.

[d][58] In 1393, Inquisitor Alexander of Cologne burned one Beghard, and three years later in Vienna, John Stauder sentenced three of his associates to death, including the sect leader Nicholas of Basel, although one managed to escape.

However, after his departure, local authorities organized massacres of the suspects both in Sangerhausen and the surrounding area, burning both those sentenced to death and penitents on the stakes (in total, at least 168 individuals).

[68] In 1477, Inquisitor Johannes Krawinckel of Dortmund accused someone named Hovet of heresy, but the trial did not proceed because Bishop Heinrich von Schwarzenburg of Münster refused to cooperate with him.

Ultimately, the entire affair ended with the condemnation of Reuchlin's works by Pope Leo X in 1520, but the only punishment for the author was a gag order and the obligation to pay the trial costs; formally, he was not recognized as a heretic.

In the same year, an investigation against adherents of the Brethren of the Free Spirit heresy was conducted by Archbishop Otto of Magdeburg, but in this case, all suspects submitted to the Church.

In 1424 in Worms, three Hussites were captured, of whom one (Jan Drändorf) was burned, the second denied his beliefs and received absolution (Martin Borchard), and the third (Peter Turnau) escaped from prison.