Inquisition

Studies of the records have found that the overwhelming majority of sentences consisted of penances, but convictions of unrepentant heresy were handed over to the secular courts for the application of local law, which generally resulted in execution or life imprisonment.

The opening of Spanish and Roman archives over the last 50 years has caused historians to substantially revise their understanding of the Inquisition, some to the extent of characterizing previous views as "a body of legends and myths".

Today, the English term "Inquisition" is popularly applied to any one of the regional tribunals or later national institutions that worked against heretics or other offenders against the canon law of the Catholic Church.

"In this process, which was already widely used by secular rulers (Henry II used it extensively in England in the 12th century), an official inquirer called for information on a specific subject from anyone who felt he or she had something to offer.

[1] When a suspect was convicted of major, wilful, unrepentant heresy, canon law required the inquisitorial tribunal to hand the person over to secular authorities for final sentencing.

[18][19] While the notational purpose of the trial itself was for the salvation of the individual by persuasion,[20] according to the 1578 edition of the Directorium Inquisitorum (a standard manual for inquisitions) the penalties themselves were preventative not retributive: ... quoniam punitio non refertur primo & per se in correctionem & bonum eius qui punitur, sed in bonum publicum ut alij terreantur, & a malis committendis avocentur (translation: "... for punishment does not take place primarily and per se for the correction and good of the person punished, but for the public good in order that others may become terrified and weaned away from the evils they would commit").

The legal basis for some inquisitorial activity came from Pope Innocent IV's papal bull Ad extirpanda of 1252, which authorized the use of tortures in certain circumstances by inquisitors for eliciting confessions and denunciations from heretics.

[10] They judged heresy along with bishops and groups of "assessors" (clergy serving in a role that was roughly analogous to a jury or legal advisers), using the local authorities to establish a tribunal and to prosecute heretics.

The first inquisitors were appointed there in 1233, but due to strong resistance from local communities in the early years, most sentences concerned dead heretics, whose bodies were exhumed and burned.

[57] After the fall of Montsegur and the seizure of power in Toulouse by Count Alfonso de Poitiers, the percentage of death sentences increased to around 7% and remained at this level until the end of the Languedoc Inquisition around from 1330.

In turn, Bishop Jacques Fournier of Pamiers (he was later Pope Benedict XII) in the years 1318–1325 conducted an investigation against 89 people, of whom 64 were found guilty and 5 were sentenced to death.

However, since this sect was associated with the peasant revolts in Thuringia from 1412, after the departure of the inquisitor, the local authorities organized a mass hunt for flagellants and, regardless of their previous verdicts, sent at least 168 to the stake (possibly up to 300) people.

[83] Numerous conversions and executions of Bosnian Cathars are known to have taken place around 1239/40, and in 1268 the Dominican inquisitor Andrew reconciled many heretics with the Church in the town of Skradin, but precise figures are unknown.

[86] The fragmentary surviving protocols of the investigations carried out by the Prague inquisitor Gallus de Neuhaus in the years 1335 to around 1353 mention 14 heretics burned out of almost 300 interrogated, but it is estimated that the actual number executed could have been even more than 200, and the entire process was covered to varying degrees by some 4,400 people.

[89] Portugal and Spain in the late Middle Ages consisted largely of multicultural territories of Muslim and Jewish influence, reconquered from Islamic control, and the new Christian authorities could not assume that all their subjects would suddenly become and remain orthodox Catholics.

Since the beginning of the most serious heretic groups, like the Cathars or the Waldensians, they were soon accused of the most fantastic behavior, like having wild sexual orgies, eating babies, copulating with demons, worshipping the Devil.

In addition, this inquisition prosecuted non-converts who broke prohibitions against the public observance of Hindu or Muslim rites or interfered with Portuguese attempts to convert non-Christians to Catholicism.

Egipcíaca was the first black woman in Brazil to write a book – this work detailed her visions and was entitled Sagrada Teologia do Amor Divino das Almas Peregrinas.

[107] With the Protestant Reformation, Catholic authorities became much more ready to suspect heresy in any new ideas,[108] including those of Renaissance humanism,[109] previously strongly supported by many at the top of the Church hierarchy.

[citation needed] The fierce denunciation and persecution of supposed sorceresses that characterized the cruel witchhunts of a later age were not generally found in the first thirteen hundred years of the Christian era.

The Portuguese 1640 Regiment determined that each court of the Holy Office should have a Bible, a compendium of canon and civil law, Eymerich's Directorium Inquisitorum, and Diego de Simancas' Catholicis institutionibus.

[128] Despite some support[129] from Pope Innocent VIII,[130] he was expelled from the city of Innsbruck by the local bishop, George Golzer, who ordered Kramer to stop making false accusations.

Denunciation was elevated to the status of a superior religious duty, filling the nation with spies and making every individual suspicious of his neighbor, family members, and any strangers he might met.

'[5] The summary of the Directorium Inquisitorum, by Nicolás Aymerich, made by Marchena, notes a comment by the Aragonese inquisitor: Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces ("The interrogations are misleading and useless").

"[167] As the historian Nigel Townson wrote: "The sinister torture chambers equipped with cogwheels, bone crushing contraptions, shackles, and other terrifying mechanisms only existed in the imagination of their detractors.

"It is true that it is a very praiseworthy practice to subject the accused to torture, but no less reprehensible are those bloodthirsty judges who base their vain glory on the invention of crude and exquisite torments" – he adds.

(The Pauline letters: 1 Corinthians, B. Incest in Corinth, 5:4 and 5:5 )[198] The sentence of Paul could also be understood in this way: he handed over to the Devil those "who have suffered shipwreck in the faith [...] so that they may be taught not to be blasphemous."

A heretic who repents, the first time, should be allowed penance and their life safeguarded by the church from the punishment of the secular authorities (who treated pernicious and public heresy as a kind of sedition.)

In some cases, heretics and other targets did not hesitate to attempt to murder the inquisitors, or destroy its voluminous archives, because they had much to lose in the face of an inquisitorial investigation: their freedom, their property, their lives.

In 1242, a Cathar group armed with axes entered the castle of the town of Avignonet (southern France) and murdered the inquisitors Guillaume Arnaud and Étienne de Saint-Thibéry.