Nicholas Eymerich

A year after obtaining the position, Eymerich was given the honorific Chaplain of the Pope as a recognition of his diligence in pursuing heretics and blasphemers.

As he directed much of his efforts to the apparent errors of members of the clergy, he often found his investigations blocked by the court, curia, or papacy.

When Eymerich interrogated the Franciscan spiritualist, Nicholas of Calabria, King Peter IV of Aragon had him removed from office at the general chapter held at Perpignan in 1360.

This conflict ended around 1376 when the local governor took 200 horsemen and encircled the Dominican monastery where Eymerich was residing.

The Directorium Inquisitorum includes the sentence: Quaestiones sunt fallaces et inefficaces -'Interrogatories are misleading and futile'.

In the schism that erupted after the death of Pope Gregory XI, Eymerich sided with Antipope Clement VII, and so returned to Avignon late in 1378.

Eymerich refused to recognize Ermengaudi in that office, and in 1383, acting as Inquisitor General, notified the inhabitants of Barcelona that he had banned the works of Ramon Llull.

Furious, Peter IV ordered Eymerich to be drowned, however, the Queen Eleanor of Sicily influenced him to change the sentence to permanent exile.

[3] King Peter IV died in 1386 and was succeeded by his son, John I, who recognized Eymerich's authority as Inquisitor General.

At first, John I favored the repression of the Lullists, but this lasted only until 1388 when Eymerich decided to investigate the entire town of Valencia for heresy.

[citation needed] Although the Directorium Inquisitorum was Eymerich's only book-length work, he wrote numerous tracts and papers on various theological and philosophical subjects.

Eymerich also wrote numerous works, including his Tractatus de potestate papali (1383) defending the legitimacy of the Avignon antipopes, Clement VII and Benedict XIII.

The title page of the 1578 impression of the Directorium Inquisitorum, which is printed in Latin gives his name as "Nicolai Eymerici", -ich being a derivative of Roman genitive -ici, also used as diminutive, to point a child's parenthood.

The surname of blessed nun Anne Catherine Emmerich -Emmerick- comes from a town to which her family was bond, is not a Patronimic Valerio Evangelisti, an Italian novelist, has written a cycle of ten science fiction books featuring Eymerich as the main character.