Reims, ordering an archiepiscopal inquest into reported heresy in Flanders. The next
year, at the Council of Tours, Alexander included a canon indicating that heretics were to
be sought out by local ecclesiastical authorities. Another canon, c. 10 of Tours, stated that
“it is expedient to discover new remedies for new maladies,” and some of Alexander III’s
other correspondence indicates a concern for the secrecy of heretics and could be
considered a rationale for requiring the inquisitio procedure in this instance.
As for the laity, Alexander also allowed the procedure of denunciation—that is,
accusation without the responsibilities normally incumbent on the accuser. This was a
form of the denunciatio evangelica that with accusation and inquisition came to be
regarded as the three standard means of making a crime known to authorities.
Denunciations were to be made by suitable people, synodal witnesses—testes synodales,
a principle laid out in the well-known decretal of Alexander III, Ad abolendam of 1184,
which also insisted that the ordinaries (bishops) of dioceses conduct hearings of these
special witnesses for the purpose of discovering heresy.
As the perception of the extent and danger of heresy increased, more and more severe
penalties were imposed by both ecclesiastical and temporal powers for those convicted.
Crusades against heretics were launched, and the use of the inquest increased during the
pontificate of Innocent III (1198–1216). In 1199, Innocent III appointed the abbots of
Cîteaux and other Cistercian monasteries to hold inquests in Metz in matters of dissent,
and in the process of rationalizing the prosecution of criminous clerics, Innocent
commanded that they be proceeded against by the inquisitio method rather than by
accusation. Recent schol arship has indicated how important the changing criminal law of
clergy now seems to have been for developments in criminal procedure generally.
In the wake of the Albigensian Crusade, the pope and the king of France collaborated
upon the general constitution of inquisitorial tribunals throughout the kingdom,
established in the ordonnance Cupientes of 1229. Cupientes established, as Maisonneuve
stated, “the inquisitorial procedure, by virtue of which all vassals and officers of the king
were obliged specifically to seek out heretics and accomplices to heresy.” In the same
year, the Council of Toulouse formalized the episcopal inquisition. With the increasing
importance of the mendicant orders, particularly the Dominicans, in the early 13th
century, mendicant inquisitors joined mendicant confessors and preachers. After the
disastrous inquisitorial experiments of Robert le Bougre in 1233–35, Dominicans began
to be used regularly as inquisitors, even in episcopal inquisitions.
Inquisitorial tribunals flourished most effectively in the south of France, but in 1310
Marguerite Porete became the first capital victim of the inquisitors at Paris, followed by
the destruction of the Templars in 1316. The case of Jeanne d’Arc in 1431 reflects the
increasingly prominent role in the inquisitional tribunals not only of the Dominicans but
of the faculty of theology at the University of Paris and continued the close collaboration
among episcopal, mendicant, and political authorities.
From the 14th century through the 16th, the faculty of theology of Paris provided most
of the inquisitorial activity in France.
Edward Peters
[See also: ALBIGENSIAN CRUSADE; ALEXANDER III; BERNARD GUI;
HERESY; JEANNE D’ARC; MARGUERITE PORETE]
Barber, Malcolm. The Trial of the Templars. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978.
Lambert, Malcolm. Medieval Heresy: Popular Movements from the Gregorian Reform to the
Reformation. 2nd ed. Oxford: Blackwell, 1992.
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