Laurent, M.-H. Beatus Innocentius V(Petrus de Tarantasio OP) studia et documenta. Roma:
Sabinae, 1943.
INNS/INNKEEPING
. See TRAVEL
INQUISITION
. In medieval Latin, the term inquisitio generally conveyed the sense of investigation or
inquest. Charlemagne’s agents, the missi dominici, conducted inquests; William the
Conqueror’s survey that produced Domesday Book was an inquisitio. Emperor Henry IV
encountered opposition from the Saxons when he attempted to conduct an inquisitio
concerning lost royal rights in Saxony. Thus, the investigation of religious dissent, the
practice with which the word “inquisition” has been most closely identified, was in a
major sense merely another form of investigation by an authority competent to inaugurate
an inquest and carry it out.
Other forms of inquisitio included the obligation of bishops to make visitations to the
religious institutions of their dioceses and to correct wrongs found during such
visitations. Various forms of inquisitio were used in the church, usually against erring or
criminous clergy, more frequently after 1200. These instances of the term probably
echoed older Roman criminal legal procedure, which from the 1st century tended to
supplant an older private accusatorial criminal procedure with one in which the
magistrate or judge assumed the responsibility for assembling evidence and carrying out
a criminal trial. This process was technically known as cognitio extraordinaria. In
another instance, inquisition might be made into the writings of a scholar accused of
error.
With the emergence of formalized and institutionalized papal authority in the 11th
century and classical canon law in the mid-12th, other dimensions were added to
inquisitio. Papally delegated investigators and judges were instituted and in some
instances could subdelegate all or part of their judicial authority to others. With the
growth of widespread forms of religious dissent, popes urged bishops to investigate
heresy in their own dioceses and appointed monastic figures to preach against it. This
combination of delegation and appointment was not restricted to matters of dissent,
however; popes also appointed preachers of the Crusades and later constituted the Order
of Preachers (Dominicans) and delegated judicial authority for other matters as well.
Earlier episcopal attempts to discover heresy were hampered by the survival in many
regions of the accusatorial procedure—that is, someone had to accuse publicly those he
suspected of heresy. In 1162, however, Pope Alexander III wrote to Henry, archbishop of
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