Inquisition 379and adequate shelter to large, comfortable, and well-
furnished buildings with a courtyard and stabling for
HORSESand pack animals. They might have dining halls,
large kitchens, and numerous, sometimes even private,
bedrooms. Travelers were normally expected to sleep at
least two to a bed, more often three or four. One would
pay a much higher price for single occupancy. Food often
might be obtained but was billed separately. Many
innkeepers did not own their inns but leased them from
local owners. Some did succeed in becoming owners and
forming GUILDS. Many were immigrants who catered to
their compatriots.
Further reading:Noël Coulet, “Inns and Taverns,”
DMA7.468–77; J. J. Jusserand, English Wayfaring Life in
the Middle Ages, trans. Lucy Toulmin Smith, 4th ed.
(1892; reprint, New York: Barnes & Noble, 1950); Nobert
Ohler, “Hospitality and Inns,” in The Medieval Traveler,
trans. Caroline Hillier (Woodbridge, England: Boydell
and Brewer, 1989), 79–96; Jonathan Sumption, “Hospital-
ity” in Pilgrimage: An Image of Medieval Religion(Totowa,
N.J.: Rowman & Littlefield, 1976), 198–206.
Inns of Court In the Middle Ages and since, the Inns
of Court were institutions for the training of students in
the common LAWof ENGLAND. Near the old walls of
medieval LONDON, they were established between the old
city and the royal courts, then at Westminster, in the late
13th and the 14th century. Their origins and curriculum
in the early period have remained unclear.
Sir John FORTESCUElisted four greater and about 10
lesser inns or inns of chancery. His four greater Inns of
Court with at least 200 students were Lincoln’s Inn, the
oldest; Inner Temple; Middle Temple; and Gray’s Inn.
According to Fortescue, the 10 lesser inns of chancery
were for beginning students. The course of study might
include such nonlegal subjects as Scripture, history,
music, and instruction on proper comportment. Most
of the students had to be members of noble families
who were willing to maintain and could afford to pay for
the long course of study.
By the 15th-century instruction in the common law
was carried out by senior student lecturers called readers.
Mock or moot trials were conducted by less advanced
students called apprentices. The inns resembled the uni-
versities of the day in their teaching methods. Students,
unlike those at OXFORDor CAMBRIDGE, were not likely to
assume clerical orders. Such a system furthered the
growth of an English common law and developed with
only indirect influence from the ideas and procedures of
the Roman law then taught in the universities.
Further reading:Samuel E. Thorne, ed., Readings and
Moots at the Inns of Court in the Fifteenth Century,2 vols.
(London: B. Quaritch, 1954–1990); John Hamilton Baker,
The Third University of England: The Inns of Court and the
Common-Law Tradition(London: Selden Society, 1990).
Inquisition During the Middle Ages, and for far
longer, the papacy and hierarchy of the Catholic Church
paid close attention to the defense of orthodoxy and the
suppression of dissent on ecclesiastical matters and
dogma. With the expansion and consolidation of the
papal monarchy from the 11th century, the popes took a
strong hand in promoting and enforcing orthodoxy by
their own system of inquisition and ensuring that bishops
paid attention to an inquisition at the diocesan level. All
were ready to find such deviation whether it existed in
any articulate form or not.PAPAL ROLE IN DEVELOPMENT
The institutionalization of an ecclesiastical body to set
and carry out regular procedures and enforce clear norms
developed only in the late 12th century. Pope Lucius III
(r. 1181–85) in 1184 in conjunction with the emperor
FREDERICKI ordered archbishops and bishops to pursue
any heretics in their dioceses. Public authorities were to
collaborate with them and facilitate enforcement and
punishment. Judgment about what was orthodox or het-
erodox was to be the task and responsibility of the clergy,
in reality the popes. Pope GREGORYIX politicized these
efforts explicitly when he cited the alleged practices and
ideas of the emperor FREDERICKII to employ heresy as
yet another reason to depose him. At that moment alle-
giance to the emperor became heresy and thus tied to
unorthodox beliefs that must be eliminated.
From the late 12th century, the apostolic see or the
papacy appointed teams of inquisitors with specific
instructions on what they were to investigate and prose-
cute. This led to a set of norms circulated in inquisitorial
“manuals” that contained the procedures and questions
that dictated the duties of the friars who generally held
these repressive offices.AN INQUISITION, ABUSES,
AND LOCAL RESPONSE
Inquisitors were assigned to work in areas fixed and
assigned by the papacy or where someone or something
had alerted them of heresy in the area and called on
them to assist in dealing with it. When an inquisitor first
arrived anywhere, he proclaimed a period of grace when
anyone who had had any contact with heretical ideas or
practices was required to confess and declare repentance,
thus precluding condemnation and dire consequences.
The inquisitor then compiled a list of people who were
named local informers who were only too often acting
against enemies. The cleric in charge then summoned
the accused suspects, examined them, and either acquit-
ted them, assigned a penance, or turned them over to the
secular authorities for punishment that could include
death by burning. Such extreme penalties were carried
out sporadically, since the accused victims ran away
or had political and social connections to escape such
punishments. The local populace sometimes rioted