7. When were inquisitors introduced and what strategies did they follow to eliminate heresy?

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  • Created on: 01-06-18 19:36
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  • 7. When were inquisitors introduced and what strategies did they follow to eliminate heresy?
    • University of Toulouse
      • Founded in 1229
      • Attracted many Paris scholars
    • School set up by Franciscans who had settled in Toulouse in 1222
    • Order of Preachers
      • Appointed by Pope Gregory (1227-41) in 1233 to sit on inquisition tribunals that enquired into matters of heresy and faith
      • According to Catherine Leglu, Rebecca Rist and Clare Taylor
        • most significant move of all
    • Inquisitors introduced when Catholic lords, as allies of French Crown, took control of Languedoc
      • Allowed church to fight heresy in a different way
      • Specific office of inquisitor was introduced during pontificate of Gregory IX
    • Bernard Hamilton
      • considers inquisition to have been an antidote to more extreme expressions of social hostility
        • that resulted in lynching of supposed heretics by mobs and soldiers, often on mass scale
          • e.g. Beziers in 1209
    • Concern of Rome and its representatives was to save souls and it valued this above punishing miscreants
      • Hostility originated not in heretics' criticism of clerical failings, which was a common enough viewpoint at a popular level
        • but because they attacked core Christian beliefs, social order and very existence of Church itself
    • Recent scholarship on inquisition reflects R.I. Moore's focus on repression as an expression and imposition of power from above
      • Through which a repressive clerical agenda could be acted out, rather than as a popular phenomenon
    • Bull of Lucius III (1181-5) placed responsibility of investigating heresy on bishops
    • The Fourth Lateran Council (1215) advocated corporal punishment of unrepentant adherents to heresy
      • if they had been tried and found guilty by qualified clergy - by handing over to 'the secular arm'
        • i.e. to legitimate lay authorities who, unlike clergy, had moral right to punish through violence
          • Thus the threat of violence, needed to make inquisition successful, was already in place
    • In order for its strategies to be realised, heretics had to be separated from their base of support in southern French towns and castra
      • This had not happened as a result of crusade, and so new methods were needed to drive wedge between those who adamantly supported heretics and those who could be induced to expose them
        • In 1229, people of region had been sworn to reveal heretics where they found them, and public officials sworn to arrest them
          • Portion of legislation links the Peace of Paris directly to inquisition

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