-
Introduction
- University of Pennsylvania Press
- Chapter
- Additional Information
1 Introduction Heresy-hunting probably always had a political dimension. It only intensified once the popes took an increasingly active role beginning in the twelfth century .1 Lucius III’s pivotal decretal Ad abolendam (1184), sometimes mistakenly taken as the or at least a foundational document of the papal inquisition, called on imperial authorities to assist in the search for heretics, and may have been issued with Emperor Frederick I’s tacit support.2 It also dictated a mode of investigation containing some of the elements of the new technique of inquisitio.3 Although originally intended for the investigation of abuses committed by the higher clergy, when Innocent III began to systematize it in the early thirteenth century, he did so in a similarly political context. He certainly made the attack on heresy a political question when, for example, early in his reign he aimed another key document in the development of papal efforts to suppress heresy, Vergentis in senium, at the commune of Viterbo at a time when he was struggling to bring it under papal obedience. By applying imperial law to heresy, the decretal made heretics’ property forfeit.4 Innocent was also responsible for one of the most notorious political heresy-hunts, the Albigensian crusade.5 Neither politicizing heresy nor creating a new means of seeking it out automatically entailed the creation of an institution designed to pursue it, an inquisition. Instead, thirteenth-century inquisitors often worked in quasiindependent fashion without papal authorization. The popes responded with intense efforts to bring inquisitors under their authority, quickly taking an interest in this remarkably useful tool and putting it to work, especially against forms of heresy that would eventually develop into witchcraft.6 Thus in the mid-thirteenth century Gregory IX deputed Conrad of Marburg as his personal agent against a group of “Luciferians” in the vicinity of Cologne.7 But even Gregory enjoyed only indifferent success in controlling local inquisitors and his efforts did not create any kind of institution, certainly not a Roman Inquisition.8 It was not until the late fifteenth century that even local introduction 2 inquisitions could be spoken of as institutionalized. The popes assiduously pursued efforts similar to Gregory’s in some cases, the kingdom of Aragon being one of the best illustrations. Other efforts were almost entirely abandoned , as happened in most of the Italian peninsula until 1542, when Paul III refounded the Inquisition. After several protracted struggles, those with Venice and the duke of Mantua being among the best known, by the end of the century the popes largely succeeded by in gaining theoretical control of all local inquisitions in Italy.9 Practical dominance was another matter, with several of the most important tribunals either almost eluding papal control, as in Venice and Naples, or constantly resisting it, as in the Spanish duchy of Milan, seat of another major inquisitorial tribunal. By the early seventeenth century when this book begins, the popes had made the nature of their ambitions clear. Urban VIII spoke only a little more bluntly than his immediate predecessors when he described his government as “absolutely monarchical.”10 As it had done from the first, the Roman Inquisition continued to provide one of the best tools for establishing such a regime. In The Roman Inquisition: A Papal Bureaucracy and Its Laws in the Age of Galileo, I began by endorsing the usual view that the Inquisition was the most powerful papal congregation, the only one headed directly by the pope. I went beyond that to argue that Urban VIII (reigned 1623–1645) developed an unprecedented degree of control over the institution, which he was prepared to put to nearly any end, including, as had his predecessors, the papacy’s political goals. A prosopographical study of all the Inquisition’s professional staff and a large sample of the Cardinals Inquisitor demonstrated the same point. Loyalty to Urban and his family became a much more important qualification than either preparation in law or theology or the on-the-job training that all members of the Holy Office, including the cardinals who directed its operations , had previously undergone. Urban’s attitude also at first glance undercut the centuries-long development of the Inquisition’s procedure and “style,” in theory developed to protect defendants (see the end of this Introduction and in more depth Roman Inquisition, Chapter 5). In the Inquisition the law— civil, canon, and its own adaptation of both—and careful bureaucratic procedures stood in tension not only with constantly changing...