Inquisition and its Organisation in Italy, 1250-1350 1903153891, 9781903153895, 9781787445369

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nquisition against heresy in Italy was a partnership between the papal inquisitor, usually a Dominican or Franciscan friar, the local bishop and the civic authority; and it is generally considered that the inquisitor was the leading figure, from the mid thirteenth century onwards. This book seeks to question whether this is true. Through an examination of the roles of the different partners, and in particular the part played by the lay and clerical staff of the inquisition, it offers a much more diverse picture, arguing that the inquisitor was often supplicant rather than dominant, and the civil authority continued to play a major part. Dominicans and Franciscans took different approaches to inquisition, and related in different ways to their parent orders. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished sources, the book analyses these divergences, and shows the internal operations of the inquisition. It also teases out the lives and histories of the individuals who spent their careers working for the inquisition – notaries, messengers, spies and many more – and shows how inquisition against heresy was part of the civic fabric of the Middle Ages. JILL MOORE has researched in several Italian medieval and Renaissance

fields, before, during and after a career in the British civil service and gained her PhD from Birkbeck, University of London. Cover image: Fitzwilliam Museum MS 278 b, Thomas Aquinas teaching a group of men, by Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna, from a fourteenth-century antiphoner. By kind permission of the Trustees.

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION IN ITALY, 1250 –1350

HERESY AND INQUISITION IN THE MIDDLE AGES

JILL MOORE

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION IN ITALY 1250 –1350

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US)

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

JILL MOORE

Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages Volume 8

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION IN ITALY, 1250–1350

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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for Medieval Studies in association with Boydell & Brewer Limited. Our objective is the promotion of innovative scholarship and fresh criticism on medieval culture. We have a special commitment to interdisciplinary study, in line with the Centre’s belief that the future of Medieval Studies lies in those areas in which its major constituent disciplines at once inform and challenge each other. Editorial Board (2019) Professor Peter Biller (Dept of History): General Editor Professor T. Ayers (Dept of History of Art) Dr Henry Bainton (Dept of English and Related Literature): Secretary Dr J. W. Binns (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. P. Clarke (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr K. F. Giles (Dept of Archaeology) Dr Holly James-Maddocks (Dept of English and Related Literature) Dr Harry Munt (Dept of History) Professor W. Mark Ormrod, Emeritus (Dept of History) Professor Sarah Rees Jones (Dept of History): Director, Centre for Medieval Studies Dr L. J. Sackville (Dept of History) Dr Hanna Vorholt (Dept of History of Art) Professor J. G. Wogan-Browne (English Faculty, Fordham University) All enquiries of an editorial kind, including suggestions for monographs and essay collections, should be addressed to: The Academic Editor, York Medieval Press, Department of History, University of York, Heslington, York, YO10 5DD (E-mail: [email protected]) Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages ISSN 2046–8938 Series editors John H. Arnold, Faculty of History, University of Cambridge Peter Biller, Department of History, University of York L. J. Sackville, Department of History, University of York Heresy had social, cultural and political implications in the middle ages, and countering heresy was often a central component in the development of orthodoxy. This series publishes work on heresy, and the repression of heresy, from late antiquity to the Reformation, including monographs, collections of essays and editions of texts. Previous volumes in the series are listed at the back of this volume.

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Inquisition and its Organisation in Italy, 1250–1350

Jill Moore

Y ORK MEDIEVA L PRE S S

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© Jill Moore 2019 All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation no part of this work may be photocopied, stored in a retrieval system, published, performed in public, adapted, broadcast, transmitted, recorded or reproduced in any form or by any means, without the prior permission of the copyright owner The right of Jill Moore to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 First published 2019 A York Medieval Press publication in association with The Boydell Press an imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge, Suffolk IP12 3DF, UK and of Boydell & Brewer Inc. 668 Mt Hope Avenue, Rochester, NY 14620–2731, USA website: www.boydellandbrewer.com and with the Centre for Medieval Studies, University of York www.york.ac.uk/medieval-studies ISBN 978-1-903153-89-5 A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of URLs for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate This publication is printed on acid-free paper

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This book is dedicated to Ron Saroff, the best of old friends, who sadly did not live to see its publication

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This book is produced with the generous assistance of a grant from Isobel Thornley’s Bequest to the University of London

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Contents List of illustrations

viii

Acknowledgements ix Abbreviations

x

A note on the text

xi

Introduction 1 Between Church and State: the legal, organisational and financial framework of inquisition

25

2

Starting work: the practicalities

58

3

The inquisition notary: making actions legal

91

4

Nuncii, heralds and messengers: public voice or ‘social scourge’?

1

5 The familia and the wider support system

120 144

6 Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum 172 7

The cuckoo in the nest? Inquisitors and their orders

200

8

An uneasy relationship: inquisitor, bishop and civil power

230

Conclusion 258 Bibliography 267 Index287

vii

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Illustrations Figure 1: Line drawing of the seal of the inquisition in Treviso

72

Map 1: North–Central Italy, showing places mentioned in the text

xii

viii

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Acknowledgements This book could not have been published without the kind support of a grant from the Isobel Thornley Bequest to the University of London, to which I am most grateful. It could not have been written without the patience and assistance of staff in a number of Italian archives and libraries. I would like to acknowledge, in particular, the help and kindness of the archivists at the Biblioteca Comunale in Treviso and the General Archive of the Dominican Order at Santa Sabina, of the staff at the Archivio Segreto at the Vatican and the Archivio di Stato in Bologna, and of Valerie Scott and her team at the British School in Rome (to which in general I am grateful for support and the kind of cross-sectoral discussions which open unexpected mental doors). In England, my thanks go to Birkbeck, University of London, for the extra support of an associate research fellowship, while the London Library has cheerfully and promptly found things others could not. John Arnold and Filippo de Vivo have been unfailingly helpful and stimulating, and David d’Avray has been extremely kind and supportive in several ways. I also owe a special debt to Peter Rycraft of the University of York, who got me interested in heresy many years ago as an undergraduate and taught me not to be daunted by sources or language. Finally, my husband Simon Pepper has been the greatest support possible, listening with endless patience as I worked out the relationships of inquisitors and their teams, and using his professional skill to draw the map and illustration of the Treviso seal.

ix

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Abbreviations AFH AFP AGOP AMRom ASB ASI ASL ASOB

ASRSP ASV ASVen AV BISIME BSPU BSSP CH Collectoria DBI JEH MEFRMA MGH MOFPH Muratori, ‘Pungilupo’ PL Potthast PP Praedicatores

Archivum Franciscanum Historicum Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum Archivium Generale Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, Santa Sabina Atti e Memorie della Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria per le province di Romagna Archivio di Stato, Bologna Archivio Storico Italiano Archivio Storico Lombardo Acta S. Officii Bononie ab anno 1291 usque ad annum 1310, ed. L. Paolini and R. Orioli, 2 vols., Fonti per la storia d’Italia 106–7 (Rome, 1982) Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria Archivio Segreto Vaticano Archivio di Stato, Venice Archivio Veneto Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo e Archivio Muratoriano Bollettino della Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria Bullettino senese di storia patria Church History ASV, Camera Apostolica, Collectoria Dizionario biografico degli italiani Journal of Ecclesiastical History Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: moyen âge Monumenta Germaniae Historica Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi, V, Dissertatio Sexagesima, ed. L. A. Muratori (Milan, 1741), cols. 102–48 Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1857–66) Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, ed. A. Potthast, 2 vols. (Berlin, 1874–75) Past & Present Praedicatores, Inquisitores, I: The Dominicans and the Medieval Inquisition. Acts of the 1st International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, Rome 23–25 February 2002 (Rome, 2004) x

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A note on the text Except for those well known in their English form, such as Peter of Verona, Latin names and place-names have been rendered where possible into the language most appropriate to the individual. They have been left in Latin, and the place of origin italicised, where the conversion is uncertain, as with Jacobus de Burgo. For currency amounts, I have mostly adopted lire, rather than other possible variations. For ease of reading, I have generally referred to ‘heretics’, rather than sub-categorisations of belief, such as credentes. I apologise if this offends purists.

xi

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Map 1: North–Central Italy, showing places mentioned in the text

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Introduction One June day in 1331, Cassiano, collector of the dazio (customs duty) at the small port of Riva on Lake Garda, became suspicious of two newly-arrived strangers. They claimed to be dealers in wax candles from nearby Verona, but he thought they spoke in the wrong dialect. Instead of visiting a merchant, they asked directions to the home of Monda, widow of a local apothecary. Because of their style of hair and dress, and because Monda had a reputation for free-thinking, Cassiano convinced himself they must be heretics (pathari).1 Cassiano’s colleague in the port offices encouraged his speculations, which only strengthened when the two strangers vanished from sight for two weeks. When they reappeared, Cassiano hurried off to report his suspicions to ser Bressanino di Niccolò di Val di Ledro, who was the local official of the inquisition in Riva. The town was too small for a permanent inquisitor, so Bressanino took the denunciation to the inquisitor’s vicar, Federico da Mantova, guardian of the local Franciscan convent.2 Federico agreed to accompany Bressanino to the port, but refused to take action against the strangers, saying he had no idea who they were and he did not want to overstep his office. All Cassiano and Bressanino could do was wait until the next year, when Alberto da Bassano, inquisitor for the Trento diocese in which Riva fell, visited the town to hold a travelling inquisitio. By convention, this began with an invitation to citizens to report any knowledge of heresy, and a large number queued up to denounce their neighbours or enemies, who were then interrogated by the inquisitor or his vicar. In this case, many depositions survive – including that of Monda, who was eventually cleared of suspicion.3

1 The

term patharus or patarinus is widely used to mean heretic. It was originally linked to Cathar, but Cathars had been all but eliminated from Italy by the 1330s. 2 The guardian (guardianus) was elected by the provincial chapter to oversee Franciscan friars’ ministry and welfare at a particular convent. He was usually supported by a lector, responsible for theological education, and could co-exist with a custos, responsible for discipline across several convents within a province. Guardians and lectors often deputised for inquisitors, custodes less often. See M. Robson, The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006), pp. xi–xii, for a glossary of other Franciscan administrative terms. 3 A. Segarizzi, ‘Contributo alla storia di fra Dolcino e degli eretici trentini’, Tridentum 3 (1900), 273–97, 383–99, 442–54 (pp. 294–5, docs. 4, 5; pp. 443–8, doc. 48); M. d’Alatri, ‘Rileggendo gli atti del processo trentino dell’inverno 1332–1333’, collected in Eretici e inquisitori in Italia. Studi e documenti, 2 vols., Bibliotheca Seraphico-Cappuccina 11 and 12 (Rome, 1986–87), I, 243–58. The Franciscan Alberto da Bassano was

1

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 This incident throws valuable light on the practical organisation of inquisition against heresy in medieval Italy, a subject largely ignored by scholars. Although the inquisition as a weapon against heretics began to take shape from the late 1230s, there was only ever a handful of actual inquisitors in office. To maintain any kind of effective geographical oversight, they had to build, and depend on, a network of local agents, both secular and clerical. The Riva episode shows how this system worked. A citizen with suspicions took them to a permanent inquisition official, based locally. If the inquisitor was absent, the official consulted the inquisitor’s vicar, here the guardian of the Franciscan convent. The vicar then decided on a course of action, which did not always result in arrest and sometimes depended on the extent of the powers delegated to him. In areas where Franciscans held inquisitorial roles, the guardian was ideally placed to deputise, given his management function among his fellow friars. Among the Dominicans, the task frequently fell to the lector. However, inquisitors of both orders also relied on the lay officials of civil authorities across Italy to report (and sometimes detain) suspicious characters. The focus of this study is the organisation and evolving role of this supporting cast of staff, without whom inquisition could not have functioned. The period examined (around 1250 to around 1350) is chosen because this was when the medieval inquisition assumed the form it would essentially keep until the Counter-Reformation. Before the 1250s, it had neither an effective nationwide network in Italy nor the legislative base established under Innocent IV. After around 1350, the civic and religious environment had altered substantially. The century between offers the chance to analyse both evolution and consolidation. Until fairly recently, scholars have tended to engage with the inquisition only as a new judicial form (inquisitio) or as a means of exploring the heresies it combatted. Few have seriously considered its day-to-day mechanics. In fact, in an influential article, Richard Kieckhefer argued that ‘the Inquisition’ as an organised force did not exist in the middle ages, but should simply be regarded as a collection of individual inquisitors going their own separate ways, without structural continuity or permanent lay staff.4 An exploration of Kieckhefer’s contention forms an important thread of enquiry in this study, but in the meantime I have avoided capitalising ‘inquisitor’ and ‘office of inquisition’. The organisational premise on which heresy inquisition was based from 1252 onwards was certainly unusual, and its dynamics deserve exploration. Broadly, it consisted of a series of three-cornered local partnerships between an experienced inquisitor, having taken part in the proceedings against Meister Eckhart when lector of the convent at Cologne a couple of years earlier (p. 246 n. 12). 4 R. Kieckhefer, ‘The Office of Inquisition and Medieval Heresy: The Transition from Personal to Institutional Jurisdiction’, JEH 46 (1995), 36–61.

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Introduction papally mandated inquisitors, diocesan bishops and secular authorities, serviced by an officium inquisitionis which stood between them and owed responsibility in varying degrees to all the parties. There was some local variability in the details of agreements with communes, and the balance of power between the partners also fluctuated with time and personalities. Though it is often asserted that the so-called ‘papal’ inquisition quickly superseded the earlier anti-heresy role of diocesan bishops, the reality varied a great deal. Moreover, inquisition in Italy from 1254 onwards was partitioned regionally between the Dominicans and Franciscans, who differed both in their approach and in their reliance on their parent orders in carrying out their duties. Despite these local nuances, it is clear that by the third quarter of the thirteenth century, the inquisition in Italy was a firmly established organisation, unified by common practices, team spirit and information-sharing across both geographical areas and responsible orders. In the early fourteenth century, with richer source material, the careers and activities of its lay and clerical support staff can be examined in detail, exposing social as well as organisational structures. This analysis shows that, for Italy at least, Kieckhefer’s argument that medieval inquisition against heresy was not an institution is rendered untenable on his own criteria. Across the period, the political, religious and economic context within which the inquisition functioned changed substantially. The Italy of 1350, with an increasingly discredited and absentee papacy, a weak Empire and the economic turmoil which followed the Black Death, was very different from that of 1250, with strong popes and emperors locked in combat; the great surge of popular devotion which fuelled the Flagellants and the confraternities; communities still shaking off feudal ties and coalescing into powerful city-states; and two active and widespread heretical groups, the Cathars and the Waldensians, who were a clear focus for the inquisition’s activities. The transformation of its environment, and to some extent its own success in eliminating the Cathars, inevitably affected the course of the inquisition’s development. However, these wider changes are only sketched here with a broad brush. Modern scholarship on the inquisition has principally focused on southern France. Although there were close relationships between inquisitors in France and Italy (in the modern territorial sense), their institutional development differed because of the very different political environment. The most significant divergence was in the role of the French king (rather than municipalities and the Church) in receiving the product of heresy confiscations and funding inquisitors. The French system is dimly seen in the parts of Piedmont held by the Angevins, and more clearly south of Rome, where the Angevins in the Regno followed the French model after Charles I established himself. This study draws lessons from scholarship on France, but does not attempt a detailed comparison of the two very different regimes. 3

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 A balanced understanding of the medieval inquisition, in Italy and elsewhere, has been greatly affected by centuries of bad press and the defensive reaction of the Church. Post-Reformation confessional politics, with their emotive accounts of burnings and torture, mainly relate to the sixteenthcentury Spanish or Roman Inquisitions (here the capital letter is warranted). But the Black Legend casts a backward shadow over the medieval inquisition too, assisted by contemporary attacks by writers of the calibre of Dante and Boccaccio.5 These represent inquisitors as corrupt and venal. The many medieval accounts of protests over burnings help to tar the inquisition itself as uniquely barbaric, even though a glance at Italian criminal court records shows that its penalties were far from exceptional for its time. This blinkered approach has affected understanding in two main ways. On the one hand, highly partisan studies have emerged from Catholic, Protestant and anticlerical standpoints, from those who did engage with the issues. On the other, there has been a reluctance to explore them at all. The Church itself has hesitated over its attitude to this contested aspect of its heritage, with ambivalence particularly evident among scholars from the mendicant orders. Even in 1988, in his study of the Dominicans in Bologna, Alfonso D’Amato OP entitled his chapter on the medieval inquisition ‘un’attività non strettamente domenicana’.6 Grado G. Merlo noted that it was as late as 1998 that the first major conference on inquisition issues was held in Rome.7 Consequently, although many historians have used inquisition texts to explore heresy as a religious and social phenomenon, it is only quite recently that the inquisition’s own mechanics have claimed attention. Serious modern discussion of the inquisition began, effectively, with Henry Charles Lea’s magisterial A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages. In many ways this has never been bettered, and it was certainly a triumph of research in adverse circumstances. Lea promoted a Protestant view of the inquisition as monolithic, unaccountable, all-powerful and essentially evil.8 He enticed Victorian readers with rubrics such as ‘All Social Forces Placed at Command

5 See

J. Levarie Smarr, ‘The Tale of the Inquisitor’, in The Decameron: The First Day in Perspective, ed. E. B. Weaver (Toronto, 2004), pp. 148–59; extracts from the poem Il Fiore, attributed to Dante and describing inquisitorial excess, are reproduced in C. Bruschi, ‘Inquisizione francescana in Toscana fino al pontificato di Giovanni XXII’, in Frati minori e inquisizione. Atti del XXXIII Convegno internazionale, Assisi, 6–8 ottobre 2005 (Spoleto, 2006), pp. 285–324 (pp. 319–20). 6 ‘Not really a Dominican issue’. 7 L’Inquisizione: Atti del simposio internazionale, Città del Vaticano, 29–30 ottobre 1998, ed. A. Borromeo (Città del Vaticano, 2003). 8 H. C. Lea, A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages, 3 vols. (London, 1888), I (facsimile reprint, Cambridge, 2010). Chapters 7–14 separately published as The Inquisition of the Middle Ages: Its Organization and Operation (London, 1963), with a valuable introduction by Walter Ullmann. References are to the 2010 reprint unless otherwise stated.

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Introduction of Inquisition’ and ‘Fruitless Rivalry of the Bishops’, thus taking at face value the papacy’s hopes of inquisition power, rather than the more complex reality. Even Lea, however, cavilled at some claims by earlier historians, conceding that ‘[i]magination has grown inflamed at the manifold iniquities of the Holy Office, and has been ready to accept without examination exaggerations which have become habitual’. Lea believed that ‘the records of those evil days have mostly disappeared’, leaving no possibility of getting at the facts.9 But, as it happened, his book almost coincided with Célestin Douais’s full edition of Bernard Gui’s Practica, and shortly preceded the discovery and publication of a wave of primary sources which provided material to question Lea’s highly-coloured analysis.10 Even since the Millennium, new sources continue to be discovered, such as the 1335 papal processes against the inquisitor Lorenzo d’Ancona.11 Using such material, twentieth-century Catholic historians such as Jean Guiraud presented a less critical and more nuanced view of inquisition operations. Guiraud’s The Medieval Inquisition, translated into English in 1930 and published with Church approval (it was printed by the Printers to the Holy See), challenged Lea’s depiction of inquisition impunity and cruelty by pointing to evidence of acquittals, lay advocates and the very limited use of execution.12 Inquisitors, Guiraud declared, preferred to use canonical penances followed by the reconciliation of the sinner. When fines were imposed, ‘care was taken not to make these mere extortions of money, but the sum was assigned to religious works or enterprises of public utility’. Guiraud acknowledged that there were property confiscations and demolitions of heretics’ houses, but he set these in the context of the shared heritage of similar Roman law penalties. Burning was also a secular punishment for

9 Lea,

Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 549–50. Gui, Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis, ed. C. Douais (Paris, 1886). Lea relied on correspondents for archive work, himself remaining in the US, but he had access to transcripts of a manuscript of the Practica. 11 P. Iocco, ‘Il caso giudiziario di un inquisitore inquisito: Fr Lorenzo d’Ancona OFM’, Picenum Seraphicum: Rivista di studi storici e francescani, anno 22–23 (2003–04), 11–65; S. Parent, ‘L’annulation d’une sentence de condamnation pour hérésie contre les seigneurs d’Osimo sous Benoît XII (1335): du nouveau sur l’affaire Lorenzo d’Ancona’, MEFRMA 123/1 (2011), 191–241. 12 J. Guiraud, The Medieval Inquisition, trans. E. C. Messenger (New York, 1930), pp. 93–108. Lea acknowledged that execution was not common. Few sentence-books survive for Italy, but those of Bernard Gui and Jacques Fournier in southern France illustrate the comparative rarity of execution. Following Palès-Gobilliard and others, J. Théry, Le livre des sentences de l’inquisiteur Bernard Gui (Paris, 2010) notes (p. xxix) that of 636 individuals sentenced, only forty-three (6.7%) were sent to the stake. In Italy, the sixty-eight sentences against heretics in the 1268–69 sentencebook of Orvieto have no instances of condemnation to execution. M. d’Alatri, L’Inquisizione francescana nel Italia centrale del Duecento (Rome, 1996), edits the text of the Orvieto Liber Inquisitionis (pp. 209–338). 10 Bernard

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 some crimes, sanctioned by imperial law. However, in his desire to redress the balance, Guiraud in his turn made questionable claims. If he knew, as he must have, Gerolamo Biscaro’s evisceration of inquisitorial corruption in Florence, it is hard to see how he could approvingly cite Thomas de Cauzons’s assertion that ‘the cases of corruption known to us are very rare, and everything leads us to infer a general uprightness, joined to a strict discipline, amongst the inquisitorial officials’.13 Henri Maisonneuve tried to strike a balance between Lea and Guiraud. In his study of the early development of the legislation leading to the inquisition, he pointed out the importance of remembering that the Catholic Church was ‘not just a mystical body but a society of this world’. It had to operate pragmatically. More subtle than Guiraud, he argued that whilst it was excessive to see inquisition practice only as an inheritance from Roman law, it was Roman law that gave it its supreme justification.14 The point that the inquisition was not uniquely barbaric was rubbed home fifty years later in Andrea del Col’s heroic attempt at a conspectus of both medieval and Counter-Reformation inquisition in Italy, which sets events such as the mass executions at Verona in the 1270s against later Protestant atrocities.15 Post-war historians of Church matters often reacted to the uncomfortable problems of justifying or condemning the persecution of heretics by marginalising the inquisition itself.16 In 1967, Gordon Leff’s massive study of heresy gave thirteen of 740 pages to the inquisition, all in the prologue, and concentrating on origins rather than application.17 Malcolm Lambert’s excellent general study, Medieval Heresy, sets out the bare bones of the inquisition’s origins in a short chapter headed ‘Inquisition and abuse’, but also does not consider its development.18 Even Lorenzo Paolini, in his study of heresy in Bologna based on the surviving acts of the Bologna inquisition, concentrates on the heretics and their beliefs and says little about the functioning of the inquisition itself.19 Others handled the fraught question of justification by 13 Guiraud,

Medieval Inquisition, p. 78. T. de Cauzons, Histoire de l’Inquisition, 2 vols. (Paris, 1909), II, 86. De Cauzons is best known for works on occultism. 14 H. Maisonneuve, Études sur les origines de l’Inquisition, 2nd edn (Paris, 1960), pp. 10, 367–8. 15 A. del Col, L’Inquisizione in Italia dal XII al XXI secolo (Milan, 2006), pp. 3–5. 16 Merlo noted that in his 700-page history of the Franciscan order, Gratien de Paris devotes only ten pages – in an appendix – to its role in the inquisition: G. G. Merlo, ‘Frati minori e inquisizione’ in Frati minori e inquisizione, pp. 3–24 (p. 3). 17 G. Leff, Heresy in the Later Middle Ages: The Relation of Heterodoxy to Dissent c.1250– c.1450, 2 vols. (Manchester, 1967), reprinted as one vol. (Manchester, 1999), pp. 34–47. 18 M. Lambert, Medieval Heresy, 3rd edn (Oxford, 2005). His The Cathars (Oxford, 1998) includes more detailed discussion of the creation of the inquisition in Italy (pp. 171–214) and some aspects of the later thirteenth century activity. 19 L. Paolini, L’eresia a Bologna fra XIII e XIV secolo, I: L’eresia catara alla fine del Duecento (Rome, 1975). Paolini has corrected the omission in many later articles.

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Introduction treating the inquisition as only one manifestation of an increasingly less tolerant societal view of difference.20 Richard Kieckhefer reacted to the inquisition mythos by challenging the then-established view. In his important article, he argued that the medieval inquisition was not a powerful organisation, but simply a collection of individuals invested with personal authority. In his eyes, the officium inquisitionis was a description of a function, not the name of an institution. Kieckhefer’s theme – examined in more detail later in this study – has been influential in the English-speaking world, but followed in Italy only by Gabriele Zanella. Zanella claimed (with some justification in a few cases) that the medieval inquisition was often fairly incompetent and easy to evade.21 Why this might be so, he did not examine. Heresy and the inquisition did not escape the socio-economic analysis which characterised scholarship in the 1960s and 1970s. Difficult issues of belief, justification and papal versus imperial sovereignty were now replaced by almost equally divisive questions about the chicken-and-egg links between heresy and social or political dissent. As well as provoking significant debate inside Italy, this period saw important work by Marvin Becker, which dissected – at least for Florence – the entanglement of the inquisition with civic affairs and finance. Becker’s debate with J. N. Stephens presented a much more intricate picture of local relationships than either Lea or Guiraud could have attempted.22 A renewed interest in the inquisition’s socio-economic impact began to appear just before the Millennium, as an outgrowth of a broader scholarly conversation on the effect of Church holdings and devotional offerings on the secular economy.23 This wider 20 R.

I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1990); N. Cohn, Europe’s Inner Demons (New York, 1977). 21 G. Zanella, ‘Malessere ereticale in Valle Padana, 1260–1308’, Rivista di storia e letteratura religiosa 14 (1978), 341–90, collected in Hereticalia: Temi e discussioni (Spoleto, 1995), pp. 15–66. Zanella suggests (p. 16) that heretics avoided discovery because of poor co–ordination between inquisitors. He returns to the theme in ‘Armanno Pungilupo, eretico quotidiano’, reprinted in Hereticalia, pp. 3–14, noting that inquisitors did not seem to follow through on accusations even within their own territories. 22 M. B. Becker, ‘Florentine Politics and the Diffusion of Heresy in the Trecento: A Socioeconomic Inquiry’, Speculum 34 (1959), 60–75; J. N. Stephens, ‘Heresy in Medieval and Renaissance Florence’, PP 54 (1972), 25–60; debate PP 62 (1974), 153–61, 162–6. 23 See the collections Gli spazi economici della chiesa nell’Occidente mediterraneo (sec. XII– metà XIV): Atti del sedicesimo Convegno internazionale di studi tenuto a Pistoia nei giorni 16–19 maggio, 1997 (Pistoia, 1999), especially L. Paolini, ‘Le finanze dell’inquisizione in Italia (XIII–XIV sec.)’, pp. 441–82; A. Rigon, ‘Conflitti tra comuni e ordini mendicanti sulle realtà economiche’, in L’economia dei conventi dei frati minori e predicatori fino alla metà del trecento. Atti del XXXI Convegno internazionale, Assisi 9–11 ottobre 2003 (Spoleto, 2004), pp. 339–62; and Économie et religion: l’expérience des ordres mendiants (XIIIe–XVe siècle), ed. N. Bériou and J. Chiffoleau (Lyons, 2009).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 context of the interaction of civil and religious life is most recently treated by Andrews and Pincelli on the employment of clerics in Italian city governments, and by Roisin Cossar on clerical households.24 In the late twentieth century, key scholars in the field came increasingly to consider the medieval inquisition not so much as an enforcer of religious orthodoxy, but as an instrument of power over individuals, and through them, over their communities. For Languedoc, Arnold has explored the way inquisitorial forms and procedures squeezed deponents into categories from which they could not escape, imposing its own world-view on them and creating possibly non-existent heresies. He cites Fr Bernard Délicieux’s exasperated assertion that Saints Peter and Paul would be convicted at an inquisitorial tribunal. James Given and Alan Friedlander have also shown for Languedoc the wider impact of the inquisition’s activities on local politics and relationships, going far beyond the correction of individual religious transgressions.25 Caution is needed when comparing inquisition in France and Italy, but in both, power relationships are a vital prism through which to view its operations. The close association in Italy between accusations of heresy and disagreement with papal secular politics was documented by Fumi for Umbria and the evolving papal states, but was also critical in Visconti Milan and Este Ferrara. Norman Housley, among others, demonstrated the links between inquisition, crusade and politically motivated accusations of heresy across the whole Italian peninsula, tying together the Church’s different ways of securing its temporal and religious objectives.26 Inquisition powers were brought into play in service of local civil and ecclesiastical authorities, and in return the inquisition itself had the help of secular muscle from both military

24 Churchmen

and Urban Government in Late Medieval Italy, c.1200–c.1450. Cases and Contexts, ed. F. Andrews with M. A. Pincelli (Cambridge, 2013); R. Cossar, Clerical Households in Late Medieval Italy (Cambridge MA, 2017). 25 J. Arnold, Inquisition and Power: Catharism and the Confessing Subject in Medieval Languedoc (Philadelphia, 2001); J. Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society: Power, Discipline, and Resistance in Languedoc (Ithaca NY, 1997) and ‘The Inquisitors of Languedoc and the Medieval Technology of Power’, American Historical Review 94 (1989), 336–59; also A. Friedlander, The Hammer of the Inquisition. Brother Bernard Délicieux and the Struggle against the Inquisition in Fourteenth-century France (Leiden, 2000). Though focused on France, the collection Inquisition et pouvoir, ed. G. Audisio (Aix-en-Provence, 2004), contains a number of papers with wider relevance. 26 L. Fumi, ‘Eretici e ribelli nell’Umbria’, BSPU 3 (1897), 257–85, 429–89; 4 (1898), 221–301, 437–86; 5 (1899), 1–46; 6 (1900), 205–425, subsequently collected as a monograph (Città di Castello, 1916); C. Lansing, Power and Purity: Cathar Heresy in Medieval Italy (Oxford, 1998); N. J. Housley, The Italian Crusades: The Papal–Angevin Alliance and the Crusades against Christian Lay Powers, 1254–1343 (Oxford, 1982); also ‘Politics and Heresy in Italy: Anti-heretical Crusades, Orders and Confraternities, 1200–1500’, JEH 33 (1982), 193–208. For a different take, see A. Murray, ‘The Medieval Inquisition: An Instrument of Secular Politics?’, Peritia 5 (1986), 161–200.

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Introduction and charitable confraternities, who supplied officiales for the inquisition team. The payback for this assistance was cut-price sales of heretics’ property to the confraternities, an issue discussed further in Chapter 8 below.27 Correcting the trend to interpret the inquisition in essentially secular terms as a tool of power, Christine Caldwell Ames has reasserted the religious and spiritual foundations of inquisition against heresy. Her work followed Prudlo’s study of Peter of Verona, and both emphasise the urgent need of Dominican order and papacy alike to sanctify his murder. Caldwell Ames offers a more powerful theological justification for inquisitors’ actions than has been advanced for decades, providing a context in which the treatment of the poor recanting heretic dragged half-burnt (‘semi–combustus’) from the pyre becomes at least explicable.28 Maisonneuve would have approved: ‘les moyens sont violents, mais les résultats sont heureux’.29 Following Caldwell Ames, Karen Sullivan sought to widen and advance this theme by looking at the devotional lives of inquisitors, though she instances only Peter of Verona in Italy: there is scope for such work on other Italian inquisitors, some of whom had intellectual standing.30 These studies are a necessary reminder that medieval motivations and belief-systems should not be judged from modern, essentially secular, perspectives. But they too need to be treated with caution. They are based primarily on theological treatises, apologias and idealised statements of objectives, rather than on the sometimes grubby decisions which formed the reality of inquisitors’ lives. The extent to which real devotion and religious zeal was (or was believed to be) the motivating factor for inquisitors’ actions is hard to establish, and probably changed over time. In the mid-fourteenth century, Boccaccio castigated Florentine inquisitors who acted not for ‘alleviamento di miscredenza

27 D.

M. Federici OP, Istoria dei Cavalieri Gaudenti, 2 vols. (Venice, 1787), published details of advantageous property purchases from the inquisition in Treviso. More recently, the issue is touched on in several works by M. Fanti, G. G. Meersseman and J. Henderson, notably Henderson’s ‘The Flagellant Movement and Flagellant Confraternities in Central Italy, 1260–1400’, Studies in Church History 15 (1978), 147–60. 28 C. Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution: Inquisition, Dominicans, and Christianity in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 2009); D. Prudlo, The Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (†1252) (Aldershot, 2008). For the half-burnt heretic and his medical care, see M. Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi del Duecento (Rome, 2008), p. 139. 29 Maisonneuve, Études, p. 10, ‘the methods are violent, but the outcome is happy’. 30 K. Sullivan, The Inner Lives of Medieval Inquisitors (Chicago, 2011). Some medieval Italian inquisitors did produce significant theological and literary works, aside from teaching materials: for example, Guido Capello da Vicenza, inquisitor of Bologna around 1300 and later bishop of Ferrara, wrote the Margarita Bibliae, a well-known example of Biblical versification which has gone unrecognised by literary scholars as the work of an inquisitor. I am indebted to Greti Dinkova-Bruun, University of Toronto, for a discussion on its significance. On this theme, see also G. Barone, ‘Guido Capello’, DBI 18 (1975), amended in later editions.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 […] ma empimento di fiorini’ (not for ‘correcting erroneous belief […] but for amassing florins’); many Florentines agreed.31 By contrast, half a century earlier in the Marca Trevisana, popular support for the inquisition and its spiritual role in the community is shown in testamentary bequests, and even inquisitors’ appointments as guardians of orphans. This positive attitude of the faithful towards the inquisition is known, sadly, because some inquisitors spectacularly failed to live up to expectations, and scandal ensued. A cluster of publications surrounding Boniface VIII’s imprisonment of the Franciscan inquisitors of Padua and Vicenza in 1302 and the subsequent enquiries by Gui de Neuville and Guillaume de Balait provide ample evidence both of inquisitors’ shortcomings and of the economic impact of confiscations for heresy. The episode has been known in outline since the pioneering work of Gerolamo Biscaro in 1932, but the significance of one important source (the Liber Contractuum of Vicenza) was identified only in the 1990s.32 In his sketch of the ideal inquisitor, Bernard Gui implicitly acknowledged that religious zeal was not always the main driver of his colleagues’ work: Like a just judge, let [the inquisitor] so bear himself in passing sentence of corporal punishment that his face may show compassion […] and thus will he avoid the appearance of indignation and wrath. […] In imposing pecuniary penalties, let his face preserve the severity of justice as though he were compelled by necessity and not allured by cupidity. Let truth and mercy […] shine forth from his countenance, that his decisions may be free from all suspicion of covetousness or cruelty.33

With the scandal in the Marca Trevisana and the accusations from Florence, one important strand of inquisition historiography in Italy unsurprisingly deals with its financing. The business model for the inquisition’s operations

31 Levarie

Smarr, ‘Tale of the Inquisitor’. Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici nella Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio, I (1235–62)’, L’Archiginnasio 75 (1980), 9–75; ‘II (1265–1648)’, L’Archiginnasio 78 (1983), 285–401 (pp. 301–4) for Boniface’s bull with his decision to strip the Franciscans of office because ‘fired by greed and evil intent, under the cloak of their office they wickedly pestered many matrons and women in the city and diocese of Padua, extorting money from them’ (‘inducti cupiditatis ardeant ac instigati malicia quamplures, immo multas matres et feminas Padue et […] civitatum et diocesum pretextu officii supradicti maliciose ac nequitate aggraverunt, exigendo pecuniarum suarum’). Studies of the scandal: G. Biscaro, ‘Eretici ed inquisitori nella Marca Trevisana’, AV 5th s. 11 (1932), 148–80; M. d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti del Duecento’ and ‘Due inchieste papali sugli inquisitori veneti (1302 e 1308)’, in Eretici e inquisitori. I, 139–217 and I, 223–42; F. Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza nel Duecento. Dati, problemi e fonti (Vicenza, 1988); Il Liber Contractuum dei frati minori di Padova e di Vicenza (1263–1302), ed. E. Bonato, introduction by A. Rigon (Rome, 2002). 33 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 367–8 (his accurate paraphrase of the Latin original in Gui, Practica, p. 233). 32 G.

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Introduction in Italy placed receipts from heresy confiscations at the centre of relationships between inquisitor, bishop and commune, and, unlike in France, financial accounts are also a major surviving source of inquisition records. Key relevant works include Biscaro’s heavily redacted edition of the accounts of the Lombard inquisitors from 1292 and his three-part study of the Florentine inquisition (1319–34), closely based on its accounts. More recently, studies by Paolini and Benedetti both flag the impact of evolving papal fiscal policy and its erratic demands on inquisitors’ ability to perform their office.34 Despite their age, Biscaro’s regional studies and Mariano d’Alatri’s work on the Franciscan inquisition in central Italy remain the best general entry points to any analysis of the medieval inquisition in Italy, though written from completely different perspectives: fiercely anticlerical and pro-Franciscan respectively. One important strand of scholarship on the inquisition arises from studies of its manuals and its legal development, which among other things can – as shown in Dondaine’s seminal work – illustrate the interconnections between inquisitors in different regions.35 Though a crucial foundation for understanding inquisitors’ culture and process, these studies have evolved largely independently of the major research trends whose outline is sketched above. The last few decades have also seen valuable biographical studies of some inquisitors, such as Parmeggiani’s work on Florio da Vicenza. These start to put flesh and personality on the Grand Guignol caricatures of the past.36 The overall effect of recent work has been to broaden the discussion, so that the inquisition – both generally and in Italy – can be seen as just one facet of wider Church and social history, rather than as a shameful cul-de-sac. In examining how the inquisition in Italy was organised and developed, and in

34 G.

Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori ed eretici Lombardi (1292–1318)’, Miscellanea di storia italiana 3rd s. 19 (1922), 446–557; ‘Inquisitori ed eretici a Firenze (1319–1334)’, Studi Medievali n.s. 2 (1929), 347–75; n.s. 3 (1930), 266–87; n.s. 6 (1933), 161–207, hereafter ‘Firenze’ (1929), (1930), (1933); Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, pp. 441–482; M. Benedetti, ‘Le finanze dell’inquisitore’, in L’economia dei conventi, pp. 363–401. 35 A. Dondaine, ‘Le manuel de l’inquisiteur (1230–1330)’, AFP 17 (1947), 85–194, repr. in Les hérésies et l’Inquisition, XIIe–XIIIe siècles, ed. Y. Dossat (Aldershot, 1990); other work on manuals includes L. Paolini, ‘Il modello italiano nella manualistica inquisitoriale (XIII–XIV secolo)’, in L’Inquisizione, ed. Borromeo, pp. 95–118; T. Scharff, ‘Schrift zur Kontrolle – Kontrolle der Schrift. Italienische und französische Inquisitoren-Handbücher des 13 und frühen 14 Jahrhunderts’, Deutsches Archiv für Erforschung des Mittelalters 52 (1996), 547–84. On legal issues, see R. Parmeggiani, I Consilia procedurali per l’inquisizione medievale (1235–1330) (Bologna, 2011). 36 R. Parmeggiani, ‘L’inquisitore Florio da Vicenza’, in Praedicatores, pp. 681–99; see also G. Zanella, ‘Florio da Vicenza’, DBI 48 (1997). B. Guenée, Between Church and State: The Lives of Four French Prelates in the Late Middle Ages, trans. A. Goldhammer (Chicago, 1991) provides a useful sketch of the career of Bernard Gui, who – though French – had much in common with his Italian brothers.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 particular how it interacted with the civic and ecclesiastical authorities who were its partners in the pursuit of heresy, the present study aims, wherever possible, to add a cross-order and inter-regional dimension to previous scholarship. My approach to these questions is inevitably influenced by Richard Kieckhefer’s proposition that medieval inquisition into heresy was not an institution but merely a set of individual personal jurisdictions whose officeholders had no organisational connection with their colleagues elsewhere. It is uncontested ground that, in the words of Henry Kelly, the medieval inquisition was not ‘a central intelligence agency with headquarters at the papal curia’. But there are a number of intermediate points between that extreme and the position advanced by Kieckhefer. Fortunately, he himself provides useful criteria against which his judgement can be assessed.37 To start by defining terms, inquisition into heretical depravity was carried out as a special commission given to members of the mendicant orders by the papacy, initially directly and later by delegated powers given to the orders’ provincial heads. There were other forms of inquisition into heresy, undertaken by bishops or by secular magistrates, which both preceded the papal inquisition and continued alongside it. Indeed, the persistence of these alternative approaches is one of the key issues in shaping the new organisation’s relationships. The origin of the different mandates is discussed in Chapter 1, setting the scene on the legal background.38 Inquisitio as a formal legal approach was applied from the early thirteenth century to several types of investigation. Within the Church, these were of a disciplinary nature, such as enquiries into disputes between monks and abbots. Elsewhere, the term also came to be used for an approach to criminal investigation. The legal background and the intertwined development of the different sorts of inquisitio is well examined in works by Massimo Vallerani.39 The development of inquisitio as a legal form is not the object of this study, but it is worth noting that heresy inquisitors did sometimes undertake other kinds of inquisition, such as into clerical misconduct. For instance, in the duchy of Spoleto, heresy inquisitors are found between 1319 and 1324, judging cases of murder, adultery, counterfeiting money, simony, impeding

37 R. Kieckhefer, see n. 4 above. H. A. Kelly, ‘Inquisition and the Prosecution of Heresy:

Misconceptions and Abuses’, CH 58 (1989), 439–51 (p. 439). fraught relationship between bishops and inquisitors in investigating heresy was plotted in several older studies: e.g., A. C. Shannon, The Popes and Heresy in the Thirteenth Century (Pennylvania, 1949); M. d’Alatri, ‘Il vescovo e il negotium fidei nei secoli XII–XIII’, in Eretici e inquisitori, I, 113–25. Almost the only discussion of the secular role is by A. Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà. Disposizioni antiereticali negli statuti cittadini dell’Italia centro-settentrionale nel secolo XIII’, Clio 21 (1985), 345–93. 39 See in particular M. Vallerani, La giustizia pubblica medievale (Bologna, 2005). 38 The

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Introduction Curial officials and buggery with a Jew.40 Although here I have consistently used ‘the inquisition’ to mean inquisition into heresy, the Spoleto examples point up that it was a legal tribunal – the tribunal of the Faith. At the beginning of the papal inquisition into heresy in the 1230s, inquisitors were a small group of named individuals, who set off to do their job with only a very limited support system. In these very early stages, it is undoubtedly correct that their office was personal; to an extent the first inquisitors were making the rules as they went along. However, things changed quite rapidly. From the 1250s, responsibility for appointment and dismissal mainly lay with the Dominican and Franciscan orders. From 1260, an inquisitor-general, Cardinal Gian Gaetano Orsini (the later Nicholas III), was interposed between individual inquisitors and the pope, and issued rulings which sought to co-ordinate investigations, not only between Italian inquisitors but also with their counterparts in Languedoc.41 As Dondaine demonstrated, inquisitors themselves developed good-practice formularies and shared them with colleagues in different orders. By the 1280s, Italian inquisitors had acquired purpose-built premises in many cities, and by the early fourteenth century often had substantial property portfolios. The number of lay and clerical support staff grew. In the 1320s, the Florentine inquisitor Michele d’Arezzo had some forty identifiable lay staff.42 Twenty years later, Pietro da L’Aquila in Florence was backed by an armed band of (variously, depending on the source) 250 or 500 men.43 Notwithstanding this transformation in their circumstances, Kieckhefer argues that the medieval inquisition cannot be regarded as having an institutional existence. He states that the term officium inquisitionis was rarely used, and was in any case merely a description of the inquisitor’s role or function, rather than carrying the meaning of an ‘office’ in a continuing bureaucratic sense – as in, for example, Office of Public Works. Support staff, he says, were ‘mere adjuncts to the execution of the inquisitor’s personal function rather than members of a lasting institutional structure’.44 Italian evidence shows, however, that officium was used in different ways, including (I contend) in the modern, bureaucratic sense. There is clearly need for caution in describing and interpreting the medieval inquisition. It did not spring fully formed into life in the 1230s, but evolved over a period, for the early part of which there is limited data. 40 Good

examples of heresy inquisitors’ occasional role in other kinds of inquisitio are found in L. Fumi, ‘I registri del ducato di Spoleto’, BSPU 5 (1899), 127–63. 41 Orsini’s appointment is usually taken as 1262; for recent re-dating, Parmeggiani, Consilia, p. 74 n. 137. 42 Collectoria 250, passim (my count). 43 M. d’Alatri, ‘L’Inquisizione a Firenze negli anni 1344/46 da un’Istruttoria contro Pietro da L’Aquila’, in Eretici e inquisitori, II, 41–68 (p. 54) cites Villani as claiming 250, whilst Marchionne di Coppo Stefani claims 500. 44 Kieckhefer, ‘Personal Jurisdiction’, p. 55.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Progress varied in different parts of Italy, depending not only on the state of political relations with the papacy but also on the topography: urban or rural. For example, Kieckhefer cites Merlo’s view that in the mountainous Turin area the organisation of the inquisition even in the mid-fourteenth century ‘became complex only at the time of trial’.45 It does seem to be the case that in this area inquisitors had fewer recorded staff, but Merlo’s view may be affected by the available sources – trial records rarely demonstrate the behindthe-scenes activity in smoking out a heretic. Bearing this in mind, I argue that the process of institution-forming in fact began very swiftly, and that by around 1280 the inquisition in Italy can safely be regarded as a firmly rooted body, with at least as much validity and permanency as other medieval bureaucratic entities. Particular features which support the development of an institutional identity include continuity of lay staffing between inquisitors; staff pushing forward business in the inquisitor’s absence (and still more, during vacancies); sharing of protocols between offices in different territories; and co-operation or concerted action between inquisition staff in different areas. Kieckhefer acknowledges the existence of such features in various locations, but argues that they do not demonstrate an institutional existence because, he believes, the evidence lacks continuity. With the additional material advanced here, some of these arguments fall away. For example, Kieckhefer accepts that one member of the Florentine inquisitorial familia in the early fourteenth century worked for two inquisitors, but feels this was just an aberrant example of two inquisitors independently hiring the same person. Here he has been misled by a long outdated article by Davidsohn.46 Chapters 3, 4 and 5 below, looking in detail at notaries, nuncii and the wider familia, show that there was in fact much continuity of staffing in the Florentine inquisition office over a lengthy period, covering the terms of some seven successive inquisitors. Similar continuity is also found in other cities. Such a degree of consistency in lay staffing from one inquisitor to the next points to the establishment of cadres of career staff and undermines a key part of Kieckhefer’s argument (although there are other local variations which might tend to support it). Though the thirteenth century is less fully documented, there are other signs of a very swift transition from personal office to a continuing bureaucracy keen to plug possible loopholes in its powers: for instance, there was anxiety to establish that inquisitors’ appointments remained valid during vacancies in the Holy See, so that prosecutions did not fail, and similarly that vicars retained authority to act during breaks 45 G.

G. Merlo, Eretici e inquisitori nella società piemontese del Trecento (Turin, 1977), p. 128. 46 Kieckhefer, ‘Personal Jurisdiction’, pp. 54–5, citing R. Davidsohn, ‘Un libro di entrate e spese dell’Inquisitore fiorentino (1322–1329)’, ASI 5th s. 27 (1901), 346–55. Kieckhefer does not reference the fuller work of Biscaro (n. 34 above).

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Introduction in the tenure of the appointing inquisitor. This aspect is examined in Chapter 6 below, on the inquisitor’s clerical staff. From the mid-thirteenth century, inquisitors also sought to co-ordinate activity between them, and to disseminate good practice. This was a natural reaction from a small group of individuals trying to establish a new function with limited back-up, but also tended to bureaucratisation. Collegiality was encouraged not only by Orsini, as inquisitor-general, but also by leading prelates in the mendicant orders. We see the Dominican inquisitors of upper Lombardy in the 1290s working as a group, conferring with each other regularly and concerting action under the guidance of the prior-provincial. The inquisitors of Florence and Bologna, respectively Franciscan and Dominican, worked closely together, co-operating on cases and exchanging good practice tips. Inevitably, some – such as Mino da San Quirico in Florence (1332–34) – ploughed a different furrow, but their idiosyncrasies do not alter the general arc of development. As the inquisition evolved from its beginnings in the 1230s towards a settled institution, inquisitors’ relationships with their ecclesiastical and civil partners also changed. How did the interaction between inquisitors, bishops and the civic authorities alter, as the papal inquisition became a fact of life, rather than a new and suspicious power bloc? The accepted thesis is that the papal inquisition rapidly superseded the bishops’ role and the vestiges of secular responsibility, although it continued to rely on the civil power for various forms of support. What happened in practice was, however, much less straightforward. I argue that in Italy both the episcopal inquisition and secular duties towards heresy continued in some form well into the fourteenth century. The demarcation between the functions of different players became blurred, with the inquisition in many places taking on duties (such as the seizure and sale of heretics’ goods) which were originally the task of the communes. But the reverse of this coin was the integration of both inquisitor and inquisition staff into city elites. In Florence in 1325, for example, the inquisitor was Tedisio dei Fabbri Tolosini; his close relative Lapo dei Fabbri Tolosini was custos of the major convent of Santa Croce, where the Florence inquisition was housed; and the inquisition’s long-term banker was another relative, Guido dei Fabbri Tolosini.47 In some respects, the inquisition became a willing tool of civic or factional politics. A third strand of enquiry is the relationship between medieval inquisitors and their parent orders. Classic writing about the inquisition – and not just in Italy – emphasises the great freedoms inquisitors had under papal legislation, including the freedom to interpret the meaning of legislation for themselves (although with advice from the local bishop). A key aspect of this liberty was an explicit ban on superiors’ interference in inquisitorial discretion.

47 See

n. 2 above for meaning of custos.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Nevertheless, inquisitors remained friars and, as such, they were subject to their order’s control. This presented, as Holly Grieco notes, ‘a dilemma of obedience and authority’.48 Italian evidence shows that, in practice, inquisitors had continuing close involvement with their parent orders in the execution of their role. Instead of becoming more independent as the new organisation rooted itself, the reverse seems to have occurred. Attempts by the orders to control inquisitors’ behaviour are visible from the last quarter of the thirteenth century, and as the office of inquisitor was increasingly rotated through the small group of the orders’ senior officials, inquisition finances were raided for the orders’ benefit. The role of heresy confiscations in financing church-building is well known (for example, Santa Reparata in Florence). It has been less remarked that subventions from inquisitors contributed substantially to the general running costs and lifestyle of convents, as well as to the personal incomes of senior friars. Both the close financial nexus and the extent to which inquisitors were integrated into the regular cursus honorum raise question marks over their true degree of independence from their orders’ authority. Bruschi has claimed that, for the Franciscans in Tuscany, inquisition was seen until around 1310 as a rather undervalued activity not leading to advancement in the order’s main offices. She argues that things changed in the early fourteenth century.49 The degree to which inquisitors had been, or expected to become, prelates of their order casts their relationship with local convents and provincial management in quite a different light. Chapter 6 below examines the evidence on inquisitors’ career tracks, and considers whether the approaches of the two mendicant orders differed. The source material that exists to address these questions is very mixed in quality and nature, with both geographical and chronological gaps. For some Italian regions (Milan, Friuli and especially the Regno) almost nothing remains.50 Elsewhere, a scatter of published and unpublished inquisition documentation survives, for cities from Rieti in the south to Trento in the north. The most substantial clusters are for Bologna, the Marca Trevisana,

48 Lea,

Inquisition of the Middle Ages, p. 343: ‘In the exercise of this almost limitless authority, inquisitors were practically relieved from all supervision and responsibility.’ D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 25, notes that ‘gli inquisitori, in quanto tali, godevano della più ampia autonomia di fronte ai loro superiori’ (‘inquisitors, in that capacity, enjoyed the fullest autonomy from their superiors’) though he emphasises that they remained subject to authority as friars. In ‘A Dilemma of Obedience and Authority: The Franciscan Inquisition and Franciscan Inquisitors in Provence, 1235–1340’ (unpublished PhD thesis, Princeton University, 2004), H. J. Grieco explores the awkward tension. 49 Bruschi, ‘Inquisizione francescana in Toscana’, pp. 298–301. 50 For one very late survival, see Processus contra Valdenses in Lombardia Superiori anno 1387, ed. G. Amati, ASI 3rd s. 1/2 (1865), 3–52 and 2/1 (1865), 3–61.

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Introduction Florence and Orvieto, of which the 922 acts of the Bologna inquisition from 1291 to 1310 – edited by Paolini and Orioli – are by far the largest and most useful deposit.51 In his classic Montaillou, Ladurie demonstrated the depth of social history that can be excavated from inquisition processes, and other historians have used them to understand heresies and heretics.52 The main question I ask of them is rather different: what can they tell us about how the inquisition really worked – its staff, contacts and day-to-day procedures? The Bologna documents are especially interesting for this purpose, because they extend beyond depositions and formal sentences to include practical examples of internal procedures, otherwise known only from formularies. In addition to the processes, seventeen sets of inquisitors’ financial accounts are held in the Vatican Archive. These cover periods from 1292 to 1334, together with some associated inquiries into financial and procedural wrongdoing, running up to the 1340s. The inquiries have mostly been published, at least in part, but the accounts themselves remain largely unedited and under-exploited. They are not a problem-free source, and some important issues regarding them are discussed below. The two very different types of deposit sadly do not overlap – we do not have both processes and accounts for the same period and inquisitor – but they do enable the inquisition’s organisation and business to be interrogated from different angles. For Bologna, some individuals named in the Acta also appear in the slightly later financial accounts, thus extending a view of the inquisition’s staffing in the city over more than two decades. This data is highly relevant to exploring staff continuity and its contribution to institutionalisation. Surviving inquisition documentation is held in all types of archive in Italy – papal, state, civic, episcopal and the records of individual churches – as well as in many different fondi within them.53 Since staff of the officium inquisitionis are seldom identified as such, the relevance of material such as property sales 51 Bologna

processes: Acta S. Officii Bononie ab anno 1291 usque ad annum 1310, ed. L. Paolini and R. Orioli, 2 vols., Fonti per la Storia d’Italia 106–7 (Rome, 1982); L. Aldrovandi, ‘Acta S. Officii Bononiae ab anno 1292 usque ad annum 1309’, AMRom 3rd s. 14 (1895–96), 225–300. See also E. Dupré-Theseider, ‘L’eresia a Bologna nei tempi di Dante’, in Studi storici in onore di Gioacchino Volpe per il suo 80° compleanno, 2 vols. (Florence, 1958), I, 383–444; A. Thompson, ‘Lay versus Clerical Perceptions of Heresy: Protests against the Inquisition in Bologna, 1299’ in Praedicatores, pp. 701–30; also A. Thompson, Cities of God: The Religion of the Italian Communes, 1125–1325 (University Park PA, 2005). Based on the Acta, Paolini and Orioli published two monographs, one (already cited) by Paolini on the Cathars, the second by Orioli on the Dolcinians: R. Orioli, L’eresia a Bologna fra XIII e XIV secolo, II: L’eresia dolciniana (Rome, 1975). 52 E. Le Roy Ladurie, Montaillou: Cathars and Catholics in a French Village, 1294–1324, trans. B. Bray (London, 1978). 53 Some controversial sentences, like the Florentine inquisitor’s against Cecco d’Ascoli in 1327, are known from recopying in manuscript collections, rather than from the original. The Biblioteca Riccardiana in Florence alone holds some six versions of the

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 can be hard to spot.54 As Padovani makes clear, civic or diocesan documentation to illuminate the role of other partners in inquisition is either absent or even more fragmented. To supplement the uneven material drawn from statutes, chronicles and published civic financial accounts across Italy, I examined two different bodies of unpublished civic records. Those of Treviso between the 1260s and 1340s allow the study of one (originally Ghibelline) city’s interaction with the Franciscan inquisition over a long period, which included several radical changes of political regime and a notable confrontation between inquisitor and bishop.55 They also complement the inquisition deposit in Venice at Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, appropriately both the inquisition’s seat and now the state archive, as well as fragments of the 1302 inquiry held in the Vatican. The criminal court records of Guelf Bologna for the two decades between 1298 and 1318 span both the dates of the Acta and the period 1311–18 for which we have the Dominican inquisitor’s financial accounts. They enable investigation of parallels between the inquisition’s procedures and those of the secular courts, as well as showing links between staff working in both environments. Besides these main groups of sources, I have made use of a mosaic of others, both edited and unedited. Inquisition handbooks and manuals, matriculation rolls of notarial colleges, minutes of the general and provincial chapters of the two main mendicant orders and other administrative material, convent necrologies, tax records, and lay and clerical chronicles and diaries have all made an input. Some discussion is necessary on the largely unpublished financial accounts rendered to the Apostolic Camera, and now held in the Vatican Archive. The evolution of accountability by inquisitors is considered in more detail in Chapter 7 below, but an important point in assessing the evidential value of these records is that the extant accounts, though rendered to the Camera, in fact represent a palimpsest of four different accounting obligations with different frequencies. Inquisitors had a mutual annual obligation to settle the books with civic authorities; an annual duty of due diligence to present accounts to their order; a much more intermittent, but unpredictable,

sentence in both Latin and volgare: see S. Tosti, ‘Descriptio Codicum Franciscanorum Bibliothecae Riccardianae Florentinae’, AFH 8 (1915), 226–78, 618–57. 54 For example, the Liber Contractuum of Vicenza, a compilation of suspicious property confiscations by the inquisition, was long thought to be simply a register of Franciscan land transactions. See Rigon, introduction to Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, p. xi. 55 Some civic records up to the end of the thirteenth century are edited: Gli Acta Comunitatis Tarvisii del secolo XIII, ed. A. Michielin (Viella, 1998). In the mid-eighteenth century, the cleric Vincenzo Scoti collated and transcribed records over a longer period, including ones in private hands which have not entered the civic archive. For consistency, I have principally cited from Scoti, although the volumes are not foliated to modern norms: Treviso, Biblioteca Comunale, MS 957 (12 vols.), V. Scoti, Documenti Trivigiani.

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Introduction reckoning with the Curia; and a collegial obligation to compile a terminal account on leaving office, showing what was left to a successor. Some of the accounts we possess seem to have been built up from annual submissions to the orders, while others (or parts of others) are much closer to what would have been presented to the communes. Several are terminal accounts, in various states of completeness, including one from an inquisitor who died in office. The earliest known reckonings with the papacy, under Boniface VIII, have not survived and their records may in fact have been lost early in the Avignon papacy.56 What remains consists of the income and expenditure accounts of thirteen Dominican inquisitors in different parts of the huge Lombard province, running from 1292 to an audit beginning around 1319, and of four Franciscan inquisitors in Florence between 1319 and 1334. There are also partial records of two papal inquiries in 1302 and 1308 into possible corruption and embezzlement, under the legates Gui de Neuville and Guillaume de Balait, plus others in 1334 and the 1340s against the Florentine inquisitors Mino da San Quirico and Pietro da L’Aquila, and against inquisitors in the Marche. Parts of the 1302 and 1308 inquiries are supplemented by material in the archives of Padua and Vicenza, and have been partially edited or closely described by a group of scholars.57 The surviving accounts vary hugely in depth, detail, structure, period covered and length – from one page to nearly 300. As much as assiduity in record-keeping, the differences are the result of time in office, personality and the nature of an inquisitor’s territory. The best of the surviving accounts enable close analysis of inquisition activities, including comparison between successive inquisitors in the same post and between those in different posts at the same time. The worst are infuriatingly vague, and were clearly found so by the papal audit team, whose marginalia give useful insight into what

56 B.

Guillemain, Les recettes et les dépenses de la Chambre apostolique pour la quatrième annee du pontificat de Clement V (1308–1309) (Introitus et exitus 75), Collection de l’École Française de Rome 39 (Rome, 1978), refers (p. vi) to a disastrous fire early in the reign of Clement V which wiped out papal financial records. These may have included other early accounts of inquisitors. Guillemain notes that the first (1594) index of the archives of the Camera Apostolica contains no more than is already known today. 57 Financial accounts: principally Collectoriae 133, 249, 250 and 251. Inquiries: Collectoriae 133, 159a, 404 and 421A. For Mino, Collectoria 251 and Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1933), 161–207. Processes against Pietro da L’Aquila and the Marche inquisitors are described, with some documents, in d’Alatri, ‘Un’istruttoria’, pp. 41–68. and M. d’Alatri, ‘Un processo dell’inverno 1346–1347 contro gli inquisitori delle Marche’, in Eretici e inquisitori, II, 77–107. Some other recently published processes against inquisitors deal with procedural matters, not financial transgressions. Many documents relating to the 1302/08 inquiries are edited in d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’ and ‘Due inchieste papali’.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 was and was not seen as acceptable spending and account-keeping.58 Though accounts were compiled by a particular inquisitor for his own term, and do not run through interregnums, some do throw light on the handover to a successor. Most provide information on the inquisitor’s team, his contacts with other inquisitors and members of his order, jurisconsults and sometimes civic officials. The records of the Lombard inquisitors Lanfranco da Bergamo, Tommaso da Gorzano and Florio da Verona seem to have reached the Curia by way of the reckoning made to the legate Guillaume de Balait around 1308, following suspicions that inquisitors in general were not handing the papacy its due share of the proceeds from heresy confiscations. The accounts of Lanfranco and Tommaso run to the end of their tenure as inquisitor, whilst Florio died in office and his accounts were (after a fashion) completed by colleagues.59 As well as being the earliest chronologically, these three documents come from the inquisitors’ own offices, in the case of Lanfranco and Tommaso possibly even compiled by their own hands. They were not, however, the first stage of the recording process. Tommaso da Gorzano certainly compiled his accounts from loose receipts or jottings of expenditure, which (as he tells us) he occasionally lost during his journeying. A suspicious neatness in fitting monthly and yearly entries within a double opening also suggests that these are not first-stage material. The other sets of Dominican accounts, collectively known as the Liber Conum, result from an audit conducted by the pope’s representative, Arnold, bishop of Bologna, around 1318–20. These capture inquisitors at all stages of their tenure, and some accounts were probably compiled in haste specifically for the audit. The material here is not a rebinding of the inquisitors’ own submissions but – from the handwriting and presentation – was copied into a continuous record by the collector’s staff, from whatever originals were supplied. It contains numerous errors. Some, such as leaves misplaced from one set of accounts to another, were presumably introduced in the assembly process by inattentive scribes.60 Others (repetition of material) may have been in the inquisitors’ originals, or also due to copying error. Paolini and others have criticised inquisitors for sloppiness in account-keeping, even contempt 58 The

one-page account of receipts rendered by the Bologna inquisitor Niccolò da Ripa Transone has an angry margin note from the auditor to the effect that ‘this is no use to us without the expenditure accounts’: Collectoria 133, fols. 168v–9r. 59 Florio’s accounts are very messy. They include both holograph agreements in volgare with his bankers about sums deposited, and jottings by the collector on blank pages. His inquisition business is also hopelessly confused with sums received and disbursed in the building of Benedict XI’s memorial chapel, which he coordinated. 60 For example, Collectoria 133, fol. 146, embedded in the accounts of Giovanni dei Pizigotti, inquisitor of Bologna, is (from the style and place names) an errant from the accounts of Francesco da Pocapaglia, inquisitor of Piedmont (fols. 169v–188r).

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Introduction for the duty itself. However, the contributory role of the collector’s scribe needs to be recognised, something which becomes obvious when consulting the originals. The Franciscan accounts from Tuscany are by far the longest and most elaborate. They were acquired during the 1332–34 process for embezzlement and other crimes against the inquisitor Mino Daddi da San Quirico, during which the legate demanded the accounts of most of Mino’s predecessors back to 1319.61 The Florentine accounts are much more consistent in organisation and presentation than those of the Dominicans, which is not surprising since (except for Mino’s) they were the product of the same officials in the same scriptorium. Page layouts and changes of ink between entries of receipts suggest that they were not recopied by the collector’s staff. As with the Dominican accounts, they indicate annual accountings at the provincial chapter. We also find many references to the fact of the inquisition’s regular reckoning with the podestà on his leaving office, though no example of both sides of this accounting seems to survive. Some of the Florence accounts do, however, incorporate a separate record of inquisition prison costs, for which the civic authorities in both Florence and Prato would be billed. The context of suspected financial misreporting means the accounting data from both Lombardy and Tuscany have to be treated with caution. It is certainly unwise to treat all the accounts as a full and comprehensive record. Doubts expressed by scholars such as Biscaro, Paolini and Zanella centre mainly around whether receipts were fully recorded (it is clear from the inquiry against Mino that not all were), and whether particular kinds of expenses – on clothes, food, writing-office costs – were artificially inflated.62 But if income and expenditure were both misrepresented, why and by whom was this done? Embezzlement is an obvious suspicion, but was this the fault of inquisitors themselves or of their staff? It is hard to believe inquisitors personally would query the number of sheets of paper or parchment said to be needed by their scriptorium. A plausible alternative explanation to corruption, advanced by Paolini and d’Alatri and discussed in Chapter 1 below, is that expenses were padded out, not to steal from the Church, but in order to disguise surplus income, and thus prevent unreasonable papal collectors from seizing all an inquisitor’s working capital. On the other side of the balance sheet, an equally important issue is not only whether the sums reported as income were complete, but also whether they were depressed by below-value sales of confiscated property. The accounts themselves cannot answer that question, since they only record amounts received. We do not have details about corresponding property sales, which could be conducted 61 The

accounts of Mino’s immediate predecessor, the short-lived Pietro da Prato, are not part of the collection and it is not clear whether any were ever compiled. 62 Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 479, refers to spese incredibili (‘unbelievable expenditure’).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 either by the inquisition or by civic authorities. Sources such as the Liber Contractuum undoubtedly suggest that some sales were not at market rates, but again, the motivation is not straightforward. Below-value sales of property could improperly benefit those connected with the inquisition, but they also helped Church purchasers. There are also great variations in expenses between inquisitors in different territories, making it hard to gain insight into ‘appropriate’ spending levels. The Franciscans in Florence spent hugely on stationery costs, whereas the Dominican Tommaso da Gorzano in Genoa and Alessandria records hardly anything under this rubric, despite much activity in heretic-taking. Was this because the Florentines were more bureaucratic, because their costs were padded out or because Tommaso, perhaps, used writing-office services in Dominican convents and thus did not enter his full costs? Other questions are to do with the accounting treatment of minor communes within an inquisitor’s area, which in principle should have had annual reconciliations with him for their own costs and receipts. We have passing examples of quittances from other authorities (for instance, Prato and the Angevin territories in Piedmont), but no clear picture of how or whether the inquisition’s own costs were shared between its different civic partners. Despite these uncertainties, however, for the purposes most relevant to this study – such as showing the inquisitor’s movements, the composition of his familia and their pay and duties – there is no reason to doubt the accounts’ reliability. I have taken them mainly at face value in these respects. Heavily edited extracts from the Lombard accounts were published by Gerolamo Biscaro in 1922 and have been the main portal to this material for generations of scholars. Biscaro concentrated mainly on heretic-taking, and omitted almost all entries relating to the inquisitor’s staff, lifestyle and method of work. It is often unclear how extensive his excisions are, which can be misleading. In one instance, a page of over 100 lines of entries in Tommaso da Gorzano’s accounts is reduced to three. Biscaro also wrote three detailed articles on the Florentine inquisition, based on its accounts, which are valuable but suffer similar limitations. In addition, all of his work predates the current archive foliation. For ease of reference, all my citations to the accounts are to originals and the current Vatican Archive foliation, save for those of Lanfranco da Bergamo, inquisitor of Pavia from 1292 to 1308. Biscaro’s version of these is much fuller than the rest, and I have used his transcript and referencing where possible.63

63 Biscaro,

‘Inquisitori lombardi’, pp. 503–55, for a digest of Dominican accounts in Collectoria 133. Some errors, notably in the dates assigned to Tommaso da Gorzano, have been carried over into work by other scholars. See also M. Benedetti, ‘Frate Lanfranco da Bergamo, gli Inquisitori, l’Ordine e la Curia Romana’, in Praedicatores, pp. 157–204. Davidsohn’s partial publication of the Florentine accounts in Collectoria 250 also contained errors which have misled others – e.g., G. W. Dameron, Florence

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Introduction The other major block of financially oriented material relevant to the inquisition deals with the 1302 and 1308 inquiries in the Marca Trevisana. The partial records of the 1302 inquiry itself are buttressed by the Liber Contractuum, a dossier of suspect inquisition financial transactions assembled from public notarial records by the communes of Padua and Vicenza to support a complaint to Boniface VIII. Elements of this material look back as far as the 1260s. At least five scholars – Biscaro, d’Alatri, Presutti, Lomastro Tognato and Bonato – have published parts of the story, but with different objectives and consequently with lacunae and ragged edges.64 Besides the material used here, much more is undoubtedly still buried in Italian archives. Andrew Roach found processes in Vercelli and Novara, and the team working with Merlo in Milan has also identified new material.65 In a cross-regional study, however, there are limits to possible new research. In particular, I have hesitated to plunge into notarial archives without good leads. As Chapter 3 discusses, notaries were key figures in medieval Italian society. They were essential for the inquisition’s own record-keeping, and among other things prepared sale documents for heretics’ confiscated property. Undiscovered acts and instruments on inquisition affairs may well lie hidden in general notarial cartularies. But unless a notary can be separately identified as working for the inquisition, speculative searches are likely to be futile.66 Sylvain Piron has drawn attention to the survival of cartularies from two notaries working at Santa Croce, both of whom are independently identifiable as inquisition notaries. He reports that they contain only convent business. In Bologna, where we have reasonably good information on successive inquisition notaries, none of their registers appears to have survived.67 In his attempt to rebut Henry Lea’s unfavourable analysis of the medieval inquisition, Jean Guiraud commented that ‘an impartial historian, anxious above all to get at the truth, must continually confront the letter of the law with its application’.68 Over eighty years later, historians probably question whether a single ‘truth’ exists, and this is likely to be especially the case in and its Church in the Age of Dante (Philadelphia, 2005), p. 230 – by wrongly describing lay staff as friars and misidentifying an inquisitor. 64 G. Presutti, ‘Altri documenti su l’omonimo fr. Antonio da Padova OFM e l’inquisizione in Lombardia’, AFH 8 (1915), 662–7. For others, see n. 32 above. D’Alatri’s transcriptions of the early folios of Collectoria 133 suffer similar problems to Biscaro’s work, eliding or omitting a great deal of the originals, without making clear quite how much. I have nevertheless relied primarily here on the more accessible published work: d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’ and ‘Due inchieste’. 65 A. Roach, ‘The Relationship of the Italian and Southern French Cathars, 1170–1320’ (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1989). 66 A further issue is that sales of heretics’ goods are frequently not identified as such, and cannot easily be disentangled from other confiscations. 67 S. Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence. Santa Croce autour de 1300’, in Économie et Religion, ed. Bériou and Chiffoleau, pp. 321–55. 68 Guiraud, Medieval Inquisition, p. 108.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 medieval Italy, with its varying heritage and mass of different administrative arrangements. Confronting theory with practice is nevertheless essential, even though the available sources mean that some decades and some geographical areas are much less covered than others. Care is also needed in using material originating from financial disputes, since it could skew the picture of inquisitors as a whole. Florence appears to have been especially unfortunate in successive holders of the office. In drawing conclusions, I have tried as far as possible to correct for biases and gaps such as these. The following chapters first examine, briefly, the legal and political context to the inquisition’s work, and in particular its relationship with bishop and commune. Chapter 2 looks at the practical circumstances facing a new inquisitor on taking up post, whilst Chapters 3, 4 and 5 examine in depth the notaries, nuncii, familiares and other groups of the inquisitor’s lay staff. Chapter 6 considers his clerical support, leading into a discussion of inquisitorial career tracks and challenging Caterina Bruschi’s view that the office of inquisitor altered its position in the cursus honorum only during the first decade of the fourteenth century. Finally, Chapters 7 and 8 examine inquisitors’ relationships with their parent orders and take an overview of how interaction with civic and episcopal authorities evolved over the whole period. The evidence presented shows that, by contrast to the proposition advanced by Richard Kieckhefer, inquisitors rather rapidly developed the key signatures of an institution, adopting similar procedures and approaches, co-ordinating activity and in particular developing experienced teams of staff who spent decades with the inquisition. As the process of institutionalisation progressed, the relationships between inquisitors and their matching civic and ecclesiastical authorities altered – sometimes see-sawing to and fro. We cannot say that change was uniform, partly because we lack consistent data but mainly because inquisitors had to adapt themselves both to the different circumstances of their territories and to the politics of the time. Differences of personality and qualification also have to be taken into account in assessing the arguments of Caldwell Ames and Sullivan, who emphasise the theological justification of inquisition against heresy. The conviction and intellectual subtlety of a Bernard Gui or a Guido Capello have to be balanced against the corruption and ignorance of a Mino da San Quirico. The most important proposal I will offer is, however, that inquisitors in Italy remained much more heavily dependent on secular and ecclesiastical partners, and especially on their orders, than any of them cared to admit. Whatever papal legislation might say, inquisitors in practice needed this co-operation. They were not dominant, but often rather supplicants.

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1 Between Church and State: the legal, organisational and financial framework of inquisition

Almost all the legislation significant in establishing the medieval inquisition against heresy was created in the 130 years between 1184 and about 1320, a period which also saw major developments in thinking about canon and civil law, and about public justice in general. This chapter provides an overview of how the framework of inquisition evolved, with particular emphasis on it as a partnership activity. The papal inquisitor was not the only entity in Italy to have responsibilities for combating heresy: others had such duties before the inquisition took shape, and continued to exercise powers of their own after it was established. Although over the century of this book (1250–1350), the papal inquisition’s role was greatly enlarged and entrenched vis-à-vis ecclesiastical and secular partners, the period should not, in Italy at least, be seen in terms of the inquisitor emerging supreme. The organisational structure formalised by Innocent IV in the early 1250s, and renewed by his successors, meant inquisitors continued to need support from both bishops and civic authorities, who also continued to exercise their own independent roles. The exact balance of power between the three parties shifted from place to place, and time to time, not only according to politics and strength of personality, but also the changing geography of heresy itself.

Early efforts against heresy During the second half of the twelfth century, the Church struggled to find effective ways to combat the two major heresies, of the Cathars and Waldensians, which had taken firm root both in southern France and across north and central Italy. Bishops had responsibility for the spiritual health of their flock, but even when inclined to be active against heresy, they found it increasingly difficult to fulfil this element of their duties in a coherent way. There were a number of reasons for this, some specific to Italy. As Lambert has noted, there was an absence of established procedure, which left bishops 25

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 uncertain where to turn when heresy was suspected.1 In both France and Italy there was widespread sympathy for Church reform, reflected in movements like that of the Humiliati. This easily morphed both into public tolerance of the anticlerical aspects of different heresies, and into heresy itself.2 The ‘little foxes’ of St Bernard also employed entryist tactics, something hard to address from the bishop’s standpoint unless there was obvious doctrinal error or an attempt to engage in regulated activities, such as preaching.3 In Italy, the rise of communal governments in this period eroded both the bishop’s temporal authority and his economic base. Mantese’s now-elderly study of the woes of the Vicenza diocese illustrates the extreme financial difficulties some bishops experienced, resorting to money-lenders and to selling Church lands in order to keep afloat. Vacancies, absenteeism, tense relationships with their chapters and personal weakness also undermined bishops’ effectiveness against heresy. The situation differed from city to city, but similar pictures are painted by Lansing and Ferrali for places as unlike as Orvieto and Pistoia. At least five Italian bishops and abbots were removed from office by Innocent III alone, in his efforts to reinvigorate and cleanse the Church.4 1 See

Lambert, Cathars, pp. 60–91 and Lambert, Medieval Heresy, pp. 41–96 for discussion of the early spread of the two major heretical movements (not, of course, limited to France and Italy). Alleged Cathars are attested south of Rome, but Waldensians in Italy were concentrated in the north at this early date: Lambert, Medieval Heresy, map p. 78; for pressures on bishops, see especially pp. 74–5. For ease of reference, other smaller (or imaginary) heresies are not mentioned here. As noted, the term Patarine is treated as equivalent to both Cathar and generalised heretic. 2 Leff, Later Middle Ages, pp. 15, 40, 448 succinctly contrasts the different approaches taken to the Humiliati and other groups, such as the Waldensians. F. Andrews, The Early Humiliati (Cambridge, 1999), explores this in more depth. 3 In Orvieto two women, Militta and Julitta, later accused as Cathars, were activists in calling for repairs to the cathedral roof, thus characterising themselves as good Christians. They were such frequent church attenders that the bishop thought of inviting them to join a clerical confraternity (Lansing, Power and Purity, pp. 30–1). ‘Little foxes’: St Bernard of Clairvaux’s Sermon 65, in his sermon series Super Cantica Canticorum, is accessibly translated in W. L. Wakefield and A. P. Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York, 1969), pp. 132–8 (pp. 132–4). 4 S. Ferrali, ‘Le temporalità del Vescovado nei rapporti col Comune a Pistoia’, in Vescovi e diocesi in Italia nel Medioevo, Italia Sacra 5 (Padua, 1964), pp. 365–408, offers a useful overview. In Vicenza, Bishop Uberto in 1204 had debts on which the interest exceeded the income of the bishopric. Two decades later, neither the papal administrator inserted to bring order nor Uberto’s successor had been able to liquidate the debt, despite huge sales of lands: G. Mantese, ‘Prestatori di danaro a Vicenza nel secolo XIII’, Odeo Olimpico 4 (1943–63), 49–79 (pp. 50–1). Lansing, Power and Purity, pp. 26–7, describes the Orvieto see as ‘besieged on all sides’. For removal of bishops, see J. C. Moore, Pope Innocent III (1160/61–1216): To Root up and to Plant (Indiana, 2009), pp. 264–5. R. Brentano, The Two Churches: England and Italy in the Thirteenth Century (Berkeley CA, 1988; 1st edn 1968), pp. 83–107, points to both the

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Legal, organisational and financial framework In 1184, at the council of Verona, Lucius III issued the important decree Ad abolendam, which Maisonneuve describes as ‘the founding charter of the Inquisition’. Among other measures, this attempted to establish a systematic procedure for identifying heresy by regular local inquiry by the bishop, and to shore up episcopal authority by requiring local magistrates to take oaths to expel heretics. For the first time, it provided that heretics were to be automatically excommunicated. This was not the first occasion on which attempts had been made to enlist the civil power against heresy in support of the bishops, but Ad abolendam was both the first general measure and issued with the active support of the emperor, Frederick Barbarossa, who was present at the council.5 It had, however, mixed success. Ten years later, in 1194, the emperor Henry VI was obliged to direct a further decree at Prato, ordering the imprisonment of heretics and the confiscation of their goods; in 1195, he ordered all levels of civil authority in the town of Rimini to swear to uphold anti-heretic laws. There was also difficulty in Ferrara and Modena. Meanwhile, Innocent III in 1199 directed the decretal Vergentis in senium at the people of Viterbo, instructing that heretics and their heirs were to be deprived of their property by secular lords.6 Before the beginning of the thirteenth century, Church and State (at any rate, at the topmost level) were thus co-operating in ratcheting up pressure on heresy and increasing the penalties.7 In 1209, the Church embarked on a different tactic, which also required the involvement of secular powers, though this time as agent rather than partner. The Albigensian Crusade aimed to crush heresy in the Languedoc by brute force, bending the principles of crusading indulgences to recruit

bishops’ lack of support (‘the insubstantiality, the administrative unimportance, of the Italian diocese’) and their generally unimpressive personal qualities. 5 Sacrorum conciliorum nova et amplissima collectio, ed. J. D. Mansi, 53 vols. (Florence, 1759–1927, repr. Graz, 1961), XXII, cols. 476–8; Maisonneuve, Études, p. 151. Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’, pp. 348–56, usefully summarises the stages of involvement of the civil power. 6 J. Dalarun, ‘Hérésie, commune et inquisition à Rimini (fin XII–début XIV siècle)’, Studi Medievali 3rd s. 29 (1988), 641–83 (pp. 644–5); Maisonneuve, Études, p. 155. The Modena incident, concerning the destruction of the ‘mills of the Patarines’ is the subject of debate, since Patarinus was also a local family and forename. J. Duvernoy, Le catharisme II: L’histoire des cathares (Toulouse, 1979), p. 169, summarily dismisses the connection with heresy. Although originally directed at Viterbo, Vergentis in senium rapidly acquired wider currency, being reaffirmed at the Fourth Lateran Council: see Vergentis: Die Register Innocenz III. 2. Band 2. Pontifikatsjahr: Texte, ed. O. Hageneder, W. Maleczek and A. A. Strnad (Rome, Vienna, 1979), pp. 3–5; also PL 214, col. 537 and 216, cols. 1214–16. For a summary of the dissemination of early anti-heretic provisions in canon law collections, see R. Rist, The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198–1245 (London, 2009), pp. 123–4. 7 Though, as Hamilton among others observes, the death penalty was not envisaged by the papacy at this stage: B. Hamilton, The Medieval Inquisition (London, 1981), p. 29.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 the Church’s strength.8 Though less well covered by later historians, the crusade as an anti-heretic measure was subsequently extensively applied in Italy, often against Ghibelline signori such as Ezzelino da Romano and Oberto Pelavicini. Its early beginnings are seen in the late 1220s, with the full force finally applied after the death of Frederick II in 1250.9 Even into the early fourteenth century, the crucesignati, those who had taken up the sign of the cross for crusade purposes, are described in some handbooks as one of the pillars of the office of inquisition.10 The crucesignati were generally members of religious confraternities and are not to be confused with those required to wear the yellow cross in punishment for error: the distinction is well seen in the contested punishment for Pagano da Pietrasanta, a knight of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who fell foul of the inquisition and – in Benedetti’s words – had to replace his red cross with yellow ones.11 In 1215, the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent III consolidated and developed previous canons against heresy. Ad abolendam and Vergentis in senium were reaffirmed, and doctrinal norms were established to make the proof of error easier and more consistent. However, some towns and some bishops were still unable to bear down on heresy in the way successive popes desired. So, in 1224–25, Honorius III is found exhorting the bishops of Brescia, Modena and (once again) Rimini to apply the provisions of previous councils. As Maisonneuve commented, in a slightly different context, ‘It’s one thing to promulgate a law, and quite another to implement it.’12 The pace of change now accelerated, in both France and Italy. Important regional councils in Narbonne (1227) and Toulouse (1229) developed canon law further and had a lasting influence beyond the south of France. At Toulouse, an attempt was made to solve the bishop’s problem of identifying heretics by creating a grass-roots support organisation of ‘synodal witnesses’ (or police, as Lambert more robustly calls them). Committees of a priest and three laymen were to be appointed to sniff out heretics and report them to higher authority, either ecclesiastical or temporal. In 1228–29, a similar concept is clearly evident at work in Milan, where Gregory IX agreed with the newly obedient commune that the rectors and podestà should appoint twelve

8 Rist,

Papacy and Crusading, pp. 62–8, outlines successive stages of Innocent III’s thinking in invoking the help of the ‘material sword’, and the rationalisation of using crusading rules within Europe. 9 Housley, Italian Crusades, passim; Rist, Papacy and Crusading, pp. 133–40. In 1254, Innocent IV issued several bulls empowering inquisitors across Italy to preach the cross against heresy. 10 The De officio, of about 1325, describes the crucesignatus as the third official of the inquisition, after the inquisitor’s vicar: Il De officio inquisitionis: la procedura inquisitoriale a Bologna e Ferrara nel Trecento, ed. L. Paolini, (Bologna, 1976), pp. 17–18. 11 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 267. 12 Maisonneuve, Études, pp. 229–34 for a summary of Fourth Lateran; p. 244 for Honorius and the Italian bishoprics.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework good men at the commune’s cost to take station in pairs at the city gates to intercept heretics. Those caught would then be judged by a separate college, consisting of one layman and the archbishop’s legate. Two Dominicans and two Franciscans would assist, but final responsibility lay with the archbishop. The idea of the boni homines as a physical obstacle to protect the city is found elsewhere in Italy in this period. A century later, the captains of the gates in Milan are poetically described by Galvano Fiamma as ‘Hos […] pugiles in Arriana perfidia magnos’.13 From this point, the story is best considered in three strands. Firstly, the papacy – by now tired of ineffective and indirect tools – began to take a number of steps to acquire a stronger, direct grip. Secondly, pressure continued to be placed on bishops to take action, either by themselves, via the civil authority or with the assistance of other religious. And thirdly, the secular power, notably the emperor, articulated an independent right looking back to Justinian to suppress heresy as a secular, not just a religious, offence. This not only bound city magistrates to take action on their own initiative but also greatly increased the range and severity of possible punishments. As Maisonneuve shows, the evolution of imperial legislation both influenced, and was in turn influenced by, papal legislation. The office of inquisition, as it was eventually formulated by Innocent IV, was the product of all these three drivers.14 In the early thirteenth century, the emergent Dominican and Franciscan orders (given their Rules in 1216 and 1223 respectively) began to provide both local bishops and the papacy with a mobile force which could not only set a moral standard for the Church in its preaching, but also act on their commands to root out heresy. Indeed, these were the principal objectives of the nascent Dominicans, as set out by bishop Foulcques of Toulouse, who around 1215 organised a group to assist him within his city ‘to root out the corruption of heresy, to drive out vice, to teach the creed and inculcate in men sound morals’.15 13 Councils

of Narbonne and Toulouse, see among others Rist, Papacy and Crusading, pp. 93, 136; Maisonneuve, Études, pp. 237–42; Lambert, Medieval Heresy, pp. 144–6; Duvernoy, Histoire des Cathares, p. 270. For the Milan agreement: Padovani, ‘Inquisizione del podestà’, p. 361; d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 8; Vallerani, Giustizia pubblica medievale, p. 37; F. Taylor, ‘Catharism and Heresy in Milan’, in Heresy and the Making of European Culture: Medieval and Modern Perspectives, ed. A. P. Roach and J. R. Simpson (Farnham, 2013), pp. 383–401 (p. 396); Galvano Fiamma, La Cronaca Estravagante di Galvano Fiamma, ed. S. Ambrogio, C. Parisi and M. David, Centro Nazionale Studi Manzoniani, Mediolanensia 2 (Milan, 2013), p. 315, caps. 55–6: ‘[They were chosen as] the great champions against the Arian heresy’. 14 Rist, Papacy and Crusading, pp. 121–5 conveniently summarises the development of canon law against heresy under Gregory IX. 15 Wakefield and Evans, Heresies, p. 37, for translation of Foulcques’s charter on admitting the Dominicans to his city. More detailed background in W. L. Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Southern France, 1100–1250 (London, 1974), pp. 127–8.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Maisonneuve aptly describes these early Friars Preachers as ‘a corps of specialists, moving from diocese to diocese according to local need, at the behest of the responsible authorities [the bishops], rather than in response to a higher command’. They were as yet proto-inquisitors. Some were commissioned by local bishops to act on their behalf, as in Toulouse and before 1233 in Milan. Some were mandated directly by Gregory IX to inquire into heresy. Others seem to have acted independently, building on the general preaching authorisation issued by Gregory to all Dominicans in 1227. They sought backing from bishop, civil authority or newly-formed societates fidei as circumstances dictated.16 Several preachers against heresy in these years have been touted as the ‘first’ inquisitor. Well-known early examples around 1231 were Conrad of Marburg in Germany and Robert le Bougre in northern France, neither of them Dominican. One strand of Dominican historiography presents Dominic himself as the first inquisitor, but is dismissed by modern scholars, except for its relevance to the order’s own myth-making.17 The intertwined development of canon law and the evolving role given to mendicants mean that it is both difficult and pointless to try to identify the ‘first’ inquisitor, in the later sense of the word. However, it is fair to say that the birth of the inquisition occurred in the 1230s. Of greater significance to this study is the evidence that early ideas about inquisition and the pursuit of heresy envisaged initiatives from secular authorities as well as churchmen. In Rome, the constitution published in 1231 by the senator Anibaldo cites his responsibility to detain ‘heretics discovered in the city, especially by inquisitors appointed by the Church, or by other Catholic men’ (‘hereticos qui fuerint in urbe reperti, praesertim per inquisitores datos ab Ecclesia vel alios viros catholicos’). In other words, non-clerics could identify and investigate heresy. In Brescia in 1230, the podestà’s oath of office not only committed him to enquire after heretics, but also (on advice from the bishop) to appoint additional officials at the commune’s cost to assist with this duty, beyond those in his own entourage.18 This formulation is quite close to that of the later officium inquisitionis as

16 Maisonneuve,

Études, pp. 248–9 for the early Dominicans; quotation p. 249, ‘Ils ressemblent, pourrait-on dire, à un corps de spécialistes, passant de diocèse en diocèse suivant les urgences locales, soit à l’appel des chefs responsables, soit plûtot en vertu d’un ordre supérieur’. For Milan, d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 8. 17 Conrad and Robert are extensively treated in histories of heresy. Both earned fearsome reputations for zeal and severity. Conrad was eventually imprisoned and killed in 1233 by the concerted action of bishops and secular authorities. The proposition that Dominic was the ‘first inquisitor’ is dismissed by Wakefield, Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition, p. 128, but Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution, pp. 103–33, shows how and why his gradual rebranding occurred. 18 The podestà – appointed from outside a city – typically brought all his own officials with him, to ensure neutrality in his role as magistrate.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework framed by Innocent IV. At the same time, the bishop of Brescia (appointed in 1229 or 1230) was the Dominican Guala da Bergamo, a papal confidant and diplomat, later beatified, who in 1232 was nominated by Gregory IX as inquisitor in Lombardy along with another Dominican, Alberigo, and given a special mission towards Brescia. Peter of Verona was also despatched to preach in the province. These arrangements show how the secular power, the bishop and the nascent papal inquisition were intertwined. There was as yet no distinction between episcopal and papal inquisition: those hunting heretics could be bishops, Church-appointed inquisitors, lay believers or civic authorities.19 An important administrative step in the birth of the papal inquisition took place in 1234, when Gregory delegated the nomination of papal inquisitors in Lombardy to the Dominican provincial, Stefano di Spagna. This not only allowed the provincial some control over the disposition of his friars, but also distanced the pope a little from poor choices. Stefano’s first nominee was Guido da Sesto, a theologian who had taught at both Bologna and Padua, and who was an auditor of cases at the Curia. The chronicle of Ambrogio Taegio treats him as the first inquisitor of Lombardy, but perhaps more significantly as ‘omnibus cardinalibus notus’ – known to all the cardinals, and thus a safe pair of hands, not an unknown zealot. Guido remained an inquisitor until at least the 1250s, when he fades from the record.20 The delegation of powers of appointment, periodically renewed and extended, effectively meant that from 1234 onwards, the formal choice of Dominican inquisitors in Lombardy lay with the prior-provincial rather than the pope personally. This did not, however, imply that successive popes stepped back from interest and intervention when an issue caught their attention. In 1237, similar powers were given to the smaller province of Romagna. By this point it is safe to speak of inquisitors, if not yet ‘the inquisition’, though the circumstances in which early inquisitors such as Peter of Verona operated were very different from those of their successors. In this early period, bishops like Guala could also be inquisitors, distinct from their expected pastoral role.

19 Anibaldo’s

constitution, Maisonneuve, Études, p. 247. For Guala, see Maisonneuve, Études, p. 252; d’Alatri, ‘Il vescovo e il negotium fidei’, pp. 118–19; A. D’Amato, I Domenicani a Bologna (1218–1600), 2 vols. (Bologna, 1988), I, 193. 20 The delegated power of nomination was renewed in 1237, 1251, 1252 (when the provincial acquired full power to appoint, transfer or substitute inquisitors) and again in 1254 (when the provincial was freed to create local seats of the inquisition). For Guido da Sesto’s slightly blurry history, see AGOP, XIV, 3.53, Ambrogii Taegii, Chronicae ordinis Praedicatorum, III, Chronica brevis, fols. 23v–4r. Taegio records Guido’s death in 1240 (fol. 27v) but Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 67–9, and others, show him alongside Raniero Sacconi in the hunt for Peter of Verona’s killers, i.e. after 1252. Taegio’s thirteenth-century chronology is shaky.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350

Secular legislation and responsibility Major organisational changes in 1252 and 1254 created the office of inquisition broadly as it persisted through the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The exact form of those changes was, however, greatly influenced by the evolution of secular responsibilities towards heresy, especially in the lands of the empire. By the time the first recognisably papal inquisitors came on the scene in the 1230s, civil authorities in Italy had already for some forty years been bound by both papal constitutions and imperial decrees to take action to root out heresy (though not all did so). In many cases, anti-heretic laws were already on city statute books, responding to exhortations from Ad abolendam onwards. Four important general pieces of legislation which entrenched, clarified and extended secular duties were issued by the young Frederick II. In 1224, the statutes of Catania, applicable to imperial territories in northern Italy, began to create the foundations for a fully autonomous secular role. They positioned heresy not as a religious deviation, but as a form of lèse-majesté or publicum crimen similar to murder. This not only implied a familiar tariff of penalties, but also set heresy within an accustomed framework of civic action and organisation. The 1224 Constitutio contra haereticos Lombardiae did however envisage some distinction between religious and secular roles: secular authorities delivered heretics to the stake, or cut out the tongues of the repentant, but in doing so acted at the request of the bishop: ut quicumque per civitatis antistitem vel diocesis, in qua degit, post condignam examinationem fuerit de haeresi manifeste convictus et haereticus iudicatus, per potestatem, consilium et catholicos viros civitatis et diocesis earundem ad requisitionem antistititis illico capiatur, auctoritate nostra ignis iudicio concremandus, […] aut eum lingue plectro deprivent.21

In 1231 the Constitutions of Melfi (the well-known Liber Augustalis) elaborated the same duty for Frederick’s hereditary kingdoms of Naples and Sicily, this time making it absolutely clear both that heresy was to be numbered among public crimes (and treated on a par with them) and that the responsibility of the civil power included initiating inquiry into heresy – not merely action on request.22 At Ravenna in spring 1232, the constitution 21 ‘Whoever

is convicted after due examination of manifest heresy, and is adjudged a heretic by the bishop of the city or diocese in which he lives, shall be instantly seized at the bishop’s request by the podestà, council and good Catholic men of the same city or diocese, and by our authority submitted to the judgement of fire, or else [….] they shall cut out his tongue.’ See MGH Leges 4, Constitutiones 2 n. 157, pp. 194–5. Also Maisonneuve, Études, pp. 243–57 (p. 244), which summarises Frederick’s legislation; and Padovani, ‘Inquisizione del podestà’, p. 353. 22 No original version of the Liber Augustalis survives. The most authoritative text is in Die Konstitutionen Friedrichs II für sein Königreich Sizilien (MGH Leges 5,

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Legal, organisational and financial framework Commissi nobis slightly modified the severity of the earlier laws by providing both for perpetual imprisonment and for the confiscation and destruction of property (though neither seem great encouragements to reconciliation and repentance). Finally, the extended and modified provisions were promulgated (or re-promulgated) for the territories of the empire at Padua in 1239. It is the Padua recension which commonly appears in inquisitorial collections. Notwithstanding Frederick’s personal excommunications and repeated conflicts with the Church, successive popes were eager to incorporate his provisions in canon law and to promote his legislation throughout Italy, as a further means of persuading secular powers to adopt a duty to pursue heretics. Maisonneuve notes that, as early as 1221, Honorius III pressed his legate in Lombardy and Tuscany to get a previous set of Frederick’s provisions (issued at Frankfurt in 1220) incorporated into town statutes. In April 1227, Gregory IX urged all the rectors and podestà of Lombardy to observe Frederick’s constitutions alongside Church council edicts. In 1233, the Franciscan Enrico da Milano persuaded Vercelli to incorporate both Frederick’s 1224 statutes and Anibaldo’s Roman constitution into its statutes. Indeed, beginning with Innocent IV’s bull Orthodoxae fidei in 1252 and frequently reiterated (as, for example, in the bull Cum adversus), getting communes to incorporate the Frederician laws in their statutes was one of the first tasks enjoined on inquisitors collectively. It was pursued tenaciously even when towns already had extensive anti-heretic provisions on the statute book, sometimes derived from local archiepiscopal edicts as well as from the papal or imperial legislation. The result was often not entirely consistent, leaving room for argument about who was empowered or required to do what.23 The key issue arising from the interplay of canon law, imperial law and local agreements in this period is the extent to which – in any one city – the

Constitutiones et Acta Publica Imperatorum et Regum 2, supplementum), ed. W. Stürner (Hanover, 1996). From a different MS corpus, monumental studies by H. Dilcher, Die Sizilische Gesetzgebung Kaiser Friedrichs II: Quellen der Constitutionen von Melfi und ihrer Novellen (Cologne, 1975), and Die Konstitutionen Friedrichs II von Hohenstaufen für sein Königreich Sizilien, ed. and trans. H. Conrad, T. von der Lieck-Buyken and W. Wagner (Cologne, 1973), both examine the origins and derivation of the Constitutions. J. M. Powell, The Liber Augustalis, or Constitutions of Melfi Promulgated by the Emperor Frederick II for the Kingdom of Sicily in 1231 (Syracuse NY, 1971) offers an English translation, but is hard to compare with the German studies because based on an outdated text tradition. For wide-ranging discussion on Frederick as lawmaker, see the conference proceedings edited by A. Romano, Colendo iustitiam et iura condendo … Federico II legislatore del regno di Sicilia nell’Europa del Duecento: per una storia comparata delle codificazioni Europee, Convegno Internazionale di Studi […] Messina–Reggio Calabria, 20–24 gennaio 1995 (Rome, 1997). Padovani has further bibliography. 23 For Vercelli: Maisonneuve, Études, p. 255; d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 8. Maisonneuve, p. 309, characterises Orthodoxae fidei as an attempt, after Frederick’s death, to relaunch the secular inquisition alongside the clerical inquisition.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 civil power acted on its own initiative in unearthing and determining heresy, or moved only at the request of the bishop or other Church authority. Piecing the story together is hampered by the erratic survival of early versions of city statutes; and, of course, the presence of a statutory duty did not mean it was rigorously implemented. In his study of how Italian civil statutes dealt with heresy, Padovani traces from the twelfth century onwards their reflection of papal and conciliar exhortations for cities to join with their bishops in quashing heresy. At that early point, he argues, the intention was that the civil power should not itself determine or inquire into the fact of heresy. That was a religious matter.24 By the early thirteenth century, however, the oaths required of public officials in a number of Italian cities clearly demanded that they should act not only at the behest of the Church, but also autonomously, both in apprehending heretics and, by extension, determining heresy. Some of the oaths, as at Brescia, envisaged an institutional arrangement similar to that later established under Innocent IV’s Ad extirpanda. As we have seen, Anibaldo’s Roman constitution certainly does not limit identification of heresy to clerics alone, but includes viros catholicos. By placing heresy on a par with other secular crimes – ‘sicut et alios malefactores’ – the Frederician legislation also plainly envisages both lay inquiry and lay decision. Heretics might, though, be confirmed as such by religious authority.25 Where anti-heretic duties were incorporated in civic statute (and some cities, let alone lower levels of civil authority, still did not have them by the mid-thirteenth or even fourteenth century), their exact form varied considerably. The detail and apparent pace of change was dictated primarily by local politics and the stability of the civil administration, but also – a mundane but important point – by the frequency with which the statutes themselves were revised. For example, Florence decreed in 1206 that heretics should be subject to ban and the confiscation of goods, but it was several decades before it went further.26 As early as 1227, the podestà of Rimini attempted to incorporate Frederick’s 1224 provisions in the city’s statutes, but clashed with angry heretics when he sought to enforce them.27 In Venice, which famously did not admit the inquisition until 1289, the first reference to heresy as a crime appears only in the doge’s promise of 1249. In Verona, this step was finally taken only in 1270, after the Guelf triumph.28 24 Padovani,

‘Inquisizione del podestà’, pp 352–3. The following owes much to Padovani’s careful analysis which, however, does not make it easy to trace the successive stages of development in individual cities. 25 Stürner, Konstitutionen, I, 1, 151. 26 Padovani, ‘Inquisizione del podestà’, pp 359–60. The caveat is that incomplete survival of statutes from this period may sometimes lead to wrong conclusions. 27 Dalarun, ‘Rimini’, p. 646. 28 For the promissione of doge Marino Morosini of Venice, see I. da Milano, ‘L’istituzione dell’Inquisizione monastico-papale a Venezia nel secolo XIII’, Collectanea Franciscana 5 (1935), 177–212 (p. 178). For Verona, C. Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo a Verona nel secolo

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Legal, organisational and financial framework By the mid-thirteenth century, a confused environment thus existed in which no single body consistently owned all the responsibility for identifying, pursuing and prosecuting heresy. Important practical details varied from city to city, depending on which version of imperial laws or Church canons had been incorporated in their statutes. The civil authority was clearly responsible for carrying out most types of non-spiritual punishment, on a par with what already existed for offences such as treason, murder or rebellion. However, there were significant nuances. Vercelli, for instance, rejected the amputation of tongues as an alternative to burning. While some cities made much use of banishment – smartly passing the problem to someone else – others did not.29 It was usually clear that the podestà or rector had responsibility to seize and punish a heretic when requested by the bishop. But the Church was not necessarily the initiator in discovering (or even determining) heresy. In Verona as late as 1270, the podestà had the obligation of seizing heretics in the city and district, but the statutes placed him on a par with the bishop in examining and judging them: CCLVIII Et potestas hereticos capere teneatur in civitate et districtu, et si examinati ab ipso episcopo et potestate Verone, et ab illis quos episcopus vel eius vicarius et potestas voluerit, si examinationi voluerit interesse, heretici fuerint iudicati et infra XV dies non respuerint ab heretica pravitate et ad fidem sanctam et catholicam redire contempserint per potestatem legittime puniatur [sic]. (‘CCLVIII The podestà is bound to seize heretics in the city and district. If, on examination by the bishop and the podestà of Verona personally, and by others at the will of the bishop or his vicar, and the podestà (if they wish to be involved in the examination), they are judged to be heretics, and if within fifteen days they do not reject heretical depravity and readily return to the holy and catholic faith, they shall lawfully be punished by the podestà.’)30

In Venice, action against heresy was entirely a lay matter until 1289, and continued alongside the papal inquisition even after that. In the countryside and in smaller towns which were not the seat of a bishop, common sense suggests that the burden of initial action to root out heresy had to depend on the secular authorities. This remained true even when the inquisition was better established. In Cividale del Friuli, for example, the statutes of 1307–09 (the earliest surviving, but building on an anti-heretic archiepiscopal constitution of 1219) required captured heretics to be handed over to the inquisitor XIII’, AV 25 (1883), 64–86, 267–87 (pp. 70–4). He speculates that part of the provisions may be older. 29 In 1268, the sentence-book of Orvieto showed a number of cases of banishment: d’Alatri, Liber Inquisitionis, in Inquisizione francescana, pp. 209–338. 30 Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, p. 71 n. 4.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 within fifteen days. It was thus the civil authority that was doing the initial identifying and seizing. The carattere laicale of the pursuit of heresy in Venice might have been particularly well-articulated, but it was far from unique.31

Siena – a case-study The complex interplay of responsibilities in the mid-thirteenth century is well illustrated in Siena, and it is worth looking more closely at the city’s provisions. From 1254, the city fell nominally under the remit of Franciscan inquisitors in the province of Tuscany, but it was not permanently an inquisition seat, and the first record of any papal inquisitor is not until 1267 (which may simply mean earlier information has not survived). We do not know if any Dominican inquisitor was present before the regional division of responsibility between the mendicant orders took place in 1254, but the early statutory provisions hedge their bets between the two orders, notwithstanding the papal decree. In Siena, the precise roles of the civil and religious authorities turned on the degree of heretical culpability: whether the suspect was a consoled heretic (the statutes are written in terms of Cathar characteristics), a credens or a fautor/receptator. Distinctio 1 of the 1262 constitution, the earliest surviving, committed the podestà by his oath of office to expel from Siena and its contado, and seize the goods of, anyone denounced as a heretic by the bishop or his chapter (‘a domino episcopo vel capitulo’).32 The podestà also had the responsibility of levying money penalties on a credens, again at the instance of the bishop or chapter. Failure to pay, however, swept the culprit into the entirely civil process of banning, a fate which must have been common, as the fine for being a credens was fifty lire, high for most citizens. At lower levels of heretical culpability, among the receptatores and fautores, action was entirely secular, treating them in the same way as anyone assisting a banned person.33 31 P. S. Leicht, ‘La lotta contro gli eretici in Friuli nel secolo XIII’, Memorie storiche forogi-

uliesi 20 (1924), 137–41; I. da Milano, ‘Inquisizione a Venezia’, p. 187. consistency I have used Distinctio throughout this study, although some local statutes use Distintio. On the content, formalising a role for the cathedral chapter is unusual unless there was a vacancy; in most cases, it is the bishop’s vicar who is his alternate. In 1323 we find the chapter’s representatives acting in place of the bishop of Florence in an agreement with the inquisitor during a vacancy in the Florence see, and the Siena statutes may be contemplating such a circumstance: for the Florence agreement, see Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense, MS 1730, fols. 293ra–5vb; L. Oliger, ‘Alcuni documenti per la storia dell’inquisizione francescana in Toscana e nell’Umbria’, Studi francescani 3rd s. 3 (1931), 181–204, doc. 6; Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 201–4, doc. 49 (p. 204). 33 L. Zdekauer, Il constituto del comune di Siena del anno 1262 (Milan, 1897), Distinctio I, caps CXVIIII, CXX, CXXI, CXXII, pp. 53–4. Earlier statutes of 1226 and 1246 had existed, and their ghosts are faintly visible in the extant text. 32 For

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Legal, organisational and financial framework These provisions have to be read in the light of another part of the constitution, Distinctio 5, dealing with the penal code. In Zdekauer’s view, this was compiled very shortly after 1262. It reflects the presence of the mendicant orders in the city, but not yet an inquisitor. Though similarly cast as part of the podestà’s obligations of office, the provisions (paraphrased below) significantly alter those in Distinctio 1, in terms of both responsibility and penalty. They require the podestà – at the request of the bishop and the friars (‘et fratrum’), but here not the cathedral chapter – to make inquisition of heretics and their supporters, to confiscate their goods, and to burn the consoled publicly, regardless of their exact description. Those suspected of heresy by the bishop or chapter shall, however, be excluded from public office. Neglect of this duty is punishable by forfeit of salary. In a final sentence, the podestà swears to give aid and counsel against heresy to the Friars Preacher and the Friars Minor, if they request it. The relevant paragraph reads: CLXVI Et ad petitionem domini episcopi et fratrum faciam diligenter inquisitionem de hereticis et eorum fautoribus et credentibus, et omnia bona conficare [sic] faciam, consolatos autem, quocumque nomine censeantur, in aspectu populi ignibus concremari faciam; et si fuero negligens circa hec, salarium meum ammittam. Et pro isto negotio fidei contra hereticam pravitatem dabo favorem et consilium Fratribus Predicatoribus et Minoribus, quandocumque viderint expedire.

It thus appears that the whole of the practical process of rooting out and determining heresy – not merely punishing a heretic previously identified by someone else – was (or could be) now a duty of the civil authority. The only task in which the civil power was not involved was the sentencing of the tranche of unconsoled heretics judged more culpable than credentes.34 The interweaving of civic, episcopal and mendicant responsibilities in Siena was complicated further because, in 1244, Bishop Bonfiglio delegated his responsibilities in ‘inquisitionem, captionem, temptionem et examinationem hereticorum atque credentium eorundem’ (‘the seeking out, capturing, testing and examining of heretics and their believers’) to the local Dominican prior and Franciscan guardian jointly and severally, or to whoever they might appoint. Was this the graceful submission of a bishop to the likely arrival of a papal inquisitor, or simply an abnegation of duty? We do not know whether subsequent bishops followed Bonfiglio’s pattern, though in 1312 Bishop Ruggero da Casole (himself a Dominican) made a similar delegation, nominating the Dominican prior alone to substitute for him on inquisition business. This probably did not mean that Ruggero declined involvement in

34 L.

Zdekauer, ‘Il frammento degli ultimi due libri del più antico constituto senese (1262–1270)’, BSSP 1 (1894), 131–54, 271–84; 2 (1895), 137–44, 315–22; 3 (1896), 79–92. Citation from (1895), p. 318.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 heresy, but simply recognised that he had been appointed to a post requiring presence in Rome, and needed to make provision for representation in his absence. But it is significant that he and Bonfiglio both delegated their episcopal powers to the head(s) of mendicant convents. From the bishop’s viewpoint, the conventual structures of the Dominican and Franciscan orders themselves had a role in the negotium fidei, as distinct from individual friars’ roles as papal inquisitors.35

Ad extirpanda: the framework of the office of inquisition The death of Frederick II in December 1250 stimulated a new phase in the conflict between the Hohenstaufen and the papacy. Imperial successions were seldom smooth, and Frederick’s lack of a single heir to both the empire and Sicily complicated matters further. Although the Ghibelline cause was upheld in northern Italy by Ezzelino III da Romano and Oberto Pelavicini until their deaths in 1259 and 1269 respectively, the imperial vacancy placed Innocent IV in a much stronger position. Even the kingdom of Sicily temporarily made its peace with the Church. At the same time, the mid-century outbreak of popular devotion which stimulated the growth of both religious and militant confraternities was in full swing. This provided additional manpower for anti-heretic activities, especially when encouraged by indulgences and (at times) crusade. It was against this backdrop that the structural framework of the medieval Italian inquisition finally took firm shape, in Innocent IV’s famous bull of May 1252, Ad extirpanda. Although Maisonneuve describes Ad abolendam as the founding charter of the inquisition, it was Ad extirpanda which set out the management plan and attempted to reconcile the different interests now involved in pursuing heresy. In unusually prescriptive detail, which would probably not have been ventured in Frederick’s lifetime, the bull proposed a three-cornered relationship in hunting heresy, between papal inquisitor, civic authority and bishop, creating an infrastructure within which their respective existing roles could be systematised and tweaked. Several aspects were foreshadowed in the arrangements which had already developed in cities such as Milan and Brescia, and the language borrowed freely from previous papal and imperial provisions. Reissued by Alexander IV in 1257 and by Clement IV in 1265, with some modifications, it was repeated by later popes and embedded in canon law. 35 For

Bonfiglio and Ruggero, see G. Severino, ‘Note sull’eresia a Siena fra i secoli XIII e XIV’, Studi sul medioevo cristiano offerti a Raffaele Morghen per il 90º anniversario dell’Istituto Storico Italiano (1883–1973), 2 vols., Studi storici fasc. 88–92 (Rome, 1974), II, 889–905 (pp. 901–2, 904); P. Piccolomini, ‘Documenti senesi sull’inquisizione’, BSSP 15 (1908), 233–46.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework Unlike general bulls in the Ad abolendam tradition, Ad extirpanda placed precise administrative obligations on civic leaders, together with detailed penalties for non-compliance.36 Intended to be binding on all levels of administrative unit, from the largest city to the smallest village, it starts from the presumption that the papal and Frederician constitutions against heresy are incorporated in the city statutes (hence inquisitors’ push to make this happen, regardless of whether it was necessary). Civic leaders are required firstly to swear to ban heretics as they would a crime (‘tamquam pro maleficio’), and to seize their goods. Within three (later, eight or ten) days of his own appointment, the podestà must appoint twelve viros probos et catholicos, two notaries and two servitors (or as many as are necessary) to pursue heresy.37 Nominations of suitable candidates are to come from the bishop (if he wants to involve himself), from two Dominicans and two Franciscans, themselves nominated by their prior or guardian, or (a significant modification by Alexander IV in 1255) from papal inquisitors themselves. These individuals – to whom enormous power is given, including the right to fine the civic authorities of any community up to 200 marks if they do not produce their heretics on demand – constitute the officials of the inquisition. The officials’ sworn duty is to pursue heretics, seizing their goods, whether in the city or elsewhere, and to surrender them to the bishop, his vicar or the inquisitor. The officials must not be impeded in their task. The podestà or other civic authority must bear the costs of taking the captured heretics wherever the bishop or inquisitor chooses, and of imprisoning them – under the guard of good Catholics appointed by the bishop, Dominican or Franciscan friars or by the inquisitor – in a secure prison separate from common criminals or banniti. (This was later a significant practical issue for cities which, in general, lacked prison facilities at this point. However, there is evidence that inquisitors themselves cared little about separating prisoners.) All rural and urban communities are bound to offer support to the officials as they go about their work, on pain of a fine of twenty-five or fifty imperial lire

36 The

most complete recent version of Ad extirpanda is edited by G. Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici nella Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio. Parte prima: 1235–62’, L’Archiginnasio 75 (1980), 9–75 (pp. 28–37); Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum, XXIII, cols. 569–75 for the 1252 text. For the Clement IV recension as used by later inquisitors, see the Constitutiones sacre Inquisitionis of Vicenza (Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 159–70). Maisonneuve, Études, pp. 309–16, discusses the provisions. 37 The reference to twelve good men is a carry-over from earlier provisions, by then embedded in many city statutes. The duty of appointment within three days was clearly unrealistic, both for the podestà and for other participants in the process. A relaxation to ten days was quickly requested by the inquisitors of Lombardy, notably Raniero Sacconi. Clement IV’s recension recorded in the Vicenza Constitutiones sacre Inquisitionis has eight days, but different timetables may have applied to inquisitors in different territories, depending on which relaxation they followed.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 depending on the size of community. Innocent even dictates the scale of the officials’ travelling expenses: they are to have a daily rate of eighteen imperial denarii (by 1265 this had increased to two imperial solidi) when outside their home town. An important provision, mentioned twice in the bull, is that, for salary, the officials are to have one third of the seized property of heretics and of money fines levied on them. This would prove a bone of contention, both between inquisitors and their officials, and between officials of different kinds. The disposition of the other two thirds of receipts, to be divided between the commune and a sort of ‘good works’ fund, is discussed more fully below. The officials’ term of office is limited to six months, renewable (the implication is once only) by the podestà. They can be dismissed by the podestà if found unsuitable by the bishop or friars. There is much more in this vein – forty-eight clauses in all, by the time it reached Clement IV’s 1265 recension. The bull even goes into detail about the potential sale of lumber retrieved from the demolished houses of heretics, though it does not deal with the sale of the heretics’ own ashes, which we find occurring later in Lombardy. Maisonneuve calls it not so much a code of procedure as a police regulation: it is certainly an attempt at micro-management.38 From the standpoint of this study, however, it raises a number of important issues. Firstly, the continuing role of diocesan bishops is deeply embedded, whether or not a papal inquisitor is present. The bishop is given the option of standing back from some aspects of involvement, should he wish, but otherwise it is he who selects the officials with whom the inquisitor must work, and he who receives captured heretics for processing. This is an elegant way of handling the inevitable tension between different authorities, except that no provision is made (probably deliberately) to resolve disputes between inquisitor and bishop when they did arise. The degree to which they needed to inform or consult each other, and who should defer to whom in the event of conflict of interest (as when both wished to investigate the same heretic, or where there were differences of view over the degree of culpability) remained a running sore for the next sixty years. Different popes swayed this way and that, and it was not until Clement V’s Multorum querela in 1311 that the argument was finally concluded formally.39 Even then, some inquisitors were reluctant to accept the decision: in 1319, the Florentine inquisition sought a consilium from eleven clerics and jurists (including the renowned Cino da

38 Maisonneuve,

Études, p. 314: ‘Ce n’est pas à proprement parler un code de procédure, c’est un règlement de police.’ 39 This was a product of the Council of Vienne, which reached decisions on many other points of contention relating to inquisition procedure. The solution, essentially, was to require joint action, with consultation between inquisitor and bishop at all stages, except over initial detention of suspects: S. Menache, Clement V (Cambridge, 1998), pp. 301–2.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework Pistoia) to pick the decretal apart and re-answer all the questions. Nearly eighty years later, in 1396, it was still such a live issue that the then Florentine inquisitor had the consilium recopied into his manual for reference.40 This in itself flags up that Italian bishops did not retreat from involvement with inquisition into heresy as the papal inquisition took root. The anonymous writer of the De officio inquisitionis (around 1320–25) sidestepped the issue by declaring that the lead official of the inquisition was the bishop and inquisitor, treating them as a single entity.41 Secondly, although Innocent had taken advantage of the imperial vacancy both to impose new tasks on civil authorities and to try to cast them in a subordinate role, their practical importance as the vital oil in the machine is evident throughout Ad extirpanda – even down to their responsibility (not that of either bishop or inquisitor) to maintain up-to-date copies of the papal constitutions on heresy for all the partners. With the ravages wrought in records by nearly 800 years, it is difficult to demonstrate compliance with this requirement, but some cities certainly took the duty seriously. At Treviso in 1304, we find the city using its newly amended copy of the constitutions to argue that the inquisitor was in breach of Boniface VIII’s recent provisions.42 Ad extirpanda also brings to the fore the role of the officiales of the inquisition. Its provisions institute a permanent administrative organisation to pursue heretics and support the inquisitor, but it is important to note that the officiales, notaries and servitors are not the inquisitor’s personal staff. They are appointed and dismissed by the podestà, and in practice form an independent office – the officium inquisitionis – responsible to podestà, bishop and inquisitor jointly. Their term of duty is not aligned to that of a particular inquisitor. Indeed, because of the podestà’s obligation to appoint the officiales within a few days of taking up office himself, their appointment cycle is much more closely geared to the secular rotation of city magistrates and civic offices. Historians from Lea to Kieckhefer have tended to see the officiales merely as creatures of the inquisitor, and Kieckhefer of course argues that the officium inquisitionis, as a bureaucratic entity, did not exist in this period.43 The purpose of the Ad extirpanda arrangements was, however, to create a system which took account of the interests of all the different parties. The independence of the officiales and the officium inquisitionis from the inquisitor was not a legal fiction: its reality is attested by a number of incidents in which we find officials at loggerheads with inquisitors (and even being excommunicated by them), usually in disputes over money.44 There were undoubtedly

40 MS

Cas 1730, fols. 279v–82va; Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 188–99, doc. 47. officio, pp. 3, 9–10. 42 Biscaro, ‘Marca Trevisana’, pp. 166–8; Rigon, introduction to Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, p. xxix. 43 Kieckhefer, ‘Personal jurisdiction’, pp. 47–53. 44 A notable example is that of Mascara dei Mascara, a long-time inquisition official 41 De

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 occasions when inquisitors exercised an unhealthy sway over compliant officials, but this should not cloud perceptions of the bull’s intention to hold a space between them. In subsequent decades, repeated pressure by inquisitors to insert themselves into the appointment process for officials, or take it over completely, strongly suggests that they did not see the officiales as subservient. As we have noted, inquisitors were quickly (1255) included among those able to put forward nominations for appointment, but as late as 1297 their desire to control the selection and dismissal of officials more completely provoked the inquisitor in Padua to seek a legal consilium.45 In 1322 in Piacenza, not far away, the civil power’s refusal to let the inquisitor nominate officials was seen as impeding the negotium fidei.46 The term officialis is used inconsistently across contemporary sources. Ad extirpanda implies that the officiales consisted collectively of the twelve good men, the two notaries and the two servitors, but the notaries and servitors are often distinguished from the others. It would certainly be wrong to suppose either that all the inquisition’s staff were classed as officiales, or that they were the only staff employed in inquisition. Chapter 5 below discusses the size of the inquisitor’s team and the distinction between officiales and others in more detail, but the fact that a distinction did exist is clearly demonstrated from two lists of recent staff headed, respectively, officiales and familiares servitores, compiled to assist the inquiries of Gui de Neuville and Guillaume de Balait into inquisitorial corruption in Padua and Vicenza in 1302/1308. Membership of the lists does not overlap, and (unlike the servitores) the officiales are plainly weighty citizens and professional men.47 Eighteen of the twenty-nine are described as dominus, and seven are notaries. One became the steward (domicellus) of the bishop of Vicenza. Another, the nobly born judge Federico di Montebello (himself the brother of the Dominican inquisitor Guido Capello), had in 1289 been one of Vicenza’s three representatives arguing the city’s case before the papal legate assigned to resolve a dispute with the bishop.48 They are not the sort of people you would expect to find personally standing guard in Padua, who was sued and excommunicated by the former Franciscan and then Dominican inquisitors for failing to hand over to them receipts which he regarded as the property of the officium inquisitionis: ASV, Instrumenta miscellanea 370. 45 The consilium was delivered by the jurist Bovatino da Mantova in 1297, during a dispute between the inquisitor and the town of Padua. He concluded – rather oddly – that the inquisitor alone should nominate the officiales, and that the podestà was obliged to appoint the persons he nominated. It is not clear that this had wider relevance beyond Padua, and did not settle the argument even there. Bovatino did not deal with the question of dismissals. See Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 172–3 (doc. 41). 46 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 200. 47 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 173–4, docs. 5–6. 48 G. Mantese, ‘Un processo a Roma tra vescovo e comune di Vicenza’, Rivista di storia della Chiesa in Italia 3 (1949), 238–63 (p. 241). The career of Federico di Montebello is discussed in more detail in Chapter 3 below.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework at the gates of the city, as in the 1229 Milan provisions noted earlier, or the similar provisions from Vicenza itself. However, some certainly did involve themselves directly in Cathar-catching, as evidence from Verona and Ferrara in the case of Armanno Pungilupo makes clear. The true composition and duties of the officiales, or sub-groups within them, is perhaps the most difficult piece of this analysis. Embedded in the later clauses of Ad extirpanda, we find reference to other lay staff to be employed by the city on inquisition business. The podestà must make one of his assessors available to work with the bishop, his vicar or the inquisitor: this is probably meant to refer to a judge-assessor familiar with civil and criminal cases, to act as a lay representative on the tribunal. Another assessor must be appointed to travel with the bishop or inquisitor in order to set up panels of at least three men of good standing (boni testimonii) in each location visited, to give evidence of fama about suspected heretics or their sympathisers. This harks back to the recommendations of the 1229 council of Toulouse, and comes close to instructing the podestà to set up a spy organisation for the inquisitor.49 Not in Ad extirpanda, but in civic documents, we find a third type of assessor, involved in valuing heretics’ property for sale. Finally, within twelve days of the start of a new podestà’s term of office, Ad extirpanda mandates him to audit (sindicare) the books of his predecessor, and his assessors, on their fulfilment of the anti-heretic constitutions. The assessment is to be done by three faithful and Catholic men (‘tres viros catholicos et fideles’), chosen by podestà and bishop within three days of the start of the new podestà’s term, together with Dominican and Franciscan friars nominated for the purpose by the local prior and guardian, or by the inquisitor.50 There is no specific provision for a reciprocal audit of the inquisitor himself, though in practice the financial settlement which was the core of the audit required the inquisitor to produce some sort of books.51 The existence and role of these different kinds of assessors and subsidiary officials emerges only dimly from surviving sources, and it is difficult to be 49 It

is not clear how far this function really existed in Italy at the start of an inquisitio, though spies and exploratores are common. It is possible that in practice it was performed by local officials of the inquisition, like those in Riva sul Garda described in the Introduction, who testify at the beginning of Alberto da Bassano’s inquisitio. 50 The description relates to Clement IV’s rescript. The provision underwent a number of changes between Innocent IV, Alexander IV and Clement IV, evidently because of the practical difficulty of bringing together appointment panels within the very short timescale allowed, in all the places where an inquisitor exercised his function. 51 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 198, doc. 74, publishes a settlement between the city of Vicenza and the inquisitor Antonio da Padova which shows the mutual audit and accounting process at work. In 1284, 1286, 1306 and 1320, Florence appointed a sindicus to represent the commune’s interest in the valuation and division of heretics’ goods; see Parmeggiani, Consilia, p. 250; D. Corsi, ‘Per la storia dell’inquisizione a Firenze nella seconda metà del secolo XIII’, Bollettino della società di studi valdesi 132 (an. XCIII) (1972), 3–16 (pp. 6–7).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 sure how the provisions operated in practice, especially in small communities with limited administrative apparatus. The conclusion that can be drawn, however, is that the officium inquisitionis did not exist in isolation. It sat at the centre of a spider’s web of offices and mini-tribunals with specialised and often short-term functions, many of which sprang into feverish action only at specific times, such as the changeover of podestà or rector. But the effect was always to tie the office of inquisition into the wider world of the civic or diocesan authorities.

After Ad extirpanda Ad extirpanda was rapidly followed by a shower of other bulls which filled in the fine detail of how heresy inquisitors should work, often enlarging their privileges and exemptions. According to d’Alatri, over eighty bulls relating to inquisition in Italy were issued during two years of the reign of Alexander IV alone.52 Some measures dealt with spiritual niceties, such as enabling inquisitors and their socii to absolve each other when they had committed technical sins in the interrogation of heretics, and giving absolution and indulgences to their team, both clerical and lay. Others protected them from interference in the exercise of their office by superiors in their order, civil authorities and even papal legates.53 Successive bulls gave much greater latitude over the evidence acceptable in the prosecution of heresy than would have been allowed in other tribunals: for example, permitting testimony from anonymous witnesses, criminals and people who had been excommunicated. These easements have frequently been seen by later scholars as demonstrating a culture of impunity; this is not, however, always visible when looking more closely at how inquisitors actually operated in particular cases. Many post-Ad extirpanda provisions tackled procedural difficulties which only became evident when the papal inquisition really began to take root, systematising its operations and in the process becoming more bureaucratic and legalistic. One long-running issue concerned the principle of delegation: whether inquisitors could delegate their powers to others (discussed in more detail in Chapter 6 below, on the inquisitor’s vicars and other clerical support), and whether, since inquisitors themselves were technically delegates of the Apostolic See, their own authority lapsed at each papal death and needed to be renewed by the incoming pope. This was not just an administrative

52 D’Alatri,

Inquisizione francescana, p. 44. release from obedience to superiors, Alexander IV, Catholice fidei negotium (December 1260), rescripts by Urban IV (October 1262) and Clement IV; Gui, Practica, pt 4 III/1.A (pp. 209–10). Also see d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, pp. 16, 23. Immunity against legates, Alexander IV, Ne inquisitionis negotium, September 1258, Potthast 17,536; 17,662.

53 For

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Legal, organisational and financial framework nuisance for all concerned, but had implications for the validity of investigations left half-completed when the vacancy began. Heresy inquisition by bishops did not suffer from this problem, and nor, in principle, did investigation by civil authorities. This was another (unmentioned) reason why co-operation and shared responsibility were advisable. Despite the practical inconvenience, delegation proved an area where popes hesitated to give inquisitors greater powers. In 1262, Clement IV, with his bull Ne aliqui dubitationem, confirmed that the authority of Franciscan inquisitors continued during vacancies in the Holy See. However, this privilege was not extended to the Dominicans until 1290, under Nicholas IV. The inquisitors of Lombardy thus needed in 1265 to write to Clement imploring him to confirm their decisions ‘iuxta formam summorum pontificorum Innocentii, Alexandri et Urbani in temporibus quibus Sedes Apostolica vacabat’ (‘in the same way as the popes Innocent, Alexander and Urban did for the periods when the Apostolic See was vacant’), lest there should be any irregularity if a heretic was relaxed to the secular arm. It appears that Bergamo had been using this point of doubt to delay executions.54 An important modification, first issued by Innocent IV in 1254, was a power to interpret the imperial and papal constitutions locally where there was doubt. This avoided the need to seek clarification from the pope over every uncertainty, and gave wriggle room where there was a mismatch between papal, imperial and civic legislation of different dates.55 The use of this power, often exercised jointly with the diocesan bishop, was normally preceded by consultation with jurists, who included some of the most significant legal figures of their day – both well-known glossators and future popes such as Clement IV (Gui Foulcques) and Boniface VIII (Benedetto Caetani). Inquisitors’ resort to consilia from jurists, either in a panel or individually, was very frequent, and needs to be considered alongside new bulls and decretals as a way of expanding the inquisition’s acquis. As Parmeggiani has shown, the consultatores formed in practice an important part of the inquisitor’s team.56 54 See

Maisonneuve, Études, p. 326; E. Langlois, Les registres de Nicolas IV, 4 vols. (Paris, 1886–90), IV, nos. 2780–81; Potthast 23,312, Ne aliqui dubitationem. Lombard inquisitors’ letter, P. Savignoni, ‘L’archivio storico del comune di Viterbo’, ASRSP 18 (1895), 5–20, 269–318 (p. 306, doc. CVIII) 55 Potthast 15,433. 56 Parmeggiani, Consilia, invaluably edits the known inquisition consilia. Some – like the two from Gui Foulcques (pp. 58–71), originally issued in Languedoc respectively no later than 1257 and in 1261 – had wide currency among inquisitors in both France and Italy, while others had much more restricted application. More than half a century later, the first Foulcques consilium was so frequently consulted by the Florentine inquisition in its manual of about 1312 that a thumbprint is worn into the vellum page (MS Cas 1730) where it was held down. Notable Italian jurists consulted by inquisitors included Cino da Pistoia, Giovanni d’Andrea and Guido de Baysio. Parmeggiani argues that, however eminent the jurists, consilia were not seen as providing the certainty of papal decrees (Consilia, pp. xxi–xxix). Gui

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 As papal inquisitors in the 1260s and 1270s finally established footholds in formerly Ghibelline cities such as Verona and Vicenza, many of the questions put to jurists dealt with the treatment of the heirs and property of people condemned as heretics only after death. Heresy frequently condemned the culprit to seizure of all property and, by extension, disinherited their heirs, under the biblical principle of visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children.57 How far back could inquisitors seize property on claims of ancestral heresy, and for how many generations could they block heirs from Church or public office because of a tainted heritage? Here, the political interests of new civic regimes and different elements in the Church could collide, and again it is notable that the papacy was not always willing to give inquisitors what they wanted. Against the background of vicious prosecutions in Vicenza, declaring as heretic people who had died good Catholics many years earlier, Boniface VIII sought to protect heirs who had held the property undisturbed for forty years – two generations.58 Yet in 1314, the Florentine inquisitor and bishop still found it necessary to publish their own joint interpretation of the new inheritance and exclusion provisions, after consulting three jurists, including Giovanni d’Andrea.59 The heresy and inquisition bulls of mid-thirteenth century popes were mainly formalised in canon law in Boniface VIII’s Liber Sextus in 1298.60 His successor, Benedict XI, himself a former Dominican master-general and familiar with the practical problems of inquisitors, added in 1304 the clarificatory letter Ex eo quod, addressed to the inquisitors of Lombardy, which – contradicting a bull of Nicholas IV – provided that bishops should not receive any of the product of heresy confiscations, nor play a role in overseeing inquisitors’ accounts. Accountability was henceforth to the Camera Apostolica or to papal nominees.61 This change in oversight might

Foulques’s Consilium has now been edited by V. Bivolarov, Inquisitoren-Handbücher. Papsturkunden und juristische Gutachten aus dem 13. Jahrhundert mit Edition des Consilium von Guido Fulcodii, MGH, Studien und Texte 56 (Wiesbaden, 2014), pp. 206–55; Bivolarov argues for an earlier date of composition between 1238 and 1243, before the Dominicans withdrew temporarily from inquisition in southern France. 57 Numbers 14. 18. 58 MS Cas 1730, fol. 63r. Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia, reports (pp. 28–9) the seizure in Vicenza in 1289 of goods deriving from a new conviction of a ‘heretic’ dead before 1235, i.e. over sixty years earlier. For a general discussion, see K. Pennington, ‘Pro peccatis patrum puniri: A Moral and Legal Problem of the Inquisition’, CH 47 (1978), 137–54. 59 MS Cas 1730, fols 239v–43v; also edited Oliger, ‘Alcuni documenti’, doc. 4. Giovanni d’Andrea was the glossator of Boniface VIII’s Liber Sextus, as well as of the Clementinae. 60 Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. xxi–xxii and n. 49 identifies the omissions. 61 The most recent edition is G. Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici nella Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio. Parte seconda: 1265–1648’, L’Archiginnasio 78 (1983), 285–401 (p. 308). MS Cas 1730 includes Ex eo quod in a reference list of

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Legal, organisational and financial framework have been prompted by the 1302 scandal in the Veneto, in which the bishops of Padua and Vicenza joined with the commune to complain to the pope about the inquisitor’s fraud. Not long afterwards, Clement V’s work at the Council of Vienne in 1311 was gathered together – effectively absorbing the Liber Sextus – in the Liber Septimus, better known as the Clementinae, which were confirmed and issued by his successor, John XXII, in October 2017. This was the last substantial collection of papal legislation dealing with the medieval inquisition, though John issued a number of further decretals, drawn together in his Extravagantes. The Council of Vienne also set new policy on troublesome areas, such as responsibility for prisons, and imposed age minima for inquisitors, their vicars and prison custodes. Aside from their substantive content, the numerous bulls and letters dealing with heresy and inquisition in the second half of the thirteenth century raise interesting questions about papal relationships with inquisitors and the sort of organisation they thought they had created. Some bulls were simply rescripts or confirmations of ones issued by previous pontiffs, perhaps with small amendments. Many, however, gave privileges to inquisitors in one particular province, or responded to queries about areas of doubt, but were not communicated to those elsewhere. The extra powers and privileges were usually (but not always) extended to others in due course, but with a delay which could range from months to several years. In the case of Ne aliqui dubitationem, the gap between Franciscans and Dominicans was as much as twenty-eight years, on the not unimportant matter of whether an inquisitor’s authority continued after the death of the pope who had appointed him. Little attempt seems to have been made to treat those from different provinces and orders consistently, or to consider the consequences of uneven powers.62 Bulls addressed to all inquisitors throughout Italy as a group are uncommon, and it is clear that papal communication mainly focused on the individual and the province, rather than on inquisitors as a collectivity. Inconsistencies such as these might arise from poor chancery practice, or because one order had a better lobbying organisation at the Curia than another. If, however, the geographical unevenness in inquisitors’ privileges was intended, it could support Richard Kieckhefer’s contention that in the thirteenth century at least, inquisitors were seen only as individuals with personal jurisdiction, rather than as a coherent new organisation.63 the incipits of the most important inquisition-related bulls, as seen by Florentine inquisitors, even though it was not directed to them (fol. 213v). 62 The time lag between the first known issue of a bull and its dissemination to inquisitors in different provinces is conveniently illustrated in Öpitz’s codicographical analysis of the Florentine manual: G. Öpitz, ‘Über zwei Codices zum Inquisitionsprozess: Cod. Cas. 1730 und Cod. des Archivio Generalizio dei Domenicani II 63’, Quellen und Forschungen aus Italienischen Archiven und Biblioteken herausgeben vom Deutschen Historischen Institut in Rom 28 (Rome, 1937–38), 77–106. 63 Kieckhefer, ‘Personal jurisdiction’, pp. 36–40.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Whatever the papal rationale for leaving powers uneven, it was swiftly undermined by inquisitors themselves. They clearly compared notes – the Florentine inquisition’s manual highlights several provisions where Franciscan privileges differed from those of the Dominicans – and seem freely to have incorporated in their working guides powers which were not, so far as the surviving record shows, ever bestowed on their particular province.64 What the period following Ad extirpanda did not do was disturb its basic tripartite arrangement of duties. The reality was that papal inquisitors were too thin on the ground in Italy to act alone. Initially, there were only four inquisitors for the huge province of Lombardy (increased to eight in 1256 and nine in 1260). When the Franciscans entered inquisition in Italy in 1254, they initially had one inquisitor in each of their (smaller) provinces. Throughout the fourteenth century, there were at most two in Tuscany and sometimes only one.65 Even if all the posts were in fact filled, in order to function inquisitors needed the full co-operation of their partners – both episcopal and civil – together with assistance from their orders through the spreading network of mendicant convents. Despite minor changes, Ad extirpanda thus had to remain the basic outline of how the papacy saw the inquisition working, bringing together all three entities with an interest in the elimination of heresy and creating a fourth body (the officiales and officium inquisitionis) to act as their hands. A consistent institutional approach did not, however, mean that the inquisition’s working practices were uniform across Italy. The threecornered arrangement allowed for a large degree of variation in the accommodation reached between papal inquisitors, bishops and the civil power. Since it was a decision for the civic authorities whether to admit the inquisition in the first place, modifications could be (and were) introduced as a precondition to adopting Ad extirpanda’s structure – as, for example, in Verona, discussed further in Chapter 8. Local grace-notes were not confined simply to the time allowed for appointment panels, but to issues such as the pursuit of heretics into (or from) a different jurisdiction. The broad framework of inquisition was the same, but even before taking account of differences induced by personalities and power struggles, the details of practice could vary.

64 Marginalia

in (Franciscan) MS Cas. 1730, fols. 95ra–rb, 101ra–va, note where Dominican powers were different, indicating exchange of information about each other’s privileges. 65 For the sequence of changes, see D’Amato, I Domenicani a Bologna, I, 198–9, for the Dominicans, and G. Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo documentorum ad usum inquisitoris haereticae pravitatis in Romandiola saec. XIII’, AFH 44 (1951), 71–86, for most Franciscan provinces. The record of inquisitors in Siena, the other Tuscan seat, is incomplete.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework

Financing the new structure: a flawed business model A critical issue which affected the development of the papal inquisition after Ad extirpanda was the lack of clear thought on how the new structure should be financed and the perverse incentives which might arise. Innocent IV’s intention seems to have been that everything should be funded from the confiscation of heretics’ property, supplemented by resources freely provided as needed by secular authorities, the mendicant orders and the diocesans. This was – for many reasons – a flawed business model. In his important article on the inquisition’s finances, which builds on the work of Padovani, Lorenzo Paolini traces from its Roman roots the concept, first, that all a heretic’s goods were forfeit; and second, that they should be divided in three parts. By the time of the 1231 constitutions of the Roman senator Anibaldo, adopted by Gregory IX in the decretal Excommunicamus of the same year, the convention became formalised as one part to those who had arrested the heretic, one to the secular tribunal which punished him (for Rome, Anibaldo himself), and the third for useful public works, such as the rebuilding of city walls. This was accompanied by a scale of fines for the lesser participants in heresy: credentes, fautores and receptatores. Under these arrangements, all the yield went to secular authorities. This was at least in part a recognition of the new expenses they incurred, as more communes provided in their statutes for a standing group of ‘twelve good men’, and established both prisons and more elaborate heretic-hunting systems.66 At the hands of Innocent IV, this schema suffered a major deformation in the financial interests of the Church. Ad extirpanda provided as before that the civil authority should be responsible for selling and dividing into three parts the property of heretics confiscated by the new officium inquisitionis. But there was a new twist. One part was to go to the commune itself, and one to the officials responsible for the arrest and seizure, as their salary. The third share of confiscations, however, instead of being devoted to public works, was to be held safely and spent, after discussion between the diocesan and the inquisitors, ‘to benefit the Faith and destroy heretics’ (‘in favorem fidei et ad hereticos extirpandos’).67 At least initially, much of this third portion was directed towards building and improving churches, such as Santa Reparata in Florence and San Lorenzo in Vicenza, during the great building boom of the late Duecento. The overall effect of the new dispensation was to place a good

66 Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, pp. 450–2. Paolini also sees the proliferation of fines on those in

any way connected with heretics as something essentially driven by the communes’ need to cover costs. 67 Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici. Parte prima’, p. 35, quotation from Ad extirpanda; pp. 31, 35, salary of officials. Since surviving accounts deal only with the expenses and receipts of the inquisitor’s close team, no information is available on the costs incurred by officiales in recovering and selling heretics’ property.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 two thirds of the value of confiscations in ecclesiastical rather than secular hands, counting the officium inquisitionis for this purpose as a Church body rather than a shared institution.68 In practice, however, much less than a third of the sums recovered actually reached the secular authority. Ad extirpanda is silent on quite how the expenses of the inquisitor himself, and of the officium inquisitionis as a whole, were to be met, apart from specifying a day-rate for travel outside the city boundaries by officials, to be paid by the commune. The natural supposition is either that necessary inquisition costs were top-sliced before the division of receipts into three, or else that they were met from the officials’ share (their ‘salary’) or from the final third, under the rubric of ‘destroying heretics’. None of these seems to have been the case. The best available evidence is from the 1302 papal inquiry into the behaviour of the inquisitors of Padua and Vicenza. This shows that in a settlement in Vicenza with the inquisitor Antonio da Padova, gross receipts from confiscations were divided in three, but that after meeting costs, the commune’s net share fell by a quarter. Thirty-nine per cent of its costs represented expenses on prisons, a charge consistently seen as the commune’s responsibility. By far the greater proportion of the amount deducted, sixty-one per cent, went to the inquisitor and his team in travel and living expenses and the purchase of two horses. In effect, therefore, the commune bore the bulk of necessary inquisition costs out of its one-third share. The precise model adopted in Vicenza may not have been followed everywhere, and it is difficult to reconcile with the accounts surviving from Dominican Lombardy and Franciscan Tuscany, which show inquisition costs going far beyond the summary description of those agreed in the Veneto. However, fragmentary information from cities such as Florence and Treviso certainly suggests that there also a proportion of inquisition salaries and expenses were met from the commune’s third. Innocent’s switch in financial focus from secular to ecclesiastical benefit was thus far more extensive than it seems at face value. 69 The design flaws in the financial model became more obvious as time passed. The system relied on a continuing stream of reasonably well-off heretics, with estates sufficient to fund not only the inquisition and communal operations, but also the pious works in which both invested expectations. Yet the more successful an inquisitor was in wiping out heresy, the harder it became to generate further funds. The problem was compounded as Cathars, from a relatively wide economic spectrum, were eliminated and replaced by poorer heretics. It is not surprising that in the second half of the thirteenth 68 Paolini,

‘Le finanze’, p. 459. from Collectoria 133, fol. 28r, partly published by d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 198–9; see also Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 472. Some notarial costs were top-sliced before the gross receipts were divided in three. The salaries of the notaries and servitors are presumably included, though not specifically mentioned.

69 Calculations

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Legal, organisational and financial framework century, as Paolini remarks, a high proportion of queries put to jurists for advice concerned finance in general and the treatment of heretics’ heirs in particular.70 Post-mortem condemnations and consequent disinheritance reached a peak at the end of the thirteenth century; after this, areas originally excluded from inquisition purview, such as usury and magic, then also became very tempting as a means of recruiting funds.71 Aside from the confiscations and multe (fines) set out in Ad extirpanda, the inquisition’s only other potential source of income was pious donations. These are attested among the Franciscans in the Marca Trevisana (March of Treviso) and the Romagna, where in 1298 an entrepreneurial inquisitor appointed a fund-raising procurator to drum up donations. In the March of Treviso, there are numerous examples of both donations and testamentary bequests, which feature in the Liber Contractuum as instances of inquisition mishandling. (Some bequests may not have been entirely voluntary, but represent attempts by those under suspicion to preserve at least some of their estates for their heirs.) In Lombardy, early Dominican inquisitors resorted to the more extreme tactic of getting papal approval to break wills and divert bequests made for other pious purposes. Even the most pro-inquisition popes were reluctant to make a habit of this, but it indicates the financial pressures.72 The incentive to generate money to fund both their operations and pious works potentially skewed inquisitors’ decisions, both about whom to pursue and the nature of penalties. The Franciscans had particular difficulty with the notion that their inquisitors – as mendicants sworn to poverty – could impose financial penalties from which they themselves would profit. In 1274, the order’s general chapter at Lyons recognised the element of moral hazard and fruitlessly attempted to ban multe.73 Nevertheless, the perception that

70 Paolini,

‘Le finanze’, pp. 467–8. the direction on action against usurers, see J. Chiffoleau, ‘L’inquisition franciscaine en Provence et dans l’ancien Royaume d’Arles (vers 1260–vers 1330)’, in Frati minori e inquisizione, 151–284 (p. 229). Usury and magic had been excluded from the inquisition’s field of activity by Alexander IV’s bull Quod super nonnullis of 1258 (to the Franciscans) and 1260 (to the Dominicans): see Maisonneuve, Études, p. 319. The pursuit of usurers was eventually permitted by the Clementines. 72 Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’, doc. 4, appointment of fund-raiser (1298). In Lombardy as early as 1255 the inquisitors Egidio da Parma and Raniero Sacconi of Piacenza obtained papal approval to overturn a charitable bequest for a hospital and divert the funds to the building of a Dominican convent in Lodi ‘ob impugnandam hereticam pravitatem, que dicitur in illis partibus pullulare’ (‘to fight heretical depravity, which is said to swarm like flies in those parts’). This was followed by several other similar attempts: AGOP, XIV, Liber GGG/II, fols. 391rv. For misuse of donations in the Marca Trevisana, see Rigon’s introduction to Bonato, Liber Contractuum, pp. xxx–xxxii; and d’Alatri, ‘Due inchieste’, docs. 6–7, for dissipation of bequest by Agnese di Carrara, whose estate was lent out at interest, including to a tavern keeper. 73 D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 21. 71 For

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 inquisitors acted from financial rather than religious motives did much to lose them popular support, and eventually Clement V took action at the Council of Vienne in 1311, ordering excommunication for those who imposed money fines inappropriately, and exhorting them not to extort money under the guise of office. A decade or so later, Bernard Gui’s description of the ideal inquisitor encapsulated the need to avoid suspicions of cupidity.74 However, as in many fields, papal edicts were not matched by executive control. The confiscation model of financing fell short in other ways. It did not provide for an inquisitor’s start-up costs in a new location or for initial investigative work. Smoking out heretics in rural and remote areas could take years, during which work still had to be funded. Even if a suspect’s goods were declared forfeit immediately on arrest, the recovery and sale of assets was not a quick process, since it involved both the disposal of real property and the pursuit of business investments and debts.75 Recognising these genuine issues for new inquisitors, Alexander IV permitted Franciscan inquisitors to sell heretics’ goods themselves, rather than wait for the podestà to do it in the timescale prescribed by Ad extirpanda. The easement was well meant, but in fact it paved the way for inquisitors and inquisition officials to take on ever more of the sale of goods, invading the commune’s area of responsibility far more widely than was necessary and changing the balance of relationships.76 For thirty years after Ad extirpanda, changes nibbled at the edges of the nominal financial regime. There were increasing efforts (discussed in Chapter 7 below) to improve inquisitors’ accountability – primarily to their orders rather than their secular partners. Concern about possible mishandling of funds fully broke surface in 1288, with Nicholas IV’s bull Super extirpatione, which provided that the fruits of all confiscations and multe should be deposited with a trusted person selected jointly by the bishop and the inquisitor, and spent only with the bishop’s agreement. Moreover, the inquisitor should present his income and expense accounts to the bishop. No evidence survives of how fully this provision was implemented, and in fact Super extirpatione was overtaken in Lombardy in 1304 by Benedict XI’s

74 For

Clement’s provisions, see Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 464. For popular belief that condemnations were finance-driven, see A. Thompson, ‘Lay versus Clerical Perceptions of Heresy: Protests against the Inquisition in Bologna, 1299’, in Praedicatores, 701–30 (pp. 728–9). He calculates that in the 1299 riots, one in five of the 320 rioters who surrendered themselves to the inquisition attributed a financial motive to the inquisitor’s pursuit of the two executed Cathars. For Gui citation, see above, p. 10. 75 The unearthing of a group of heretics in Lu and San Salvatore, near Asti in the March of Genoa, took seventeen visits by spies and nuncii across twenty-seven months of investigation to yield arrests: Collectoria 133, fols. 70r–3v (Tommaso da Gorzano). 76 Maisonneuve, Études, pp. 322–3; Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 461.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework letter Ex eo quod, removing episcopal oversight and directing accounting to the papal Camera.77 Even before then, by 1295, Boniface VIII had begun to summon inquisitors to present accounts to the papacy.78 The reign of Boniface VIII has been seen, with some justification, as a tipping point in attitudes towards inquisition financing. Boniface not only took a tougher line on standards – we have seen him limiting the despoliation of heretics’ descendants – but at audit, and notwithstanding the provisions of Ad extirpanda, he required inquisitors to surrender all their surpluses to the Camera. This had two effects. On the one hand, inquisitors sought ways to protect working capital from the auditors’ clutches. On the other, fraud or concealment of revenues became, not just grievances between secular authority and inquisitor, but crimes against the Church, justifying the severe sentences of excommunication and imprisonment imposed on the errant Veneto inquisitors: ‘Until Boniface VIII, absolute discretion in economic and financial management was guaranteed; afterwards, the manuals warn of the risks and penalties facing those who plot extortion and blackmail.’79 From this point on, scholarly discussion of the Italian inquisition in the fourteenth century has been dominated by issues of financial malfeasance. This is mainly because of the nature of the surviving source material, but there are too many detailed accusations of widespread corruption and ‘luxury’ against inquisitors to discount completely the claims of unnecessary and excessive spending. Some scholars have however suggested that the apparently huge spending in inquisitors’ accounts on items such as clothing, food and stationery reflects not corruption but a rational response to tightening audit demands. Under this argument, high expenses on innocuous items were in fact a fiction to conceal a capital reserve from the auditors and protect working funds. This rebuts the charge of corruption only by convicting inquisitors of deceit on a grand scale.80 With the available evidence, it is impossible to disentangle truth from falsehood: both positions could co-exist in the same set of accounts.

77 Bronzino,

‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici. Parte seconda’, pp. 306–8; d’Alatri, ‘Il vescovo’, pp. 113–25 (p. 122). Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 463, discusses the treatment of Super extirpatione by the De officio of c.1325. As a privilegium rather than a papal letter, Super extirpatione seems to have been recognised as the senior authority into the 1320s. 78 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 107–9, describes the early papal accounting demands (1295) on Lanfranco da Bergamo, inquisitor of Pavia. 79 Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, pp. 466–7: ‘fino a Bonifacio VIII, l’assoluta discrezionalità nella gestione economica-finanziaria viene garantita; dopo, i manuali avvertono dei rischi e delle pene cui saranno sottoposti se compiranno estorsioni e concussioni’. 80 Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, pp. 478–9, discusses the pattern of spending versus receipts, with spending rising and receipts falling the longer an inquisitor remained in office. He is convinced that the figures are manipulated, but there are other possible reasons for such a pattern.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 What is certainly clear is that by the early decades of the Trecento, the tripartite division of proceeds set out in Ad extirpanda had in practice very largely broken down, to be replaced by a much more inchoate and less transparent structure. In 1308, the inquiry into the activities of inquisitors in the March of Treviso noted with a faint air of surprise that the practice in the area was to divide the proceeds of condemnations in three, according to the papal constitutions, with one part going to the relevant commune, one to the officiales working on the case and the third to the office itself. Writing in about 1330, Zanchino Ugolini claims that the tripartite division had fallen into desuetude and that inquisitors in the Marche now maintained that half the proceeds of confiscations should go to the Church and half to meet the costs of the inquisition itself (‘quod ipsa Romana Ecclesia vult quod dimidia dictorum bonorum designetur suae camerae et alia dimidia remaneat officio Inquisitionis pro incumbentibus tolerandis’). Elsewhere, it was argued that inquisitors should keep all the goods they themselves confiscated, with only those confiscated by the commune being subject to a three-way division. The scene was set for confrontations between city and inquisitor, quite unlike the uneasy acceptance of respective roles after 1252.81

Division of responsibilities between the mendicant orders A final element of the organisation of inquisition in Italy which needs to be touched on was its geographical partition between Dominicans and Franciscans. Before 1254, responsibility had lain almost wholly with the Order of Preachers, although there is some evidence of Friars Minor in secondary roles. In spring 1254, Innocent IV took the decision to split responsibility for the Italian inquisition regionally between the two orders. It is not entirely clear what lay behind this.82 The Dominicans kept Lombardy, which ran across northern Italy from the French Alps and the March of Genoa as far

81 D’Alatri,

‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 178, doc. 23, statement on distribution; Zanchino Ugolini, ‘Tractatus de haereticis’, ed. C. Campeggi (Rome, 1568), p. 203; Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 243–53 for a very thorough discussion. 82 For a general discussion of the Franciscan entry into inquisition, see d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana. R. Michetti, ‘Frati minori, papato e inquisizione a Roma e nel Patrimonium beati Petri (XIII sec): tra vocazione universale e dimensione territoriale’, in Frati minori e inquisizione, pp. 25–79, argues convincingly (pp. 44–50) that the pope’s actions should be seen as part of a wider attempt to normalise the Franciscan position within the Church, rather than as specifically oriented towards their inclusion within the inquisition. Michetti gives extensive recent bibliography. H. J. Grieco, ‘Franciscan Inquisition and Mendicant Rivalry in Mid-thirteenthcentury Marseille’, Journal of Medieval History 34 (2008), 275–90, buttresses Michetti’s argument by pointing to the sensitive position of Franciscan inquisitors in Marseilles (‘a tightrope of loyalties’) and questioning their suitability for the task.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework as Bologna. The Franciscans, assuming a primary role for the first time, took responsibility for the Marca Trevisana and the Veneto, the patriarchate of Aquileia (other than its territories in Lombardy), Romagna, Umbria and the March of Ancona, Tuscany, the Provincia Romana, Rome itself and Lazio. These territorial divisions broadly persisted until 1301–03, when the scandalhit Franciscans were for a number of years stripped of responsibility for the cities and dioceses of Padua and Vicenza. Together with Friuli, these cities were incorporated in a new Dominican province of lower Lombardy. Covering Bologna, Ferrara and Modena as well as the new territories, the creation of Lombardia inferior – much smaller than its sister-province – eased the administrative burden on the hard-pressed prior-provincial, but created Dominican inquisition territories very different in geography, character and wealth.83 The actual process of transition from Dominicans to Franciscans in 1254 is not visible in surviving sources. The sudden imposition of a new duty, somewhat removed from their normal activity, must have been hard for the Friars Minor to accommodate, and it seems inherently likely that there was disruption and delay as Dominicans withdrew, and untried Franciscans moved in. The extent of dislocation is hard to gauge, because so little information is available about inquisitors’ activities in Italy before 1254.84 Peter of Verona in the late 1230s and 1240s, and Ruggero Calcagni in 1244–45, conducted well-known missions in Lombardy and Florence, but otherwise we have a very limited picture of the degree to which early inquisitors were actually present in different parts of their huge territories. Letters from successive popes urging provincials to nominate suitable friars as inquisitors, both before and after 1254, imply that inquisitorial posts went unfilled in this period, possibly even into the 1260s: newly appointed Franciscans may therefore have filled a void rather than displaced an existing inquisitor. Using the evidence of the Siena city statutes of 1262, which mention both orders even-handedly, Severino has argued that the Dominicans continued to be involved in inquisition in the city even after it became a Franciscan responsibility: in other words, that there was a phased transition until the Friars Minor could get inquisitors in place. Although this would make sense to a modern eye, it is more likely that the provisions noted by Severino derive from arrangements in Ad extirpanda and earlier for consultation on heresy cases with both orders, rather than a prudent civic nod to an expected

83 Maisonneuve,

Études, p. 317, notes that Innocent’s bull Licet ex omnibus of 30 May 1254 also gives the Franciscans Campania. Further south and under Charles I of Anjou, it was the Dominicans who exercised inquisitorial office in the Regno. There were several internal reorganisations of the Franciscan territories as a result of their predilection for creating new and much smaller administrative provinces. 84 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, has assembled fine detail for Milan, less so for other parts of the Lombard province.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 transitional arrangement. Certainly the papacy did not allow freelance arrangements between the orders, when they came to its attention.85 What does seem clear is that throughout the 1250s and 1260s, many areas did not have a regular inquisitorial presence. Insofar as inquisition against heresy actually took place, it continued to be – as in the early Duecento – a function of the bishops, of mendicant convents and of civil authorities.

Conclusion This chapter has summarised over a century of legal and financial development, to provide context for the more detailed examination, in following chapters, of how inquisition worked on the ground. Three points should be highlighted. Firstly, despite attempts by inquisitors to gain dominance over their partners, the pursuit of heresy in Italy was envisaged as – and remained – a joint function between bishop, inquisitor and civic authority. It was not reserved to the papal inquisitor alone, and the practical importance of the roles of both civic authority and bishop needs to be emphasised, notwithstanding either the pressures arising from Innocent’s financial settlement or the see-sawing detail of responsibilities between inquisitor and bishop. Secondly, the Ad extirpanda arrangements implied a larger continuing role for local convents of the Dominican and Franciscan orders than is commonly acknowledged. Under Alexander IV’s Catholice fidei negotium, papal inquisitors were not answerable to superiors in their order in matters of their office. But convents locally had a vital connection with inquisition business. Senior friars of both orders (nominated by the local prior or guardian) were involved in the selection of the inquisitor’s staff, in the sindication process and (as in Siena) through civic statutory provisions. Inquisitors relied on their orders to provide manpower; priors or guardians often acted as their vicars, and were a backstop during vacancies. There was close engagement with the order in many aspects of the inquisitor’s discharge of his function. Thirdly, Richard Kieckhefer (who dismisses Ad extirpanda in half a sentence) is mistaken in claiming that ‘the inquisition’ as an organised concept did not exist in the middle ages. He cites, but dismisses, Max Weber’s criterion for an institution: whether there was ‘methodical provision […] for the regular

85 Severino,

‘Eresia a Siena’, pp. 903–4: ‘Sembra però che a Siena, diversamente dalle altre città dell’Italia centrale, i domenicani avessero mantenuto qualche competenza negli affari dell’inquisizione anche dopo il 1254.’ (‘It seems that in Siena after 1254, unlike in other cities of central Italy, the Dominicans retained some authority in the affairs of the inquisition.’) D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 16 n. 44, notes that when in 1291 the Franciscan Bonagiunta da Mantova and two Dominicans carved up responsibility for Verona between them, the Dominicans were promptly sent packing by Nicholas IV.

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Legal, organisational and financial framework and continuous fulfilment’ of bureaucratic functions.86 The arrangements set out in Ad extirpanda appear on paper to meet that requirement by linking provision for the pursuit of heresy not to the transient inquisitor, but to the continuing obligation placed on the podestà, who swears on behalf of all his successors. There were uneven foundations in different cities but this does not diminish the method in the provision. Ad extirpanda also provides for the appointment of inquisition staff under a continuing set of arrangements by a ‘supervising authority’ (a key issue in Kieckhefer’s eyes). Their responsibility to pursue heresy was independent of the inquisitor’s own appointment: they were not, as he would have it, ‘mere adjuncts to the execution of the inquisitor’s personal function rather than members of a lasting institutional structure’.87 In terms of the real development of an institution, the question is what actually happened in practice. The following chapters start to open up this topic.

86 Kieckhefer, 87 Ibid.,

p. 55.

‘Personal Jurisdiction’, pp. 38–9.

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2 Starting work: the practicalities

This chapter begins to examine in more detail how the inquisition in Italy actually functioned, by looking at a number of the practical considerations which shaped an inquisitor’s life. In order to give shape to disparate subjects, the chapter is organised broadly to follow the experiences of an inquisitor newly taking up post in the decades after the promulgation of Ad extirpanda in 1252, and the immediate issues he would have faced. How did he demonstrate his bona fides and acquire the practical support – staff and accommodation – needed to do his work? What were the social and physical circumstances in which he exercised his role? How did he finance his work? Where did he turn if he needed support and advice? Answers to these questions illuminate from several angles the constraints on the inquisitor’s practical and legal independence, and the growth of the inquisition as a bureaucratic entity. Chapter 1 noted that the structure mandated by Ad extirpanda was not only built on uneven local foundations but also took root at different times in different places, as inquisitors were appointed, the communes agreed to accept them, and more distant towns were eventually reached. It is simplistic to think of the inquisition in Italy as something which after 1252 (and the disruption of the 1254 split of responsibilities) progressed steadily and evenly along a common path of development. There are many signs of convergence of practice, and correspondingly of a growing organisational identity, but not complete uniformity either within or between orders. One reason for inconsistent development was that an inquisitor’s existence could be somewhat precarious well into the fourteenth century. This was not so much a question of money and other resources, but of his real freedom to do his work uninterrupted. Even the process of appointment by provincials under delegated authority was frequently disrupted by papal demands and interventions. Other calls on inquisitors’ attention came from the mendicant orders themselves. Both inquisitors and their support arrangements had thus to be flexible. In response to such pressures, however, we see inquisitors acting in concert, supporting each other and helping each other out. These are characteristics of an emerging institutional personality, not of individuals acting separately under purely personal remits. 58

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Starting work

Appointment, removal and term of office Many of the experiences of a newly arriving inquisitor were dictated by the circumstances of his appointment. There were two aspects to this question, one practical and one (in the wide sense) political. First, did he take over seamlessly from a predecessor in the same location, inheriting a functioning set of support arrangements and a full team of staff? What if there had been an interregnum, or he was the first in a particular post? Even many decades after the inquisition came fully into being, inquisitors could not bank on a smooth entry to office. There were gaps in tenure, some cities were only intermittent inquisition seats, and the political upheavals of medieval Italy also forced inquisitors away from home base, sometimes for prolonged periods. The inquisitors of Milan and Florence were particularly likely to find access to their normal seats disrupted. The second set of issues surrounded who appointed the inquisitor, why, and for how long. From as early as 1234, responsibility for inquisitors’ appointment and removal had technically been delegated to the Dominican provincial in Lombardy, and by May 1252, the power was expanded and clarified to include appointment, substitution and removal. However, this did not mean the papacy stepped back from close involvement with inquisitors’ work. During 1251, for instance, Innocent IV ordered five Dominicans on inquisition missions to Venice, Cremona and Milan and instructed the provincial to mount other missions in both Lombardy and the Romagna.1 It was not until 1254 that provincials were able to decide inquisition seats for themselves. In Rome and other parts of the pope’s temporal dominions, direct papal intervention in appointments and activities was frequent throughout the thirteenth century, as were close personal connections between popes and some (but not all) inquisitors.2 Under John XXII, there was a resurgence of direct appointments, bypassing the provincial, mainly because of his suspicions about Franciscan beliefs. Papal intervention sometimes led to unseemly clashes of authority where pope and provincial both instituted an inquisitor for the same place.3

1 Bulls

delegating appointment powers were issued and reissued to different orders and provinces of Italy at different times, most commonly in versions of Licet ex omnibus. For Innocent IV’s nominations in Italy in 1251, see Maisonneuve, Études, pp. 308–9. 2 Successive popes’ close relationships with the Franciscan inquisitors Andrea da Todi (especially) and Benvenuto da Orvieto are explored in papers by D. Solvi, ‘Inquisizione e frati Minori a Orvieto’, and R. Parmeggiani, ‘Inquisizione e frati Minori in Romagna, Umbria e Marche nel Duecento’, both in Frati minori e inquisizione, pp. 81–111 and 113–50. The articles cover a similar timespan from different geographical and scholarly angles. Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, points repeatedly to the ‘special relationship’ enjoyed by the ex-Cathar heresiarch Raniero Sacconi with more than one pope. 3 As with the appointment of Simone da Spoleto in 1333, discussed on p. 64.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 In the mid-thirteenth century, the frequent repetition by successive popes of their exhortation to the provincials to appoint inquisitors and supply them with aides (socii) suggests that not all provincials acted as promptly or consistently to institute inquisitors as the papacy would have liked. Provincials might have a different view of priorities, or inadequate suitable manpower after taking account of the other needs of their expanding orders. But it is reasonable to say that, by the last quarter of the century, direct papal appointment was rare in Italy, and the process of appointment by provincials under delegated authority had become normalised. Of the seventeen inquisitors whose financial accounts we possess between 1292 and 1334, all were appointed – and, as far as we know, selected – by the relevant provincial. In his delegation of authority to the Franciscan minister-provincial in Tuscany in 1265, Clement IV was quite explicit. The minister had the power both to appoint and to remove inquisitors in the listed dioceses: ‘inquisitores […] in Pisana, Lucensi, Lunensi, Pistoriensi, Florentina, Fesulana, Clusina, Senensi, Vulterrensi, Grossetana et Massana diocesibus instituere et eos removere.’4 However, successive thirteenth-century popes vacillated over whether the provincials’ power of appointment really did include the right of removal, and in what circumstances. Inquisitors claimed their independence would be threatened if they could be summarily dismissed. It was argued they should lose office only for particular misbehaviours, such as extortion, prosecuting (or not prosecuting) a suspect for favours, or seizing property which already belonged to the Church. (Examples exist, however, of inquisitors remaining in post despite allegations of all these.) Not until the reign of Boniface VIII, sixty years after the first delegation of appointment, was the provincials’ ability to remove or replace inquisitors definitively settled. Arguments over this point were, however, largely hypothetical. In Italy, the hierarchy of the mendicant orders rarely if ever acted to remove inquisitors for cause, even when begged to do so.5 On the other hand, when incumbents were needed for another post within the order, they were whisked away swiftly and the order’s needs were given priority, regardless of any problems for the office of inquisition. Thus Ruggiero da Petriolo, at Bologna, served barely eighteen months in 1311–12 before being translated to become priorprovincial, even though he succeeded another inquisitor (Niccolò da Ripa

4 MS

Cas 1730, fols. 128va–9ra (Licet ex omnibus); also Potthast 19,416. the 1330s, the guardian of the Prato convent pleaded with the minister-provincial (Pietro da L’Aquila) to remove Mino da San Quirico as inquisitor of Florence, because he was bringing the order into disrepute and inciting hostility against all Franciscans. Similar complaints arose during Mino’s previous post as inquisitor in Siena. Pietro did nothing. See Collectoria 251, fol. 83r (testimony in 1334). A similarly dusty answer was received in Treviso’s 1304 complaint against fra Aiulfo: Biscaro, ‘Marca Trevisana’, pp. 166–8; Rigon, introduction to Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, p. xxix.

5 In

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Starting work Transone) who had departed in disorder after a similarly brief tenure.6 Popes themselves also normally declined to remove inquisitors when complaints were made, even when embarrassed by their behaviour.7 They acted only in cases of gross financial abuse affecting the Church (as with the inquisitors of Padua and Vicenza in 1302), or when their own authority seemed to be challenged, for example by the luckless Lorenzo d’Ancona in 1335, discussed below. Removal was not necessarily permanent, however. Boninsegna da Trento, imprisoned by Boniface VIII in 1302, was both swiftly released and his excommunication lifted when missing funds reappeared; an early source claims he returned to inquisitorial duties.8 Although he could feel reasonably safe against arbitrary removal, a newly appointed inquisitor could never be completely sure how long he had in post. Among Dominican inquisitors in upper Lombardy, the fashion was for lengthy appointments. Lanfranco da Bergamo, inquisitor of Pavia, served thirteen years in one post, from 1292 to 1305. His close contemporary Tommaso da Gorzano, inquisitor of the March of Genoa, served eight. Francesco da Pocapaglia, inquisitor of Piedmont, had already been in post for some years when his accounts begin in 1307, and continued for another nine years.9 By contrast, their colleagues in the smaller province of lower Lombardy, instituted in 1303, often had rather short terms. The differences 6 Collectoria

133, fols. 163v–8r for Ruggiero’s term of office; Niccolò as Ruggiero’s predecessor, fol. 164v; Niccolò’s fragmentary account, fol.168v. 7 In 1263, Urban IV insisted to the enraged Doge and council of Venice that he could not remove the Franciscan Florasio da Vicenza, inquisitor in the Marca Trevisana. After first being prevented from excommunicating the entire Venetian governing body for failing to incorporate anti-heretic constitutions in their statutes, Florasio denounced them as fautors of heresy because of diplomatic contacts with the Ghibelline tyrant, Oberto Pelavicini. Urban claimed Florasio (possibly his chaplain) had acted through zelum fidei non superbiam (‘zeal for the faith, not arrogance’). See ASVen, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 91/III, docs. 23, 28; da Milano, ‘Inquisizione a Venezia’, pp. 191–4 and notes. However, ways were found by the Curia to resolve such problems discreetly. D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 144, says Florasio voluntarily resigned his post soon after this incident and returned to Rome, whilst remaining in posts close to the inquisition. Da Milano (p. 194 n. 1) has him as inquisitor in Rieti. In 1276 he returned to the Veneto as guardian of the Franciscan convent in Verona, where he was instrumental in getting the city to accept anti-heretic constitutions: M. d’Alatri, ‘Una sentenza dell’inquisitore fra Filippo da Mantova (1287)’, in Eretici e inquisitori, I, 219–22. More details on Florasio’s career are in G. W. Clement, A Franciscan Inquisitor’s Manual and its Compositional Context: “Codex Casanatensis” 1730 (Fordham NY, 2013), pp. 14–15, though it is possible there may be a homonym. 8 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 159; ‘Due inchieste’, p. 240, doc. 17. 9 Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’ pp. 448, 528, incorrectly has Tommaso da Gorzano serving twice (1292–94 and 1300–05). Benedetti repeats the misreading. Tommaso’s hard-to-read accounts (Collectoria 133, fols. 70r–83r) show a single continuous period in office from October 1297 to July 1305. He was, however, almost certainly an inquisitor elsewhere before and after his Genoa post.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 in length of tenure may point to different views about the career track of inquisitors, or simply reflect the differing pressures on those operating in mountainous terrain and among small towns versus their colleagues based in the urbanised lowlands of Emilia-Romagna. The toilsome life of inquisitors in western Piedmont must have required a different type of person, with more local knowledge, than their fellows further east. Here, the post of inquisitor may have been seen as a transitional placement, handed around within the provincial inner circle based at the Dominican headquarters in Bologna. Both in Tuscany and the Veneto/Marca Trevisana, Franciscan inquisitors tended to have relatively short periods of office in a single place, though they often went through a recycling of roles which kept them close to the inquisition for many years, even if their formal tenure had ended. Franciscan convention was for all office-holders, including inquisitors, to place their office at the minister’s disposal at each provincial chapter (though this did not necessarily mean they served only a year in any one post). Michael of Cesena established in 1320 that the normal period of office for a Franciscan inquisitor was a maximum of five years, reduced to two in 1354. In the 1370s, however, a series of inquisitorial appointments for Tuscany were made for a three-year term, and not by the minister-provincial but by the cardinal-protector or the cardinal vicar-general of the Friars Minor.10 Before 1320, Fussenegger and d’Alatri both suggest that there was no constraint on the period served.11

Appointment by special commission The new inquisitor might in principle be liberated from interference by his superiors, but the papacy freely exercised the power to direct him. The intervention could extend all the way from an order to pursue a particular local matter which had caught the pope’s attention, to parachuting in a special inquisitor, overriding normal appointment processes. Such interventions could cause a good deal of upheaval to the inquisitor’s normal work. In January 1301, Boniface VIII dragged Guido Capello, the inquisitor of Bologna, away from the pursuit of the Apostle Dolcino of Novara, with orders to settle the long-running conflict in Ferrara between commune, cathedral canons and inquisition over whether Armanno Pungilupo should be canonised or 10 B.

Bughetti, ‘Documenta quaedam spectantia ad sacram Inquisitionem et ad schisma Ordinis in provincia praesertim Tuscie circa finem saec. XIV’, AFH 9 (1916), 347–83 (pp. 350–5). These appointments may be atypical, given the political turmoil in order and papacy at the time. 11 The convention was enshrined in the 1292 general statutes issued in Paris, following an earlier agreement in 1282: ‘Statuta generalia Ordinis edita in Capitulis generalibus celebratis Narbonae an.1260, Assisii an. 1279 atque Parisiis an. 1292. Editio critica et synoptica’, ed. M. Bihl, AFH 34 (1941), 13–94, 284–358 (p. 77); Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’, p. 73; d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 24 n. 76.

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Starting work condemned as a heretic. Though Ferrara was in Guido’s inquisitorial territory, the task meant he had to step aside from his main duty for several months, leaving his co-inquisitor, Manfredo da Parma, to hunt the Dolcinists.12 In 1279, we find Nicholas III instructing Alessio da Mantova to open a process against the bishop of Padua for obstructing the inquisition, while in 1285 Honorius IV extended the territorial remit of the Tuscan inquisition to allow them to pursue heretics he believed had fled to Sardinia. This was not welcomed: in the Tuscan inquisition’s manual, the extension is sidelined with an unbelieving exclamation mark – in Sardinea!13 A number of special appointments outside the normal chain of command were made by different popes, sometimes with extra powers. In 1297, Boniface VIII named the Franciscan Matteo da Chieti (recently returned from diplomatic service in the East) as special inquisitor against the fraticelli and bizochi in the Abruzzo and March of Ancona. In this case, Matteo seems to have slid gently into a regular inquisition office. However, in June 1300, Boniface ordered him to go beyond normal inquisition business and expel usurers and Jews from his territory.14 Some years later, in 1317, the Dominican Barnaba da Vercelli (twice prior-provincial of Lombardy and later master-general of the order) was appointed as ‘inquisitor to destroy the Waldensians’. He nominally occupied a normal post in succession to Francesco da Pocapaglia, but it is clear that his colleagues regarded him as being on a special mission, without the usual sources of support. In fact, they clubbed together to provide him with resources.15 12 Muratori,

‘Pungilupo’; G. Zanella, ‘Itinerari ereticali: Patari e Catari tra Rimini e Verona’ and ‘Armanno Pungilupo, eretico quotidiano’, both in Zanella, Hereticalia: Temi e discussioni (Spoleto, 1995), pp. 67–118 and 3–14; J. Larmon Peterson, ‘The Politics of Sanctity in Thirteenth-century Ferrara’, Traditio 63 (2008), 307–26. Zanella’s documentary appendices on Armanno Pungilupo are included only in Itinerari ereticali: Patari e Catari tra Rimini e Verona, Istituto storico italiano per il Medio Evo: Studi storici 153 (Rome, 1986). 13 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 168–9, for Alessio da Mantova. Many special instructions related to proceedings against bishops. For the extension of Tuscan inquisitors’ powers to Sardinia: MS Cas 1730, fols. 129rb–30ra; also Potthast 22,307 (Sane didicimus). 14 L. Amabile, Il Santo Officio della Inquisizione in Napoli (Città di Castello, 1892), p. 62. D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 146 n. 51, notes that Matteo had been minister-provincial in Umbria. In 1291 Nicholas IV sent him with wide powers to negotiate alliances with ‘the princes of the Orient’ for the recovery of the Holy Land. Evidently he was a person in whom several popes reposed trust. D’Alatri defines his inquisitorial province as Umbria (the Provincia di S. Francesco). See also Parmeggiani, ‘Inquisizione in Romagna’, p. 122 and (for the direction on action against usurers), Chiffoleau, ‘L’inquisition franciscaine en Provence’, p. 229. Also Maisonneuve, Études, p. 319; Potthast 17,382; 17,436; 17,745. 15 Collectoria 133, fol. 188r, Barnaba as Francesco’s successor in western Piedmont, 1316; fol. 213r (accounts of Giovanni da Fontana, 1317–18), subvention to ‘fratri Barnabe inquisitori ad destruendum sectam valdensium’, (‘brother Barnabas,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 John XXII intervened extensively to impose special inquisitors, partly to pursue his political agenda against secular rulers such as the Visconti, and partly to hunt down the Spirituals. D’Alatri argues that he felt he could not trust inquisitors appointed by the Franciscan ministers-provincial.16 Thus in 1319 Michel LeMoine, a French Franciscan of extreme views (and who had previously been stripped of inquisition office in Languedoc because of his savagery towards the Spirituals) was given special papal authority to pursue them in Tuscany. The commission was sufficiently unusual for it to be recorded in the Florence inquisition’s manual of law and procedure, though it is unclear whether LeMoine actually visited Italy.17 In 1333 John appointed Simone da Spoleto as inquisitor in the Provincia Romana, also with a remit to act against the Spirituals. However, the ministerprovincial had already installed his own appointee, who refused to give way. John was therefore obliged to reiterate in February 1334 that Simone was the sole valid inquisitor in the Provincia Romana, overruling the provincial.18 Benedict XII likewise intervened to appoint his own inquisitors in the Marche and around Rome, where popes had a special interest in appointing nominees who would pursue their secular agenda by enforcing obedience in the papal territory of the Duchy of Spoleto and the Patrimony of St. Peter. Successive popes plainly took the view that inquisitors they appointed by special commission took precedence over ordinary inquisitors appointed by provincials under delegated powers. The position was not so clear to the

inquisitor for destroying the Waldensian sect’). Giovanni also gave him horses. In 1322–23, Barnaba led the inquisition team in Milan during the prosecution of the Visconti. L. Besozzi, ‘I processi canonici contro Galeazzo Visconti’, ASL 10th s. 6 (1981), 235–45 (p. 237) summarises his career. 16 M. d’Alatri, ‘Fraticellismo e Inquisizione’, in Eretici e inquisitori, I, 193–217 (pp. 210–17). 17 L. Oliger, ‘Alcuni documenti’, doc. 5, edits and discusses Michel’s letter to the Tuscan minister, in which he described himself as ‘ex speciali commissione […] inquisitor et iudex contra quosdam pseudofratres’ (‘by special commission, inquisitor and judge against certain so-called friars’). For John XXII’s bull of November 1317, Super omnia desiderabilia, see MS Cas 1730, fols. 272ra–3va. J.-M. Vidal, Bullaire de l’Inquisition française au XIVe siècle (Paris, 1913), pp. 35, 38, publishes both the bull and LeMoine’s letter to the Tuscan provincial. For LeMoine’s biography, A. M. Ini, ‘Nuovi documenti sugli Spirituali di Toscana’, AFH 66 (1973), 305–77 (p. 359, doc. 45 and n. 1). 18 R. Mosti, ‘L’eresia dei “fraticelli” nel territorio di Tivoli’, Atti e Memorie della Società Tiburtina di Storia e d’Arte 38 (1965), 41–111, for Simone’s appointment (p. 59) and papal confirmation (p. 63): ‘quidam fratres tui ordinis minorum, asserentes se per dilectum filium ministrum provincialem fratrum ordinis predicti eiusdem provincie inquisitores dicte pravitatis in memorata provincia deputatos, te in ipsius executione officii satagunt impedire’. (‘Certain brothers of your order of Minors, declaring themselves appointed inquisitors of [heretical] depravity in that province by our beloved son, the minister-provincial of your said order, are busying themselves to obstruct you in the execution of your office.’)

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Starting work inquisitors themselves. An early instance appears in the protracted affair of Pagano da Pietrasanta, a well-connected knightly member of the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, who was pursued by Dominican Lombard inquisitors from 1289 to 1301. After several appeals, papal judges were appointed, but overruled and dismissed by the inquisitor Tommaso da Como. When Boniface VIII heard of this, he promptly suspended Tommaso from office, and added that no one should be appointed to the relevant office in the meantime, without special papal licence. The affair rippled out to encompass the legitimacy of the whole Milan office and its actions against others. In the Marche in 1335, Lorenzo d’Ancona annulled a sentence originally imposed on the lords of Osimo in 1321 by an inquisitor appointed by John XXII. Final settlement had been made in this long drawn-out and essentially political affair only in 1333, but Lorenzo uncovered evidence that threw doubt on the veracity of the original denunciation. An angry Benedict XII launched processes against Lorenzo for exceeding his authority, required him to appear before an investigative commission in Avignon to justify himself, and instructed that he be stripped of all powers and offices in his order, including the right to preach. Lorenzo seems to have decided that his Church career was over, and Iocco speculates that he ended as one of the six Franciscans martyred in Peking in 1340.19 These are only a selection of incidents. They point to the conclusion that inquisitors in Italy were far from having complete impunity in their office, especially where those accused had influential friends. Those operating in the papal states and under the eye of the pope were particularly vulnerable to intervention, even when the inquisition had been firmly established for decades and long after the removal to Avignon. As the case of Lorenzo d’Ancona shows, attempts to act independently and uprightly could sometimes attract heavier censure than venality or corruption. Although they usually occupied their offices without contest, inquisitors in our period must nevertheless always have been looking over their shoulder to the Curia.

Instruments and seals of office The mechanics of inquisitorial appointment are not well documented. Decisions about who to post where were probably taken during provincial

19 For

a detailed study of the Pietrasanta affair, see Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 258–75. For the lengthy papal vendetta against the lords of Osimo and Lorenzo’s intervention: Fumi, ‘Eretici e ribelli nell’Umbria’, BSPU III (1897), 257–85 and 429–89 (mainly); M. d’Alatri, ‘Gli idolatri recanesi secondo un rotolo Vaticano del 1320’ in Eretici e inquisitori, II, pp. 9–40 (pp. 11–13). Part of the process against Lorenzo d’Ancona is published by Iocco, ‘Un inquisitore inquisito’, pp. 11–65 (pp. 25–6 for Lorenzo’s fate). Parent, ‘L’annulation d’une sentence’, pp. 191–241, publishes further material, with a good bibliography on aspects of this affair.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 chapters, when other changes in office were decided, but were not recorded as part of the order’s administrative business, probably because the apostolic delegation of appointment lay personally with the provincial prior or minister. It may have been partly to provide a suitable forum to discuss staffing matters that in 1273 the Dominican Lombard province sought to establish a separate annual meeting of all inquisitors with the prior-provincial.20 Since 1265 provincials had been enjoined to consult discreet brothers about the selection of inquisitors, and almost all the handful of surviving instruments of appointment assert that this requirement had been fulfilled.21 There is no way of knowing how meaningful the discussion was. Of five Franciscan appointment letters in our period, four relate to actual appointments. The fifth is a template contained in an inquisition manual from the Marche, which found its way to the convent of Bosco ai Frati. The earliest example, for Tuscany in 1281, appoints an inquisitor to replace one who died in office; others in 1310 and 1319 are for the area of the Veneto around Padua, the so-called provincia del Santo; and in 1321 for Umbria. This last was certainly executed during the provincial chapter, if not formally as part of it.22 All incorporate the relevant text of Clement IV’s Licet ex omnibus, rehearsing the provincial’s delegated authority and the boundaries of the appropriate province. However, there are appreciable differences in form. The two Veneto instruments are cast as letters to all the ecclesiastical and civic authorities of the province, exhorting support for the new inquisitor. By contrast, those of 1281 and 1321 for Tuscany and Umbria are directions from the provincial to the new inquisitors themselves. All refer to the consultation requirement, but only the Umbrian instrument of 1321 lists the custodes and lectors actually consulted. The provincial’s seal is attached. The instruments of 1310 and 1321 both appoint two inquisitors to the province, but do not assign a specific geographical remit; any territorial split is apparently left to be sorted out between them. The fifth Franciscan example, from around 1298, is a template made out as if to Tommasino Malebranchi, in similar form to the 1281 and 1321 instruments, that is, as a direction from the provincial to the new inquisitor.23 It is accompanied by standard forms of instruments to

20 T.

Kaeppeli, ‘Acta capitulorum provinciae Lombardiae (1254–1293) et Lombardiae Inferioris (1309–1312)’, AFP 11 (1941), 138–72 (p. 151). See also Chapter 7 below. 21 The requirement to consult discreet brothers on inquisition appointments (‘cum consilio discretorum’) is in Clement IV, Licet ex omnibus (October 1265); Potthast 19,416. 22 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 169–71, doc. 2, for the acts of 1310 and 1319. For appointments in 1321 and date of provincial chapter, see Oliger, ‘Alcuni documenti’, doc. 8 and p. 14. For 1281 Tuscan example: M. d’Alatri, ‘Archivio, officii e titolari dell’inquisizione toscana verso la fine del Duecento’, in Eretici e inquisitori, I, 269–95 (pp. 289–90). 23 Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’, pp. 71–86, doc. 6. It may be a copy of Tommasino’s actual appointment document, absorbed into the manual.

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Starting work appoint other members of the inquisitor’s team, such as his vicar and syndic. In at least one Franciscan province, there was thus clearly movement to standardise the form and mechanics of the appointment process. Two much earlier Dominican exemplars are for Anselm of Alessandria in 1267, and Florio da Vicenza in 1278. The first is reported by Dondaine to be accompanied by two 1265 bulls of Clement IV. The second is presented as a personal letter from the provincial of Lombardy, Bonanno, to Florio and is accordingly warmer in tone than the others.24 It incorporates Clement IV’s Licet ex omnibus, with its instruction to appoint (by then) eight inquisitors in Lombardy, but it differs from the other survivals in one important respect: it specifically relieves Florio of his existing post as sub-prior of the Venice convent. At this point, the Venetian government had not yet agreed to admit the inquisition, and the form of the appointment may have reflected a prudent desire to avoid any ambiguity about Florio’s role in the city. It is hard to believe that none of the other new appointees held any current post in the order; if they did, their removal must have been handled as a separate instruction. Was the letter of appointment with the provincial’s seal enough for the new inquisitor to start work, or was there any ceremony of conferment of office or swearing-in? Despite the huge powers being assigned, literally of life and death, the implication of the sources is that there was neither oath nor ceremony. The Veneto appointment of 1310 suggests a semi-public act in the election itself, witnessed by several friars in the Franciscan convent of Padua. However, both the 1281 Franciscan example and many Dominican sources show that the new inquisitor was not necessarily personally present when an election was made and office was conferred. Ruggiero da Petriolo, Dominican inquisitor in Bologna in 1311–12, refers to being institutus in Bologna by the provincial, Corrado da Camerino, ‘secundum comunem formam institutionis Inquisitorum’ (‘after the normal practice of the institution of inquisitors’), a phrasing which suggests a degree of established ritual. But he himself was miles away at the time, in the convent of Fermo (‘litteras eius institutionis recepi in conventu Firmano’). As one of his very first acts, Ruggiero had his white capes refurbished ‘because they were less than white’ (‘quia erant minus albe’), but perhaps he was looking ahead to their future use, rather than wanting to look his best at a ceremony of conferment.25 Comments made by other new inquisitors in their accounts also indicate they were not present

24 Parmeggiani,

‘Florio da Vicenza’, pp. 694–6; A. Dondaine, ‘La hiérarchie cathare en Italie, II: Le Tractatus de hereticis d’Anselme d’Alexandrie, OP’, AFP 20 (1950), 234–324 (p. 261 n. 57), reprinted in Les hérésies et l’Inquisition. 25 Collectoria 133, fol.163v, for citations on appointment; fol.164v, refurbishment of robes. Fermo is south of Ancona, some five days’ journey from Bologna. Ruggiero might have been even further away, as he refers (fol. 164v) to the first stage of his journey back to Bologna as starting at Fucino (modern Celano), south of L’Aquila.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 when their act of appointment took place. Inquisition guidance and manuals of this period are silent over whether any ceremony occurred. This was an age when false friars gulled the credulous.26 How did the new inquisitor prove his bona fides? It is unlikely that notification of appointment was sent routinely to all civil and ecclesiastical authorities in the province, and certainly not directly by the provincials. One of the first tasks of any new inquisitor would therefore have been to obtain his own copies of his instrument of appointment, with the appropriate seals and copies of papal bulls, to exhibit when needed. He also had to acquire his seal of office. Both letter and seal would be needed very quickly. According to the tract Hic est modus, dating from around 1251 and incorporated in the fourteenth-century Lombard manual De officio inquisitionis, when an inquisitor first came to a town, and before preaching, he had first to go to the bishop and show him the authority and office committed to him (‘et ostendere auctoritatem et officium sibi commissum’) and afterwards go with the bishop to the podestà, causing them to read the letters and the papal constitutions on heresy (‘litteras legi faciant et constitutiones’), and seeking help and advice from both.27 He thus needed his letters and authorities before beginning effective work. We can get some idea of compliance with this guidance from inquisitors’ account books. Out of thirteen Dominican inquisitors for whom we have financial accounts between 1292 and 1318, ten record the cost of copies of the appointment instrument among their very earliest expenses, as payments either to notaries or to named individuals who supplied them (including the provincial’s socii). For two other inquisitors, we lack records of the start of their appointment. Only one of the thirteen (a careless record-keeper) has no clearly identifiable entry for this purpose.28

26 False

friars claimed to give indulgences, took penances improperly and forged papal bulls. Their activities were such a problem in Tuscany that in 1300–01 Matthew of Acquasparta, cardinal-bishop of Porto, general of the Franciscans and papal legate to Florence, gave the Florentine inquisition extra powers to take action against them. See Oliger, ‘Alcuni documenti’, docs. 2, 3; also MS Cas 1730, fols. 113rb–14rb. 27 Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 55–7, doc. 11; Paolini, ‘De officio’, pp. 129–31. The origin of Hic est modus is debatable, though Parmeggiani points to similarities with guidance from Pietro da Collemezzo, cardinal Albano, in the 1250s. However, the checklist approach evidently still struck a chord in 1325 as a practical way to start off. 28 Collectoria 133 records the purchase of copies of the appointment letter for the following inquisitors: Lanfranco da Bergamo (fol. 38r), Tommaso da Gorzano (fol. 70r), Florio da Verona (fol. 91r), Manfredo da Parma (fol.131r), Corrado da Camerino (fol. 156v), Ruggiero da Petriolo (fol. 164r), Marchesio da Brescia (fol. 192v), Pace [da Vedano] (fol. 198v), Giovanni da Fontana (fol. 209v), Jacobus de Burgo (fol. 214r). Francesco da Pocapaglia’s accounts begin part-way through his period of office. Niccolò da Ripa Transone left an account only of receipts, not expenses. Thus only one inquisitor (Giovanni dei Pizigotti, Ferrara) has no explicit initial payment for the instruments of office. His costs might be subsumed in a large

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Starting work Not all inquisitors had to get their copies themselves. The bull for Ruggiero da Petriolo was obtained for the new inquisitor by his predecessor’s vicar, Bonvisino, and sent to him at his distant convent. Bonvisino presumably hoped for (and got) reappointment.29 Jacobus de Burgo, and possibly the elderly Florio da Verona, also had their letters of appointment brought to them where they were.30 As distinct from letters of office, five of the thirteen, in Pavia, Bologna, Genoa, Brescia and Pavia/Lodi, also record the purchase of copies of inquisition ‘privileges’ as part of their initial apparatus. The ‘privileges’ would have been the key papal bulls conferring inquisition powers and enjoining the civil authority to support inquisition activities; in fact, the entry in Jacobus de Burgo’s accounts confirms that his were letters from domini Clement and Benedict.31 Surprisingly, there is no mention of local agreements with the civil authorities about mutual responsibilities, though we know that such local privileges existed. For example, in 1310, Francesco da Pocapaglia, inquisitor of western Piedmont, went to obtain privileges or a ‘letter of favour’, first from Robert of Anjou, overlord of his part of Piedmont, and a couple of months later from the Emperor Henry VII himself, recently arrived in the area.32 We do not know whether these were passed on to his successor. It certainly appears that papal privileges, which must have been held in local inquisition archives, were freshly copied for each inquisitor and that they did not use the ‘office copy’. Evidence of compliance with the advice to visit the bishop and the podestà is very sparse – though this may simply mean that such visits were cost-free, and thus did not require mention in an account book. No inquisitor records calling on the podestà, and only two whose data we have – Lanfranco da Bergamo and Corrado da Camerino – mention early visits to the local bishop, in Lanfranco’s case within a month or so of arrival in office.33 Corrado (inquisitor in Ferrara in 1316) paid three visits to the bishop in the first week. However, this was a special case. The bishop was his fellow Dominican, formerly both inquisitor and prior-provincial, Guido Capello da Vicenza. Guido was embroiled in political controversy both in his see and in Bologna,

(fifty-two solidi) payment pro negotiis offitii Inquisitoris in November 1310, just after his appointment (fol. 140r). 29 References to Bonvisino da Bologna, as vicar of Niccolò da Ripa Transone and later, apparently, as vicar to Ruggiero: Collectoria 133, fols. 164v, 165v. 30 Collectoria 133, fol. 164r, letters brought to Fermo for Ruggiero da Petriolo, and fol. 214r, by a messenger to Jacobus de Burgo, inquisitor in Pavia and Lodi. Florio da Verona (fol. 91r) records a payment to a friar and a conversus for his letters, but not in terms that suggest they were the copyists. 31 Collectoria 133, fol. 214r. 32 Collectoria 133, fol. 178r, costs ‘pro eundo ad dominum Imperatorem pro littera impetranda pro favore Officii ab eodem’; fol. 177v, visit to King Robert for a similar purpose. 33 Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, p. 451; Collectoria 133, fol. 155v.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 and was the subject of continuing enquiries over his previous inquisitorial finances, so there was much to discuss beyond formalities. Besides the instruments of appointment, the inquisitor required a seal. Seals were not only a vital element of the validation of documents in the middle ages, but in this case may be potentially significant indicators of where medieval inquisitors lay on the spectrum between personal and institutional authority. Was the seal a personal and finite attribute, or passed down from a predecessor as a symbol of continuing institutional power? If it was a personal attribute, did the inquisitor take it with him to new postings or was it destroyed when he laid down his post, in the same way as the Fisherman’s Ring? The evidence here is ambiguous and differs between the two orders. No inquisitor, Dominican or Franciscan, refers to the handover or surrender of seals at the start or end of a term of office. Five of the thirteen Dominican inquisitors, however, clearly record the purchase of an inquisitor’s seal, usually as one of their first items of expenditure. Others certainly did have seals (since they buy sealing wax and cords to append the seal), and it is not clear whether their accounts simply fail to mention their purchase, or whether they came by their seal in a way which did not cost money. The evidence of purchase perhaps suggests the seals were a personal attribute, not a symbol of authority inherited from a predecessor. Some Dominican inquisitors buying seals had previously been inquisitors in the same province, so getting a new seal might also imply that it was required to exercise office in the geographical area of their their new posting. Though instruments of appointment mainly did not limit where in the province the inquisitor was to exercise office, this reasoning suggests that inquisition office, and the seals to confer authority, were not fully transferable between different parts of the huge Lombard province. (Geographical limitation of authority is also suggested in the Pagano da Pietrasanta case, mentioned earlier.) We might infer that seals were associated with office-holding in a particular location, rather than with inquisitorial office generically.34 Against this, the sources also suggest that inquisitorial authority from a previous location did not expire immediately on leaving the post. Tommaso da Gorzano came directly from office elsewhere to take up the post in the March of Genoa for which we have his accounts from 1297. After recording his new appointment, and whilst still in Venice en route to his new base in 34 Collectoria

133 records the purchase of seals by: Tommaso da Gorzano (fol. 70r); Manfredo da Parma (fol. 131r); Corrado da Camerino (fols. 155r, 157v); Ruggiero da Petriolo (fol. 164v); and Jacobus de Burgo (fol. 214v). Tommaso, Manfredo and Corrado had all been inquisitors previously in the same provinces. Marchesio da Brescia records the early purchase of cera ad sigillandum (wax for sealing, fol. 196r). He had been prior of the Brescia convent in 1307, but it is not clear whether he held inquisition office elsewhere before taking the post in Brescia in 1311 for which we have records. See AGOP, XIV, Liber GGG/1.A, fol. 380r. In its list of Brescia priors, the succeeding appointment is dated to 1313.

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Starting work Alessandria, he gave instructions for the imprisonment of a heretic, a transaction which must both have been a hangover from his previous post, and have required a validating seal. However, he did not actually record the purchase of a new seal until about three months after appointment, during which period he also published sentences against the Colonna in Tortona and Alessandria – important business relating to his new post. The implication is that his previous authority was used (and was regarded as valid) for all these transactions.35 There may have been a different practice among the Franciscans. We have detailed accounts for four Florentine inquisitors in Tuscany, though unfortunately none for the Veneto and March of Treviso where there were many more seats in a wider territory. Although there are references to the repair and cleaning of seals belonging to the inquisitor or his notary, the Florentine material records the initial acquisition of a seal and letters of authority for only one inquisitor, Accursio Bonfantini, in 1326. Both were handed over at the provincial chapter in Siena, where he was appointed. Accursio’s predecessor, Michele d’Arezzo, had needed to repair his own seal, so perhaps the old one was too damaged for Accursio to take over.36 The absence of other mention could mean that Tuscan inquisitors normally inherited their seals directly from their predecessors, thus taking a step towards institutional identity. This speculation may be tentatively supported by the physical evidence of surviving inquisition seals in other Franciscan inquisitorial territories. In Umbria, Oliger reports that newly appointed inquisitors had a seal with the motto S. Administrationis Sancti Francisci – the name of the province which included Assisi. In the March of Treviso, a surviving medieval inquisition seal bears the inscription Sigillum Sanctae Inquisitionis Tarvisinae. Both link to location, and the second to the office of inquisition itself, rather than to the person of the office-holder. As well as confirming that, for the Franciscans, the use of the seal was limited to the region where office was actually held, the Treviso seal is particularly interesting because of its iconography. It depicts St Francis together with San Liberale, the patron saint shown on Treviso’s

35 Collectoria

133, fol. 70r. The very badly degraded opening section of Tommaso’s accounts shows he was instituted inquisitor at the convent in Padua in September 1297 and paid for the instruments for the heretic’s imprisonment whilst in Venice, presumably winding up business, before returning to Padua in October to commence the lengthy journey to his new seat at Alessandria. He published the sentence against the Colonna at the end of October 1297, but did not buy a seal till December. Tommaso kept minutely detailed accounts by month, and (mainly) chronologically within the month, so it is unlikely that the purchase is simply out of place. I have been unable to establish where his previous inquisition post was. 36 Collectoria 250, fol. 38v, Michele d’Arezzo (appointed summer 1322) pays four solidi in November 1323 ‘pro reparatura unius sigilli Inquisitoris’ (‘for the repair of one inquisitor’s seal’), the first mention of his seal and possibly implying there was more than one. Collectoria 250, fol. 105r, payment for Accursio’s seal.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350

Figure 1: Line drawing of the seal of the inquisition in Treviso

gonfalone, flanked and footed by the cross and stars from the city’s stemma and trampling on two dragons (representing Satan). In firmly linking inquisition, Church and commune as partners in the defeat of heresy, it is, in fact, an heraldic depiction of the tripartite arrangement set out in Ad extirpanda.37 37 Oliger,

‘Alcuni documenti’, p. 13 for the Umbrian seal. A general discussion on Franciscan seals is in A. Faloci Pulignani, ‘Il sigillo di frate Elia’, Miscellanea Francescana 7 (1908), 143 and L. Oliger, ‘De sigillo fr Angeli Clareni’, Antonianum 12 (1937), 61–4. For Treviso’s symbols and the inquisition seal, see G. Renucci, Le insegne araldiche del comune di Treviso (Treviso, 1986); G. Renucci, ‘Le chiese e i conventi’ in Treviso Nostro (Treviso, 1964), p. 181; I. L. Gatti, S. Francesco di Treviso. Una presenza minoritica nella Marca Trevigiana (Padua, 2000), p. 157 and tav. 28; and G. B. Tozzato, Treviso e l’Inquisizione (Treviso, 2009). These sources do not give the seal’s provenance or date, but treat it as around 1300.

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Starting work Acquiring a seal was one thing. On leaving office, what did inquisitors do with them? Direct handover to a successor seems implausible, from surviving evidence of dates of office. Were they destroyed, kept for use in a next posting until a new one was issued (as Tommaso da Gorzano’s activities might imply), left in the care of a vicar or (more likely) the conventual prior; or perhaps surrendered to the provincial? The small-scale artwork required to make a pictorial seal matrix was both expensive and time-consuming to prepare, so it is unlikely seals were just destroyed. Indeed, we know that in other circumstances, Dominicans used them till they were worn out. Vicars had their own seals, and as discussed in Chapter 6 below, could not fully substitute for the inquisitor. They would not have been able to use the inquisitor’s seal during a vacancy. It seems most likely that old seals were meant to be surrendered to the provincial (or someone acting on his behalf), and possibly recycled to the next inquisitor when he arrived to take up post. This might explain how inquisitors were able to acquire seals within days of taking up office. Such considerations suggest that the cost of seals in Dominican inquisition accounts represents, not outright purchase of a brand-new seal, but a fee or rental charge for the use of the existing seal during the period of the inquisitor’s office. Renting seals was not an unusual arrangement in Italy in civic offices. In Bologna, with whose practices many Dominican inquisitors must have been familiar, the four notaries of the Memoriali, the city’s official record of public notarial transactions, rented their seal of office from the commune and returned it at the end of each six-month term.38 A rental charge might also explain the rather variable costs recorded in inquisitors’ accounts, which often seem too low to represent purchase of a newly made seal. There are hints in Dominican sources that seals and other instruments of office might have been obtained from (and, by inference, surrendered to) the provincial’s socius, to whom payment was also made. In April 1316, Corrado da Camerino, inquisitor of Ferrara, records an initial payment of eight solidi for his seal, but in August also pays the provincial’s socius a much larger amount – four Bolognese lire – for a seal, perhaps genuinely a new one. Evidence that the provincial’s socius acted as intermediary in inquisition appointments is also seen in Pavia in 1292, when Lanfranco da Bergamo pays the provincial’s socii ten solidi for his letters of appointment (‘pro literis officii mihi iniuncti’), long after he records receiving the letters themselves.39 Rental of a seal from the appointing authority might suggest a point of transition between personal and institutional office – personal office in a continuing institution. But whether rented or purchased, it seems highly probable that 38 L’Archivio

dell’Ufficio dei Memoriali: Inventario 1, Memoriali 1265–1436, vol. 1, 1265–1333, ed. L. Continelli, Universitas Bononiensis Monumenta 4 (Bologna, 1988), pp. ix–xl, referring to rubric XLIV of the city statutes. 39 Collectoria 133, fols. 155r, 157r, Corrado da Camerino; fol. 38r, Lanfranco da Bergamo.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 the sums paid out to validate appointments went from inquisition funds into the provincial’s account, to defray his time and trouble. This discussion has to be set in the wider context of the use of seals by mendicant office-holders in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. The proliferation of seals was evidently a general problem, with the implication that they were not routinely surrendered when the office-holder moved on, and possibly then used incorrectly. It would have been a serious matter if an inquisition seal were used without authority. On several occasions, Dominican provincial and general chapters issued general edicts that all seals should be surrendered and the holder of any seal re-approved. Inquisition seals whose holders had moved on might have been collected during this periodic housekeeping, if not already returned to the provincial’s socius. Chapter records also show that the province’s own seal was re-used to the point of destruction, then formally shattered. This strengthens the likelihood that an inquisitor’s seal was also re-used rather than destroyed on his departure, especially after a relatively brief tenure.40 Without further evidence, and more physical examples of the seals themselves, firmer conclusions are not possible. Practice may also have varied over time, between regions and between orders. The evidence we do have, though, suggests that inquisitors’ seals were not fully personal. They were linked to a specific territorial post, though (among Dominicans) with some flexibility. Seals were probably re-used by subsequent post holders, and (again among the Dominicans) may have been issued or reissued by the office of the provincial on payment of a fee or administrative charge. It is a mystery why the very detailed Franciscan accounts for Florence do not shed more light on the purchase or transfer of seals, but one possible conclusion is that by the 1320s Franciscan seals were fully inherited. The evidence of the surviving Treviso seal interestingly demonstrates the tripartite basis for the office of inquisition.

The physical surroundings of inquisition An inquisitor arriving in his new post with his letters of authority and his seal found a wide variety of circumstances in which he was expected to carry out his duties. As a practical issue, he required not only personal lodging and somewhere secure to keep records, but also housing and workspace for his

40 For

housekeeping of seals, T. Kaeppeli and A. Dondaine, Acta capitulorum provincialium provinciae Romanae (1243–1344), MOFPH 20 (Rome, 1941), p. 98 (1291); p. 137 (1300): ‘Sciant singuli fratres quod propter consumptionem antiqui sigilli est sigillum nostre provincie innovatum et antiquum confractum de consilio discretorum.’ (‘Let all brothers know that because the old seal is worn out, our province’s seal is renewed, and the old one broken up on the advice of wise brothers.’)

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Starting work notary and servitors, somewhere to take witness depositions and interrogate suspects, meeting rooms for discussions with jurisconsults, and a larger chamber where he could sit in formal judgement. Most of these facilities could be obtained within mendicant convents, though with some disruption to their normal business. More problematic were inquisitors’ need for stables and their access to prison facilities. The former were not a normal feature of mendicant convents at this early stage; the latter usually were, though they were not always available for use by the inquisition.41 Inquisitors generally based themselves in convents of their own order, commandeering its larger spaces such as the refectory, infirmary or chapterhouse for public business. Some other formal business was transacted in accommodation borrowed from the local bishop, and the episcopal prison was also used. In both orders, the borrowing of conventual space continued for many decades. By no later than the 1270s, however, the inquisition had begun to develop its own infrastructure and to possess dedicated accommodation, the domus inquisitionis (house of inquisition). The domus was generally inside the convent precincts, and varied from a simple structure combining a lock-up for short-term prisoners, stables and an interrogation chamber to more elaborate buildings with office space, lodging facilities and chapels. Some members of the inquisition team slept there, but it was not the inquisitor’s personal residence, although he might maintain a cella (cell) in the larger properties.42 Whether Dominican or Franciscan, he himself usually lodged in the convent at his main base and, when travelling, depended on the hospitality of whatever religious establishment was most convenient. This was not always a house of his own order. While hunting heretics in the mountains of Piedmont, where the Preachers had few houses, Dominican inquisitors lodged with Franciscan convents or even with village priests. They may have camped or occasionally stayed in commercial lodgings when on the road, though it is difficult to be sure from the available sources. Their staff certainly did. Rather scandalously, the Franciscan inquisitors of Florence also lodged in 41 In

the Dominican Provincia Romana, the 1282 provincial chapter at Orvieto ordered conventual priors to construct ‘carceres bonos et fortes’ (‘good, strong prisons’) within three months, or face personal penalties for each week of delay: Kaeppeli and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, p. 60. The order was repeated and strengthened at the 1284 chapter, which required leg irons (compedes ferreos) to be provided (p. 68). The minutes of the Lombard provincial chapter held at Ferrara in 1279 describe in Gothic detail the underground cell in which a miscreant is to be held, aired only by an inaccessible spiraculum (vent): see Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 156. 42 The use of the domus inquisitionis for staff accommodation emerges from an unfortunate incident in Bergamo in 1316, when a group of imprisoned heretics set fire to the domus in order to break out, destroying goods belonging to the inquisitor’s socius, who was based there (Collectoria 133, fol. 210v). At least one famulus (servant) slept in the domus inquisitionis of Pavia, on a cheap mattress (‘materacium parvi valoris’): Collectoria 133, fol. 216r.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 nunneries, both when travelling and as a temporary retreat from the summer heat of the city. (Franciscan inquisitors in the Veneto also enjoyed summer retreats.) There is no evidence that Dominican inquisitors did this.43 Inquisitors’ access to, and use of, premises was affected by the massive thirteenth- and fourteenth-century developments in the estates of the Dominican and Franciscan orders themselves. Not only did the overall number of friaries increase rapidly (though many were small and the distribution between the orders uneven geographically), but both orders migrated within towns, beginning on the edge of the urban area, then moving towards the centre when better established.44 Inquisitors resident in the local convent were inevitably caught up in this expansion and relocation process, as occurred with Lanfranco da Bergamo at Pavia in 1292. Convents were often crowded, and inquisitors’ demands on space could lead to friction where they occupied land wanted for the convent’s own expansion. In Ferrara, where inquisition business had previously involved the inconvenience of commandeering the friars’ infirmary, the Dominican convent had to be ordered by the prior-provincial in 1297 to release land inside the precinct to build a domus inquisitionis. It appears from this transaction (in which the inquisitor Guido Capello and his predecessor, Florio da Vicenza, were both involved) that the officium inquisitionis was actually to own the land – it was not simply occupied by grace of the convent. Tension between convent and inquisition remained such that by around 1310–11, the inquisition in Ferrara might have moved outside the precinct. By this point, however, the office owned several properties in the city, most likely the result of confiscations from Jews.45 There were other reasons than competition for space why an inquisitor’s presence in the convent might be unwelcome. In Parma in 1279, the Dominican convent was stormed and set ablaze by an angry mob after an unpopular execution. The blame seems to have attached to the order as a whole, rather than the inquisition as such. In the words of the chronicler Salimbene, ‘the Parmese rose up against them on account of a woman whom the Preachers had burned at the stake as a heretic’. An elderly friar died, and the whole order was expelled from the town for eight years, its friars farmed

43 Biscaro,

‘Firenze’ (1929), pp. 55–6, for the Franciscans’ close relations with the nunneries of Montedomini and Monticelli. 44 See, for example, Rigon, ‘Conflitti tra comuni e ordini mendicanti’, pp. 345–6, with the example of Ascoli Piceno. 45 A. Samaritani, ‘I frati Predicatori nella società ferrarese del Duecento’, Analecta Pomposiana 13 (1988), 5–48 (pp. 40–1). Florio witnessed the land concession forced by Guido (p. 47); see Parmeggiani, ‘Florio da Vicenza’, pp. 685–6 n. 19, for discussion of this land grant, which Zanella thinks marks the first inquisition property in Ferrara: Zanella, ‘Itinerari ereticali’, p. 108. For inquisition use of the friars’ infirmary in 1281: Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 129–30, doc. 32. Sale of domus officii in Ferrara, 1310–11, Collectoria 133, fol. 139r; references to other property, fols. 145r, 149r, 150r, 154v, 155r, including purchase of a prison.

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Starting work out to other convents.46 In 1316–17, after the recapture of the heretics who had burnt down the domus inquisitionis at Bergamo, it was necessary to set twenty armed guards around their prison night and day, to ward off locals trying to break in before the execution of twelve of them took place. This incident must have been more than unsettling to the rest of the convent, however righteous they felt the inquisitor’s actions to be.47 In the papal city of Viterbo, where the Franciscan inquisitor Bartolommeo d’Amelia had settled by 1264 into rooms in the convent of S. Francesco, Clement IV himself remarked on the city’s exceptional hostility to the inquisition. Here too blood was shed. The security problem may explain why the Viterbo inquisition remained firmly rooted in the convent for over a century, until the rectors of the province finally seized its rooms in the late fourteenth century.48 Space constraints meant that a new inquisitor could not always count even on his base convent to give him a bed, especially if it was not his ‘home’ convent in the order. When Lanfranco da Bergamo arrived in Pavia in 1292, he initially had to lodge and eat outside the convent. It might have been to make himself more acceptable as a guest that we find him quickly contributing to the convent’s building fund.49 Although he followed a previous inquisitor in the same post, with only a short gap, he had (he says) no cella of his own in the convent, initially had neither bed nor office furniture, and had to do all his business from the cella he then had to have built ‘cum non haberem in illo loco aliam’ (‘since I had no other in that place’). Only in mid-1293 was Lanfranco able to build a dedicated domus inquisitionis in Pavia, and then 46 Bronzino,

‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici. Parte seconda’, pp. 295–8, doc. 37 (letter of Honorius IV describing the incident); Salimbene de Adam, The Chronicle of Salimbene de Adam, ed. and trans. J. L Baird, G. Baglini and J. R. Kane (Binghamton NY, 1986), pp. 514–15; Parmeggiani, ‘Florio da Vicenza’, p. 686. The minutes of the 1280 provincial chapter of Lombardy phlegmatically instruct the priors of convents housing friars from Parma to treat them as they would their own members, but without reference to the cause of the diaspora: this is the only contemporary internal reference to the events. See Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 157. 47 Collectoria 133, fol. 211v. The inquisitor of Bergamo, Giovanni da Fontana, conducted frequent executions of Dolcinians, even before this mass burning. 48 D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, pp. 86–7 n. 8; Michetti, ‘Frati minori a Roma’, p. 64. 49 Collectoria 133, fol. 39r, gold florin contributed to the building of the convent’s campanile; fol. 38rv and Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, pp. 503, 508, accommodation problems. The convent was in the throes of moving to a new location, and Lanfranco later reports building another cella ‘in loco novo S. Thome’. At this early stage of development of Franciscan and Dominican convents, the friars’ cells were not necessarily units in a single large building, but individual cabins, often of flimsy construction. Cossar, Clerical Households in late Medieval Italy, pp. 133–5, discusses the fluidity of descriptions for clerical dwellings – cella, domus, camera habitacionis – in north Italy at this period, pointing out that domus could sometimes mean a room within a larger structure. I have taken cella to mean a single room or cabin, while domus seems generally used in inquisition material to describe a free–standing structure with more than one room.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 only with the help of a very large loan from the Milan inquisitor, Guido da Cocconato, who had an interest because he himself used it as a way-station. Lanfranco’s building seems to have been used for a stable and prison, rather than as dwelling or office space.50 At least Lanfranco had a single, defined base from which to conduct his work, even though, like many other Lombard inquisitors, he was frequently on the move. His close contemporary Tommaso da Gorzano, inquisitor in the March of Genoa from 1297 to 1305, split his time between three main centres – Alessandria, Asti and Genoa – when not on the road. He was accommodated in the local convent in each place, but only after two years, in December 1299, acquired a cella which could be locked. Tommaso never progressed to a domus officii, but instead had to keep inquisition records in lockable chests in each of his three main centres, paying a custodian to look after them. Not surprisingly, there was a tendency to find that the books and papers he wanted had been left in the wrong place, and his accounts refer on several occasions to cross-country dashes to try to retrieve them.51 Pace da Vedano, who held the same post from 1310 to at least 1317, also makes no mention of a domus officii, though references to the purchase of office furnishings suggest that his scriptores officii had a settled workspace in at least one location. Since this was gated off, they perhaps shared the space with other users. As well as a separate stable, Pace did however buy, and then extend, a dedicated prison in Genoa, whereas Tommaso seems to have used a private jail. He also invested in a ‘repositorium librorum officii’ (archive for the office’s books).52 The development of permanent inquisition buildings depended more on a city’s location and heretic history than its size or economic importance.

50 Collectoria

133, fol. 39r: ‘In emptione domus pro officio, cum officium nullam domum habebat in Papia, lib. 158, de quibus mihi dedit fr Guido inquisitor cum non haberem ad solvendum, libr. 100 imp., alios dedi… Item, in faciendo meliorari domum illam et parando pro carcere, stalla equorum et in aliis multis necessariis ipsius domui, lib. 12 et dimid.’ (‘To the purchase of a house for the Office, since it had no base in Pavia, lib. 158, of which fr Guido inquisitor gave me 100, as I had no means to pay, and I provided [the remainder]. Item, towards improving the building and preparing it as a prison, stalls for horses and many other necessaries, 12 lib and a half.’) 51 Collectoria 133, fol. 73r records the loss of Tommaso’s receipts for April–May 1300, as a result of a mix-up between the capsa Alexandrie and the capsa Janue (chest for Alessandria and chest for Genoa); fol. 77r (August 1303), records payment to a janitor ‘for looking after the inquisition’s property’ (‘pro custodia rerum officii’) in Alessandria. 52 Collectoria 133, fol. 199r, purchase of prison (1311); fol. 201v, wooden roof in front of prison; fol. 202v, building of portico; fol. 201v, ‘pro disco et hostio scriptoris officii’ (‘for a desk and gated railing for the office’s scriptor’) and ‘pro muro et cathedra scriptoris officii’ (for a wall and for a chair for the office’s scriptor). Hostium has several meanings, but a barrier gate or railing seems the most plausible here. For Pace’s prison activities, see Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 206–7.

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Starting work Sometimes buildings owned by the inquisition were surrendered as circumstances changed. Piacenza had a domus inquisitionis as early as 1278 because heretics were then found there in large numbers.53 By 1312, when it was no longer a permanent inquisitorial base because heretic numbers had dropped off, the building had been surrendered in favour of a modest rented property.54 Modena, only intermittently visited by its Bologna- or Ferrarabased Dominican inquisitors, had a domus officii inquisitionis sufficiently early that by 1299 its access (via a bridge and along a canalside) was already in disrepair, to the anger of the inquisitor Guido Capello da Vicenza, who threatened penalties to most of the city government unless the roadway was mended immediately.55 The building itself evidently contained work space, besides a prison and possibly stables. In 1317, the inquisitor Corrado da Camerino maintained a cella there.56 At Prato, a town of similar size and the frequent home of the Franciscan inquisitors of Florence during factional upheavals, there may not have been a domus inquisitionis at all. The inquisitor lodged in the convent and his staff in the guest accommodation, while sentences in both 1276 and 1297 were delivered in the curia Inquisitoris in the convent: ‘curia’ may have referred to the temporary function of the space as a court of justice, not its normal purpose. In the 1320s, accounts record a prison, but not other structures, though (according to the corrupt inquisitor Mino da San Quirico) the office did in fact own other property in Prato, close by the Franciscan convent.57 By contrast, in late 1321 a cella was constructed for the Florentine inquisitor in the convent of the tiny town of Figline, probably because of its usefulness as a way-station when travelling in the upper Val d’Arno, but perhaps also because it was the residence of the jurist, Decco da Figline, much used by the inquisition.58 Although (according to Paolini) Bologna had only a modest heretic presence in the thirteenth century, and was steadily Guelf – with King Enzo’s prison in the main square to prove it – it was also the heart of the Dominican

53 The

chronicler Galvano Fiamma reports that when the inquisition re-entered Piacenza after Oberto Pelavicini’s death in 1269, twenty-eight cartloads of heretics were burnt in one day: see Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 107–8 and nn. 198–9. 54 Collectoria 133, fols. 193v, 197v, rents paid by Marchesio da Brescia (1311–17). 55 ASOB, I, docs. 81, 83. 56 Collectoria 133, fol. 162v, repair of cella. 57 F. Tocco, Dante e l’eresia: quel che non c’è nella Divina Commedia (Bologna, 1899), docs. 19, 23 for 1276 and 1297 sentences. Collectoria 250, fols. 28rv, 31r, 32r, cite five payments for the Prato prison in 1322 alone. For Mino’s claim of a long-existing building owned, but undeclared, by the officium, see Collectoria 251, fol. 51r. 58 Collectoria 249, fol. 63v. This must have been a replacement structure; an inquisitor’s sentence of 1280 was delivered ‘in camera suae solitae residentiae’ (‘in a room in his usual residence’) at Figline. See M. d’Alatri, ‘Nuove notizie sull’Inquisizione toscana’, in Eretici e inquisitori, I, pp. 259–68 (note, p. 263).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 order and the seat of an inquisitor from at least 1273. Since there is good information on inquisition activities in the city, it is worth taking a closer look at its buildings and their usage.59 The first domus inquisitionis was acquired in 1285, twelve years after the first attestation of an inquisitor. This structure, in wood on a stone or brick base, was built to order on land apparently already owned by the inquisition in the rapidly developing precinct of San Domenico, in the angle of the road and the Aposa river. The next year, a second house was bought from Sinibaldo Gentili da Cingoli, professor of grammar at the university and a close friend of the then inquisitor, Florio da Vicenza.60 The building and purchase contracts both survive, and show that both purchases were undertaken by Florio personally, acting alone in one case and on behalf of the officium inquisitionis in the other. It is not clear whether there was any difference in usage of the two buildings, but the difference in the formula for ownership highlights that by 1285, if not earlier, the officium inquisitionis was recognised as a legal entity distinct from the inquisitor himself – and capable of property ownership. By the turn of the century, one of the two buildings is described in notarial subscriptions as ‘sited within the cloister of the friars Preacher’, whilst the other is ‘next to the friars’ orchard’. The inquisitor’s personal residence (domus habitacionis) was also in the cloister, and may have been a third, separate, structure; it appears that in Bologna he did not occupy a normal cella of the convent.61 In 1316, under Manfredo da Parma, the domus officii was roofed in tile, and the inquisition’s well was repaired. The domus habitacionis was substantially renovated and extended in stone, with the installation of two lockable doors and a second window. One window may have been 59 The

first attested inquisitor in Bologna was Aldobrandino in 1273, but anti-heretic activity (not necessarily by a papal inquisitor) dates back at least to 1254, when Aldrovandi (‘Acta S. Officii Bononiae’, p. 236) notes the podestà’s costs for an execution. For an overview of Bologna’s topography and political orientation, F. Bocchi, Bologna. Il Duecento, Atlante storico delle città italiane, 2 vols (Bologna, 1995), I; also V. Vitale, Il dominio della parte guelfa in Bologna (1280–1327) (Bologna, 1902). 60 Paolini, L’eresia a Bologna, pp. 2–3 n. 5, for the 1285 construction contract; M. Giansante, ‘L’inquisizione domenicana a Bologna fra XIII e XIV secolo’, Il Carrobbio 13 (1987), 219–27 (p. 223), for an image of the 1286 purchase document. D’Amato, I Domenicani a Bologna, I, p. 200, notes Florio da Vicenza’s friendship with Sinibaldo, whose family provided an inquisitor to Bologna in the 1320s (Lamberto da Cingoli). See Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1930), p. 269. For a short summary of inquisition buildings at this period, see Parmeggiani, ‘ Florio da Vicenza’, p. 685 n. 19. 61 ASOB, I, docs. 11–12, ‘in domo officii inquisitionis, iuxta ortum fratrum predicatorum’ (‘in the house of the office of inquisition, beside the Preachers’ garden’); doc. 29, ‘in domo inquisitionis, sita intra claustra loci fratrum predicatorum’ (‘in the house of inquisition, situated within the cloisters of the Preachers’ place’). References to the ‘camara domus habitacionis dicti inquisitoris, sita intra claustra loci fratrum predicatorum’ (‘chamber of the inquisitor’s personal residence, situated within the cloisters of the Preachers’ place’) suggest that the inquisitor’s sleeping and workspace were separate (ASOB, I, docs. 327, 366).

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Starting work barred.62 Apart from beds, writing desks and prie-dieux, we know very little about the internal fittings of inquisitors’ rooms, except in the case of Florence, where the inquisitor Pace da Castelfiorentino indulged himself with devotional paintings by Taddeo Gaddi and other pictures with ornamented frames to brighten up his surroundings. Mino da San Quirico, probably not typical, fitted glazed windows, a round table so he could eat in his quarters, a fire-basket for charcoal and a lead container for heating water. He also had a couch for his work-room, evidently separate from his cella. All the expenses were queried by the papal auditor.63 The Dominican inquisition buildings in Bologna, at the heart of the order, were understandably much more imposing than the prison and stables described by Lanfranco da Bergamo in Pavia in 1293. They included office accommodation, a chapel and eventually a balcony big enough to accommodate formal tribunal hearings with important officials present.64 Because the buildings were in the cloister, they probably did not incorporate stabling or prison cells. The exact location of those services is unclear, as in general is Bologna’s access to prison facilities. In the late 1280s, the Bologna inquisition used the convent’s own prison to house suspected heretics, presumably because of the lack of its own dedicated facilities. Even at the very end of the century, both the inquisition and the commune still relied on nunneries to house female prisoners, though this was an extremely unwelcome burden to some of them. However, a carcer officii inquisitionis is attested by 1299.65 One consequence of the Bologna inquisition’s location in the heart of the convent was that business relating to women did not normally take place in the domus inquisitionis itself, presumably to avoid exposing other friars to contact with their polluting presence as they were brought through the precincts. Before the tenure of Guido da Parma (1304), inquisitors in Bologna usually dealt with female witnesses and suspects in the church of San Domenico itself, in its sacristy, or on some occasions in the women’s own homes.66 Not 62 Collectoria

133, fol. 133v, repair of well, 137v, tiling of roof of domus officii, 134r, expenditure on building works at the domus habitacionis, all 1316. The ability to lock doors to personal chambers was a special concession for inquisitors: Dominicans generally were obliged to keep them open. 63 Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 359, for three payments to Taddeo Gaddi totalling six gold florins for a picture for the inquisitor. Collectoria 251, fol. 6v–7r, for Mino’s domestic improvements. 64 ASOB, I, doc. 591, tribunal sitting on balcony. 65 In 1291, the heretic Onebene testifies to having met the perfect Benvenuto da Cremona ‘after he had got out of the Preachers’ prison’ (‘postquam exiverat de carcere fratrum predicatorum’): ASOB, I, doc. 1, pp. 2–3; docs. 328–30, existence of a dedicated prison; doc. 377, use of nunneries for female prisoners. For prison facilities in Bologna in general, see G. Geltner, La prigione medievale: una storia sociale (Rome, 2012); p. 50 for use of nunneries to house women prisoners. 66 None of the hundreds of Bologna inquisition acts involving women prior to 1304 takes place in the domus inquisitionis. The majority are in the church of San

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 enough detail is available from other inquisitorial areas to confirm whether this gender distinction was a common pattern for depositions and sentences, but it is certainly clear that some communes insisted on segregating the inquisition’s male and female prisoners when in civic jails. In Padua in 1275 this was the source of sharp disagreement between the inquisitor and the podestà.67 In Franciscan Florence, there were similar problems, even though, by the early fourteenth century, it had a rather elaborate prison. In the 1320s, ‘high value’ female prisoners were kept in the house of a notary, though this may have been a tactic; it was only in 1327 that the carcer inquisitionis was finally modified to hold women separately from men.68 Even an inquisitor with his own accommodation could find himself needing to borrow space from others to carry out certain kinds of business. Major sentences were, of course, delivered publicly and with ceremony, in the main churches or on the arenga (rostrum) in front of the palazzo comune (city hall). But many other stages of business required discussion with, and sometimes approval from, jurisconsults and civic and diocesan representatives. This did not have to take place on inquisition property. In Bologna, in addition to the use made of several churches and of the domus inquisitionis, notarial subscriptions show that over a dozen other locations – some rather surprising – were used for inquisition work. Business was transacted in: the upper room of the bishop’s palace; the personal chamber of the bishop’s vicar; the covered passageway to the bishop’s palace; the friars’ chapterhouse; the area in front of the chapterhouse (both under the portico and in the cloister); the balcony over the chapterhouse door; the chamber near the entrance to the schools; the porch of the gate leading to the friars’ cemetery; the porchway between the inner and outer gates of the convent; and, on occasion, on university premises, including the students’ chapterhouse and a lecture hall.69 The impression given by this range of locations is of an organisation racing to get its work done, and often Domenico, some in their own homes, or in one case in a friar’s house (‘in domo fratris Rodulfi de Montecalvo’): ASOB, II, doc. 796. The only plausible explanation for the gender differentiation in location is a wish to avoid bringing women to the domus inquisitionis. From 1304, under Guido da Parma, some low-status female cases (Dolcinians) are handled in the domus inquisitionis. 67 ASVen, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari 91/III, doc. 36 (30 June 1275). The podestà, Michele d’Oria, felt it unsuitable to house female inquisition prisoners in the common jail and instead detained them in the lock-up of the palazzo comune under a lighter regime, which may have included parole. The Franciscan inquisitor, Alessio da Mantova, less squeamish, took the view that Michele was disobedient and even encouraging heresy, and excommunicated him. The dispute had to be resolved by the inquisitor-general, Gian Gaetano Orsini. 68 Collectoria 249, fol. 54v, female heretic detained in notary’s house; Collectoria 250, fol. 139r, modification of Florence prison to divide the interior, just prior to several months’ imprisonment for three women (fols. 139v–40r). 69 ASOB, I, docs. 101, 104, 124, 389; II, docs. 563, 569, 838, 864, 902, 904, 905, 588–90

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Starting work snagging important collaborators such as the vicars of the podestà and bishop wherever they could get hold of them. But it also illustrates that – contrary to the secrecy claimed by Henry Lea – much inquisition business was carried out in places which could, at best, only be described as semi-private. You do not get much privacy holding discussions in gateways. Indeed, testimony in one Bologna case came from a convent doorkeeper claiming to have overheard heretical statements ‘in curia fratrum predicatorum ante portam’ (‘in the Preachers’ courtyard in front of the gate’), where (he said) many laymen and communal bannitors hung around. Whatever might have happened later on, the workings of the inquisition around 1300 were much more public than is often thought.70 The domus inquisitionis and associated buildings within the convent precinct were not the only properties held or managed by the inquisition. As well as buying and renting properties for the use of their own core team, some inquisition offices in the later Duecento moved towards becoming landed proprietors on a much larger scale. Rather than being destroyed or sold, as canon law provided, properties and land confiscated from heretics were now often retained for extended periods and let out to tenants, providing an income to the inquisition in both cash and kind. There were good reasons for this. Since seizure of property occurred before conviction and sentencing, renting it out avoided the embarrassment of disposing of the property of an innocent. However, this process could lead to an unconscionable build-up of assets in the inquisition’s hands, and denied their share of proceeds to the other partners in the officium inquisitionis, including the officiales themselves. Nor did all such property appear in inquisitors’ accounts. In the early 1330s, the corrupt inquisitor Mino da San Quirico of Florence sought to muddy the waters during the process against him, by denouncing a house and land in Prato which had been held by the inquisition for over fifty years without being sold or reassigned. This asset is not mentioned during the thirteen or so years prior to Mino’s accusations, covering the tenure of six inquisitors.71

‘in capitulo studentium’, 592, ‘in domo in qua convenerunt scolares et universitas scolarium’, (‘in the house where the scholars and the body of scholars meet’). 70 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, p. 406: ‘the Inquisition shrouded itself in the awful mystery of secrecy until after sentence had been awarded’; ASOB, I, doc. 427. The bannitors were the senior communal nuncii charged with delivering public sentences of exile and confiscation of property against criminals and others deprived of civil rights. 71 Collectoria 133, fols. 188v, 190r, rents received by Marchesio da Brescia over five years from two properties in Milan; fol. 189v, rent from another property in Brescia. Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’, pp. 84–5, doc. 7, a sample three-year tenancy contract let by the inquisition in 1298 for farmland and vineyards, the ‘rental’ of which was a third of the product in grain and wine. Presumably this helped with the office’s food bills. Similar arrangements are found in the Veneto. Collectoria 251, fol. 51r, alleged property in Prato.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 As inquisition teams expanded, more accommodation was needed to house staff and officials. Lanfranco da Bergamo paid rent for a team member for whom there was no room at the domus inquisitionis. Under the Florentine inquisitor Michele d’Arezzo, in 1325, a new building was constructed as a dwelling and workspace for the notary Cettino Benricevuti da Prato, which may also have housed laundry facilities for the inquisition.72 But there are some more questionable references, which suggest that property not properly disposed of under the constitutions was being used as rent-free accommodation for a wider group of hangers-on. As well as receiving rent from properties let out, the Florentine inquisitor Pace da Castelfiorentino paid for the cleaning of a house occupied by a familiaris who breezes through the records, never to be seen again.73 In the Marca Trevisana, land was amassed through bequests made either for the inquisition’s own use or for them to administer for charitable purposes. Large-scale property ownership and management of this kind clearly implies a complex and continuous organisation, going far beyond what an inquisitor alone could supervise during a short period of office. In fact, even with a large support team, inquisitors do not seem to have been very good at it. The mismanagement of property donated or under guardianship features highly in the list of grievances from Padua and Vicenza, which led eventually to the Franciscans’ loss of control there in 1302–03. Bonato and Rigon have noted, for example, that the estate of Aicardino di Litolfo, intended to be safeguarded by the inquisition for his heirs, was said to have been wasted from 12,000 lire to a third of its original size over twenty years.74 The preceding discussion essentially spans the half century from the 1280s to around 1330, since little information is available on the inquisition’s premises before then. During this period, the size of the estate increased manyfold, and in many places buildings begun in wattle and thatch were replaced with more durable stone and tile. But premises remained highly variable in nature and quality. Accommodation ranged from borrowed space to purpose-built establishments, and (as in Piacenza) owned property could be replaced by rented accommodation as needs changed. Buildings were usually on the edge of the convent precinct, and not necessarily contiguous. As we see in Bologna, the ownership of a domus inquisitionis did not eliminate the need to use a wide variety of convent and other premises for various

72 Collectoria

250, fol. 57v. The building had two storeys, a water supply and a large sink. Laundry is the best explanation for the fitments, which certainly were not needed by a notary. 73 Collectoria 249, fol. 42v, six months’ rent for a domus officii (which could be a building seized by the office, rather than one used for inquisition purposes) from ser Francesco da Figline; fol. 62r, payment for cleaning the house (‘pro attatura domus’) in which the familiaris Ildebrandino lived. 74 Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, doc. 261; pp. xv–xvi.

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Starting work purposes, prior to public sentencing. Indeed, heavy dependence on the local convent is apparent throughout. Though some inquisitors did move their premises outside the convent itself, as may be the case in Ferrara, others remained rooted there throughout the fourteenth century, at any rate for their core accommodation. Inquisitors relied heavily on convents’ co-operation to enable them to function at the most basic level of having a place to live and work, and their lives were subject to disruption as the convents themselves developed. The need to keep on good terms with their conventual hosts may explain the frequency of financial offerings to them, discussed in more detail in Chapter 7 below. As is evident in other respects, inquisitors’ theoretical autonomy sat alongside practical dependency.

Money and manpower Besides accommodation, the new inquisitor needed support staff and money. Where did he get it? If an inquisitor took over directly from a predecessor in the same seat, there might be some resources, or at any rate outstanding debts, to be assigned. If the predecessor was still on the spot, a formal handover might even be made person to person. However, this seems rarely or never to have happened. During gaps in tenure, the prior or custos of the local convent acted as deposit holder for inquisition funds, and when there was a very long hiatus, he occasionally assumed a larger role. 75 The handover to the new inquisitor was meant to cover cash holdings, deposits with the inquisition’s bankers, debts owed to and by the office, and formal transfer of property, ranging from buildings to used riding capes and old mattresses.76 Debts included not only outstanding amounts from fines or confiscations, but also sums owed by previous inquisitors or staff, who often used inquisition funds as a personal bank. A final element was the account of expenses for the inquisition’s prison, which represented a claim against the commune.77

75 The

Florence custos held inquisition funds in 1326, when Tedisio dei Fabbri Tolosini abruptly departed after less than a year in office; and in 1331–32 during nearly a year’s hiatus between the departure of Pietro da Prato and the arrival of Mino da San Quirico. In 1307, Florio da Verona (Padua, Vicenza, Venice) died in office and the local prior took possession of his accounts to hand over to his successor. See Collectoria 250, fol. 91v, handover to Accursio Bonfantini (November 1326); Collectoria 133, fol. 96r, Florio da Verona. 76 The amount of detail in surviving accounts on property handed over varies enormously, and unfortunately cannot be used as a catalogue of assets. 77 When Accursio Bonfantini took over as inquisitor in Florence in 1326, he was owed sums by his predecessor-but-one in Florence, Pace da Castelfiorentino, by two previous inquisitors of Siena and by a semi-retired nuncius. Pace eventually paid up only in May 1329: Collectoria 250, fols. 92rv.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 The problem for a newly arriving inquisitor was that, at least on paper, there was often not much cash to take over. Many surviving accounts show inquisitors leaving their books in the red, to the frustration both of the papal auditors and of their successors. They sometimes also left staff unpaid. When Lanfranco da Bergamo arrived in Pavia in 1292, he found that his predecessor had not only bequeathed him no operating capital, but had also borrowed the large sum of 140 lire pavesi against the future sale of a heretic’s goods, leaving the inquisition office heavily indebted. The sale took six months to complete, and yielded less than the pledge. As a result, Lanfranco had to borrow money on three occasions from the inquisitor of Milan in order to fund himself and his horses, until cash began to flow from confiscations and penalties to offset the losses. Things were no better in wealthy urban centres: when Pace da Castelfiorentino took over from Antonio da Arezzo in Florence in 1319, he recorded a modest surplus of receipts over expenditure of fifty-five florins, but almost immediately had to get a loan of one hundred florins from the office’s banker to meet necessities. Reflecting the inconsistency of accounting practices, this is represented as an asset.78 Even the debts claimed to be due to the office were often clearly uncollectable, and were passed on from inquisitor to inquisitor as a matter of form rather than as a statement of resources potentially available. The Florence office, for example, continued for almost two decades to list as owing the costs it had incurred in a fruitless attempt to wrestle ex-Templar properties away from the Hospitallers, to whom they had been assigned by the pope.79 Lanfranco da Bergamo turned to his colleagues for loans to tide him over, and it is clear that the formal sources of inquisition finance (the profits of confiscations and fines) ran alongside a flourishing informal system of financial exchanges and subventions, between inquisitors themselves and with other clerics. Some even borrowed at interest.80 These loans and accompanying pledges were not always entered in inquisition accounts, partly 78 For

Lanfranco’s woes, Collectoria 133, fol. 32r; Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, p. 503; Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 157–8. For Pace, Collectoria 249, fol. 39r. 79 The accounts of the Florentine inquisitors Pace da Castelfiorentino in 1319 and Accursio Bonfantini in 1326 both record as sums due expenses incurred over the Templars of 214 florins and 41 florins respectively, dating from the inquisitors Andrea dei Mozzi (1306–11) and Grimaldo da Prato (second term, 1310–15): Collectoria 249, fol. 39r; Collectoria 250, fol. 92r. 80 Pace da Castelfiorentino pledged a bible as security for a loan of twenty florins from a senior friar at Santa Croce, the brother of his notary. This was eventually recovered some five years later and the debt cancelled (Collectoria 250, fol. 3v). However, the bible itself did not belong to the office. It seems originally to have been accepted by Andrea dei Mozzi (thus before 1311) as a pledge against a loan of thirty florins to the Franciscan convent of Cortona. It was eventually sold by Accursio Bonfantini (1326–29) for eighteen florins to the master of the Altopascio friary, after fifteen to twenty years in inquisition custody and the loss of nearly half its value: Collectoria 251, fol. 69v, and Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1933), p. 182.

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Starting work through carelessness and partly, perhaps, because inquisitors expected to be repaid in other ways.81 The extent of this secondary system of support is therefore hard to gauge, but it played a significant role in smoothing cash flow problems for both new inquisitors and well-established ones. In such circumstances, it is no surprise that many inquisitors record a rush of receipts from heresy confiscations and fines in their first year in office. Not only were they eager to prove themselves, but they needed the cash from confiscations and penalties to keep the office running.82 It is also plausible that inquisition staff, who had a vested interest in generating enough funds to meet their salaries, kept some suspects ‘warming over’, ready for quick action when the new inquisitor arrived. These practical financial imperatives are overlooked by Richard Kieckhefer, who criticises the supposed inertia of medieval inquisitors not operating under central direction.83 Besides money and lodging, the newly arriving inquisitor needed manpower. He rarely brought staff with him, apart from a clerical socius. Under Ad extirpanda, the civic authority was required to supply two notaries, two servitors and the services of twelve good men, all appointed after consultation with the bishop and representatives of both mendicant orders. The term of office of these staff was however keyed to the secular appointment cycle of the podestà (January and July), whereas most inquisitors took up post in the autumn. There was thus a good chance that an arriving inquisitor would find the nucleus of a functioning team in place, even after a few months’ hiatus. He did not have to wait for appointments to be made, although he might not get on with office-holders appointed without his involvement. Subsequent chapters examine the different groups of staff in more detail. The point to note here is that the inquisitor was not alone in his work. Even if his accommodation was sometimes unsatisfactory, he was supported by an infrastructure which – contrary to Kieckhefer’s propositions – had a continuing existence even when he was not present.84 In fact, he was the manager of a team – often a very large one.

81 Ruggiero

da Petriolo, inquisitor in Bologna 1311–12, records receiving a loan of ten Bolognese lire from the Ferrara inquisitor, Giovanni dei Pizigotti, although nothing appears in Giovanni’s own accounts. Giovanni may, however, not have pushed for reimbursement because Ruggiero moved to become prior-provincial, a post to which he himself aspired: Collectoria 133, fol. 164r. 82 Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 479, comments on the pattern of higher revenues and lower expenses in the early years of office, reversing as time passed. He attributes this to manipulation of the books, but there might sometimes have been honest explanations. 83 Kieckhefer, ‘Personal Jurisdiction’, pp. 42–5. 84 However, Kieckhefer, ‘Personal Jurisdiction’, p. 59, rightly acknowledges the importance of the convents where inquisitors were based: ‘the role of the local friaries as institutional bases for inquisition was clearly vital’.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350

The social environment It would be wrong to give the impression that new inquisitors arrived unsupported in an unfamiliar environment. Some had spent careers in the local convent, and others had close personal and family links with the civic or episcopal elite at their main base. Their officials plugged them into local networks, and were sometimes relatives, either of the inquisitor himself or of significant civic or ecclesiastical figures. In Florence, the long-time second notary, Benvenuto de Trissanti, was the brother of the senior Franciscan preacher at Santa Croce, Giacomo de Trissanti. Rando notes that at Verona, tight bonds linked the ruling Scaligera family, the bishopric, the inquisitor’s circle and the families of the new bourgeoisie (‘a Verona, infatti, un forte legame stringeva famiglia scaligera, episcopio, ambiente inquisitoriale e famiglie della nuova borghesia’). In 1277, the inquisitor and podestà of Verona were brothers, and similar comments could be made for other cities.85 In describing the close association between inquisition officials and influential Florentine families in the later thirteenth century, Corsi speaks of ‘hidden markers [in the inquisitor’s behaviour] bearing witness to compromises with the economic affairs of various influential Florentine families’ (‘profonde tracce che ne testimoniano la compromissione con le speculazioni economiche di alcuni influenti famiglie fiorentine’).86 Though the inquisitor at the time Corsi describes was not a native Florentine, many Tuscan inquisitors were themselves from important local families and enmeshed in the political and economic affairs of the city. A Piccolomini was inquisitor in both Florence and Siena in the 1280s. Andrea dei Mozzi, inquisitor in Florence c.1305–10, was the nephew of the eponymous, recent, ill-famed bishop.87 Both Accursio Bonfantini (1326–29) and his predecessor, Tedisio dei Fabbri Tolosini, came from significant Florentine houses and must have been well acquainted with the higher levels of city government and commerce. Two of Tedisio’s close relatives were the inquisition’s bankers for at least twenty years, including during his tenure; another had been a prior of the commune in 1321 and 1325, whilst a fourth was guardian, then custos, of the Florence convent in the year Tedisio was

85 Il

Quaternus Rogacionum di Bongiovanni di Bonandrea da Bologna, ed. D. Rando and M. Motter (Bologna, 1997), p. 35; Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, p. 79. The inquisitor, Filippo Bonacolsi, and the podestà, Giannino, were both sons of Pinamonte Bonacolsi, lord of Mantua. 86 Corsi, ‘Per la storia’, p. 3. 87 For Bartolommeo Piccolomini: G Mengozzi, ‘Documenti danteschi del R. Archivio di Stato di Siena’, BSSP 28 (1921), 87–182 (p. 126); C. Piana, ‘Silloge di documenti dall’antico archivio di S. Francesco di Bologna’, AFH 49 (1956), 17–76, 391–433 (p. 36). For Andrea dei Mozzi (and his rather scandalous uncle), see Dameron, Florence and its Church, p. 289.

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Starting work inquisitor. Accursio’s relative was gonfaloniere di giustizia (standard-bearer of justice, a high official) in 1323–24.88 Although friars were meant to forswear family ties on joining their order, it is clear that this did not always happen. Accursio Bonfantini borrowed from inquisition funds to finance his niece’s wedding, and allowed his nephew Tinghus to take loans as well. A relative, Pierino, was briefly his familiaris, and Picchino (possibly identical) was the commune’s syndic for inquisition business, also salaried from inquisition funds.89 These examples (and they could be multiplied many times from the Veneto, where one inquisitor was renowned for enriching his nephews) may speak to impropriety in the conduct of some inquisitors, but they also demonstrate their rootedness in the political, social and economic networks of the cities where they held office.90 Some inquisitors had no known close ties in the area where they exercised their post. Francesco da Pocapaglia, inquisitor of western Piedmont, originated from a minor noble family holding one castle west of Asti. For others, it was social ties which directed their choice of base. Tommaso da Gorzano, from a small community on the fringes of Asti, favoured Asti as his inquisitorial base (and is sometimes described as Thomas of Asti), though the town was actually Francesco’s nominal seat. Tommaso’s own principal centre should have been Alessandria. Close involvement with important local families could however prove problematic when political upheavals took place. The best examples are not for inquisitors personally, but for the families which supplied their staff. The Bonandrea family, exiled from Bologna because of their links to the Lambertazzi faction, supplied notaries and clerics to the Verona inquisition under Filippo Bonacolsi and more widely in the Veneto, but were forced by political change and the murder of family members to migrate to Trento, under the protection of Filippo, by then bishop of Trento. This is an interesting case of an inquisition-related family regrouping in a different environment.91

Conclusion Although medieval inquisitors disposed of great powers, their lives were pervaded by insecurity. They were subject to constant meddling by the 88 Biscaro,

‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 351 n. 3; Collectoria 250, fol. 91r. 250, fols. 113v, 116r, Piero Bonfantini familiaris, 1327; fols. 141r, 145r, Picchino Bonfantini, sindicus and deposit holder, 1328–29; fols. 145rv, loans to Donna Gemma, Accursio’s sister, and his nephew Tinghus, 1329. 90 Fra Giuliano da Mantova ‘had numerous nephews and nieces, all of whom, according to many accounts, he enriched, though previously they were poor’ (‘habebat nepotes et neptes plurimos, quos omnes, secundum multorum relationem, ditavit, cum antea essent pauperes’: d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 177, doc. 18. 91 Rando and Motter, Il Quaternus Rogacionum, passim. 89 Collectoria

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 papacy, and though, once appointed by their provincial, their office was fairly secure, the order intervened in other, more subtle, ways. Their initial financial circumstances could also be quite uncertain, though colleagues helped out with loans. These uncertainties lasted long after the inquisition is regarded as being firmly established. The physical surroundings of inquisition remained precarious beyond the turn of the fourteenth century, and much depended on the relationship with the local convent. Even in settled bases such as Bologna, where the inquisitor had buildings of his own, it was necessary to use a wide range of ad hoc locations to carry out its work. Many of these were more public than is often claimed for inquisition business, not to say unsuitable. In some places, there is evidence of accumulating property holdings as a result of confiscations, giving the inquisition something of the character of a landlord. This in turn required a more intensive back-office effort to manage: perhaps this is why we find standard forms of land lease entering the Rimini inquisition manual in 1298.92 Elsewhere the buildings of the 1270s were surrendered as the geography of heresy changed, and initial accommodation in wattle, wood and thatch was replaced with brick, stone and tile. Inquisitors were not alone. Team spirit with their colleagues helped them through initial financial hiccups, and along with their staff, they were often embedded in the local community through family and political ties. Some of these, they allowed to influence their work. Distinct from the inquisitor’s personal role, there are many signs of the development of a sense of institutional identity for the officium inquisitionis itself, not least in the purchase of property (as in Bologna). The evidence of inquisition seals is difficult to interpret, but it offers intriguing pointers to the inquisitor’s relationship with place, order and commune and also to a slightly different approach between the two main mendicant orders.

92 Fussenegger,

‘De manipulo’, p. 84, doc. 7.

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3 The inquisition notary: making actions legal

In his Tractatus de haereticis of around 1330, the judge-advocate Zanchino Ugolini wrote that his work was needed because inquisitors were ignorant of the laws that governed their actions: ‘inquisitores, ut plurimum, sunt iuris ignari’. Indeed, in pleading to be excused of his temerity in striking down a predecessor’s verdict, the inquisitor Lorenzo d’Ancona confessed as much.1 The person who was meant to keep the inquisitor’s actions legal was the inquisition notary. He and his small group of colleagues were probably the most important members of the inquisitor’s direct team, since they were essential for the validation of any kind of business in medieval Italy. Transactions recorded by a qualified notary were ‘public instruments, whose authority did not depend on witnesses, seals or other authenticating devices’ but simply on the notary’s own declaration.2 Where notaries were appointed under authority of either emperor or pope, the authenticity and accuracy of the documents they prepared or copied was recognised both universally and long after the death of the originator. Locally accredited notaries had a more restricted range of recognition outside their home area, but were still essential to validate local business. Notaries swore to record faithfully the subject matter with which they were dealing, and could be struck off or subjected to other penalties if they failed to observe their oath.3 Their participation not only attested the veracity of 1 Zanchino

Ugolini, ‘De haereticis’, ed. Campeggi, p. 116. For Lorenzo, ‘iuris imperitissimus’, see Iocco, ‘Il caso giudiziario’, p. 55. 2 J. A. Brundage, The Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: Canonists, Civilians and Courts (Chicago, 2008), pp. 398–9. A. Bartoli Langeli, Notai. Scrivere documenti nell’Italia medievale (Rome, 2006) gives an excellent bibliography of recent Italian work on both the notarial function and the work of individual notaries themselves. The seminal study is G. Costamagna, Il notaio a Genova: tra prestigio e potere (Rome, 1970). 3 This was a real sanction. Thirteenth-century records of the Bologna notarial college show several examples of striking-off for falsifying records, which also meant being banned from the city. See Liber sive Matricula Notariorum Comunis Bononie (1219–1299), ed. R. Ferrera and V. Valentini, Fonti e Strumenti per la storia del notariato italiano 3 (Rome, 1980), p. 329, ‘Thomas Bonacursii de Thuscis bannitus comunis Bononie

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 judicial proceedings and records of public business, but also gave weight to commercial and financial contracts of all kinds. Yet Andrea del Col wrote as recently as 2010 that ‘the characteristics, responsibilities and activity of inquisition notaries are poorly understood’.4 The importance attached by the inquisition to written records has frequently been commented on, but it was the notary himself who gave them authenticity. Public belief about the notary’s significance in inquisition business is attested very early, when in 1249 four suspected heretics in Orvieto kidnapped the notary of the inquisitor Ruggiero Calcagni, along with his registers, and forced him to rewrite the acts concerning them. By falsifying the record of which he was custodian, they (rather naively) supposed they would escape punishment. Solvi comments that ‘the attempted falsification of the register [seems to me to show] full awareness of the irreplaceable juridical value of the records of the processes’.5 Ninety years later, one of the charges levelled against the corrupt Florentine inquisitor Mino da San Quirico was that he did not use a public notary but himself wrote down depositions and added codicils to witness testimony in his own hand, contrary to the papal constitutions.6 The notary was thus plainly seen by educated and uneducated alike, not just as a subordinate member of the inquisitor’s staff, but as a separate pole of authority within the officium inquisitionis, with independent professional standing and standards. Without him, the inquisitor’s work could not be valid. How then did the inquisition notary actually function within the officium? Did he actually exercise an independent position in guiding and setting standards for inquisition business (including advising the inquisitor on his legal powers), or merely follow instructions to record documents? As the

tamquam falsarius et pro falsitate’ (‘Thomas Bonacorsi de Thuscis, banished by the commune of Bologna as a forger and for fraud’, 1284) and four others in similar terms (p. 330, Venetico Michaelis, 1304; pp. 410–11, Francesco Buvalelli, 1324; p. 425, Landolfo Bonomei, 1304; p. 576, Deotesalvo Bertholomei Carbonis, 1285). 4 A. del Col, ‘Notaio’, in Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, ed. A. Prosperi, V. Lavenia and J. Tedeschi, 4 vols. (Florence, 2010), II, 1118–19: ‘le caratteristiche, gli obblighi e le attività del notaio dell’Inquisizione sono poco studiate’. 5 D. Solvi, ‘Inquisizione e frati Minori a Orvieto’, in Frati minori e inquisizione, pp. 81–111 (pp. 87–8): ‘la tentata falsificazione del registro [mi pare dimostri] la piena consapevolezza del valore giuridico insostituibile degli atti processuali’. 6 Collectoria 251, fol. 74r (1334): the aged fra Juvenalis of Florence testified against Mino that he wrote down the words of deponents in his own hand, without calling on a public notary, and condemned many people in this way, going against the constitutions by which the words of deponents must be written by a public notary and must be open to view. (‘Quod scribebat manu propria, non vocato notario publico, dicta deponentium, et multos propter hac condempnavit, veniendo contra constitutiones cui dicta deponentium debebant scribi pro notario publico et debebant esse luce clariora.’) He further comments on the addition of codicils to testimony.

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The inquisition notary most senior member of the lay team, what was his role during the inquisitor’s absence? Is it possible to tell if notaries saw their loyalty as to the inquisitor in person, or to the officium inquisitionis? Did they work solely for the inquisition? Where did they fit in civic society? Not all of these questions can be fully answered, but it is possible to go a good way towards them.

Numbers and functions Ad extirpanda required inquisitors to be supplied in each commune with two notaries. Along with the twelve boni homines, and likewise appointed by the podestà, they were to be nominated by a panel including the bishop and representatives of both main mendicant orders. However, from an early date we find the numbers of notaries mushrooming. Angelo da Todi in Umbria and Lazio around 1260 managed to persuade successive popes to allow him five or six notaries, instead of the prescribed two. By 1268 the inquisitor in Orvieto, Bartolommeo d’Amelia, already had more notaries than the recommended number.7 In Bologna around 1300, Guido Capello had a team of at least five contemporaneously, plus four others (that we know about) based at his subsidiary centres in Ferrara and Modena. Under Ruggiero da Petriolo in 1311–12, a much less busy Bologna inquisition office still had six notaries, though by the time of Manfredo da Parma (1314–18) the team had diminished to two plus a scribe.8 These numbers compare with only ten notaries for the entire criminal justice system of the city.9 The complement varied not only with fluctuations in business, but also according to the current state of relations between the Church (or individual inquisitors) and a particular commune. There was a financial issue too: the higher the inquisitor’s expenses on staff, the smaller the commune’s share of the residue from confiscations and penalties. To avoid perpetual disputes, many cities struck local agreements on staffing, specifying the numbers of different types of staff they were willing to finance, their salary levels, and

7 Angelo

persuaded Alexander IV and Urban IV to increase his complement with notaries from his own order: see Parmeggiani, ‘Inquisizione in Romagna’, p. 118. In 1268, Bartolommeo d’Amelia, inquisitor in Orvieto, certainly had at least three notaries: d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, doc. 90. 8 Notary numbers under Guido Capello derive from subscriptions to inquisition acts and instruments, which may not include all those engaged in work such as property sales. The exact size of the Bologna notarial complement around 1300 is thus uncertain. The financial accounts of Ruggiero da Petriolo and Manfredo da Parma, on the other hand, show the numbers receiving regular pay: Collectoria 133, fols. 133v, 135v, 137rv, 136v (scribe). 9 S. Rubin Blanshei, ‘Criminal Justice in Medieval Perugia and Bologna’, Law and History Review 1 (1983), 251–75 (p. 255), number as at 1295.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 often a longer period of appointment than the six-monthly term set out in Ad extirpanda. Such agreements are discussed in more detail in Chapter 8 below. In Florence, the agreement made between the city and the inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato around 1310 allowed for two notaries with a fixed salary (salarium taxatum), with a third employed and paid at the inquisitor’s pleasure.10 This agreement was still valid in 1334, and appears to have been largely observed: the salary levels cited correspond with pay records in the inquisitors’ accounts from 1319 onwards. Occasionally, extra help was brought in, especially (but not only) when there was a large-scale writing task. In September 1321, two extra notaries were paid on a piecework basis for copying proclamations to be sent to different Franciscan custodes about the process against the ‘rebellos ecclesie Romane’ (‘rebels against the Roman Church’ – the Spirituals); while in 1320, a Guido notarius was paid for taking down witness testimony and collecting a fine.11 In 1324 ser Bartholo notarius was sent to accompany four friars (themselves not regularly involved with inquisition work) to take a confession in Castiglione, collect a fine and then write up the proceedings, for which he was paid 20 solidi.12 The number of notaries known to be engaged in the Florence office is low compared with Bologna, although their pay levels are higher. This may reflect the level of business, or perhaps a different distribution of work between notaries and other literate staff. Bologna was, after all, bulging with notaries, and over-supply may have affected price.13 In Florence, some tasks which would normally fall to a notary, such as keeping accounts and acting as the custos carceris (prison warden) were carried out by one of the familiares, Manovello di Giacomo. There is also evidence that purely scribal work was subcontracted both to commercial scriptoria (writing bureaux) and – more surprisingly – to literate but impecunious prisoners in the inquisition’s own prison. Under Michele d’Arezzo, scribal services were provided over several years by the imprisoned priest, ser Bernardo Nuti, who received clothing and better treatment in return. Bernardo had escaped in 1323 alongside a group of fraticelli, was recaptured and thereafter certainly remained incarcerated till at least September 1329.14 He is probably identical

10 Collectoria

251, fol. 68r. 249, fol. 62v, piecework; fols. 54v, 55r, Guido notarius. 12 Collectoria 250, fol. 41rv, ser Bartholo. The leader of the group of friars was fra Giacomo de Trissanti, brother of the inquisition’s long-time scribe. Two further notaries were also used several times for stages of the process against Guido Tarlati, bishop of Arezzo. 13 There were more than 1,300 notaries in Bologna in 1294: see La società dei notai di Bologna, ed. G. Tamba (Rome, 1988), p. 35. 14 For Manovello’s role, see Chapter 5 below. The Florence office had a lucrative relationship with the stationer, ser Cambio, who also provided scriptorial services: Collectoria 250, fol. 51v (1325), ‘Ser Cambio pro scriptura ista pro officio, 3 solidos’ (‘to ser Cambio, three shillings for writing for the office’). For writing services by 11 Collectoria

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The inquisition notary with the priest Bernardo da Prato who drowned in the inquisition prison during the great Arno flood of November 1333, because the inquisitor Mino would not unshackle him.15 One way of side-stepping the limits on numbers and the wage bill imposed by Ad extirpanda and local agreements on what communes would pay for was to use qualified friars as notaries. This device was used by both mendicant orders, although (unlike secular clerics) friars could not normally act as notaries.16 As early as 1259, Alexander IV instructed the Franciscan minister-provincial for the Administratio S. Francisci, the area around Assisi, to appoint five or six notarially qualified friars to the inquisition, and (for the removal of doubt about their validity) later confirmed the acts written by Paolo da Norcia.17 The Franciscan Tancredo da Rimini, imperiali auctoritate notarius (notary by imperial authority), rogated the originals of several of the template documents in the Rimini inquisition handbook.18 Of sixteen inquisition notaries in the Bologna Acta (which conclude in 1309 but look back to the 1270s), five were friars. They presumably entered the Dominican order only after their professional qualification; this is demonstrable for Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, who enrolled as a notary in 1279 and later became both friar and inquisition notary, and socius to two inquisitors. The Bologna Liber

the prisoner Bernardo: Collectoria 250, fols. 37v, 38r (October 1323); fols. 41v, 42r (March 1324) pumice ‘pro presbitero Bernardo scribendo pro officio’ (‘for the priest Bernardo, for writing for the office’); fol. 42r (April 1324); fol. 49r. (December 1324) pens ‘pro sacerdote carceris quia scribit officio’ (‘for the priest in the prison, because he writes for the office’); fol. 51v (March 1325); fol. 53v (May 1325), pens ‘pro ser Bernardo carcerato’ (‘for the prisoner, ser Bernardo’). The last continuous record of Bernardo in prison is September 1329 (Collectoria 250, fol. 142v). Later prison accounts are missing. 15 See Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1933), p. 192, drawing on the processes against Mino in Collectoria 251, at fol. 85v in modern foliation: ‘Also he [dompnus Bonifatio, monk of the Holy Trinity] said that the same inquisitor had had arrested and imprisoned a priest called Bernardo da Prato so he could extort from him 15 gold florins, which Bernardo could not pay because of his great poverty, with the result that when the flood came, he was drowned in the prison.’ (‘Item dixit quod dictus Inquisitor capi fecit et in carcere captum detinuit presbiterum vocatum Bernardum de Prato ut ab eo extorqueret 15 fl de auro, quos pretextu nimie paupertatis sibi dare non potuit, ex quo factum est quod adveniente inundatione aquarum soffocatus est in carcere.’) Geltner, La prigione medievale, pp. 115–16, reports similar use of literate prisoners as scriveners in communal jails. 16 Cleric notaries were in fact the norm in Venice, where, Bartoli Langeli suggests, notarial qualification could in effect not be achieved without clerical status. For the atypical evolution of notarial practice in Venice: Bartoli Langeli, Notai, pp. 60–5. 17 K. Eubel, ‘Elenchus Romanorum pontificium epistolarum quae in Archivio sacri conventus Assisiensis OM Conv. extant’, AFH 1 (1908), 601–16, doc. 117, Cordi nobis est; doc. 134, Ad perpetuam rei memoriam. Bullarium Franciscanum, II, pp. 350 (n. 506), 389, 540. 18 Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’, pp. 81–3.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Notariorum records the enrolment of a number of other notaries who later joined mendicant orders.19 In Florence there is no evidence of Franciscan friar notaries working prominently with the inquisition in the period 1319–34, for which we have good records. However, some certainly worked as notaries for the convent of Santa Croce itself, where the inquisition was based. Piron implies that the Santa Croce friar notaries limited their work to purely religious contracts, and the surviving records of Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne in Bologna are also faith-related. This may be a quirk of the surviving evidence, or may in fact mean that inquisition friar notaries did not operate across the whole range of notarial functions, which would have included financial and property dealings.20 For inquisitors, the use of notaries who were also friars had many advantages, not least their relative cheapness and flexibility. But unlike cleric notaries in some civic administrative offices, used for their perceived impartiality, there were potential conflicts of loyalty between Church and notarial office with the inquisition which must place a question mark over the friar notary’s ability to be truly independent in judgement.21 One particular question mark is over whether friar notaries went through the full nomination and appointment process described in Ad extirpanda, intended to guarantee acceptability to all parties. Were they perhaps used by inquisitors precisely because they were parti pris? Similar queries apply to the appointment procedure of any additional notaries above the canonical or locally agreed number. The issues may be illustrated in the career of Benvenuto de Trissanti, who served the Florence 19 For friar notaries in Bologna, ASOB, I, doc. 10, Bonacursius (c.1276) and Giacomo da

Verona (c.1277); docs. 3, 10, Artuxius (Artusio), confirmed as friar in Samaritani, ‘I frati predicatori nella società ferrarese’, p. 47, item 15; docs. 3, 10, Giovanni de Rochis (c.1296). For Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, see Liber Notariorum, p. 348, enrolment as notary, December 1279; ASOB, I, doc. 10, his earliest surviving act for the inquisition, March 1299; II, doc. 733, as socius of inquisitor Guido da Parma, August 1304; II, preceding doc. 761, description of his qualifications. He is possibly also the socius Francesco recorded in Manfredo da Parma’s accounts of 1314–18 (Collectoria 133, fols. 132v, 134v), who is paid at notarial rates. ASOB, I, doc. 570, fra Guido Signoritti, notary, witnesses a process in 1299, but his order is not given; Ioacchino da Bologna, a frequent witness in inquisition business and vicar by 1305, is separately known to be a notary, but not identified as such in ASOB. See B. Bughetti, ‘Concordia inter Fratres Praedicatorum et Minores Bononienses anno 1305 firmata, interveniente fr. Michaele de Caesena, tunc Bononie Custode’, AFH 25 (1932), 284–6. 20 S. Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 325, shows friar notaries executing purely religious contracts, such as the professions of novices, whilst secular notaries based at the convent dealt with wills and other contracts involving the friars. For two examples of Franciscan friar notaries in Bologna, see Liber Notariorum, p. 551. 21 See Andrews and Pincelli, Churchmen and Urban Government, for wider discussion of the employment of clerics in civic offices, where their impartiality was viewed as important.

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The inquisition notary inquisition as notary and scribe in the second and third decades of the fourteenth century, from at least 1313 to at least 1324. He was not one of the two salaried notaries, and the local agreement, as reported in 1334, describes the third notary as being paid at the inquisitor’s pleasure. This might suggest ad hoc and occasional employment outside normal appointment processes. However, although Benvenuto’s pay was certainly more irregular than that of the other two notaries (at one point, he was not paid for two years and ten months), he is described as familiaris during some of his connection with the inquisition and custos carceris for much of the rest. Both offices required processes of tripartite appointment and approval similar to those of inquisition notary, and do not suggest a casual or part-time role in the team. Benvenuto was also one of the notaries of Santa Croce itself, as well as the brother of one of its senior friars, the well-known theologian Giacomo de Trissanti. His religious credentials were solid. Even notaries employed only occasionally, such as Guido and ser Bartholo, were probably borrowed from other communal offices and thus had standing and credibility. The inference, in Florence at least, is that in its use of extra notarial manpower, the inquisition was careful to employ individuals who had already passed a test of acceptability to both civic and religious authorities. Around 1320, there may have been a particular motive for demonstrating propriety, since the commune was then locked in dispute with the inquisitor over whether the proceeds of confiscations were being properly recorded for the transfer of its third share.22 Notaries working for the inquisition had a number of discrete functions, and not all notaries performed all tasks. Inquisitors probably wrote their own letters to colleagues in other provinces, as well as drafts of sermons, but notaries handled the formal correspondence.23 This could be enormous, as for example when multiple copies of notices of excommunication had to be sent to churches and civil authorities throughout the province. Notaries, usually those with the formal office of notarius inquisitionis, recorded the 22 Guido

may be ser Guido notarius priorum paid in 1321 ‘pro instrumento electionis officialium qui reviderunt rationem comunis’ (Collectoria 249, fol. 58v), that is, for drawing up the appointment instrument of the officials who reviewed the commune’s accounts with the inquisition. Ser Bartholo is the ser Bartolo da Leccio paid in February 1321 ‘pro instrumento quod fecit de ratione visa ab officialibus comunis de peccuniis que tangebant dictam comunem Florentie de officio inquisitoris’, that is, for drawing up the accounts of money due to and from the commune (Collectoria 249, fol. 59r). Both, therefore, were known quantities from the wider circle of civic activity surrounding the inquisition, and were employed as notaries to prepare communal documents about the inquisition, as well as the inquisition’s own. For Florence’s edict Contra officium of 1320, see Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 360. 23 Personal writing by inquisitors, their vicars and socii is attested by purchases of ink, pens and parchment in the Florence office: Collectoriae 249, fols. 52v, 53r, calamari for ink for the socius and former inquisitor; 250, fols. 54v, parchment for the socius; 105r, repair of inquisitor’s sand-shaker; 106v, pumice for the inquisitor.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 depositions of witnesses and the interrogation of suspected heretics, some of it carried out under torture. In such cases, the notary had to be present both during interrogation and at the execution of sentences.24 Notaries recorded and formally ‘published’ the inquisitor’s public acts, such as sentences and absolutions, and the sermo generalis which began and ended either a formal inquisition process or the tenure of a particular inquisitor.25 Some of these events – like the sermo – were delivered before a large audience, while others took place essentially in private save for the required witnesses. Behind the scenes, notaries also documented all the key legal stages of an inquisition process, including recording whether a nuncius had been able to deliver a summons for the accused to appear, or had made the public announcement about a confiscation. Either on denunciation or after sentence, the heretic’s former property had to be sequestrated, debts called in and the estate valued and sold. These commercial activities were often handled by different notaries within the officium who specialised in commercial work, although they could also be dealt with by those who held the formal office of inquisition notary: there was no hard and fast separation of duties.26 Inquisition notaries collected fines, in both cash and kind, kept records of outstanding debts and lodged the monies with the depositarius (receiver of deposits, who was often one of the notarial team, but sometimes a banker). It was generally a notary who maintained the inquisition’s income and expenditure accounts, though some inquisitors handled this task personally, and some (as in Florence, with Manovello di Giacomo) used lay book-keepers.27 In large and bureaucratic inquisition 24 This

was not unique to the inquisition. Notaries in public office commonly bore formal witness to torture. In Bologna, the notaries of the main communal offices were required to be present at torture and the execution of capital sentences: ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/II/1, fol. 31r, where notaries and judges from six communal offices witness in 1299 the extraction under torture of evidence about the theft of grain. 25 Bartoli Langeli, Notai, pp. 74–7, correctly notes that ‘it isn’t easy to define the meaning of this procedure [publishing a document]’. (‘Non è facile definire il senso di questa procedura.’) He discusses some of the issues in relation to Genoa, but other cities had different practices. At one level, it was simply the notary’s attestation – the completio – which gave a document public validity. In some cases, it might mean the actual reading out of a document before witnesses or its entry in a public register. 26 Giovanni Bongia, the Florence notarius officii, is also found handling sales: see E. Panella, ‘Lapina da Firenze, eretica del Libero Spirito’, AFH 79 (1986), 153–78. 27 Inquisitors maintaining their accounts personally include Mino da San Quirico (Franciscan) and Tommaso da Gorzano (Dominican). Tommaso often did not travel with a notary. Some accounts are written in the first person; others specify that they are being maintained by a notary at the inquisitor’s behest; in yet other cases, they are written in the third person and it is unclear who physically compiled them. For Mino’s personal maintenance of accounts, see the testimony of Giovanni Bongia in Collectoria 251, fol. 68v: asked who wrote the receipts and expenses of the office, he

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The inquisition notary offices like Florence, the notary acting as depositarius would authorise the release of cash to other members of the team or reimburse them for purchases on the inquisitor’s behalf. And finally, the notary acted as an adviser on the law, with some (like Zanchino Ugolini) writing handbooks and treatises. The very wide range of functions that an inquisition notary might perform is illustrated in a 1302 delegation of powers by four former Franciscan inquisitors in the Marca Trevisana to Andrea del Valle, notary of the Padua inquisition. Andrea rogated huge numbers of property sales for the office, but his function went much wider. As well as notarius ac scriba officii, the document describes him as already ‘syndicus, actor, procurator, administrator, yconomus et negotiorum gestor’ (‘syndic, agent, procurator, administrator, household manager and man of affairs’ – some of which were legally defined positions) both for the inquisition office and the Padua convent itself. In effect, he was the business manager of both institutions. When the delegation was joined by four past and present guardians and custodes of the Padua convent, plus the friar in charge of building the church of Sant’Antonio, Andrea acquired huge power to deal not only with inquisition affairs but with virtually all Franciscan business in the province. His immediate task was, however, to satisfy the papal legate over the whereabouts of missing funds.28 Andrea was not alone in combining inquisition and convent business. The Florentine notaries Opizo da Pontremoli and Benvenuto de Trissanti and the two notaries of the Dominican inquisition in Ferrara, Ferarisio and Rolandino, all provably worked for both the inquisition office and the convent in which it was based. Whilst Benvenuto might be seen as a second-string notary, and Ferarisio and Rolando dealt with business in a place which was not permanently an inquisitorial base, it seems likely that a dual role was common in smaller cities or among secondary notaries in large ones. This has an obvious bearing on how full-time the inquisition notary’s role was.29 Inquisition notaries were not desk-bound to the home base. It was usual for a notary to accompany the inquisitor on journeys, to deal with business as it came up, though practice varied with the nature of the inquisitorial territory, the character of the inquisitor and probably the age of the notary too. Francesco da Pocapaglia dragged his notary around the mountains of western Piedmont (and sometimes the notary’s wife too), whereas Tommaso da Gorzano in the March of Genoa, with similar terrain, seems usually to have travelled with only a socius and a servant, using local notaries en route when

replied that it was fra Mino himself (‘Interrogatus qui scribebat dictos introitus et exitus dicti Officii, dixit quod ipse fr Minus’). 28 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, doc. 53. 29 For the dual role of Opizo and Benvenuto in Florence: Tocco, Dante, docs. 21, 25; Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, pp. 325–8. For Ferarisio: Samaritani, ‘I frati predicatori nella società ferrarese’, pp. 39–40.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 necessary. These two inquisitors appear not to have used friars as notaries, though we know little about their socii. By contrast, the Bologna inquisitors travelling in the urbanised areas of Emilia-Romagna used both a notary from home base and the regular notaries at their subsidiary centres, such as Ferrara and Modena. As well as travelling with the inquisitor, notaries often conducted.business independently away from home base. Even ad hoc notaries like ser Bartholo in Florence might be sent out of the city to handle issues by themselves. Giovanni Bongia, the chief Florentine notary, frequently went independently to his home area of the Mugello to cite witnesses to appear, take depositions and collect fines, accompanied by one of the familiares or his own familia.30 In the March of Genoa, Tommaso da Gorzano sent his notary alone to the town of Cassine on business, while in Padua the inquisitor Boninsegna da Trento forced a cleric suspected of some misdemeanour to present himself for possible interrogation every day until his notary had returned from an out-of-town trip.31 It would not be too strong to say that frequently inquisition business waited on the notary.

Hierarchy and status among inquisition notaries A notary’s professional authority depended on his qualification, whether by imperial authority (imperiali auctoritate), papal (notarius sacri palatii, ‘notary of the sacred palace’ or similar) or granted by local civil authorities or bishops.32 The geographical remit of the first two was in principle universal, while those in the third group could only rogate valid acts within the relevant jurisdiction or in transactions between their fellow citizens elsewhere. For wider application, their acts needed to be attested by others with better authority. Most notaries used by the inquisition were qualified imperiali auctoritate, even 30 Collectoria

249, fol. 59r: ‘pro quibusdam citationibus factis de domino Johanni et familia sua’. Similar, fols. 61rv, 66v. 31 Collectoria 133, fol. 71r, payment in 1298 to ‘notario nostro quem misi Cassinam’. After this initial visit, Tommaso then used a local notary in Cassine, about thirteen miles south of Alessandria: Collectoria 133, fol. 71r, payment in November 1298 to ‘uni notario de Cassine qui scripsit’, probably in connection with Luca combustus. For Boninsegna, see d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 183, doc. 51. 32 During the thirteenth century, when the professional validation and regulation of notaries was still developing, terminology could be inconsistent. For example, in Orvieto in 1268, the Church-qualified Orbetano di Nicolà, notary of the inquisition, describes himself as ‘auctoritate Sacrosancte Romane Ecclesie notarius constitutus’ (‘constituted notary by the authority of the sacrosanct Roman Church’): see d’Alatri, Liber inquisitionis, doc. 45. G. G. Fissore, ‘Il notaio ufficiale pubblico dei comuni italiani’, in Il notariato italiano del periodo comunale, ed. P. Racine (Piacenza, 1989), pp. 47–56, discusses the transition between episcopal and communal authority in validating notarial powers.

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The inquisition notary in areas of strong Church influence or papal temporal lordship, such as the Romagna. This was partly because, as Brundage notes, there were many more notaries authorised under imperial dispensation than approved by the Church. However, some inquisition notaries (such as Opizo da Pontremoli in Florence) held both types of qualification; others were qualified as iudex ordinarius as well. Whatever else might be laid at the door of the inquisition notary, during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries he did not lack expertise.33 Some notaries working for the inquisition may however have had only local qualifications from their home town. The two regular inquisition notaries in Ferrara, Ferarisio (or Ferrarino) de Lambrusca and Rolandino da Ferrara, are only ever described simply as notarius, even in important documents such as an exemplum of the instrument of appointment of Florio da Vicenza and in the sentence against Armanno Pungilupo, where one would expect full titles to be used. In 1290, when Ferarisio (termed civis Ferrariensis, citizen of Ferrara) took down in Bologna two consilia given by the jurists Marsilio Manteghelli and Dino del Mugello, the record’s accuracy was attested not by the notary’s own seal or mark, but by the seals of the two jurisconsults themselves. It is thus conceivable that Ferarisio (and perhaps Rolandino too) only had local Ferrarese professional validation. A similar distinction appears in two consilia against the Jews given in 1281 in Bologna and Ferrara, both sought by the Bologna inquisitor Florio da Vicenza, and both taken down by the Dominican friar notary Artusio, who appears mainly in Ferrarese business and may have been from Ferrara. In Bologna, Artusio – who describes himself only as notarius – merely writes down the consilium, whose accuracy is attested by the seals of the seven jurisconsults themselves. In Ferrara, the consilium on the same subject by three lay jurisconsults and five senior friars (both Dominican and Franciscan) is attested and published by Artusio alone. There was no shortage of notaries of Ferrarese origin who were recognised by the Bologna college (and hence imperiali auctoritate). The use of locally qualified

33 Brundage, Origins, pp. 399–400. Of three notaries of the Romagna inquisition around

1300, two were qualified imperiali auctoritate and one sacri palatii: Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’. In Florence in 1276, Acconcio Ricoveri of Prato was ‘iudex ordinarius et notarius […] tunc scriba et officialis dicti Inquisitoris’ (‘regular judge and notary […] then scribe and official of the said inquisitor’); in 1282, Ugo di Giacomo Caleffi of Florence was ‘iudex et notarius et tunc predicti inquisitoris [Salomonis de Lucca] scriba’ (‘judge and notary and then scribe of the aforesaid inquisitor’); in 1314 Benvenuto de Trissanti was ‘imperiali auctoritate iudex ordinarius et notarius publicus et scriba offitii Inquisitoris’ (‘by imperial authority, regular judge and public notary and scribe of the office of the inquisitor’); whilst in 1283 Opizo da Pontremoli is both ‘apostolica et imperiali auctoritate notarius et scriba offitii inquisitionis’ (‘by apostolic and imperial authority notary and scribe of the office of inquisition’) (all Tocco, Dante, docs. 19, 20, 25, 21).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 individuals in support of the officium inquisitionis may perhaps be an assertion of civic dignity and independence.34 Within the inquisition team, a variety of titles reflected differences in status, which were not directly linked to qualification. The title notarius officii usually denoted one of the two chief notaries and indicated formal appointment under Ad extirpanda, with a salary guaranteed by the commune, even if initially paid by the inquisitor. However, in some regions the preferred terminology is not notarius officii but notarius [dicti] inquisitoris. The distinction between ‘notary of the inquisition’ and ‘notary of [a particular] inquisitor’ is potentially significant in the context of Richard Kieckhefer’s arguments about personal and institutional jurisdiction. It is, though, not clear what the difference of terminology really represents in this case. It could be a personal or regional stylistic preference, or (in places such as Bologna, which were frequently the base of two inquisitors or co-inquisitors) suggest that a particular notary worked mainly in support of one inquisitor. It could also – consciously or unconsciously – be a rhetorical device, to separate the decisions of one inquisitor from the office of inquisition itself.35 In Bologna and Ferrara, where several inquisitors or co-inquisitors were based during the early fourteenth century, the inquisition notaries are almost always described as notarius [dicti] inquisitoris (‘notary of [the said] inquisitor’). In Florence, however, terminology fluctuated. In the earliest days of the inquisition, in 1245, the notary was described as notarius fidei. In 1309, Opizo da Pontremoli was ‘notarius et scriba offitii Inquisitionis’ (‘notary and scribe of the office of inquisition’) but in 1313 ‘dicti Inquisitoris et officii Inquisitionis notarius’ (‘notary of the said inquisitor and of the office of inquisition’).36 This latter description distinguishes between the person of the inquisitor and the officium, but it is clear the notary serves both. Only a decade later, the two salaried Florentine notaries Giovanni Bongia and Cettino Benricevuti da Prato are consistently described as notarii officii or notarii officii Inquisit. [sic].37 The best guess is that the description notarius [dicti] inquisitoris is more likely

34 Exemplum

of Florio’s appointment, 1289: Parmeggiani, ‘Florio da Vicenza’, doc. 1. Pungilupo sentence: Muratori, ‘Pungilupo’, col. 148. For Ferarisio’s activities, see Parmeggiani, Consilia, docs. 36, 37. Ferarisio/Ferrarino is recorded in Dominican and inquisition business over a period of some twenty-eight years, so must have been trusted. For Artusio’s activities, Parmeggiani, Consilia, docs. 31, 32. 35 C. Bruschi, ‘Familia inquisitionis: A study on [sic] the inquisitors’ entourage (XIII– XIV centuries)’, MEFRMA 125–2 (2013) suggests at paras. 57–60 an accounting reason for the distinction. I see nothing to support this. The regional variation is, however, strong. 36 Tocco, Dante, docs. 7, 24, 25. 37 Collectoria 249, fols. 55r, 57v, 68r (Bongia); fols. 64r, 68v (Cettino), all 1320–22. The invariable contraction Inquisit. may mean the writer himself was unclear what the term should be. Benvenuto de Trissanti is also described as notarius inquisitoris in a document of 1323 edited by Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 201–4.

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The inquisition notary not to be a comment on personal or institutional jurisdiction, but simply to distinguish the person with whom a particular notary most usually worked, especially when more than one inquisitor or vicar was potentially around. The title of scriba could be combined with that of notarius officii (as with Opizo) or represent a separate post in the office, as with his colleague Benvenuto de Trissanti. Was this meaningful? In the context of cleric notaries in episcopal courts, Ezio Pia’s recent study of Giacomo Saracco of Asti describes his progression between 1285 and 1316 from ‘notarius domini vicarii domini episcopi’ (‘notary of the lord vicar of the lord bishop’) to ‘notarius et scriba curie domini vicarii’ (‘notary and scribe of the court of the lord vicar’) as both a personal promotion and evidence of a deepening bureaucratisation of the role of the bishop’s court.38 In inquisition offices, references to scriba officii certainly tend to be found in the larger centres and may therefore also indicate a degree of bureaucratisation. Scriba implies a copyist rather than an originator of documents, and (where it is a distinct post) thus suggests a different function. However, it did not designate a less experienced notary. Benvenuto de Trissanti in Florence, scriba offitii in 1314, was not only a judge and a public notary qualified imperiali auctoritate, but already by 1313 described as servitor Inq, implying agreed appointment under Ad extirpanda, and later familiaris to both Antonio d’Arezzo and Pace da Castelfiorentino. He acted as depositarius, took charge of the inquisition prison and had a provable career of some two decades in the Florence office.39 The chief observable difference between his activities and those of the two salaried notarii officii, Giovanni Bongia and Cettino Benricevuti da Prato, is that Benvenuto tended to remain Florencebased while the others travelled with the inquisitor. This could be because of his role as notary of Santa Croce and other responsibilities. What is clear is that – as the notary without a salaried position – Benvenuto was paid both at a different rate and (as we have seen) much less regularly than his colleagues.40 38 E.

C. Pia, ‘I registri del chierico notaio astigiano Giacomo Saracco: principali tipologie documentarie per la definizione di relazioni economiche (1285–1316)’, MEFRMA 122/2 (2010), 319–25 (p. 320): ‘[…] un passaggio dal rapporto personale tra scriba e commitente al più esplicito riferimento all’officium di notarius curie, che segna uno sviluppo nel senso di una maggiore burocratizzazione’. 39 For Benvenuto’s title: Tocco, Dante, doc. 25. The contraction servitor Inq is in the original and it is unclear what the expansion should be. As familiaris: Collectoria 249, fol. 40r (1319, Antonio d’Arezzo); fol. 67v (1322, Pace da Castelfiorentino). Benvenuto drops out of sight under Accursio Bonfantini, but reappears in 1332, on behalf of the ex-inquisitor Pietro da Prato, handling a payment from Mino da San Quirico. 40 Between 1319 and 1322, Benvenuto received fifty-two florins, twenty solidi in a single payment (Collectoria 249, fol. 67v) while Giovanni Bongia, the senior notary, received over 101 florins in eight instalments (fols. 52v, 55r, 57v twice, 61r, 64r, 66v, 68v).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Other notaries who worked continuously for the inquisition are primarily found carrying out financial management activities, such as rogating contracts of sale for confiscated property or acting as the inquisitor’s procurator in interactions with civic authorities. They are not designated notarius officii, and (insofar as it is possible to judge) there does not seem to have been a career track from this sort of work into the senior, salaried posts. For instance, in Bologna Martino da Cento, who was a prominent and experienced notary on a par with the senior notary, Guido Bontalenti, acted as the manager of financial affairs over many years, but is never termed notarius officii. Andrea del Valle in Padua was unusual in combining commercial and financial affairs with the faith-focused activity of being notarius ac scriba officii.41 A debatable question is whether all inquisition notaries were strictly officials of the officium inquisitionis, under the tripartite arrangement set up by Ad extirpanda. Terminology here varies, but it seems that the two (salaried) chief notaries were regarded as ex-officio officiales of the officium inquisitionis, owing a responsibility to the bishop and podestà as well the inquisitor. However, they were distinct from the ‘twelve good men’. The scriba is sometimes also referred to as an officialis, but whether ex-officio or by election is unclear. The most that can be said with certainty is that notaries whose function was primarily to trace and sell the confiscated property of heretics were probably duly appointed officiales, looking principally to the officium inquisitionis. Others working with the inquisition on commercial business probably were not. In the two lists previously mentioned, one of inquisition officials and one of servitors, drawn up around 1302–08 for Gui de Neuville and Guillaume de Balait’s inquiries into the affairs of Vicenza and Padua, notaries appear in both categories.42 Distinctions within the body of notaries and officials serving the inquisition appear to have acquired sharper focus in the fourteenth century because of their bearing on remuneration. Ad extirpanda had specified that the officiales should receive a one-third share of the product of confiscations as their salary, and be satisfied with that. However, there are signs that not all officials put in an equal effort, and that resentment had arisen between those who actually did the work of tracking down and selling heretics’ goods and those (probably crucesignati from the military confraternities) who were formally part of the complement of officials – which, as we have seen, could rise to as many as forty in Rimini – but who contributed less to the daily task. The tension within the body led in Florence and Prato in 1323 to a rare instance of the inquisitor and diocesan (in this case, the bishop of Pistoia, because of 41 For

Martino, ASOB, II, doc. 587 plus twenty-seven more references; doc. 775, as depositarius. He had been consul of the society of notaries in 1291; Guido Bontalenti filled the role the previous year: Liber Notariorum, pp. 554, 401. For Andrea, d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, doc. 53 (p. 185). 42 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 173–4, docs. 5, 6.

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The inquisition notary other vacancies) jointly exercising their power to interpret the papal constitutions: they declared that the officials’ third share should only be divided between those who had actually worked on the seizure and realisation of the goods. It was to be for the inquisitor to split the proceeds between them as seemed best.43 It seems probable that the two chief notaries, with a regular salary paid in the end from communal funds, also (as officials) benefited from a share of confiscations which they had helped to realise. It is less clear whether they received private fees for copies of instruments, a normal source of notarial income in many cities but banned in others for those in salaried public office.

Who were the inquisition’s notaries? What kind of people were the inquisition notaries? We have seen that they were mostly highly qualified professionally. The process of nomination and approval by the bishop and representatives of both main mendicant orders implies that they were likely either to have good connections or have already achieved some standing in civic life, usually both. Canon law recommended they should be mature (defined as forty for inquisitors, notaries and custodes carceris), though such age limits were often breached. Within the age constraint, the question needs to be asked: were inquisition positions a ladder upwards for the ambitious starting out, or a (probably very lucrative) reward given to a known, safe pair of hands? Did they attract individuals drawn by faith, or were they just another public notarial function? Bartoli Langeli comments that ‘a notary is known only by his documents’, but it is possible to go further than that. A closer look at the background and connections of inquisition notaries can also shed particular light on the way the office of inquisition was integrated into civic, political and wider religious life.44 Religious conviction was presumably the driver for notaries who, like Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne in Bologna, joined mendicant orders long after professional qualification. However, many other inquisition notaries had close Church or family connections which might have inclined them to take or seek office with the inquisition. Some were themselves in clerical orders. As we have seen, the Florentine Benvenuto de Trissanti was not only one of the two notaries of the Santa Croce convent, but also the brother of the noted theologian Giacomo de Trissanti, a friar there. Giacomo was himself trusted on at least one occasion to handle inquisition business outside the city.45 43 The

best modern text is in Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 201–4, doc. 49. Langeli, Notai, p. 9: ‘un notaio, lo conosci solo dai suoi documenti’. 45 Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 325; Collectoria 250, fols. 41rv for Giacomo’s mission to take a confession from Nuto Marmorario of Castiglione. 44 Bartoli

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 In Vicenza, Giacomo di Giordano was propinquus et notarius (both relative and notary) of the indicted inquisitor, Aiulfo da Lonigo.46 In the same city, the long-time inquisition official and judge Federico di Montebello was the brother of the Dominican inquisitor of Bologna, Guido Capello. Federico had been procurator of the (Franciscan) convent of San Lorenzo in Vicenza as far back as 1282, indicating a long history of Church connections. He had also been a representative of the commune arguing a case before the pope in a dispute with the bishop of Vicenza. In around 1298, for reasons which remain unclear, he was denounced as a heretic: this could have been because of his association with the condemned de Pileo (Capello) family, or the result of a dispute with the inquisitor over the distribution of office funds. In any event, he was stripped of his possessions and failed to recover them, despite an appeal to the pope. He reappears again as an officialis by 1308, and in 1315 was procurator of his brother, Guido, then bishop of Ferrara.47 In Padua, Mascara dei Mascara – judge, notary and inquisition official – was part of another family deeply involved with the Church. His elder brother, Bartolommeo Mascara, was long-time inquisitor (and later ministerprovincial) of the Marca Trevisana. Like Federico in Vicenza, Mascara found himself at odds with several inquisitors in the exercise of his office, ending with excommunication. Perhaps as a result of family insights, a third brother, the cleric and archdeacon Manfredo, felt sufficiently disaffected that in 1299 – whilst Bartolommeo was still minister-provincial – he not only acted as procurator for the Cathar perfect Giuliano (whom he evidently knew) but also went so far as to advise him not to answer Guido Capello’s summons to go from Padua to Bologna for interrogation. Giuliano disregarded the advice and was burnt, and Manfredo was penalised by the inquisitor. These relationships throw a fascinating light on intellectual, religious and personal interactions in the Marca Trevisana.48 In Verona, the Bonandrea family linked not only inquisition and Church, but state as well. The Bolognese exile Bongiovanni Bonandrea, attested as 46 D’Alatri,

‘Inquisitori veneti’, doc. 6, p. 174. Marangon, Il pensiero ereticale nella Marca Trevigiana e a Venezia dal 1200 al 1350 (Abano Terme, 1984), p. 28, n. 135, documents the family relationship between Federico and Guido. Marangon describes Federico as first a heretic and then an inquisition official, but since in 1308 Federico had already been an official for more than fifteen years, the heresy charge and seizure of his goods by the inquisitor Boninsegna da Trento may have arisen either from a financial dispute over inquisition funds or as part of the mass condemnation of the de Pileo (Capello) family. For his 1300 appeal to Boniface VIII, see d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 159, 173–5; ‘Due inchieste’, pp. 229, 241, doc. 20. It is clear from his 1308 testimony that there was conflict between the Vicenza inquisitors and officials over the partition of heresy confiscation proceeds. 48 Maschara de Mascharis: ASV, Instrumenta miscellanea 370; d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’ pp. 148, 172–3. For Manfredo de Mascharis: ASOB I, docs. 113, 115, 124; Marangon, Pensiero ereticale, pp. 29, 56. 47 P.

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The inquisition notary Verona inquisition notary at least between 1288 and 1298, was also a cleric with a wealthy pieve: he was clericus plebis Sancti Georgi de valle Pulicella Veronensis diocesis (cleric of the parish of San Giorgio di Valpolicella, in the diocese of Verona). After political upheaval drove him from Verona too, Bongiovanni moved to Trento, to become the notary of the bishop of Trento. This was the same Filippo Bonacolsi (son of Pinamonte, the lord of Mantua) for whom he had worked when Filippo had been inquisitor in Verona before his translation as bishop in 1289. Bongiovanni’s eldest brother, Symon Bonandrea, qualified as a notary in Bologna in 1259 and was already a consul of the Bologna college of notaries by 1271. He too moved to Verona during the vicious factional fighting between the Lambertazzi and Geremei in the late 1270s. Symon worked for the Verona inquisition for some seventeen years, from around 1278 until 1295, shortly before his death. In 1288, while his brother Bongiovanni was inquisition notary, Symon received joint powers from the inquisitor and the podestà to trace and sell the goods of heretics, a position analogous to that of an officialis. Another brother, Giovanni, also a notary, seems not to have had an inquisition connection (his main occupation was teaching rhetoric in the studia at Padua and Bologna), but served Alberto della Scala as scriba capitanei (scribe of the Capitano, a leading city official) and even married his daughter in 1299. The three Bonandrea brothers thus tied the inquisition in Verona closely into the highest levels of the Scaligera seigneury and into the civic and clerical leadership of other parts of the Veneto.49 Their exile from Bologna as part of the Lambertazzi faction also demonstrates that – in the tangled politics of medieval Italy – close links with the inquisition were not limited to the Guelf party alone. Back in Bologna, Alberto di Carbone, one of the most active notaries during the inquisitorial tenure of Guido Capello, does seem to have treated the inquisition as a step up in his political ambitions. Whilst other notaries in Bologna tended to work for the office only later in their careers, Alberto (qualified imperiali auctoritate) was already employed by the inquisition within five years of enrolment as a notary in 1291. He must have been some twenty years younger than the senior notary, Guido Bontalenti (enrolled 1272). By October 1296, described simply as notarius, Alberto is found witnessing the interrogation of the Cathar Bonigrino da Verona, rogated by the elderly friar notary Giovanni de Rochis. The next year, he was one of the three notaries, all described as notarius […] inquisitoris, in the triple subscription of Bonigrino’s sentence. In 1299, he accompanied Guido Capello on a journey round other

49 Rando

and Motter, Il Quaternus Rogacionum, pp. 29–38, for a biographical sketch of the family. Cipolla describes Symon’s appointment by both the inquisitor Filippo da Mantova and the rector of the commune to pursue the goods of heretics as a special commission; it may simply be a standard form of appointment for officiales: Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, pp. 269–70. Symon’s enrolment: Liber Notariorum, p. 155; appointment as consul of the Bologna society of notaries, p. 289.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 cities in the inquisitor’s bailiwick.50 By 1306, however, Alberto fades from the incomplete records of the Bologna office and is next datably found in 1311 as the notary of the parte guelfa in Bologna, attesting his political allegiance. He may perhaps have owed his rapid rise to family donations to the Dominican convent.51 The senior Bologna notary, Guido Bontalenti, originally the son of a dyer, had had a twenty-eight year career in distinguished communal service before his first appearance on the inquisition team in 1299. Admitted as a notary in 1272, Guido had several times held office as consul for the society of notaries for his quarter during the late 1280s and 1290s. He is identifiable politically as a Guelf, having survived the purge of the notarial college from 1274 onwards. In 1287–88, he formed part of the small commission of notaries and jurisperiti who overhauled the entire Bolognese legislative corpus under the supervision of the capitano del popolo. As well as revising the statutes themselves, Guido appears to have been at this stage the keeper of the civic register of reprisals and bans (which would have included those condemned for heresy). He played a part, too, in establishing and running the system of notarial commissions, under which, in Bologna, lucrative rights were granted to handle the imbreviature (minuted records) of dead, absent or incapacitated notaries when further exempla or instruments were required from them.52 Guido was thus a significant civic figure, with powers of patronage important to his fellow notaries. His continued political standing is confirmed 50 Enrolment:

Liber Notariorum, pp. 416–17. Bologna had no minimum age for qualification as a notary. As a rule of thumb, I have assumed qualification before fifteen was unlikely, but even so, Alberto was probably working for the inquisition by the time he was twenty. Bologna career: ASOB, I, doc. 4, witness; doc. 10, attests Bonigrino da Verona sentence; docs. 69–86, with Guido Capello in Reggio and Modena. 51 Vitale, Dominio della parte guelfa, doc. 20, attestation as notary of the parte guelfa and Geremei, 1311. A. Romiti, L’Armarium Comunis della Camara Actorum di Bologna: l’inventariazione archivistica nel XIII secolo (Rome, 1994), p. 264, identifies ‘Albertum Carbonis, notarium Ancianorum et Consullum’ (‘Alberto Carbonis, notary of the Elders and Consuls’) as the writer of ‘quedam provixio’ (‘a certain ordinance’), but the date is uncertain. Bocchi, Bologna. Il Duecento, II, 101 notes a city lease in 1296–97 of land belonging to heredum Carbonis (the heirs of Carbone) and of illorum de Carbonensibus; and, at p. 120, cession by the Carbonesi of land to the Dominicans on which the convent was built. It is, however, not certain that Alberto was part of this de Carbone/de Carbonensibus family. 52 Admission as notary, Liber Notariorum, p. 291; posts in college of notaries, ibid. pp. 401, 437, 584, 598, 621. Role in revision of statutes, G. Tamba, ‘Commissioni notarili a Bologna nei secoli XIII e XIV’, in Studio Bolognese e formazione del notariato: Convegno organizzato del Consiglio Notarile di Bologna con il patrocinio della Università degli Studi di Bologna (Bologna, 6 maggio 1989, Palazzo dei Notai), Consiglio Nazionale del Notariato, Studi Storici sul Notariato Italiano (Milan, 1992), pp. 117–59, 197–382, 383–90 (pp. 119–27, 207). See also Romiti, L’Armarium Comunis, p. 118.

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The inquisition notary by his appointment in 1299 (when already very busy with the Bologna inquisition) as consiliarius populi (councillor of the Popolo) along with Giacoppino da Medicina, a frequent jurisconsult for the inquisition. At least three times – in 1283–84 and 1309 – he held office as one of the notaries of the Memoriali, a key public duty in Bologna which rotated six-monthly and involved transcribing for the record acts of public significance. It is not known when he laid down his post with the inquisition. His 1309 Memoriali appointment may be the break point, though other notaries combined the two offices. But he may also be the notary Guido (unfortunately a very common name) who still appears in the accounts of the inquisitors Ruggiero da Petriolo and Manfredo da Parma in 1311–12 and 1314–18.53 Being a notary made Guido Bontalenti prosperous. In the 1305 Estimo (tax assessment) he had the very high valuation of 1,500 lire bolognesi.54 But he continued to live in the cloth-working area of his origins, among drapers and dyers, where in June 1306 he was among a group of leading citizens agreeing to pay higher taxes for greater parish security. This followed a mob assault, in late May, on the shop of a neighbouring draper, part of a wave of factional violence in which Alberto di Carbone was also caught up. Alberto was routed from his home and witnessed the sacking of the residence of the papal legate, Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, but left action to others. Guido was made of sterner stuff. According to criminal court testimony about the sack of the draper’s shop, as the rioters approached, crying ‘Death to the Ghibellines’ (‘Moriantur Ghibellini!’), Uguccione the draper took fright despite having the correct political allegiance (‘licet Guelfus’, although a Guelf), and bolted for shelter to the nearby Dominican convent, from which he could still hear the attack on his premises. Hearing the mob battering at his neighbour’s door, Guido did not run, but gathered together the men of his household (probably including his two sons Gerardo and Filippo, both also notaries and both introduced by their father to inquisition business) and went with his retinue (‘cum comitiva sua’) to halt the attack and recover the looted goods. He was not a timid penpusher, but even in middle age a bold actor.55

53 Role

of consiliarii popolaris in securing a Guelf character to the notarial college: La società dei notai di Bologna, ed. G. Tamba (Rome, 1998), pp. 37–8. For the Memoriali system: Continelli, Inventario, Memoriali 1265–1333, esp. pp. ix–xvi. References to notary Guido, possibly Bontalenti, in inquisitors’ accounts 1311–18, Collectoria 133, fols. 133v, 135v, 137rv, 165r. Despite a forty-year notarial career, Guido might have been still working and only in his early sixties by 1314. 54 Guido’s original 1305 Estimo valuation could not be traced among fire-damaged documents. The valuation of 1,500 lire is contained in an early twentieth century MS copy of an eighteenth-century alphabetical summary of Estimo valuations, held in the Bologna archive reading room. 55 ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 67/1, fols. 19v–20r, testimony of the shop owner Uguccione and of Guido Bontalenti; 67/11 fols. 3v–4r, discussion over new security taxes. Alberto’s experiences in the riot, vol. 67/2, fols. 23r–5r.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Other Bologna inquisition notaries were also well established before coming to inquisition work. Some were elderly: Jacobinus de Turri, inquisition notary in 1273, was noted as septuagenarius (seventy year old) in the reform of the college register in 1285.56 Martino da Cento, who was the depositarius and handled the confiscation and sale of properties, had been admitted as a notary in 1269, was consul of the society of notaries in 1291 and notary of the Memoriali in 1298. Although therefore an older contemporary of Guido Bontalenti, he did not – so far as we can tell – begin to work for the inquisition till 1304.57 Guglielmo Aygonis (or Laigonis), admitted in 1292 soon after Alberto di Carbone, was notary of the Memoriali in 1307 before joining the inquisition the next year: thus after sixteen years of practice compared with Alberto’s five. He too had previously been engaged in work for the commune, writing up rules for the behaviour and election of the city constables.58 Information about the background of inquisition notaries elsewhere is less good, but shows a similar pattern of experience. Like Guido Bontalenti in Bologna, Giovanni Bongia, the notary of the Florence inquisition for over twenty years, from at least 1313 to 1334, also had a long prior history in public service and revision of statutes. He may have been one of the fourteen arbitrators elected in 1282 to review the statutes of the capitano del popolo (and thus is unlikely to have been newly qualified at that point). He was certainly paid in 1288 and 1297 as one of the consulti (experts) writing up the statutes of the podestà and capitano. Much later, when already inquisition notary, he was one of the commission of ten involved in again rewriting the city’s statutes, ahead of the revision of 1325.59 His notarial career thus potentially stretches over more than fifty years, probably making him ill suited to

56 Liber

Notariorum, p. 561. Jacobinus de Turri was already practising, but not identified as an inquisition notary, in 1257, when he received a commission in respect of another notary: see Tamba, ‘Commissioni notarili’, p. 240. 57 Liber Notariorum, admission, p. 276; consul, pp. 407–10, 599. Holding post as notary of the Memoriali, January–July 1298, see Continelli, Inventario, I, p. 66. 58 Liber Notariorum, admission, p. 429; Memoriali post, Continelli, Inventario, I, p. 89; work on constables’ rules, probably datable to around 1300, see Romiti, L’Armarium Comunis, p. 118. 59 The earliest reference to Giovanni’s connection with the inquisition is in 1313 (Tocco, Dante, doc. 24). He was still inquisition notary in 1334 under Mino da Sa Quirico (Collectoria 251, fols. 2v–14v, passim). Previous communal office and payments for work: Statuti del Comune di Firenze nel Archivio di Stato: tradizione e ordinamenti, ed. G. Biscione (Florence, 2009), p. 19 n. 8, p. 628; A. Gherardi, Le consulte della Repubblica Fiorentina dall’anno MCCLXXX al MCCXCVIII, 2 vols. (Florence, 1898), II, 581–3. In his edition of the 1325 statutes, Caggese notes that the section relating to the papal constitutions against heresy, which he does not reproduce, is written in a different hand from the rest. It is tempting to think that this was written by Giovanni Bongia or one of his colleagues. See Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, ed. R. Caggese, 2 vols. (Florence, 1910–21), I, Il Statuto del Capitano del Popolo, 1325; II, Il Statuto del Podestà dell’anno 1325 (p. vii).

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The inquisition notary coping with the corrupt inquisitor Mino da San Quirico in his old age. Like Guido Bontalenti, he also involved his son, Paniccia, in inquisition business, exemplifying instruments by commission.60 These biographies indicate that, at any rate in large urban centres, working as inquisition notary was generally the reward of experience, rather than a springboard for ambition. The situation may have been different in more rural areas, with fewer opportunities for notaries but also a smaller choice for the appointing authorities. The involvement of the chief notaries of both the Bologna and Florence offices in the preparation of civic statutes – in the case of Giovanni Bongia even whilst holding inquisition office – suggests that the appointment panels looked for a particular type of public legal experience in the inquisition notaries, enabling them to balance competing interests more effectively. We know less about the prior experience of friar notaries, though Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne was long qualified when he first appears in inquisition work. It is of note, however, that many notaries working with the inquisition were from deeply Church-oriented families, with relatives who were secular clerics, friars or even inquisitors. Guelf politics were helpful, but – as the experience of the Bonandrea family in Verona shows – not prerequisites for an inquisition career.

Independence in action One question which goes to the heart of the relationship between the inquisitor and the officium inquisitionis (and to Richard Kieckhefer’s contention that ‘the inquisition’ as an institution did not exist) is the extent of the notary’s autonomy or positioning as a separate pole of authority in the officium, able to carry on business in the absence of the inquisitor, or even in conflict with him. Examples from Tuscany and the March of Genoa have shown that notaries travelled independently to take witness statements and carry out other functions. In Bologna, experienced notaries (such as Guido Bontalenti) were teamed with inexperienced vicars, to ensure nothing went awry. Guido acted boldly in private matters, and there is evidence that inquisition notaries sometimes did much more, initiating actions rather than just responding.61 In Florence in June 1321, Giovanni Bongia personally led a posse to capture the escaped Patarine, Gratia (later burnt). He had already gone by himself to interview witnesses in the case. His colleague, Cettino da Prato, led the hunt to bring back the escaped priest ser Bernardo, and also took it on himself to engage the podestà and captain-general of Prato in the search. In the inquisitor’s absence, Cettino personally convened and consulted the inquisition’s 60 Panella,

‘Lapina’, pp. 153–78. II, docs. 669–70, 673 et seq. The vicar was Pinamonte da Bologna, hearing cases ex speciali commissione for Guido da Parma (August 1304).

61 ASOB,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 panel of jurisconsults to advise on the proper punishment in a case, and on his own initiative travelled more than once between Prato and Florence to consult both the venerable ex-inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato and the bishop of Fiesole about it. We see here a proactive function for the notary in decision making, advising on law and sentencing, and initiating action in the absence of the inquisitor, rather than mere passive recording of events. Such a role is perhaps analogous to the function of present-day English clerks to the court.62 An important issue for the maturing of the inquisition as a permanent institution is what happened during inquisitorial vacancies. This is hard to tease out. During an interregnum, inquisitors’ vicars had limited standing (discussed in Chapter 6 below), but insights about the lay team are limited. Did work continue, and if so, what was the notaries’ role? Since notaries, familiares and the twelve boni homines were appointed by the podestà on an essentially civic cycle, they remained in post even if there was no inquisitor. Logically, the commune’s obligations under both the papal constitutions and its own statutes gave authority for continued action, as did the powers of the bishop. But since surviving accounts relate only to the periods of office of individual inquisitors, not to the spaces in between, evidence is very limited on how much notaries were able to achieve. What we can say is that in summer 1332, in the interregnum between Pietro da Prato and Mino da San Quirico, the now elderly Giovanni Bongia travelled to Siena to the ministerprovincial on inquisition affairs, after consulting the ex-inquisitor Pace da Castelfiorentino. He was therefore both in office and active. Though Mino’s accounts are confused and Pietro da Prato’s are missing, Giovanni was also seemingly paid for the whole period of the interregnum through a combination of advance pay and arrears.63 Another pointer to continuing activity is the speed with which newly appointed inquisitors in general were able to settle numerous cases, suggesting that evidence-gathering work – and that of the officiales, whose role was not dependent on the presence of the inquisitor – had gone ahead during the vacancy. As was discussed in Chapter 2, incoming inquisitors often had an urgent need for working funds and would have welcomed finding cases ready for decision. The best guess is that without a sitting inquisitor, the officium did not come to a halt. It was not quite business as usual, but not a complete stoppage either.64 62 Collectoriae

249, fol. 61v, Gratia; 250, fols. 36r, Bernardo (August 1323); 27r, discussions with clerical and lay consultatores, journey to discuss penalties with Grimaldo (December 1322, January 1323); 47r, 49r, two journeys from Florence to Prato to bring Grimaldo back for advice (October–November 1324). 63 Collectoriae 251, fols. 4v, 2rv (September 1332, pay arrears for fifteen months; other payments for April/May 1332); 250, fol. 127v (advance pay from May 1329 to May 1330). 64 This did not hold true during very long gaps in oversight. When the inquisitor of Ferrara, Egidio dei Galluzzi, finally made his way to his secondary seat at Modena in 1368, after a gap of three years or more since the last inquisitorial visit,

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The inquisition notary Another indication of notaries’ and officials’ independence was the sharp differences of view between them and some inquisitors. Disagreements in Padua and Vicenza were acute enough to lead to the excommunication of officials, their conviction for heresy and even the confiscation of their property (Federico di Montebello, Mascara dei Mascara). The backdrop to the disputes was the widespread embezzlement by several Franciscan inquisitors of proceeds from fines and heretics’ goods, which should have passed through the officium inquisitionis and been partitioned according to Ad extirpanda. The officiales must have been aware that funds were not being declared to the communes, but the focus of their own argument was that they too were being short-changed, receiving only a fixed payment instead of a one-third share of confiscations as their salary. The potential role of the notarius officii in such conflicts is perhaps best indicated by inquisitors’ attempts to insert placemen and get control of the appointment process, without the tiresome necessity of consulting the bishop and a panel of friars. Parmeggiani comments that the original Ad extirpanda arrangements for consultation on appointments caused immediate difficulties. Modifying bulls issued in 1254 and 1255 by Innocent IV and Alexander IV gave inquisitors the power to act alone in nominating officials where a panel could not be assembled. But these were back-up powers, and some inquisitors wanted complete control even (or perhaps especially) when the bishop was eager to be involved. In 1297, the Padua inquisitor Pietrobuono Brosemini therefore sought a consilium from the jurist Bovatino da Mantova on whether he had the right to impose his own choice of officials. He received the rather surprising verdict that the podestà was bound to institute those officials the inquisitor solus had selected, with no mention of the consultation panel set out in Ad extirpanda.65 It is not clear how widely this consilium was followed: it is not included in, for example, the Tuscan inquisitors’ handbook. The commune of Padua itself reacted to the attempted takeover of nomination powers by proposing a completely new arrangement, under which appointments would be limited to five years and half the twelve boni homines would be nominated by the inquisitor, half by the bishop, thus creating (as Parmeggiani says) a two-part inquisition.66 These proposals seem to have been overtaken by the 1302 scandal which swept the Franciscans out of Padua and Vicenza, and essentially he lamented that he found the domus inquisitionis semi-derelict and the books and papers in disarray. See A. Biondi, ‘Lunga durata e microarticolazione nel territorio di un Ufficio dell’Inquisizione: il “Sacro Tribunale” a Modena (1292–1785)’, Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 8 (1982), 73–90 (p. 76). 65 Parmeggiani, Consilia, doc. 41; d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 171, doc. 3; Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, p. 609. Bovatino asserted that the inquisitor both could and should select the officials by himself (‘dictus inquisitor possit et debeat solus officiales eligere’). 66 Parmeggiani, Consilia, doc. 41, n. 253.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 substituted an episcopal inquisition for several years. By 1340, however, inquisitors elsewhere in the Marca Trevisana had succeeded in wresting control of nominations. Thus, in Treviso itself, now under Venetian domination, the podestà seemed to accept that the inquisitor should have two notaries, four famuli and six officials, selected by the inquisitor with the podestà’s consent (‘quos notarios, famulos et officiales ipse Dominus Inquisitor de voluntate vestrorum Potestatum eligere deberet’).67 The reduction in the agreed number of officials, against the Ad extirpanda twelve, could suggest either diminishing inquisition business or a realisation that a different mix of staff was better.68 Inquisitors’ motives for seeking to control notarial appointments did not amount simply to a desire for dominance over other partners. The extensive inquisitorial malpractice exposed in Padua and Vicenza in the Liber Contractuum and Gui de Neuville’s 1302 inquiry required the co-operation of numerous compliant notaries willing to process sales of land at knock-down prices, divert charitable bequests for personal gain and (in one complex case) get themselves nominated as pauperes Christi (Christ’s poor) in order to seize an estate left for widows and orphans.69 The affair throws an extremely unflattering light on the notaries involved, but they did not act alone: the guardian of the Padua convent was actively involved, alongside the inquisitor. Even where inquisitors distrusted a notary, or found him not to their liking, they had to live with him. In 1321, Guido Capello, now bishop of Ferrara and collaborating with the Bologna inquisitor Lamberto da Cingoli against the Este, complained to John XXII that he thought both episcopal and inquisition notaries had been bought for cash (‘magne quantitatis peccunie’) to work against them. But he evidently felt unable to remove the notaries himself.70 This substantiates the view of the notary as an independent authority within the officium, not answerable to the inquisitor alone and (as we have seen) able to act independently.

Pay and length of service The remuneration of inquisition notaries came from a variety of sources: salaries agreed with the commune for the two canonical notaries; a share of the proceeds of confiscations; the possibility of acquiring confiscated

67 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, MS 957 (12 vols.), Documenti Trivigiani 8, doc. 128, fols.

246–9, podestà’s letter to Doge Bartolommeo Gradenigo, October 1340. contrast, legal opinion in Florence in 1285 held that the papal constitutions – and thus presumably the numbers set out in Ad extirpanda – could not be changed by lay action during a revision of the statutes: see Gherardi, Le Consulte, I, 286. 69 Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, docs. 214–16, for the pauperes Christi scam. 70 G. Biscaro, ‘Dante a Ravenna’, BISIME 41 (1921), 1–143 (pp. 89–90), letter of 18 September 1321. 68 By

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The inquisition notary property at preferential prices; ‘presents’ from suspects trying to buy favour; professional fees for copies of sentences and processes; and bonuses from the inquisitor. In addition, as we have seen, notaries did not necessarily work exclusively for the inquisition. From the sources available it is possible to get only a partial picture of the overall amount. For both Franciscans and Dominicans, the core notarial team was salaried, whether or not at rates agreed with the commune. Amounts varied enormously by area, but even friar notaries received generous sums. In 1334, Giovanni Bongia’s salary was thirty-six gold florins a year, while the other salaried notary, Biliotto, received thirty florins. Bongia also received extra sums at the inquisitor’s pleasure (twenty-four florins), and probably other amounts as gifts from those hoping to sway the inquisitor. It is not clear how much further he augmented his income by charging for copies of instruments. Such professional charges could be substantial, and some cities (including Florence) debarred publicly salaried notaries from making them for essential legal documents. This did not seem to apply to the inquisition.71 Notaries also charged other inquisition offices for documents necessary for a case: in 1327, the Florence office paid the Bologna inquisition notary 1 lira 11 solidi 8 denarii (one pound eleven shillings and eightpence) for a copy of a Bologna sentence against the astrologer, Cecco d’Ascoli.72 The ability to charge for instruments and exempla opens up the issue of ‘ownership’ of inquisition records. A notary’s imbreviature were valuable professional assets, from which he could expect repeat income over many years. In Bologna, the right to make instruments and exempla from another notary’s records was controlled by the system of notarial commissions and conceded generally only for absence, incapacity or inheritance. It is unclear whether the need of inquisition notaries to reproduce their predecessors’ records was governed by this system or stood completely free of it. The record of commissions in Bologna survives for most of the thirteenth century, and no known inquisition notaries hand commissions to their successors. Quite what personal rights inquisition notaries exercised over acts and instruments created in their official capacity is an issue which can only be flagged for further enquiry by scholars. For the current purpose, the key point is that fees

71 Giovanni

Bongia’s salary and bonus: Collectoria 251, fols. 67v–8r (testimony in process against Mino da San Quirico). He was also questioned by the legate Pons how much he received for the writing–up of processes, sentences and settlements. At fol. 65v, the abbot of San Pancrasio testified that he had paid Bongia six gold florins for a copy of the instrument of a sentence against him, plus a florin each to each of the four familiares. At fol. 80r, we find Biliotto receiving two florins ‘pro labore suo’ (for his work) in a complicated bribery arrangement. 72 Cost of Cecco sentence: Collectoria 250, fol. 111r. Salary and restrictions of commune’s notaries: Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, II, 9.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 for writing up documents added to the notary’s remuneration whilst he held office – how substantially, we do not know.73 A further possible source of legitimate income was a cut from the value of confiscations or penalties. As Federico di Montebello’s 1308 testimony to the papal legate shows, the officials of the Vicenza office took the provision for a third share at face value, even if inquisitors did not. In Florence, the 1323 reinterpretation of Ad extirpanda focused proceeds on those who had actually participated in obtaining the confiscated goods, rather than sharing them between all officiales. This would have enhanced their value to the inquisition’s notaries.74 Even without this perk, the length of service of both officials and notaries suggests that appointments were too remunerative to be lightly surrendered. The view that inquisition staff were ad hoc hires can be discarded. Giovanni Bongia in Florence was continuously in office from at least 1313 to 1334, serving eight inquisitors. Benvenuto de Trissanti covers a similar span, though his involvement fades after 1323. Guido Bontalenti in Bologna probably served six or seven inquisitors over ten years. Ferarisio de Lambrusca in Ferrara appears from at least 1290 till at least 1318. Nor were long periods of service a development of the early fourteenth century: Opizo da Pontremoli in Florence is attested from 1285 to 1313.75 Inquisition notaries were thus not only experienced in law before joining the inquisition, but very experienced on the job as well. This continuity of experience sheds a completely different light on the probable relations between the inquisitor and the permanent officium than is suggested by Richard Kieckhefer’s proposition.76

Were inquisition notaries full-time? A final issue is whether notaries worked full-time for the office or whether inquisition work was simply part of a portfolio of activities. At one level this is a purely factual issue, but it also illuminates attitudes: was working for the inquisition like any other public notarial office, or was it seen as in some way special? A number of inquisition notaries did have strong Church connections, and might have personally regarded the work as an act of religious 73 A

separate issue is the handling of these rights in respect of friar notaries. While several commissions are issued in Bologna for the imbreviature of notaries who have joined the Franciscan Third Order, and may no longer have been functioning as notaries, none are issued for the Dominican friar notary, Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne. On the other hand, while he was a friar, Guido Signoritti (sometimes used as a witness by the Bologna inquisition) himself receives a commission from another notary: Tamba, ‘Commissioni notarili’, p. 318. 74 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, docs. 7–9. 75 Corsi, ‘Per la storia’, doc. 2, p. 9; Tocco, Dante, doc. 25. 76 Kieckhefer, ‘Personal jurisdiction’, pp. 54–6.

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The inquisition notary devotion. Others came from a background of civic office and perhaps had quite different drivers: security, income, factional politics. As with everything in this area, there may have been changes in practice over time, as the incidence and focus of heresy altered. Pleas by inquisitors such as Angelo da Todi in 1260 to increase his complement might suggest inquisition notaries in the mid-thirteenth century were already very stretched. By the last decades of the century, however, some notaries were clearly combining inquisition office with other activities. Already in the 1280s, Symon Bonandrea in Verona may have been employed at the convent of San Fermo as well as by the inquisition.77 In Ferrara, an intermittent inquisition seat during the 1290s, Ferarisio de Lambrusca and Rolandino perhaps relied more on their work for the Dominican convent than on their inquisition salary to make ends meet. In Florence, Opizo da Pontremoli and Benvenuto de Trissanti held office as notaries of the Santa Croce convent alongside their inquisition posts. Benvenuto’s surviving cartularies from 1318–22 overlap almost completely with his tenure as inquisition scriba, depositarius and custos carceris, for which in July 1322 he received back salary for almost three years.78 Giovanni Bongia later worked on the 1325 Florence statutes whilst drawing his inquisition salary. In Bologna, Guido Bontalenti managed to combine the 1299 year of major riots, when he processed over 300 rioters in a month, with office-holding in the college of notaries as consiliarius populi. Perhaps more surprisingly, some notaries of the Bologna inquisition can also be identified as working concurrently on the Memoriali. This rotating office, involving entering acts and contracts in a public register, required six days a week physical presence in the palazzo comune or market, with tight timescales for production of text. Yet Giacomo Alberto Martelli was appointed to the Memoriali when already inquisition notary, and during his six-month stint from January to June 1308, he is concurrently found as dicti domini inquisitoris et officii inquisitionis notarius.79 There are gaps in the inquisition record, but Guglielmo Laigonis, documented as notarius officii in May–July 1308 and possibly earlier, had worked on the Memoriali from January to June 1307. The implication is that notaries found it possible to manage both inquisition office and demanding civic posts simultaneously. The level of activity could however fluctuate wildly. By contrast with the processing of the 300-plus rioters in 1299, the Bologna inquisitor Manfredo 77 Rando

and Mutter, Il Quaternus Rogacionum, refer repeatedly to Symon in connection with the convent of San Fermo, but give no exact details of his involvement. 78 Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 325; Collectoria 249, fol. 69v. 79 Giacomo Alberto Martelli was already active with the Bologna inquisition in late 1307: ASOB, II, docs. 906–12, November–December 1307. He rogates documents as inquisition notary in May 1308, in the middle of his half-year Memoriali stint (docs. 913–16): ASB, Memoriali, vol. 116, also vols. 120 (1310), 141 (1321), 142 (1321), 147 (1323).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 da Parma registered only sixteen condemnations and fines between 1314 and 1318, mostly against the excesses of priests. Some were inherited as debts from his predecessor, with the main paperwork already completed. At this juncture, there was clearly much less for the Bologna inquisition office to do, reflected in the reduction of its notarial complement from five or more at the turn of the century to two plus a scribe under Manfredo.80 Conditions were, however, different elsewhere – in a similar period, starting in 1315, Giovanni da Fontana in Bergamo had seventy-seven convictions.81 The conclusion to be drawn is that from at least the 1280s, inquisition office was just one among a number of Church or public posts which notaries were juggling. Working for the inquisition, even as notarius officii, was neither a special nor an exclusive occupation. Benvenuto dei Campesani, inquisition notary in Vicenza, summed up the semi-detached position neatly when he subscribed himself to a document in 1302 as ‘Ego, Benvenutus de Campexanis, notarius publicus existens in officio inquisitionis heretice pravitatis’.82 He was notary-public first, and inquisition notary only while he did its work.

Conclusion A number of important points arise from this discussion. Inquisition notaries ought to be repositioned as highly significant figures in the development of the inquisition, not as mere subordinates. Their professional role in validating inquisition actions itself gives them significance. More than that, it is clear that some notaries exercised a good deal of autonomy, not only in shaping the legal course of particular cases but also in more muscular activities, such as the pursuit and capture of heretics and fugitives. The efforts made by inquisitors to control appointments strongly suggest that they did not always see eye to eye with notaries and officials. In some cases, as in Padua and Vicenza, there was serious dissension. In those areas too, there was evidence of malpractice among notaries as well as inquisitors. These conflicts highlight the responsibility of notaries and officials to the officium and the civic/episcopal partners, rather than the inquisitor personally. It cannot be assumed that inquisitors always won the tussle for influence, even where they did eventually acquire the right (as in Treviso by 1340) to nominate their own staff. Since notaries tended to outlast inquisitors many times over, their opportunity to influence the culture of the officium inquisitionis was correspondingly greater. The Padua episode also indicates, perhaps, that by the end of the thirteenth century, all partners involved with 80 Collectoria

133, fols. 130r–1r, condemnations; fols. 136v, 137rv, notary numbers. 133, fols. 207v–9r. 82 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 187, doc. 55 (‘I, Benvenuto dei Campesani, public notary, currently based in the office of inquisition against heresy’ [my emphasis]). 81 Collectoria

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The inquisition notary the inquisition seemed to feel free to modify the specific provisions of Ad extirpanda to suit local circumstances: it was a framework, not a detailed blueprint. It is significant that inquisition notaries tended to be experienced men with strong networks both in civic life and the Church: men on whom both commune and bishop could rely. Their links not only provided them with the confidence to take an independent stance when necessary, but were also potentially invaluable in smoothing the way for inquisition business involving the secular authorities. Rando remarks on the strong links in Verona between inquisitorial staff and the civic and episcopal elite. The same could be said in many cities.83 It is hard to look at the biographies of inquisition notaries over the decades around 1300 and see them as Richard Kieckhefer does, as temporary hires for a particular job.84 In fact, their importance to the development of the medieval inquisition is likely to be greater than that of the inquisitors themselves. Notaries were individuals without whom – on many levels – the inquisitor could not function.

83 Rando

and Mutter, Il Quaternus Rogationum, p. 35. ‘Personal jurisdiction’, pp. 54–5.

84 Kieckhefer,

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4 Nuncii, heralds and messengers: public voice or ‘social scourge’?

Notaries documented, validated and formally ‘published’ the inquisitor’s acts and instruments, but his decisions and their consequences still had to be communicated to the public at large. Pursuing heretics also often required contact – by letter or orally – with colleagues in other parts of Italy and beyond, and with the papal Curia. The group of staff whose main function it was to be the inquisitor’s public mouthpiece – the nuncii, precones, couriers and messengers – have barely been considered by historians. In two excoriating paragraphs, Lea lumps this ‘lowest class’ of inquisition functionaries together with spies and bravos, wrongly calls all of them familiars, and brands the whole group a ‘social scourge’.1 This is both unduly pejorative and a misunderstanding of their role. Although nuncii do not rate an entry in the Dizionario storico dell’Inquisizione, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries (and perhaps in Italy more than in Languedoc) they played a significant part in the functioning of the inquisition team as a legal tribunal. Like the notaries, they were a bridge between the inquisitor, the commune and the bishop, and they linked the inquisition firmly into secular legal practices. The tendency to translate nuncius as ‘messenger’ has contributed to the undervaluing of this group of staff. Although some were indeed specialised couriers (cursores), and in that capacity were essential in maintaining inquisition communications across Italy, the inquisition nuncius himself was not primarily a message carrier except in the sense that in all his actions he was ‘his master’s voice’. His principal function was as a sworn officer of the court, similar to modern-day bailiffs and beadles.2 Alongside the nuncii of other courts, he ensured that all stages of a legal process were announced in due form both to those affected and to the community at large. He delivered public summonses to those required to appear before the ‘tribunal of the 1 Lea,

Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 381–2. for example, translates nuncius as ‘messenger’ throughout her recent article, ‘Familia inquisitionis’. To emphasise the difference in roles, I have used the Latin nuncius, except where ‘messenger’ is in fact more appropriate.

2 Bruschi,

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers Faith’. He called on witnesses and other interested parties to make themselves known. He arrested suspects and delivered them to detention. He declared property confiscated on suspicion of heresy and took possession of it for the court. He publicised convictions and prepared the way both for the inquisitor’s formal preaching and for the announcement of mass excommunications (as for instance against the Colonna cardinals, or the followers of Ludwig of Bavaria), by summoning the public and ensuring that no disturbances occurred.3 His work was, in fact, almost entirely about the public communication of the inquisition’s business and its demonstrable compliance with legal requirements. Lea asserted that the inquisition conducted itself in secret: The Inquisition shrouded itself in the awful mystery of secrecy until after sentence had been awarded, and it was ready to impress the multitude with the fearful solemnities of the auto da fé. Unless proclamation were to be made for an absentee, the citation of a suspected heretic was made in secret.4

Hamilton downgrades this to the more circumspect, ‘The trial was held in camera and the public was not admitted’.5 Discussion in Chapter 2 above about the varied and public settings in which inquisition business was conducted shows that there must be serious doubt about even this milder assertion; the claims of secrecy are further undermined by examining the activities of the inquisition nuncius. In Italy at least, his role shows that the tribunal of the inquisition lived very much in the public realm of law. While there were undoubtedly closed and unaccountable aspects, justice was not generally carried out hugger-mugger. Indeed, its monitory purpose could not be served in secret. The work of the nuncius also shows how the daily functioning of the inquisition was intertwined with civic justice systems, whose nuncii performed identical functions in the same places. In Italy, details of inquisition procedure in relation to summonsing and announcements closely replicated those in the civil sphere. This is perhaps not surprising. As the new institution of the inquisition began to make its own jurisprudence in the thirteenth century, it drew on the developing practice of existing magistracies. In one of the very earliest manuals of procedure for inquisitors, the Ordo processus Narbonensis, we already find inquisitors speaking of citing suspects to appear, just as other

3 In

Reggio in 1299, during a visit by the inquisitor Guido Capello, the nuncius was sent, together with a Dominican friar, to order the Franciscan convent not to ring its church bells during the inquisitor’s preaching: ASOB, I, docs. 84–6. 4 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, p. 406. 5 Hamilton, Medieval Inquisition, p. 43.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 courts would.6 The similarity in procedure emphasises the position of the officium inquisitionis, suspended between Church and state.

Origin, status, hierarchy and regulation The following paragraphs explore the various functions of nuncial staff and their professional regulation, drawing examples from both the inquisition and the civil courts. An important point to note is that nuncial staff working for the inquisition and the commune were sometimes one and the same. In Bologna, at least two of the four known inquisition nuncii held simultaneous office with inquisition and commune, and elsewhere inquisitors often made use of local communal nuncii or heralds. Sometimes nuncii represented the inquisition alone, sometimes inquisition and commune together, and sometimes they engaged in purely secular work whilst holding their inquisition appointment. The joint office is particularly significant in relation to extensive civic regulation across Italy of the performance of nuncii and the requirements for their visible identification as court officers. How far did these standards bleed into the work of inquisition nuncii, when acting either alone or in a dual capacity? In his study of the development of the legal profession, Brundage notes that the term nuncius is elastic, but (with the canonist Azo) he mainly uses it to connote an envoy or messenger acting as ‘his master’s voice’. In both inquisition and secular justice systems, the heart of the nuncius’s function was in fact procedural, corresponding to the role played by (in Brundage’s terminology) apparitors, summoners or bailiffs.7 In Italian inquisition documents, the terms nuncius and preco are used almost interchangeably, with preco (often translated as ‘herald’) especially favoured in imperial territories north of the Po but less seen in the fourteenth century.8 Precones were initially one of the four decuriae (occupational categories) of apparitores (servants of a magistrate) in ancient Rome, whose functions were carried forward in later canon law. The other categories were viatores, lictores and scribae. For the inquisition in Italy, the job title viator is found regionally (especially in Verona), but apparently with the same duties as nuncius. By the late thirteenth century, the originally distinct roles of precones, viatores 6 See

Dondaine, ‘Le manuel’, for the seminal discussion of the evolution of the ‘inquisitorial code’. Analysis of the Ordo processus Narbonensis, from the 1240s, is at pp. 97–101 (reference to ‘cite’, ‘citation’ [citare, modus citandi], p. 99). 7 Brundage, Medieval Origins of the Legal Profession: for nuncius as envoy and vox domini, p. 464; for court summonsing duties by apparitors, summoners or bailiffs, pp. 148–9. 8 D’Alatri, ‘Nuove notizie’, doc. 5, p. 266, has ‘[praesente] Ruglietto praecone Guicciardini’ witnessing a sentence of the inquisitor Guicciardino da San Gimignano in 1280. Only residual use of the term is found in Tuscany from 1300 onwards.

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers and lictores were blurred and largely, though not entirely, merged in the all-purpose nuncius. Meanwhile, scribes had become a subset of the notarial profession. In broad terms, cursor, meaning a specialist long-distance courier, overlapped with nuncius and possibly viator (but not with preco, whose medieval function was announcement).9 In secular settings, there was a discernible hierarchy and functional distinction between the more numerous nuncii and the much smaller numbers of precones and bannitores.10 The 1288 statutes of Bologna provided for the election of 200 nuncii a year (fifty for each quarter of the city, shared between all communal offices). By around 1300, however, at least sixty nuncii worked for the iudex ad maleficia (criminal judge) alone. Florence meanwhile made do with ninety overall.11 Whilst the ordinary nuncius criss-crossed the city to serve summonses and execute the judge’s orders in the early part of an inquiry, the role of the five or six precones and bannitores was primarily to trumpet (literally) decision phases – bans and penalties – both from a central point and from prescribed places of announcement such as market squares, water-fountains and road junctions. There was a cacophony of 204 trumpet points in Bologna, forty in Florence.12 The publicus preco et bannitor had vital public functions. In some cities, like Pavia, new ordinances did not have effect until precones, with voice and horn 9 N.

Purcell, ‘The Apparitores: A Study in Social Mobility’, Papers of the British School at Rome 51 (1983), 125–73, for a discussion of their role in Roman courts. For viator, see Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, pp. 77, 271, examples from 1273 and 1293. For cursor, Collectoria 249, fol. 58v, payment in 1321 to a cursor who brought letters to the inquisitor in Florence (‘cuidam cursori qui portavit quasdam litteras inquisitoris, 6 solidos’). At fol. 53r, however, payment to ‘Spinello nuntio et cursori officii’. Spinello’s career with the Florence inquisition can be traced from 1319 to 1333; he is normally described as nuncius, but occasionally as cursor. 10 Ducange, Glossarium, defines nuncius and preco similarly, with nuncius having the meaning of both envoy and court officer, whilst preco is more usually a court servant – a sergeant or bailiff. In Duecento Italy, preco always seems to mean a crier who announces with a horn call. The trumbatores, mentioned in the statutes of both Bologna and Florence, seem to have been more or less equivalent to precones. Bologna court documents use preco, however. Baratores and buccinatores are found from Tuscany southwards, performing similar functions. 11 For prescribed numbers, see I Statuti di Bologna dell’anno 1288, ed. G. Fasoli and P. Sella, 2 vols. (Città del Vaticano, 1937–9), I, 80, cap. XIII. Numbers working for iudex ad maleficia, my partial count from ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, volumes covering December 1298–March 1300. For Florence, Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, II, 40, Distinctio I, cap. XII. Statutes in Florence refer to Distinctio and capitulum. In Bologna, the terminology is Liber and rubric. (See also Chapter 1 above, n. 32.) I have used capitulum for both cities. 12 Statuti di Bologna, I, 85–7, cap. XIV; Bocchi, Bologna, II, 89. Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina II, 38–9, Distinctio I, cap. XI; ‘The said bannitores must have silver trumpets and must sound them once before the ban is delivered, so that the ban is better understood.’ (‘Et dicti bannitores debeant habere tubas argenteas et tubare semel ante quam banniatur, ad hoc ut melius intelligantur banna.’)

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 call, had summoned the populace to the cortile del Broletto (courtyard of the Broletto, public assembly building) to hear them ‘published’.13 Precones and bannitores also underwent more stringent appointment processes than the nuncii. In Florence, the six bannitores – one for each sext – were elected by the priors and gonfaloniere di giustizia from nominations by an electoral college representing the major arti (guilds) and were required to be good Guelfs. The ninety nuncii underwent no direct political test: they were elected by ninety members of the council of 300, arranged so that each councillor elected one of them. In Bologna, the bannitors (who cried bans on criminals and rebels) were elected by the council of 800 and the popolo minuto, and had to post guarantors who were themselves subject to checks of character and standing by the city’s approbator (examiner). The nuncii, however, were chosen by court officials from a list built up by annual public advertisement then scrutinised by the commune’s procurators. In both cities the nuncii had to deposit financial guarantees.14 In Bologna in 1299, the inquisition had four nuncii officii identified in surviving processes, plus another based in Reggio. This was less than the complement of notaries. Other staff given no job title may however have performed some nuncial functions, as we see in Florence. Fifteen years later under the inquisitor Manfredo da Parma (1314–18), when the only information is from the accounts, pay records still show four named nuncii but also several unnamed: by now, they outnumber the notaries. The total number of nuncial staff at either point is therefore uncertain, but fairly small. The inquisition also made some direct use of the commune’s bannitores.15 As we have also seen with notaries, the Franciscan inquisition in Florence between 1319 and 1334 had a somewhat different organisation. There were at most two designated nuncii officii at any one time (compared with six each for the podestà and captain), but a cloud of others described simply as nuncius and carrying out apparently identical functions.16 Under Michele d’Arezzo (1322–25), the count of named nuncii rose to at least twenty-nine, plus others unnamed. The variation in numbers suggests that there must have been loose language in describing the ‘official’ status of these staff.

13 F.

Fagnani, ‘Gli statuti medioevali di Pavia’, ASL 9th s. 4 (1964–65), 90–130 (p. 108). nuncii and bannitori, Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, II, 37–9, Distinctio 1, cap. XI; 39–46, cap. XII; Statuti di Bologna, I, 80–4, cap. XIII (nuncii). Part of an actual election and guarantee process for a bannitor in 1313 is found in ASB Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 83 pt 1, fols. 107r-8r. 15 For Manfredo’s nuncii, Collectoria 133, fols. 131r, 132r, 133r, 137r. For payment to a bannitor in 1316, Collectoria 133, fol. 135r. 16 Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina II, 46, Distinctio 1, cap. XIII (nuncii for podestà, captain and judges). According to the staffing agreement with the commune dating from around 1310 but described only in 1334, the inquisitor was allowed one cursor, salaried at twelve florins: Collectoria 251, fol. 70r, testimony of Pace da Castelfiorentino.

14 For

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers In Florence, the distinction between the two groups of nuncii was primarily one of pay method. The nuncius officii was salaried at one gold florin/four lire a month, but until 1324 appears not to have received expenses when travelling, regardless of any provision in Ad extirpanda. By contrast, the others were paid subsistence and perhaps piecework rates when out of Florence. This was similar to the regime for the commune’s nuncii, who (as in Bologna) had an extremely complicated piecework pay tariff based on type of work and distance from the city. Being the nuncius officii thus had status, but it was not necessarily a better financial deal, especially when the cost of maintaining a horse was taken into account. In fact, Spinello, nuncius officii from 1319 to 1322, formally laid down office in September 1322 (the only such surrender of office), and thus changed financial arrangements. He continued to work for the inquisition almost seamlessly for at least another eleven years, described only as nuncius (or occasionally cursor) but this time getting expenses. His successor Donato Puccii seems to have struck a better deal, receiving both salary and subsistence, at least when away overnight. This was perhaps because (unlike Spinello) he was also a familiaris and benefited from both pay regimes.17 Many of the extra hands used as nuncii by the Florence inquisition were not full-time, and can be identified as primarily servants of the convents (especially Prato) where the inquisitors were based. Others who appear intermittently in the Florentine records on the inquisition’s behalf were attached to civic bodies, such as the syndics responsible for reviewing the accounts. It is notable that the officiales of the officium inquisitionis also employed their own nuncius when they acted collectively as an institution, as for example in selling inquisition land for the purposes of the officium itself.18 All this raises the question of where exactly the nuncius stood in the hierarchy of the inquisition team. Although nuncii generally were professionally of lower standing than notaries, the nuncius officii was counted among the servitors of the inquisition required to be provided by Ad extirpanda, and thus as an official selected and appointed under the tripartite arrangements. This was certainly the case in Verona in 1273, where we find ‘Guardus viator comunis Verone et officialis fratris Timidey inquisitoris

17 Collectoria

249, fol. 70r, in September 1322, Spinello was ‘let go’ by the inquisitor (‘licentiatus fuit ab inquisitore’). Reappearing within days, he is still found working regularly as nuncius in 1333. The only break is in 1324, when he disappears temporarily from view: Collectoriae 250, passim; 251, fols. 2r, 13v (twice), 14r. 18 Syndics’ nuncius: Collectoria 250, fol. 111r. Officials’ nuncius: Collectoria 249, fol. 57r, payment to the nuncius of the officials who sold land in front of the inquisition prison (‘nuntius officialium qui vendidit terrenum quod erant [sic] ante carcerem Inquisitionis’. (This was part of an attempt to extend and improve the prison. Since the reference is in the accounts, it is unclear whether the purchaser was the inquisitor or the commune.)

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 heretice pravitatis deputatus pro comuni Verone’.19 However, practice seems to have changed over time, with a gradual downgrading of the status of nuncii from the mid-thirteenth century onwards. In 1269, two precones are among those ‘deputatis […] super officio heretice pravitatis’ by the commune of Treviso. By 1347 and 1350, the Treviso inquisitor’s lists of registered officials contain no mention of precones or nuncii. In around 1308, in the two lists compiled for the inquiry into the inquisition in the Marca Trevisana, one listing inquisition officials and the other servitores, two precones appear among members of the familia – as servitors – but not as officiales. In Rimini in 1302, a list of two praecones and four servitores follows forty officials all being elected together, but the two groups are clearly distinguished. Notaries are grouped with the officials.20 It is hard to be absolutely certain of the true position because of overlapping roles and inconsistent descriptions. Millanino da Milano, who appears repeatedly in the Bologna acts between 1296 and 1299 as both nuncius and familiaris, is recorded in Ferrara in 1301 among the officialibus Officii Inquisitoris at the sentencing of Armanno Pungilupo by the Bologna inquisitor.21 In Florence, Donato Puccii is described as familiaris inquisitoris on his first appearance in the accounts in April and May 1324, then as nuntius offitii from June 1324 onwards. Some nuncii clearly did hold rank as officialis, but may have done so via their status as familiaris rather than as nuncius proper. As we have seen with Donato’s pay arrangements, a degree of fudge on what exactly was the qualifying office-holding could be quite useful.22 Like his colleagues who worked for the commune, the inquisition nuncius was oath-bound (nuncius iuratus) to execute his office faithfully and to tell the truth about what he had seen, heard and said.23 His assertion that he had

19 ‘Guardus,

the viator of the commune of Verona and deputed by the commune of Verona as official of fra Timideo, inquisitor of heretical depravity’: Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, p. 77 n. 1. 20 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, Documenti Trivigiani, II, doc. 62 (p. 126); VIII, docs. 201, 229 (pp. 328–9, 367); d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, docs. 5–6; for Rimini, see Zanchino Ugolini, Tractatus de haereticis, ed. Campeggi, Introduction. 21 Muratori, ‘Pungilupo’, col. 148. 22 Collectoria 250, fols. 42v, 43v, 44v for Donato’s early employment. 23 De officio, p. 31, line 888. Clement V’s constitutions strengthened Clement IV’s wording, requiring both notaries and ‘aliis personis necessariis ad predictum officium exercendum’ (‘other persons needed for the execution of the aforesaid office’) to swear to execute their office faithfully. In July 1304, we find the Bologna inquisition nuncius Nascimbene Adelardi swearing on his oath of office (‘sacramento sui officii’): ASOB, II, p. 680. Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, II, 40, Distinctio I, cap. XII: no one could legally exercise office as a communal nuncius ‘unless he first swore and gave suitable satisfaction in the sum of fifty lire f. p. [fiorentini piccoli], before the Executor of the Ordinances of Justice, to carry out the office of nuncius faithfully, correctly and according to the letter of the law’. (‘Nisi primo iuraverit et satisdederit ydonee coram Executore Ordinamentorum iustitie de libris 50 f. p. de

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers actually delivered (or been unable to deliver) a summons was reinforced by a declaration before a notary on each occasion. The records of the iudex ad maleficia in Bologna show that identical practice was followed in the city’s courts. Examples of the declarations to be made by an inquisition nuncius at each of the four successive stages of citation of a suspect are included in formularies, such as that incorporated in the manual of the Franciscan inquisition in Florence. Though the manual was itself compiled around 1310, Dondaine showed that the rather elaborate templates for declaration were in fact borrowed from much earlier southern French examples. These were evidently found to be tiresome in practice, and maybe not suitable for Italian circumstances, and the Florentine formulary therefore also includes a simpler all-purpose declaration, designed specifically for the Tuscan office.24 This is similar to the declarations actually recorded by the Dominican inquisition in Bologna from around 1299, a few of which survive.25 The declaration that a citation had been made by an accredited nuncius was, by itself, sufficient to warrant proceedings for contumacy if the person summonsed did not appear. In the civil or criminal sphere, non-appearance could very quickly trigger a ban and property confiscation. For someone summonsed by the inquisitor, there was the added risk of excommunication, which if not purged in the required period could lead on to infamation for heresy. There was thus a premium on the nuncius doing his job properly. This did not mean hunting down an escaped malefactor like a modern policeman, but did require visiting his home address to deliver summonses and alerting the community to his wanted status. If the suspect could not be located or his home was not known, a more general announcement was made in designated local public places, such as the parish church. If there was no result, the final step was for the preco or bannitor to cry the bans. These might include a financial penalty if the suspect did not come forward within a set period, or else the declaration of an immediate ban by the city, plus penalty. Lists of the banniti were compiled and publicly exhibited monthly.26 This was very similar to the responsibilities laid on communes under Ad extirpanda to publish monthly the names of those convicted of heresy, in order to warn others not to associate with them.27 In practice, there would often have been a substantial overlap between memberships of the two lists. officio nuntiationis bene, legaliter et secundum formam statutorum […] populi et Communis Florentie faciendo’.) The requirements of the Bologna communal oath are more elaborate. 24 D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, doc. 34 for Tuscan exemplar. Docs. 22–7, similar in purpose, originate from southern France and refer to a town official, the prior. See Dondaine, ‘Le manuel’, for a discussion of the transmission of formularies. 25 ASOB, I, docs. 91–2, 95–6, 97, 99. 26 Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, II, 18–19, Distinctio I, cap. IV. 27 Zdekauer, Il constituto del comune di Siena, Distinctio I, cap. CXXII: ‘and on the first

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Because of the potentially grave consequences for individuals if nuncii failed to do their job properly, communal nuncii were subject to a tariff of penalties for failings, such as not making their declaration before the notary in a timely fashion or not making announcements clearly. In Florence, these requirements were reinforced by monitoring carried out by what might today be called mystery shoppers: the 1325 statutes required the podestà to check monthly by means of secret spies (‘per secretos exploratores’) that the nuncii of the officium bannitorum had cried bans properly in all the forty nominated places throughout the city, the borgi and the suburbs.28 Bologna took a different approach: the ministrales (chiefs) appointed by the nuncii themselves had to call them together every two months to read the statute out, so no one could be ignorant of what was expected of them.29 Inquisition nuncii who were communal officials would also have had this reminder. Among the most important conditions imposed on communal nuncii was the requirement to identify themselves clearly in public, both by demonstrating who had issued the summons they were trying to execute and (in Bologna) by wearing distinctive bright-red ribboned headbands (‘infulae […] cum bendonibus’) with the insignia of the quarter they represented. Public visibility was so important they were permitted to remove the caps only when actively arresting a malefactor, and were forbidden to conceal them. In Florence, the commune’s nuncii wore tall caps with four red lilies. Failure to wear the cap when making an arrest was subject not only to a fifty lire fine but also required the release of the prisoner. Infractions of the dress code were punishable by a fine of ten lire f. p. or else by being whipped naked round the podestà’s palace. Finally a copy of the citation, bearing the name of the nuncius, had to be left behind when the warrant was executed.30 Since some inquisition nuncii held dual office with the commune and acted on behalf of both parties, were they also subject to these requirements? It is reasonable to suppose they were held to similar standards (and certainly to the visibility requirements) in the parts of their work where there was a clear communal interest. They thus probably wore distinctive clothing or visible insignia at least some of the time, whether working for the inquisition alone Sunday in January, and thereafter once each month, I [the podestà] will have the bans read against, heretics, patarines and sodomites [… and fine and ban anyone sheltering them]’. (‘Et in primo Sabbato januarii et postea singulis mensibus semel faciam per civitatem sbandeggiari hereticos et pactarenos et sodomitas […]’.) 28 Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, II, 39–40, Distinctio I, cap. XI. 29 Statuti di Bologna, I, 83, lib. II, cap. XIII. 30 Statuti di Bologna, I, 81, lib. II, cap. XIII; Statuti della Repubblica Fiorentina, II, Distinctio I, 40, cap XII. Communal nuncii also had badges of office: Tocco, Dante, doc. 16, the commune’s nuncii confront the inquisitor ‘bearing with them their insignia of office, which they carried in token of their credibility’ (‘gestantes secum insignia offitii, quod habebant in signum credulitatis’).

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers or in a joint capacity. Indeed, by the 1340s there is clear evidence that some communes actually imposed a dress requirement on inquisition staff. In Florence, the inquisitor’s familiares were compelled to wear distinctive tabards and carry a wooden shield painted with the arms of the Church. If found without them, they were to be detained and their acts treated as invalid.31 This provision is late in our period, and is linked to a particular Florentine problem with profligate grants of the right to bear arms by the inquisitor Pietro da L’Aquila. However, it seems likely that distinctive dress requirements were placed on inquisition nuncii earlier and by other communes, either because they were simultaneously communal staff or to signify permission to bear arms.

Three and a bit days in the life of the inquisition nuncius The best way to illuminate the activities and functions of the inquisition nuncius may be to examine closely the lives of the four nuncii in Bologna for a few days in spring 1299, for which internal inquisition records survive. On 11 April, Nascimbene Adelardi went on behalf of the Dominican inquisitor, Guido Capello da Vicenza, to the property of Giuliano bursarius (purse maker), a suspected Cathar perfect. He summonsed him to appear within eight days to make his defence against a charge of heresy, adding that the inquisitor would supply a copy of the charges. Although a summons at the home was normal practice, in this case Giuliano was not there, nor apparently in custody even though he had been questioned by the inquisitor on 7 April. He had been living in Padua, and as a result, he responded late to the citation: he evidently did receive it, perhaps because he still had close family in Bologna.32 A similar process of summonsing to hearings was apparently carried out even where suspects were already in custody. Citations made to those in prison are found in Bologna both in the criminal courts and in inquisition proceedings. This must have been something of a formality, except that those summonsed received a copy of the charges if they wanted one (some refused it, like the unruly Florentine heretic Donato Partis). But the respect for due

31 Corsi,

‘Per la storia’, p. 55. The 1346 Florence provision relates specifically to those bearing arms, but it appears the inquisition nuncii did do so. Similar dress requirements were not laid on the arms-bearing staff of the bishop. Collectoria 133, fol. 138v, records the purchase in 1318 by the Bologna inquisitor Manfredo da Parma of a tabard for a newly recruited famulus, which may suggest distinctive clothing for other inquisition staff. 32 ASOB, I, docs. 14, 91, 566 (late response). Giuliano was burnt in May 1299. See Paolini, L’eresia; Dupré-Theseider, ‘L’eresia a Bologna’ for accounts of the processes against Giuliano and Bompietro.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 process does demonstrate that the inquisition operated within shared legal norms.33 After citing Giuliano, Nascimbene moved on to the home of Martino Spagnolo (Yspano), a scholar in canon law also used by the podestà’s courts as an expert witness.34 Here, the nuncius issued a summons to appear urgently before the inquisitor that very day, and gave the unwelcome news that Martino would be dispossessed of his dwelling in three days’ time. The problem was not with Martino personally, but with the house he was leasing, which the inquisitor believed to belong to the Colonna cardinals. Inquisitors across Italy were busy seizing their property in the wake of Boniface VIII’s declaration that they were heretic and excommunicate; this attempt to dispossess Martino of his home illustrates in microcosm the knock-on disruption that charges of heresy brought for many unconnected lives. Nascimbene formally reported the completion of both tasks to the notary Alberto di Carbone, who recorded them in the ledger. The next day, 12 April, the inquisitor appointed ser Becco di ser Ugolino Bongiovanni Rubei as his procurator and nuncius specialis to seize Martino’s house. (Becco was primarily a banker and book-keeper, hence the need to designate him as nuncius specialis for this role.) The instrument of appointment was formally witnessed by one of the regular inquisition nuncii, Millanino da Milano, and Becco then proceeded to take formal legal possession of Martino’s dwelling by ‘opening, closing and sealing the gates of the house’. Later the same day, Millanino instructed Martino’s household staff that they and their master might remain temporarily in the seized house. We can infer there had been a protest. Again, his report of his actions was recorded by a notary.35 On 13 April, Millanino’s day began before terce (9 am), when he witnessed the examination of the rector of the church of San Tommaso del Mercato on charges of impeding the inquisition. The priest had given the last sacrament 33 ASB,

Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/I/1, fol. 45r, March 1299, for summonses executed by Bartholinus Ysenardi nuntius comunis Bononie in the commune’s prison. ASOB, II, doc. 615, in December 1303, Zacharias Zanibalbi de S. Agata, ‘detentus in carcere officii inquisitionis’ (‘held in the prison of the office of inquisition’), was cited to appear before Guido Capello for what should have been his abjuration after many confessions. Instead, Zacharias reasserted his belief in the teachings of fra Dolcino. ASOB, I, doc. 125, the nuncius Millanino da Milano summonses the Cathars Giuliano and Bompietro to hear their sentence. By this stage, both were imprisoned and had been tortured, so the summons was presumably delivered in the prison. ASOB, I, docs. 60, 67, Donato Partis, who made many insults against the inquisitor (‘dixit multa impertinencia’) refused either to check over his statements or receive a copy of the charges against him. 34 ASOB, I, doc. 92; ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/I/2, fol. 5v, 9 February 1299. Martino Spagnolo was not one of the canon law experts used by the inquisition itself. 35 ASOB, I, docs. 93–5. These internal documents are not fully attested, but probably some of the nuncii would have been present as witnesses.

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers to Rosafiore, the widow of the heretic Bonigrino da Verona, burnt eighteen months previously, and had conducted her funeral in consecrated ground despite knowing that the inquisitor wanted to examine her about her suspected relapse into heresy. The rector was ordered to deliver a surety of 200 Bolognese lire within three days, and as a punishment to exhume Rosafiore’s body with his own hands.36 No document survives, but one or more of the nuncii would have attended the exhumation and taken the corpse into custody until it could be burnt a month later alongside the living heretics, Giuliano and Bompietro.37 Later that same day, 13 April, Benincasa Martini, another nuncius iuratus of Guido da Vicenza and who was also nuntius comunis Bononie, testified before the notary Alberto di Carbone that ‘on both staircases of the palazzo vecchio [old palace] of the commune of Bologna and in front of the house where dominus Martino Spagnolo now lives’ he had cried ‘alta et preconia voce’ (‘in a loud voice and with the horn’) that Becco had taken possession of the house for the inquisition. The formula of announcing seizures on the staircases of the palazzo vecchio is identical to the one used by the nuncii and precones of the Bologna commune in criminal cases, as required by the 1288 statutes.38 The fact that it was Benincasa, with his joint office, who made this particular call from the steps of the comune indicates that he was acting for both parties. Benincasa’s announcement warned anyone with rights over the property to appear before the inquisitor within eight days to assert their claim. Public crying of impending confiscations was very necessary to alert other interested parties. Wives not implicated in heresy might have dower rights in property which needed to be asserted. Creditors might also hold pledges secured against it. Once a property had been seized by the inquisitor (or, still worse, sold on by him or the commune), it could be problematic for others to reassert rights or indeed for him to recover it. In Florence, the risk of an inquisitor’s carelessness was built into purchase contracts for confiscated property whilst elsewhere the possibility that the inquisition would lay retrospective claim to

36 ASOB,

I, doc. 15; L. Paolini, ‘Bonigrino da Verona e sua moglie Rosafiore’ in Medioevo ereticale, ed. O. Capitani (Bologna, 1977), pp. 213–28, for details of this case. The exhumation of Rosafiore and the burning of her bones was one of the flashpoints of the riots which erupted in Bologna in May 1299. 37 Collectoria 133, fol. 70v; in June 1298 Tommaso da Gorzano in the March of Genoa paid for custody of the bones of the exhumed heretic, Mia. 38 For example, on 25 August 1299, the Bologna bannitor Henrigiptus Zacharie cried a ban ‘super arengeria et super ambabus scalis palacii veteris comunis Bononie’ (‘on the rostra and on both staircases of the palazzo vecchio of the commune of Bologna’), ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/II/1, fol. 28v. The Statuti di Bologna, I, 84, cap. XIV specify that calls should be made from the stairs on the east and west sides of the palazzo.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 a property involved in commercial pledges was so great that get-out clauses were incorporated in local statute.39 Benincasa’s next task was formally to order the rector of the church of Santa Caterina at Porta San Proculo that on the following Thursday he must publicly excommunicate two parishioners, repeating the excommunication every Sunday and feast day thereafter. They had ‘offered violence’ to the inquisitor’s person – in fact, merely an attempt to collect the pedaggio (toll) from his party at the gate which the gatekeeper and his wife were responsible for manning.40 Moving across the city to the quarter of San Martino di Aposa, Benincasa’s duties continued with the formal witnessing in situ of ser Becco’s seizure of Giuliano’s home, through the ritual of opening and closing the doors of the house.41 The next day, 14 April, the nuncius reported for the notary’s records that he had cried the confiscation of the property on both stairways of the palazzo vecchio, in front of the house on the public way, behind the house on neighbours’ property and also by the side of a casamento (a small house or detached outbuilding) which formed part of the property.42 Although this might seem a comprehensive and very public announcement, the appropriation of Giuliano’s house was nevertheless later challenged by his sister and her family.43 Meanwhile, back at the domus inquisitionis – within the cloisters of the convent of San Domenico – the nuncius Millanino da Milano and ser Becco both witnessed the inquisitor’s acceptance of submission by the rector of San Tommaso del Mercato over the burial of the putative heretic Rosafiore, and noted his guarantors. Sentence would take place a few days later. Inquisitor Guido then transferred to the bishop’s palace to conduct the hearing at which the canon lawyer Martino Spagnolo responded to his citation to appear and produced witnesses both to his legal tenancy of his house and to the fact that

39 Benincasa’s

statement, ASOB, I, doc. 96. Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, docs. 256–7, illustrates the knotty problem of undoing the over-hasty sale of a heretic’s property before the widow’s dower rights had been established. See Tocco, Dante, doc. 24, for a 1309 Florentine instance where the purchaser assumed liability for all dower rights and interests attaching ‘whilst the former owner had been a Catholic’. In Verona, however, where many heretics were condemned post mortem, the risk of inquisition seizure was built into contracts, allowing their retrospective annulment if it emerged goods had been ‘published’: Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, pp. 84–6 for evolution of the provisions. 40 ASOB, I, docs. 97, 105, 100. 41 ASOB, I, doc. 98. This is one of several instances where notary, nuncius and other members of the inquisition team formally executed acts or instruments in the premises of heretics or witnesses, rather than in the domus inquisitionis. 42 ASOB, I, doc. 99. 43 ASOB, I, doc. 116, challenge by Giuliano’s sister and nephew in May 1299. Immediately after Giuliano’s execution, Guido Capello rented the house to the sister’s family, perhaps tacitly recognising their claim: ASOB, I, doc. 133. It is not clear whether they had in fact been living in the property beforehand.

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers it was not owned by the Colonna. Both of these instruments were witnessed by ser Becco.44 The fourth inquisition nuncius, Lapo Cultri, does not appear during these few days – there were probably other activities, of which details have not survived. However, Lapo is found a couple of weeks earlier wearing his other hat as a communal nuncius and engaged in one of the less pleasant aspects of the nuncius’s role. This was to witness the hamstringing and partial blinding of a malefactor against whom he had also been the main witness.45 Just as notaries formally witnessed confessions under torture, a standard part of the communal nuncius’s task was to bear formal witness to executions and physical punishments such as hangings, decapitations, amputations of limbs and floggings. They were paid extra for this duty, which made it sufficiently popular that the statutes limit to eight the numbers of nuncii who can be paid. Indeed, Lapo Cultri, who evidently had a position of authority among the communal nuncii, was the one who took receipt of the extra pay on behalf of himself and seven others for witnessing the burning of Bompietro and Giuliano on 13 May.46 Sometimes nuncii and precones actually performed sentences themselves. In Treviso in 1298, the preco Alcamo was paid extra for whipping one man and putting out the eye of another.47 We cannot tell whether inquisition nuncii were directly involved in the more extreme physical punishment of heretics, but they are certainly found in the Bologna records fulfilling the legal requirement to witness testimony extracted under torture, and in Florence

44 ASOB,

I, docs. 103–4, Becco and Martino.

45 ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/I/5, fol. 2r, witness to punishment,

March 1299; testimony against accused, fol. 2v. As inquisition nuncius, ASOB, I, docs. 118, 134, 9, 246, 271, 273–6 and others. 46 For Lapo’s receipt of payment, see Aldrovandi, ‘Acta S Officii Bononiae’, p. 254. He is the only one of the eight nuncii who formally witnessed the burning who is identifiable with a dual inquisition/commune role. The other inquisition nuncii were involved in crowd control during the execution. For communal nuncii witnessing punishments, see ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/I/1, fol. 25r, hanging; fol. 25v, flogging; 47/I/2, fol. 15r, beheading; fol. 18v, amputation of right hand; 47/I/5, fol. 1v, amputation of right hand; fol. 2r, putting out an eye. These examples relate only to the first three months of 1299, indicating that payment for bearing formal witness must have been a lucrative supplement to pay. For payment, see Statuti di Bologna, I, 82, lib. II, cap. XIII: ‘And when they go to deliver justice on a condemned person [… they shall have] twelve denarii for each nuntius, however many there are who suffer the justice […]. And no more than eight nuntii shall go to each carrying out of justice.’ (‘Et quando vadunt pro aliqua iusticia facienda de aliquo condempnato […] duodecim denarios pro quolibet nuntio quotcumque sint qui iusticiam patiantur […]. Et dicimus quod ad aliquam iusticiam faciendam non possint ire ultra quam octo nuntii.’) 47 Payment to the preco, see the 1298 Quaternus expensarum in Acta Comunitatis Tarvisii, ed. Michielin, p. 796.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 whipping heretics through the streets.48 Where torture is explicitly recorded in inquisition accounts, it seems however to have been carried out by others, notably the berrovarii (bravi, or armed retainers) of the podestà.49 The role of the nuncius could be risky as well as unpleasant. On 1 May 1299, Benincasa Martini and Lapo Cultri, who as we have seen both held dual office with inquisition and commune, were sent outside Bologna to the village of S. Martino in Argine and four neighbouring communities. Their job was to order the priests in the five villages to excommunicate a group of laboratores (labourers) engaged in ditching works, who had beaten up the inquisitor and briefly held him captive. To remedy this attack on the dignity of the Church, the priests were further required to produce the (unidentified) malefactors in Bologna in eight days’ time, under pain of interdict for the whole area and loss of office for the priests themselves. The nuncii went on to cry the excommunications personally in several locations in the five villages: outside Italy this would probably have been done by clerics.50 Inquisitors and their staff often reported being attacked or offered violence. There are of course real instances of murder, stabbing or other serious assault, from the 1252 murder of Peter of Verona onwards. At least three of the thirteen Dominican inquisitors whose accounts we have were stabbed, sometimes with serious results. In other cases, it is difficult to know what weight to put on inquisitors’ assertions. Sometimes the language seems ludicrously overblown, as when Guido Capello was reportedly ‘in danger of death’ after being chased away from the deathbed of the suspected heretic, Rosafiore, by her irate niece, or when he excommunicated a toll-collector and his wife for ‘offering violence’.51 But it does appear that the confrontation near S. Martino in Argine had really been violent and led to more than merely bruised pride. Nuncii were in principle able to enlist the help of the local authorities to back them up and assist in arrests. Failing to help the officials of the inquisition, even by failing to provide accommodation, was a fault for which communities as a whole could be fined.52 Notwithstanding this, community 48 As

when Giuliano and Bompietro were interrogated, ASOB, I, docs. 12, 13, 19. 249, fol. 64v, in Florence in January 1322, fifteen solidi were paid to the podestà’s bravi who tortured two Cathar women by compressing them (‘berrovariis domini potestatis qui artaverunt dominas Sobilia et Saphia pataras’). 50 Paolini, L’eresia, pp. 46–52; ASOB, I, docs. 118 et seq. The priests were understandably concerned at the threat of penalty to themselves when the malefactors were unknown. 51 ASOB, I, doc. 15: ‘The said inquisitor was driven out from the house in peril of his life, with much scolding and many threats.’ (‘Dictus inquisitor fuit expulsus cum multo vituperio et multis cominationibus usque ad periculum mortis de dicta domo.’) 52 De officio, p. 32: on pain of a fine of twenty-five lire imperiali ‘every [rector], whether in town or country, and of whatever jurisdiction, is obliged to give these officials and their assistants help and advice when they want to seize a male or female heretic’. (‘Quilibet etiam [… rector] teneatur, tam in civitate quam in iurisditione 49 Collectoria

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers assistance was sometimes not forthcoming, or else could be an active hindrance where locals disapproved of the inquisition’s mission. For instance, when in 1304 Nascimbene Adelardi, working alone, sought help from the community of Piumazzo to arrest the Apostle, domina Berga (Roberga), he gave her in custody to the village authorities, who deliberately let her escape.53 Despite the risks, the evidence from Bologna and Florence suggests that in most cases inquisition nuncii carried out their tasks unaccompanied and usually single-handed. However, the danger for nuncii working as longdistance couriers could be much greater. In 1317, one nuncius who was taking letters from the French inquisitor Bernard Gui in Como to John XXII in Avignon, reporting on his mission in Lombardy against the Visconti of Milan, was murdered en route. A second, carrying Gui’s letters to the bishop of Brescia, was captured by the Brescian extrinseci (exiles), badly beaten and stripped to his shirt.54 To prevent secret missives getting into the wrong hands, messengers might memorise the content and report message and response verbally. Authentication of the verbal report by a notary gave additional legal force. We do not have specific examples of memorised inquisition communications, but the system can be seen at work (and being abused) in the process against the Florentine inquisitor Mino da San Quirico (1332–34). Having refused repeatedly to come to Florence to appear before the papal nuncio, Pons Étienne, Mino was eventually confronted by Sita da Lucca, Pons’s nuncius iuratus, who delivered both verbal and written messages. Knowing that Sita would be obliged to report the encounter verbatim, Mino responded with a variety of insults about both Pons and Pope John XXII, all of which he knew the nuncius had to render for transcription into the record. For good measure, Mino then threatened to cite the unfortunate Sita with ‘impeding the work of the inquisition’, for troubling him with the message.55 The nuncius thus became a football in a contest of wills between inquisitor and papal delegate.

A servant of two masters The similarity in procedure between the nuncii working for the inquisition and those employed by the commune is attributable not only to a common legal heritage, with its body of shared assumptions about due process in the

et districtu quolibet, dare ipsis officialibus et eorum sociis consilium et iuvamen, quando voluerint hereticum vel hereticam capere.’) 53 ASOB, II, docs. 621–32. 54 Fate of Gui’s letters: ASV, Instrumenta miscellanea 616, fols. 5r, 15r. 55 Collectoria 251, fols. 39r–40r. It was improper, but far from unknown, to threaten a nuncius doing his duty.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 administration of justice, but also to the shared responsibility for the pursuit of heresy. As discussed in Chapter 1, both Ad extirpanda and earlier legislation allocated to the podestà the task of seizing and selling heretics’ goods. This was identical in process to the seizure of goods when someone was banned under civic legislation. Other penalties imposed on heretics and their followers were also essentially secular, replicating the punishments used for criminals and rebels. In these circumstances it made sense for the same nuncii to be employed by both inquisition and commune, and for the two bodies to share each other’s staff. What is less clear (perhaps also to himself) was to which master the nuncius owed primary responsibility at different stages of the process. In some instances, it is plain that nuncii held joint office serving both the civil power and the inquisitor, and could act on behalf of either or both. There is however ambiguity over whether the designation nuncius comunis et officii inquisitionis (nuncius of the commune and of the office of inquisition), or similar, simply reflects the reality of the nuncius’s two masters or whether the descriptor is used only in specific circumstances, by someone who had been appointed under the Ad extirpanda procedure and was thus salaried. In other cases, nuncii were employed simultaneously by both institutions, though never accorded a joint title. Further along the spectrum, there are nuncii working for the inquisition about whose link to the civic authority we know nothing. For example, with the Tuscan nuncii whose main job was working for various convents there may have been no connection to the commune at all. The standards and practice of these auxiliaries would not have been subject to the conditions imposed on communal nuncii, though the communes had a limited degree of leverage through grants of the right to bear arms. In Bologna, Benincasa Martini Gagliardi had been a communal nuncius at least as far back as 1285. He occurs in inquisition records between 1299 and May 1308, and is frequently, but not always, referred to with the joint title of ‘[nunctius] civitatis Bononie et nunctius iuratus fratris Guidonis Vicentini inquisitoris’ (‘nuncius of the city of Bologna and sworn nuncius of fra Guido da Vicenza, inquisitor’), or similar. However, it is usually not possible to discern any pattern in the use of a particular title. In 1306 Benincasa is included with others in the descriptor ‘nunctiis et familiaribus […] inquisitoris’, but in August–September 1307 he is found acting for the iudex ad maleficia in a purely secular capacity. The cases involved an attack on a rector and his church, and the citation of a Jew. Was the ‘faith’ element just coincidence, or was Benincasa being used by the commune in cases which touched the civil/ecclesiastical boundary?56 Benincasa is not named among inquisition staff in the accounts

56 ASOB,

I, docs. 21, 31–2, from 1299; among nunctiis et familiaribus in 1306, ASOB, II, doc. 893. He last features in the Bologna registers in May 1308: ASOB, II, doc. 916. For Benincasa’s long-standing employment with the commune, see Paolini, L’eresia,

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers of Ruggiero da Petriolo (1311–12) or Manfredo da Parma (1314–18), so must have left the office some time after 1308. Benincasa’s colleague, Lapo Cultri, is never described in inquisition records as holding joint office, only as nuncius iuratus and (frequently) familiaris of the inquisitor. However, Lapo was working simultaneously as a communal nuncius on matters which were unquestionably secular, switching hats almost from day to day. He was probably senior among the communal nuncii – as witness his role in receiving their pay at the execution of Giuliano and Bompietro in 1299 – and his participation in the burning thus indicates that the supposed distance between the inquisition and secular arms in physical punishments was more conceptual than real.57 His dual employment, and the repeated description of him as familiaris, suggest that (as with their notaries) inquisitors did not own the sole allegiance even of their familiares. The implications for the meaning of the familia inquisitoris are considered further in Chapter 5 below. The third Bologna nuncius on whom we have information, Nascimbene Adelardi, is also only titled nuncius or familiaris of the inquisition in surviving records, and does not appear as a communal servant. Nevertheless, he sometimes acted under the joint authority of both podestà and inquisitor. In his ill-fated attempt to arrest domina Berga, noted above, he carried letters of authority from both commune and inquisitor requiring co-operation by the village authorities.58 Did this mean he was also a nuncius comunis, or did he need to carry the letters precisely because he was not? In either case, the letters were clearly crucial, if ineffective. Millanino da Milano, the fourth nuncius around 1300, appears as nuncius or familiaris of the inquisitor in the main records of the Bologna office, but is called officialis in the sentence of Armanno Pungilupo in March 1301 in Ferrara, where he had travelled with Guido Capello.59 He is not visible in civic records, but as officialis must have been appointed by the podestà. The variation in the terminology probably p. 13; his 1307 activity for the commune, ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 69 pt 1, fasc. I, fols. 10r, 37r. 57 Lapo Cultri appears as an inquisition nuncius on nine occasions in May 1299 alone, including a four-day journey into the contado (surrounding countryside) in the affair of S. Martino in Argine (see above). But he also worked simultaneously for the iudex ad maleficia on a variety of cases. He testified for the inquisition on 3 May, but on 5 May, switching hats, he cried the final call for the malefactor to surrender in a case of robbery and hooliganism which had occurred in the palazzo comune itself. He last features in inquisition records in 1304. From a sample of Bologna criminal records tested, see ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/II/5, fols. 2rv, March 1299; 47/II/1, fol. 1v, May 1299. The references in Paolini, L’eresia, p. 13 are corrupted. 58 For Nascimbene, see ASOB, II, doc. 621: ‘he presented letters sent on behalf of the inquisitor, his vicar and the podestà of Bologna’ (‘[…] presentavit […] litteras missas ex parte dicti inquisitoris et viccarii sui et potestatis Bononie.’) 59 Muratori, ‘Pungilupo’, col. 148.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 means that the small group of servitors formally appointed under Ad extirpanda were lumped together for convenience with the officiales, rather than that they were numbered among the twelve boni homines. The procedural records of the Florentine inquisition are sparse, but here too nuncii are found holding joint office with inquisition and commune. The specific instance involves the induction of a purchaser into a confiscated property, and was thus a matter of equal interest to Church and commune.60 However, joint office was not just a feature of cities: in fact it may have been even more important in rural areas, where officials were few and far between. In 1307–08, the nuncius of the count of De Monte held joint office under the inquisitor of western Piedmont, Francesco da Pocapaglia. In the same period and in 1313–14 Francesco paid the nuncii of the communes of Cuneo and Chieri for services.61 Examples from other areas seem to show an insistence by civic authorities on involvement in the part of nuncial duties which bore on public communication. In Treviso in the 1260s, when the commune nominated precones as inquisition officials, the preco was obliged by statute to announce in three locations when public estimation of the value of confiscated goods was due to take place. He performed this function impartially for goods confiscated either for heresy or for secular offences.62 In Orvieto in 1268, it was the inquisition nuncius who summonsed heretics to appear for sentence, but the commune’s buccinatores (trumpeters) who called the public to witness the event.63 In both Florence and Prato, the inquisition hired the communes’ baratores to announce the inquisitor’s preaching and sentencing, and also to cry the public bans on fugitives escaped from the inquisition prison, reserving its own nuncii to carry messages and issue citations.64 In Reggio, the announcement of forthcoming

60 Tocco,

Dante, doc. 24, in 1309 Puccio Dogini was nuncius of both Florence and the offitium Inquisitionis. He is referred to in inquisition accounts well into the 1320s, though it is uncertain whether he was still working at this point. 61 Collectoria 133, fol. 174r, payments to ‘notario et nuncio comunis Cunei qui laboraverunt multum pro officio Inquisitoris’ and the ‘nuncio comitatis de Montis et Officii Inquisitionis pro labore suo’; fol. 84r, payment to ‘nuncio Comunis Carii’ [Chieri]. 62 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, Documenti Trivigiani, II, pp. 125–7, doc. 62 (1269 August). Also Michielin, Acta Comunitatis Tarvisii, pp. 326–31, doc. 87 for another version of this sale. 63 D’Alatri, Liber inquisitionis of Orvieto, in d’Alatri, L’Inquisizione francescana nel Italia centrale, p. 267, doc. 69. 64 Collectoria 250, fols. 23r, 28r, January 1323, payments to Zingano, baratore of the Prato commune, for announcing the inquisitor’s preaching; fol. 35v, payment in August 1323 to Lolo, baratore of the commune of Florence, and his colleagues for the bans sounded by them when inquisition prisoners escaped (‘Lolo baratori comunis Florentie pro se et sociis pro bannis per eos missas occasione fughe carceratorum officii’). Baratores (Florence) and buccinatores (Orvieto) seem to have performed essentially the same announcement function as precones.

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers preaching was probably shared between the civic preco and the local nuncius of the Bologna-based inquisitor.65 The commune’s presence may have been deliberately to emphasise the secular role in pursuit of heresy, and to indicate that inquisitors operated by consent. These examples illustrate the futility of trying to pin down one uniform organisational model for the inquisition in Italy across the period 1250–1350. Inquisitors adapted to local circumstances. Differences of style are however noticeable between Dominican Bologna and Franciscan Florence. In Bologna, inquisition and commune acted in close partnership. In Florence, the relationship was more distant, with specific communal services such as the baratores bought in and many nuncii drawn from a conventual environment or from other offices sitting between inquisitor and commune proper.66 It is unclear whether this was a difference between the two orders, between Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany, or a bit of both. The limited data available from the Franciscans in the Veneto suggest they tended towards the Tuscan model.

Who were the inquisition’s nuncii? Although Brundage points out that nuncii were probably fairly tough men, it would be wrong to think of them only as muscle-bound bravos. We have less information about them than about inquisition notaries, but we can establish that they were literate. The statutes of Bologna required its nuncii to be able to read or write. Though there was no explicit requirement for Florence, various obligations to leave written notifications of summonses imply some literacy.67 Nuncii also had to be numerate, because they collected pledges and some fines. In Florence, the familiaris Manovello di Giacomo, who later held the post of custos carceris and kept the accounts of the inquisition’s owings with the commune, started his career as nuncius officii. He was clearly literate and numerate in all senses.68 In both cities, communal nuncii had to be solid citizens by birth, residence, taxability or all three, and capable of posting financial and character guarantees. In his study of the fifteenth-century town crier Jean de Gascogne, whose work shared many characteristics with those of the inquisition nuncii, Nicolas 65 ASOB,

I, doc. 86. The preaching was preconizatum (announced by horn call) a week earlier and also cried by the nuncius on the day itself. It is not clear whether the nuncius Tommasino had himself been the horn-caller. 66 For instance, the use of Bertino Ristori, later identified as nuncius of the syndics overseeing the inquisition’s accounts, to deliver citations: Collectoria 250, fol. 107r, February 1327; fol. 126r, February 1329. 67 Statuti di Bologna, I, 80, lib II, cap XIII. 68 Collectoria 249, fol. 58v, December 1320 and fol. 60r, April 1321, refer to Manovello as (salaried) nuntius offitii. From fol. 61r, June 1321, onwards and until August 1323 (Collectoria 250, fol. 33v) he is termed familiaris; thereafter, custos carceris.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Offenstadt presents him as a pauper son of the people.69 The status of the role perhaps declined over time, but many nuncii in the thirteenth century were by contrast aspirational citizens, sometimes from good families. In Bologna, one nuncius comunis requalified as a notary in 1243.70 In the Veneto, Meglore Bonacorsi of Verona, who was the son, grandson and nephew of nuncii and viatores of the Verona inquisition, is found in 1332–33 having moved up in the world to become notary of the inquisitor Alberto da Bassano in Trento. He was evidently part of the diaspora of Verona inquisition staff who followed Filippo Bonacolsi after his translation to the Trento see in 1289. Meglore’s grandfather, the viator Albertino da Ponziano, rated the honorific ser in a Verona document of 1305, and Manovello di Giacomo in Florence is also referred to as ser in July 1325.71 Some inquisition nuncii made a lifetime’s career within the office, and it is apparent that there was an internal career track for trusted staff. Like Manovello in Florence, Nascimbene Adelardi in Bologna progressed from nuncius and familiaris in 1299 to become the steward (baiulus) of the Bologna inquisition by 1311 and the custos carceris by 1316. Nascimbene has a documented career of nineteen years. Manovello is attested from 1320 to 1329 (when there is a break in the Florentine evidence), and though he is not called steward, clearly undertakes that function. By 1326, he is described as keeping the accounts of the office.72 Benincasa Martini had already been a

69 N.

Offenstadt, En place publique. Jean de Gascogne, crieur au XVe siècle (Paris, 2013). Notariorum, p. 97, enrolment in 1243 of ‘Ugolinus filius Guidonis de Cerro, nunc nuntius communis, notarius’. 71 Albertino da Ponziano was viator officii of the Verona inquisition from before 1288 to at least 1297. In 1288, he undertook an embassy to the Doge of Venice on behalf of the inquisitor Filippo Bonacolsi, to present him with a letter and a copy of the papal constitutions, as part of the final steps in Venice’s agreement to accept the inquisition: his report is edited in da Milano, ‘L’istituzione dell’Inquisizione’, pp. 200–1. His sons Bonacursio and Meglore appear alongside him as witnesses and inquisition employees during this period (‘presentibus […] Albertino viatore officii qui fuit de Ponciano, Bonacursio et Meliore eius filiis testibus’): Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, pp. 271–2 (1297); also pp. 274, 281 (1305, 1288). For Bonacursio’s son Meglore in Trento, see Tocco, ‘Nuovi documenti sui moti ereticali, ASI 5th s. 28 (1901), 97–104 (pp. 100–1); Segarizzi, ‘Contributo alla storia di fra Dolcino’, doc. 1 subscribed ‘per me Meiorum domini Bonacursii de Verona, imperiali auctoritate notarium et prefati domini inquisitoris [Alberti de Baxiano] et officii scribam’. (In fact, Meglore was notary for the whole of the 1332–33 inquisitio in Riva sul Garda.) For the migration of Verona inquisition staff to Trento, where Bongiovanni di Bonandrea of Verona and other family members colonised the bishop’s curia, see Rando and Mutter, Il Quaternus Rogationum, pp. 29–67. Honorific for Manovello in Florence, Collectoria 250, fol. 55r, July 1325. Manovello’s colleague, Borghino, is the son of dominus Chiarato. 72 ASOB, I, doc. 91, April 1299, describes Nascimbene as familiaris et nuncius. He appears repeatedly up to 1305. Collectoria 133, fol. 165v has him as nuncius in 1311; at fol. 166r (plus nine other mentions), as baiulus; at fol. 133v and repeatedly 70 Liber

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers communal nuncius in Bologna for fourteen years before he appears in inquisition records from 1299 to 1308. Since we lack most of them before 1299, his dual involvement could have been longer. As the dynasty of Albertino da Ponziano in Verona shows, being a nuncius could be a family profession. In Bologna, just as the notary Guido Bontalenti sponsored his sons into inquisition employment, so Benincasa Martini brought in his son Pietro. It is a reasonable guess that Nascimbene Adelardi in Bologna and the communal preco Zanino Adelardi were brothers, with a father ranked as dominus. In Florence, Donato Puccii was inquisition nuncius whilst Vannis Puccii was the nuncius of the syndics who oversaw inquisition accounts. In Prato, Niccolò and Andrea Buti, and possibly their father too, also kept things in the family.73 Although we have no back story for them, those inquisition nuncii who were servants of convents rather than the commune must also have been trusted employees at a responsible level, not least because they were entrusted to handle the money which Franciscan friars could not. The Florentine inquisition made extensive use of the lay staff of convents where they stayed, both to service their personal needs and to carry out nuncial roles. Bettino, the famulus fratrum of the Florence convent, and his counterparts, Calderino at Prato, Falconico from Borgo San Lorenzo and others from Castel Fiorentino and Barberino di Mugello all delivered messages, made citations and helped with captives. Aghinolfo of Borgo San Lorenzo not only acted as nuncius but hired his horse out to the team as well. These individuals were not casual help in an emergency but a regular part of the inquisition workforce over many years: Bettino is attested over at least eleven years, from a first mention in 1322 until 1333. He seems to have had a particularly close working relationship with the inquisitor’s vicar, who for most of the decade was the ex-inquisitor Pace da Castelfiorentino.74 through the tenure of Manfredo da Parma till 1318, custos carceris. The gap between 1305 and 1311 may simply reflect the fragmentary state of the records. In Florence, Collectoria 250, fol. 104r, records payment to a stationer for the notebook in which Manovello writes the office accounts (‘[…] quodam alio libro parvo in quo scribat ipse Manovellus rationes officii etc 36 sol.’). 73 ASOB, II, doc. 716 (October 1304), Benincasa’s son; ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/II/1, fol. 25v (1299), Zaninus preco q. domini Adelardi. This is the only occurrence of the patronymic Adelardo in an extensive scan of the nuncii, so it is plausible that Zanino (Giannino) was Nascimbene’s brother. Collectoria 250, fol. 111r, Vannis Puccii (1327); fols. 23v–7r, Andrea and Niccolò Buti and their father, Buto di Niccolò (1322, nine references). 74 Bettino: Collectoria 249, fol. 68v (July 1322); Collectoria 250, fols. 20r, 25v (December 1322); 26r (February 1323), 40v, identified as famulus fratrum of Florence; also fols. 107r, 115v, 124v, 133r (October 1329); Collectoria 251, fol. 16r (March 1333). Falconico: Collectoria 250, fols. 54r, identified as famulus fratrum at Borgo San Lorenzo in June 1325; 55v, as nuncius sent from the Mugello to Florence, August 1325. Calderino: Collectoria 250, fols. 31r (April 1323); 36r (September 1323) identified as famulus

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Two points stand out from this analysis. Firstly, the inquisition’s nuncii were a diverse group and need to be differentiated. They ranged from those (like Manovello and Nascimbene), who were in effect career senior administrators of the inquisition office, to others recruited temporarily from a variety of sources, but often from among existing convent staff. Those with a background or parallel career of communal service were (in that capacity) expected to meet quite stringent standards, intended to prevent the intrusion of state officials into domestic circumstances and to maintain the transparency of the legal process. Some of this must have rubbed off on their inquisition work. Those from other backgrounds were not necessarily less competent, but their professional standards are unknown. In Florence at least, they were also much more numerous than the nuncii appointed under Ad extirpanda and thus approved by the commune. Secondly, it is clear that (whatever their origins) inquisition nuncii, like other inquisition staff, frequently had a long-term – or even multi-generational – association with the office, stamping their own habits and personality on it. The assertion that staff were hired case by case is, once again, simply untenable.

Conclusion Although mentioned only tangentially in inquisition manuals (which rarely refer to administrative structures), nuncii and cognate officials such as precones performed critical services in the functioning of the inquisition, communicating intentions and legal decisions. The lack of attention in Italian material is perhaps explained by Guy Geltner’s comment in his fascinating study of medieval Italian prisons: ‘Ci sono leggi nei libri e leggi nella pratica.’ (‘There are laws in books and laws in action.’).75 Explanation was unnecessary: everyone knew what a nuncius did. Nuncii often stayed with the inquisition for lengthy careers, and some are described as officiales. This may have been an ex-officio rank, attributable to appointment under Ad extirpanda, or there may have been elision between nuncii and familiares/servitores. Some may have been elected in their own right to the larger group of boni homines or officiales responsible for seizing heretics and their goods. Contrary to Lea’s pejorative description, nuncii were not the ‘lowest class’ of inquisition employee (being at the least sufficiently literate to read announcements and keep accounts, and sometimes to merit honorifics). However, there is some indication that their status declined over the century. Even more than notaries, nuncii working on inquisition business often kept one foot in civic or convent employment throughout their careers. Some held fratrum conventus Prati; also other mentions. Aghinolfo: Collectoria 250, fol. 35v (August 1323). 75 Geltner, La prigione medievale, p. 82.

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Nuncii, heralds and messengers joint office with both inquisition and commune, acting on behalf of both, whilst others were employed in parallel. Still others were bought in from the commune for certain services. Shuttling between inquisition and civic work was probably much more widespread than can be demonstrated from surviving sources, and implies a degree of standard-setting in behaviour. It is hard to identify the point at which a nuncius changed hats from acting primarily as an officer of the inquisition to acting primarily for the commune. But a boundary seems to lie around the stage of public announcement: the inquisition’s nuncii called heretics to be sentenced, whilst the commune’s officers (whether precones, baratorii or buccinatores) summoned the public by horn call to hear justice done. It was the division of public responsibility that was important: who actually paid for the service was irrelevant. The local differences in arrangements highlight that there was no uniform organisational blueprint for the inquisition in Italy. The nuncius officii was probably originally one of the two servitores required by Ad extirpanda, but numbers rapidly increased. Both in Treviso and in Florence, the nuncius was one of those nominated by the commune and paid an agreed salary, though elsewhere communal nuncii were paid piecework rates for each citation, announcement and act of witness.76 However, some nuncii working with the inquisition did not join the team after service with the commune, and certainly in Tuscany it can be demonstrated that the inquisition used the staff of different Franciscan convents to supplement its manpower resources. It is undoubtedly the case that the nuncii gave the inquisition muscle to catch heretics, hunt fugitives and witness the interrogation – and possibly torture and execution – of the unlucky. But this was not different from the functions performed by nuncii answering to the civil authority. More generally, the nuncii formed part of a close mesh of officials and public servants who bound the inquisition into the judicial machinery of the secular communes on the one hand and the wider Church on the other. Their importance lay not simply in presenting the inquisition as an organis­ ation which delivered public justice according to accepted principles of due process, but also in providing the consistency of an experienced administrative cohort.

76 Collectoria

251, fols. 70rv: under the c.1310 agreement with the commune on salaries and staff numbers, Florentine notaries received thirty-six florins a year, the four servitores eighteen florins and the cursor qui citabat twelve florins.

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5 The familia and the wider support system

Notaries and nuncii are well-defined groups of staff with particular legal functions in respect of the tribunal of inquisition. But they formed only part of the inquisitor’s wider support system. This included not only his familiares and servants, but also the jailers (custodes carceris) who secured prisoners; the exploratores or spie, who sniffed out heretical groups in places where the inquisitor could not expect co-operation; the bankers who managed the inquisition’s substantial assets; and a host of individuals with more mundane tasks – fetching, carrying, mending shoes, holding horses, doctoring the inquisitor when he was sick, setting up the bleachers for his set-piece preaching and taking up and relaying the paving stones when there was an execution, so they would not be damaged. Then, of course, there was the slightly cloudy entity of the officiales. This very diverse group is hard to number or characterise. We know much less about most of the individuals concerned, since many are unnamed and the precise nature of their relationship with the office – one-off or regular – is unknown. They mostly did not perform a function regulated by Church, bishop or commune, and the call for their services varied according to the practice of the individual inquisitor. Some inquisitors were perfectly straightforward about payments for torture (for example), whilst others make no explicit mention of it. We do not know what is concealed behind the numerous payments to ‘one who served the office’ or to the individuals surnamed Barberius who appear in many different sets of accounts and may have been surgeons, torturers, barbers or all three. So far as possible, this chapter examines this support network and its variations from place to place. It analyses, first, what is actually meant by the inquisitor’s familia and then looks in depth at two groups, the jailers and the exploratores, who are not generally considered part of the familia but without whose services the inquisition could not operate. A brief overview of some other bought-in services follows. Chapters 3 and 4 have demonstrated how closely the inquisition office was entwined with civic (and to some extent, conventual) arrangements; this analysis shows how much wider its relations went and how complex the organisational requirements quickly became. 144

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Familia and the wider support system In her 2013 article on the familia inquisitionis, Caterina Bruschi suggests that ‘there is a direct proportionality between the number of officers and the increase in structural complexity of the institution – that is, the more officers, the more complex the organisation employing them’.1 There is some truth in this, exemplified by the convoluted accounting arrangements within the Florence office in the 1320s, where roles were rotated repeatedly in a way which would not have been possible with a smaller team. The intention, particularly around the depositarius, could have been to demonstrate financial transparency. However, managing inquisition business could be complex even when there were relatively few staff working directly on the team. Needs were met in different ways, by buying services from the open market or from a variety of civic and ecclesiastical suppliers. The inquisitor as entrepreneur and the inquisitor as head of a large office of public servants represent different styles of management of resources, although both could co-exist in times of crisis. Neither style necessarily implies a lesser degree of institutionalisation and both required a greater degree of planning and management skill than many inquisitors possessed. As in other fields, different approaches could have been geographically driven, or represent differences between Franciscan and Dominican ways of doing inquisition business. Although many in the groups covered by this chapter were simply occasional service providers, others were the inquisitor’s constant companions. Though not clerics, they sometimes achieved a closeness which must have been valued by men in a lonely job. Tommaso da Gorzano, inquisitor of the March of Genoa from 1297 to 1305, travelled constantly, usually just with his socius (a Dominican friar), and his puer, a post which might best be translated as ‘page’.2 When Tommaso breaks off work in Savona and travels in midwinter to Genoa to be present at the deathbed of the long-time puer, Salvo Vivaldi, we have a rare insight into a human – and humanising – connection.3 Personal factors also need to be borne in mind in considering the dynamics of the inquisition team.

What was the familia? The inquisitor’s retinue, like that of other medieval dignitaries, is commonly called the familia. It is worth examining what the term actually meant. It had many nuances, both in different parts of Italy and as employed by different users. The word appears sparsely in the inquisition’s own records 1 Bruschi,

‘Familia inquisitionis’, para. 5. term puer is found in the inquisitions of the Marches of Genoa and Treviso (on one occasion distinguished from famulus) but only once in Franciscan Tuscany. It does not necessarily imply youth. 3 Collectoria 133, fol. 79r, January 1305. 2 The

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 (familia inquisitionis even more so), and sometimes it clearly had quite a narrow technical application. As Bruschi has noted, familia in its classical origins denoted those (not necessarily blood relatives) looking to the master of a household for the means of life. For the medieval inquisition, such a definition might include all the members of an inquisitor’s office bound to him by ties of service or expectation of payment. This was potentially a large group, embracing not only the small number of permanent servitors appointed under Ad extirpanda but also members of confraternities enrolled as crucesignati for occasional heretic hunting (of whom some were officiales of the officium inquisitionis, but others were not). This definition seems too wide to satisfy Bruschi’s other description of the familia as involving ‘family-like structures, where personal connections and the feeling of being part of a privileged group are evident’.4 One possible thirteenth- and fourteenth-century framing of a definition is that the familia consisted of those licensed to carry arms in the inquisitor’s service. The ability to bear arms inside a city was one of the most contentious issues in medieval politics, and was supposedly strictly controlled. However, the control kept slipping. In the 1340s, the Florentine inquisitor Pietro da L’Aquila is said by Villani to have had a retinue of 250 armed men. Marchionne di Coppo Stefani puts the figure at 500, but crucially says the men carried arms ‘as if they were the inquisitor’s familiars’, implying both that these were not, in fact, familiars and that familiars normally bore arms. Both Villani and Marchionne – who freely use the Italian famiglia to describe the armed retainers of the priors, capitano and podestà – suggest that Pietro’s numbers were inflated because he sold licences for profit.5 It is hard to reconcile these numbers with pay accounts for the slightly earlier period, 1319–34, which show at most around forty lay staff, many of whom combined working for the inquisitor with other occupations. Thus even if the familia was licensed to bear arms, it seems unlikely that it can normally be equated with the armed band of the 1340s. Benedetti argues (from the Dominican Lombard records) that arms-bearing was a specific attribute of the officiales, and implies that it was unusual for the familia. This is not borne out by either civic or inquisition material from Florence, which makes clear that a limited number of the familia had permits to bear arms. Her discussion highlights the lack of precision with which terms were often used, and also the risk of confusion between officiales and the familia.6

4 Bruschi,

‘Familia inquisitionis’, para. 5. Villani, Nuova cronica, lib. XIII, cap. lviii, ed. G. Porta, 3 vols. (Parma, 1990–91), III, 432; Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, Cronaca fiorentina, ed. N. Rodolico, Rerum Italicarum Scriptores n.s. 30 pt I (Città di Castello, 1903), pp. 225–6. 6 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 200–4. Corsi, ‘Per la storia’, p. 55 for civic permissions in Florence; Collectoria 250, fol. 24v for preparation of ‘apodixias officialium et 5 G.

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Familia and the wider support system The most complex inquisition accounts, from Florence and covering some fifteen years, use five different terms: the familia; the familiares (usually four senior lay staff, who could however overlap with nuncii); the famuli (a larger but amorphous group of lower-grade servants, ranging from horse-boys to aspirant familiares); and the officiales, who are placed in a separate category and, in fact, rarely mentioned. Notaries are sometimes grouped with the familia but more usually are treated separately. It is clear that the term familia is not used to mean the whole household, but narrowly to refer only to the salaried familiares. Thus, in August 1322, Pace da Castelfiorentino, the former inquisitor and now the inquisitor’s vicar, set out for Prato ‘cum familia, famulis et equis’ (‘with the familia, servants and horses’). This phrasing, frequently used, clearly establishes that in Florence the famuli were not considered part of the familia. On another journey to Prato, food is bought ‘pro familia et famulis’. Subsequent entries for board and lodging show that familia here meant the two named familiares accompanying the inquisitor.7 On the Feast of the Purification of the Virgin in 1327, the Florentine inquisitor gave gifts of wax candles to the ‘officialibus et familiaribus’, whilst a few months earlier wine was provided to ‘familie et aliis officialibus officii’ after a punishment. This latter formulation suggests that the familia was treated on a par with the officiales, the twelve good men, but was also distinct from them.8 We have seen that in Florence, the nuncius officii was sometimes, but not always, a familiaris.9 To add an extra twist to the problems of definition, the two chief notaries (Giovanni Bongia and his colleague Cettino da Prato) are both referred to as having either their own familia or travelling cum familia.10 Disentangled, this seems to mean travelling with one or more of the familiares of the office, rather than with a completely separate entourage. These distinctions appear for Florence not only because the officium inquisitionis comes across as fairly bureaucratic, but also because its accounts were compiled by staff who were sensitive to the pay and status implications of different terminology, rather than by the inquisitors themselves. The familiares – the four ‘servitores’ appointed under Ad extirpanda – were salaried under the joint agreement with the commune but expected to have their board and lodging met when travelling. The numbers and remuneration of the famuli familiarum’ (October 1322); 28r, ‘pro faciendo apodixiis officialium’ (January 1323); 38v, ‘ad faciendum apodixiis officialium pro armis’ (November 1323), that is, the renewal of permits for arms-bearing. 7 Collectoria 250, fols. 20v, 30v. 8 Collectoria 250, fol. 106v (Accursio Bonfantini); fol. 52v (Michele d’Arezzo). 9 For example, Donato di Puccio is first mentioned in April 1324 as familiaris, then as nuntius offitii from June 1324. But there are later occasions when he functions as (and is referred to as) familiaris, e.g., in December 1324 (Collectoria 250, fol. 50r). His predecessor Spinello is never termed familiaris. 10 For example, Collectoria 250, fol. 36r, ser Cettino cum familia travelling to Prato in 1323.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 were not part of the agreement with the commune. When outside the city, they were paid their keep and a fixed daily rate, but when in Florence itself they were not paid in any way which appears within the accounts.11 For the book-keepers, differentiating between familiares and famuli was thus necessary to account accurately for trips outside Florence, as well as respecting the rank distinctions. The distinction between familiares and famuli was not always visible to others, including some within the inquisition office itself. In 1334, when the papal nuncio Pons Étienne interrogated senior members of the Florence inquisition team about pay and staffing under the inquisitor Mino da San Quirico, there was uncertainty among them both over the number of familiares and who they were. The familiaris and custos carceris Giovanni Serafini listed four names besides his own, as did the notary ser Biliotto. However, the two lists had only one name in common. Another notary, ser Marsoppo, could not say even how many familiares there were – two? Perhaps four?12 It is possible that their perception was skewed because Mino (previously inquisitor in Siena) had brought personal staff with him, but if there was confusion about who was who in 1334, it is not surprising we have problems seven centuries later. The unclarity was not just obfuscation. Others in Florence used the same terms rather loosely. In the process against Pietro da L’Aquila in 1345–46, he is accused of invading the property of the widow Bartola with ‘plures et plures familiares’. But other evidence in the same process names only three of the inquisitor’s staff as familiares, one of whom is also described as nuncius. Was Bartola exaggerating for effect, or was she simply failing to distinguish between familiares, famuli and other more cloudy categories of inquisitorial henchmen, such as those in the armed bands? 13 The fine taxonomy visible at times in Florence is not matched in other parts of Italy and by other inquisitors. In Dominican Bologna, familiaris occurs only in formal, legal acts (such as giving evidence in court), where it is necessary to emphasise rank or office.14 It is not used by either Ruggiero 11 No

salary-type payments to famuli are listed in Florence, and food expenditure in the accounts is not enough to meet the board of famuli when in the city. D’Alatri, ‘Un’istruttoria’, pp. 55–6, suggests that under Pietro da L’Aquila, the familiares (and perhaps therefore the famuli) skimmed an amount off – or in addition to – money fines (‘invece di un salario fisso, i famigli ricevevano una certa quota sulle multe oppure, a volta, in aggiunta alle multe’). If this was common, it would not be apparent from the accounts. 12 Collectoria 251, fol. 84v, testimony of Giovanni Serafini; fol. 86v, Biliotto; fols. 83v–4r, Marsoppo. The two notaries may have been intentionally distancing themselves from the affairs of the office, lest blame attach. 13 D’Alatri, ‘Un’istruttoria’, p. 55. For discussion of Pietro’s familia, pp. 55–9. 14 ASOB, I, docs. 90–2, familiaris in Bologna inquisition processes. Similar usage is also seen in Bologna’s criminal courts, where one witness giving evidence in 1298 is described as ‘famulus et familiaris’ – distinguishing between function and status: ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/1/6, fol. 1v.

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Familia and the wider support system da Petriolo (1311–12) or Manfredo da Parma (1314–18) in their accounts. However, Nascimbene Adelardi, the by then very senior nuncius and familiaris, is called either nuncius or baiulus (bailiff) by Ruggiero and sometimes famulus by Manfredo. A reference to familia mea occurs once only.15 The usage of famulus where the Franciscans would say familiaris is consistent across other Dominican Lombard inquisitors. In seven years of accounts for western Piedmont, Francesco da Pocapaglia mentions two successive famuli, no familiares and never uses the term familia. He does however refer to officiales, both singular and plural.16 The foregoing suggests that no absolutely consistent meaning can be attributed to the inquisitor’s familia. It does not necessarily have the wide application of the classical term, and indeed seems to be used by the inquisition itself in a quite technical and limited way to denote the small number of familiares. Especially in Dominican records, there is particular need for caution in interpreting famulus: the famuli were not necessarily junior or menial employees, as they (generally) were in Florence.

The familiares and their work In the context of the inquisition in Italy, familiaris conveys status as an officeholder but is not a descriptor of the actual job content. We have seen that in Florence, the notaries Benvenuto de Trissanti and Giovanni Bongia (before his promotion to notarius officii) are both at various times named as familiaris or servitor. Of the main group of four Florentine familiares in the period 1319–29, three are occasionally also described as nuncius, though it is not clear how active they were in making citations. In Bologna, the emphasis is the other way round: five of the seven nuncii named in the surviving Acta are sometimes described as familiares, though nuncius seems to have been the main job.17 Outside the major cities, there does not seem to have been a similar overlap between familiaris and nuncius. In the accounts of Francesco da Pocapaglia and Tommaso da Gorzano, operating in the largely rural areas of western Piedmont and the March of Genoa, the single famulus or puer focuses mainly on personal support for the inquisitor himself, though he is sometimes sent 15 Collectoria

133, fols. 133r, 134v, Manfredo’s references to Nascimbene as famulus; fol. 131v, familia mea. 16 Collectoria 133, fols. 174r–6v, 146rv, 178r–80r, Andrea famulus appears between 1307 and Francesco’s departure in 1310–11 for the Council of Vienne. Subsequently, in fols. 182r–5r, all named references but one (fol. 182v) are to Martino famulus. The chronology of Francesco’s accounts is problematic, as he rarely gives date-points between provincial chapters, and part of his accounts has been wrongly bound elsewhere in the Liber Conum. 17 Tocco, Dante, doc. 20; Collectoria 249, fols. 40r (1319); 67v (1322).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 on independent errands, for example to pick up a heretic’s book or collect documents left in the wrong place.18 Nuncii are rarely named and mostly seem to be message carriers. This was a very different model of operation from the large teams in Florence and Bologna. In the cities for which we have good information, the familiares are best interpreted as the inquisitor’s closest lay staff, though – as we saw with Lapo Cultri, familiaris and nuncius in Bologna – this did not mean they worked exclusively for the inquisition. They were responsible not only for daily office administration but also for a wide variety of necessary (and sometimes distasteful) support tasks. They had to be adaptable, and it is easy to portray this factotum role as menial. However, like the nuncii with whom they overlapped, they were not necessarily either ruffians or uneducated. In Florence, Manovello di Giacomo is attested continuously as familiaris from 1320 to 1329, after an initial few months as nuncius officii. We have seen that he occasionally merited the honorific ser. He kept records in Latin and was the one mainly responsible for handling day-to-day expenditure, including remuneration for non-salaried staff and dealing with livery stables to obtain horses and mules for the inquisitor’s journeys. By no later than 1326, he was maintaining the office accounts. Although the term is not used, he in fact acted as the inquisition’s steward.19 When Benvenuto de Trissanti, the notary appointed as both depositarius and custos carceris, stood down after an embarrassing jailbreak in 1322, Manovello took over the role alongside his other work and handled it for the next seven years, in what seems to have been a fairly humane and imaginative manner. He not only made structural improvements to the prison but also utilised the imprisoned and impoverished priest Bernardo Nuti as a scribe. It is mistaken to describe him, as Bruschi does, simply as the jailer, with the implication that he acted as a turnkey. This was the function of Cambio, minister custodis carceris, who maintained a room in the prison itself. As Geltner has shown, the management of prisons in this period was divided between the person

18 Across

seven years, Francesco names four nuncii on one occasion each and two successive famuli (though seven notaries on multiple occasions). Collectoria 133, fol. 75r, Tommaso da Gorzano’s puer sent to collect books from Alessandria, one of his bases. 19 Collectoria 249, fol. 58v, Manovello’s first appearance as nuntius officii, December 1320: fol. 61r, as familiaris (June 1321 and thereafter). Salary payments were sporadic in the early years of Pace da Castelfiorentino, so he may have been part of the staff earlier. He served continuously to the end of Accursio Bonfantini’s term in 1329, but is not found when accounts resume in 1332 under Mino da San Quirico. For his personal maintenance of accounts, see Collectoria 250, fol. 104r, October 1326. In February 1328, he was trusted in the acquisition of a large loan ‘in the service of the Cross’ (‘in servitium crucis’) which the minister-general, Michael of Cesena, ordered to be obtained commercially by the inquisitor on behalf of the Franciscan order, and sent to the Curia: Collectoria 250, fols. 102r, 146r.

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Familia and the wider support system who actually fed and watered the prisoners and a person of notarial standing who kept the financial records (in a world where prisoners were expected to meet the costs of their own maintenance and would not be released until any penalties were paid). Manovello held the more senior role, which in this case also included compiling the inquisition’s bill to the commune for prison running costs, to be deducted from its one-third share of heretical confiscations.20 As custos carceris, apparently in both Florence and Prato, Manovello’s responsibility was as a servant of the officium inquisitionis, including both the commune and the bishop. As familiaris, he also dealt with Tuscan communes other than Florence. In September 1325, he took receipt from the outgoing inquisitor, Michele d’Arezzo, acting with the consent of the incoming one, Tedisio dei Fabbri Tolosini, of the one-third share due to Florence of monies held by the inquisition’s banker, together with the one third due to the commune of Mangone for a penalty levied there.21 This entry gives a rare insight into administrative procedures at the handover between inquisitors, as well as into the dual roles of inquisition staff. Manovello was involved on other occasions in the converse transaction: taking receipt from the commune of the inquisition’s share of confiscations. Yet alongside this responsible financial management task, we also find him parading condemned persons through the streets for their punishment. His was clearly a flexible job description.22 A similar career track was followed by Manovello’s junior colleague, Giovanni Serafini, who is first seen as a famulus under Accursio Bonfantini in 1327, but by 1334 had been successively promoted to familiaris and then custos carceris. As the only familiaris questioned by Pons Étienne in his enquiry, it appears he was regarded as the administrative head of the office. He may be the ‘familie capitaneus’ (‘captain of the familia’) to whom salary was paid by Mino in July 1332.23 In Bologna, Nascimbene Adelardi followed a similar trajectory, though we know less about his activities purely as familiaris.

20 For the layers of prison management, see Geltner, La prigione medievale, esp. pp. 42–5

(Florence) and pp. 51–3 (Bologna). The internal hierarchy and role of the notary can be seen in some surviving records from Bologna: see ASB, Procuratori del comune, Soprastante alle prigioni 1239–1445, quaderni of 1298 and 1308, containing the oaths and guarantors of the custodes carcerorum. For Manovello as custos carceris, Collectoria 250, fols.74r–81v. 21 Collectoria 250, fol. 83v, September 1325. 22 Collectoria 250, fol. 95r: in 1326, Manovello takes receipt of the inquisition’s share of the goods of dominus Altafronte, condemned in the previous year. But at fol. 78r, he parades an offender signed with the cross through the streets (February 1324). 23 Collectoria 250, fol. 112v, as famulus, September 1327; fol. 133r, as familiaris, September 1329. Payment to ‘familie capitaneus’, Collectoria 251, fol. 4r. Questioned by Pons Étienne, Collectoria 251, fols. 84rv. Giovanni Serafini may be identical with Giovanni nuncius who appears once in October 1324 (Collectoria 250, fol. 46v).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 By contrast, Manovello’s colleague Borghino had minimal connection with office paperwork, except when he accompanied Michele d’Arezzo for a lengthy stay at the baths of Corsena and had to keep an expenses record.24 His major function seems to have been outside Florence, where he regularly accompanied the inquisitor on journeys, or travelled with the notary, Giovanni Bongia, on trips into the contado to collect fines and take statements.25 He may be the person intended when Giovanni is described as travelling cum familia. Not all the fines collected made their way to the depositarius as quickly as they should, perhaps a response to irregular salary payments.26 The son of dominus Chiarato and hence presumably of respectable stock, Borghino is the only one of the four familiares never described as making citations or as nuncius. The suspicion is that, in fact, he was the enforcer. Like Manovello, he is found continuously in office from July 1320 until the end of Accursio Bonfantini’s tenure in late 1329, and may perhaps have lasted into Mino da San Quirico’s period of office.27 Not all the familiares served for such long periods. Some who flit briefly through the books were relatives of inquisitors – familiares in the fullest sense of the term. In Florence, Pierino Bonfantini appears as the familiaris of his uncle, the inquisitor Accursio, and then as one of the syndics for the inquisition, with his salary paid from another section of the office books. Accursio was not the only inquisitor to use the opportunity for nepotism: in Padua, two propinquii of the inquisitor Aiulfo were among his familiares.28 We cannot be certain whether inquisition familiares lived on the job, within the domus inquisitionis or in convent quarters. One Florentine familiaris, Ildebrandino, lived in a house for which the inquisition accepted maintenance responsibility, and thus probably owned.29 Cettino da Prato, one of

24 At

Corsena: Collectoria 250, fols. 47r–8r. For the Tuscan thermal spring industry, D. Boisseuil, Le thermalisme en Toscane à la fin du Moyen Âge: les bains siennois de la fin du XIIIe siècle au début du XVIe siècle (Rome, 2002). 25 Collectoria 250, fol. 53v: in May 1325 Bongia and Borghino go to the Val di Mugello with two famuli and horses. 26 In October 1323 Borghino received reimbursement of a loan made to the lector of the Lucca convent. This only entered the introitus (receipts) in February 1324 (Collectoria 250, fol. 66r), one of the few occasions for which it is possible to track both stages of receipt. 27 Few earlier staff identifiably survive under Mino da San Quirico. One familiaris is named as Borghognone, which may possibly be a play on an older, fatter Borghino. 28 Aiulfo’s familiares: d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, doc. 6, p. 174. Pierino Bonfantini: Collectoria 250, fols. 113v, salary, October 1327; 116r, expenses, December 1327. Pierino may be identical with Picchino Bonfantini, one of the syndics for the inquisition, with salary paid from inquisition funds: Collectoria 250, fol. 141r, four years’ salary arrears paid in 1328 to Picchino Bonfantini sindico comunis Flor pro dicto officio. If so, he held office before Accursio became inquisitor. 29 Collectoria 249, fol. 62r, sixteen denarii paid in August 1321 ‘pro attatura [cleaning] domus in quo habitavit Ildebrandinus familiaris Inquisitoris’, followed by

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Familia and the wider support system the Florence notaries, also lived in a house provided by the office. In Ferrara, where the inquisition in the second decade of the fourteenth century had a complex portfolio of buildings, staff may have been accommodated in rented properties or lodged out in confiscated dwellings: a useful perk of office and compensation for intermittent salary.30 Some of the famuli, however, certainly lived in the domus inquisitionis: in Pavia, the mattress of one was listed among the office’s possessions.31 We have noted the differences in terminology between Franciscan and Dominican inquisitors. Where familiares and famuli are regularly distinguished, were there discernible differences in responsibilities? Some famuli must have been occupied around the domus inquisitionis and running errands (Giovanni Serafini buys the inquisitor some wool). Mostly, however, the famuli surface in the records only on journeys away from the city.32 Unlike the Dominican inquisitors in the wilder parts of Lombardy and the March of Genoa, the Franciscans in Florence mainly hired horses rather than owned them. The most prominent function of the famuli is thus in managing horses and pack animals, which they brought back to Florence or Prato once the inquisitor had reached his destination: it was cheaper to do this than pay for livery. Some famuli were just horse-boys, but others owned the horses themselves, suggesting that they were part of a class of worker hiring themselves out as messengers, carriers and suchlike with their own transport. Occasionally they made extra money by renting the horses to the office.33 Famuli had an active role during the capturing of heretics, and sometimes also in denouncing them. This is more evident in the records of Dominican inquisitors where, as we have seen, the distinction between famulus and familiaris is unclear. Francesco da Pocapaglia’s famulus Andrea, with a colleague, is rewarded for capturing Giovanni di Niccolò, ‘rebel, fugitive and believer in the heretics’ (‘Johannem Nicolai rebellum, fugitivum et credentem hereticorum’). Manfredo da Parma pays his famuli a bonus for a similar arrest. In the case of Lanfranco da Bergamo, one famulus (Giovanni) went undercover to work as a spy. As with the nuncii, there was risk in the work of inquisition staff – the reason for licences to bear arms – not simply because of objections to their activities, but because of the unsettled state of the country. Tommaso substantial expenses of two florins twenty solidi (more than a month’s salary). These are the only references to Ildebrandino. 30 Collectoria 133, fol. 148r, rent of forty solidi paid in 1313 for ‘domus habita pro officio’. 31 Collectoria 133, fol. 216r, Jacobus de Burgo (1317–19) records ‘a mattress of trivial value for the famulus’ (‘unum materacium parvi valoris pro famulo’). 32 Collectoria 250, fol. 114v, purchase of wool, November 1327. 33 Collectoria 250, fol. 49r, payment to Aghinetto for the hire of his ronzino, November 1324; fol. 50v, pay to two famuli plus horse hire ‘viz Leoni Vannis et Aghinetto quorum erant dicti equi’ for an eight-day journey to and from Sarzana to fetch the inquisitor, January 1325.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 da Gorzano’s puer got extra pay for a mission to Tortona, where a war was raging, and Lanfranco’s former famulus Giovanni was prevented propter guerram (because of war) from meeting up with him to report progress on his mission. 34 Many famuli whose services were used by the Florentine inquisition were (like the nuncii) not full-time employees, but borrowed from convent staff. The gardener of the Prato convent was used on occasion to transport heavy baggage. In Figline, the inquisitor commandeered the services of the famulus of the jurist Decco da Figline, one of the office’s jurisconsults, and in Prato he borrowed both a horse and a servant from the father of his notary, Cettino da Prato.35 This rather free-wheeling approach to meeting staffing requirements seems quite different from that of the Dominican Lombard inquisitors, whose famuli were fewer in number but more stable.

Overall numbers and composition of the lay team The total size of the lay team is hard to determine because of overlapping duties and descriptions, part-time activities and differences in inquisitors’ habits over naming their staff. Information from Bologna pay records shows that between 1314 and 1318, Manfredo da Parma had four named nuncii at any one point in time plus four staff described as famuli. One (Nascimbene Adelardi) definitely appears in both categories and another may do (both called Giacomo). This implies a fairly modest total of six or seven lay support staff, besides the five notaries.36 In the earlier period (1296–1310), when information comes from surviving inquisition acts, the totals appear slightly larger, though it is not possible firmly to establish how many were in post at any one time. The Franciscan team in Florence was much larger, but differently constituted. There were fewer notaries (two salaried notarii officii, plus one other), one or two nuncii officii (though many more doing some sort of nuncial work), generally four familiares at any one time, but also a considerable

34 Collectoria

133, fol. 174r, reward to Francesco’s Andrea, 1307; others, fol. 134v, Manfredo, fourth quarter 1316, fol. 76r, Tommaso, 1302. For Lanfranco’s famulus: Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, pp. 523–4. Bruschi, ‘Familia inquisitionis’, para. 73, describes him as familiaris. 35 Collectoria 250, fol. 36r: Calderino, famulus fratrum (servant of the friars) of the Prato convent is used on four occasions in 1323 for various inquisition business, one (September 1323) including conveying payment to Turaloglu, ortolanus (gardener) and familiaris (fol. 32r) of the convent, for carrying inquisition belongings from Prato to Florence; also fol. 36r, payment to ‘Landino famulo ser Benricevuti de Prato qui venit Florentiam cum equo dicti ser Benricevuti’; fol. 35r, borrowing Decco’s famulus in August 1323. 36 Collectoria 133, fols. 131r–8v, nuncii; 133r–8v, famuli.

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Familia and the wider support system group of famuli who appear sporadically and overlap with the nuncii. Pace da Castelfiorentino (1319–22) owns to eight familiares across his term of office (of whom two were probably temporary hangovers from his predecessor), plus two nuncii and about eleven named famuli. Under his successor, Michele d’Arezzo, the numbers soar to twenty-nine nuncii and again about eleven famuli, before falling back slightly under Accursio Bonfantini to twenty-five individuals described as nuncius and possibly six others described only as famulus. There is also evidence of the re-employment of previous staff who had dropped out of sight, such as the nuncius Spinello. Even though many of those serving the Florence inquisition were not full-time employees, these numbers – a peak of over forty when familiares are added in – suggest a much larger cohort of individuals looking to the inquisition for pay and rations than across the Apennines. Are there discernible reasons for these differences between two rich cities, such as differences in pressure of business? Under Michele d’Arezzo (1322–25), the Florence office certainly did come under some strain as it coped with both the continuing issue of the fraticelli in Tuscany and John XXII’s excommunication in 1323 of the independent-minded Guido Tarlati, bishop of Arezzo. These twin problems caused the office to have to split forces, bringing the ex-inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato back from retirement again to deal with Arezzo and temporarily importing Lando, the inquisitor of Siena, to replace Michele – who had to recuse himself because of his personal links to Arezzo, not only his home convent but taken over by the Spirituals.37 The lay team thus had to provide support for several activities in different locations, with much messaging between the principals. However, the recorded activity in seizing and punishing heretics is very modest. It is hard to see that the load was greater than was experienced by the Bologna office around 1300, when it was juggling the last gasps of Catharism, riots against the inquisitor, the locally important movement of the Apostles, the detachment of Guido Capello to Ferrara to deal with l’affare Pungilupo, and then factional infighting in the city which led to armed assault on the bishop’s palace, where the papal legate, Cardinal Napoleone Orsini, was staying. A second possibility is that the Franciscan style of running things was simply less economical than that of the Dominicans, partly because the Minors’ own objections to handling money required the interposition of more lay staff to handle expenses. Some were stricter about this than others, and

37 For

discussion of this period and the vendetta against Tarlati, see Ini, ‘Nuovi documenti’, pp. 305–77; Documenti per la storia della città di Arezzo nel Medioevo, ed. U. Pasqui, 3 vols. (Florence, 1916), II (an. 1180–1337); Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), pp. 371–3 for the handling of Tarlati; pp. 369–74 for Michele’s haul of offenders; P. L. Licciardello, ‘La beata Giustina e la vita religiosa ad Arezzo al tempo del vescovo Guido Tarlati’, MEFRMA 123/1 (2011), 257–90; Collectoria 250, fol. 1r, Lando as co-inquisitor.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Biscaro points to the tightening up of financial management in Florence under Michele d’Arezzo, to ensure receipts and payments were handled formally between staff, in conformity with the Rule.38 Handling money was something most Dominican inquisitors seem to have done for themselves, notwithstanding the order’s strictures on carrying cash. Dominican inquisitors may also have recruited a better quality of staff, able to ramp up their contribution when under pressure.39 We may not, however, be comparing like with like, because of the dearth of information on the contribution of staff based in other centres in the two inquisitorial provinces. The responsibility to provide officiales, notaries and servitors for the inquisition was laid, under Ad extirpanda, on the civic heads of all secular jurisdictions, not merely those places where an inquisitor was currently based. From Guido Capello’s travelling inquisitio in 1299, we know that the Bologna office had two famuli at its subsidiary base in Modena (who are not included in the numbers above), as well as a nuncius based in Reggio. In Ferrara, two notaries dealing regularly with inquisition business can be traced over three decades. However, we have no comparable information for the Tuscan province on any staff permanently based outside Florence, in towns of such importance as Pisa, Lucca, Arezzo and Pistoia. There was a domus inquisitionis in Arezzo so presumably it had some minimal staffing.40 There were custodians for the jail in Prato, though how exclusively they worked for the inquisition, we cannot be sure. A true comparison of the inquisitor’s support would need to factor in these province-wide arrangements, though it seems unlikely to alter the picture of a more heavily staffed Franciscan operation. With this caveat, the differences we see between Bologna and Florence seem to be real, and to represent distinctive Dominican and Franciscan approaches to inquisition. The question of how civil authorities in smaller jurisdictions, and their respective inquisitors, handled the Ad extirpanda obligation to provide core staffing is one which remains to be addressed in further research. The arrangements in Riva sul Garda exposed by Alberto da Bassano’s 1332–33 inquisitio show that individuals elected as officials of the inquisition were

38 Biscaro,

‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 366. different pay regimes offer support for this view. Between first quarter 1316 and fourth quarter 1318, Manfredo da Parma’s famulus Jacobutius de Zapolino (described as familiaris some years earlier) received more in pay than the recorded salaries of Manfredo’s notaries. This implies a high-value and higher-skilled contribution: Collectoria 133, fols. 133r–8v, Jacobutius; fols. 133v–7v, payments to notaries. By contrast, the salary of the familiares in Florence under the agreement with the commune was officially only half that of the notarius officii: Collectoria 251, fol. 70r. This comparison cannot take account of off-books earnings. 40 Ini, ‘Nuovi documenti’, pp. 333–6, doc. 10 et seq. for the domus inquisitionis within the precincts of the Arezzo convent. See Chapter 8 below for its role in the inquisition’s attempt to dislodge the Spirituals who had taken over the convent. 39 The

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Familia and the wider support system dotted around small towns and villages, though often unsupported. The long tenures of known inquisition notaries – and officiales, where known – in smaller towns suggest their rectors complied, at least in form, with key parts of the Ad extirpanda requirements. However, there are also indications that inquisitors tried to exploit the relative weakness of smaller or subsidiary civil authorities, as for example when the inquisitor Aiulfo created discord by fixing confiscations and sales in Conegliano to cut out the share due to the senior authority in Treviso. There were also other complaints against Aiulfo, including going beyond the inquisition’s remit to punish individuals for sorcery and usury.41

Exploratores and spies Alongside notaries, nuncii, familiares and famuli, inquisitors made use of many other services in carrying out their functions. Among the most intriguing are the exploratores and spie, used to sniff out heretical proclivities before the inquisitor made an arrest. Some were straightforward informers, others more like bounty hunters. Others again (like the female spy Constanza da Bergamo, infiltrated into the Cathar stronghold at Sirmione before its fall) operated like wartime secret agents, in face of considerable personal risk. Constanza went so far as to be consoled to prove her bona fides and gain greater credibility in her work (‘et hoc fecit, ut melius posset explorare facta Haereticorum, qui erant in Sermione’).42 The use of these individuals, and their acknowledgement in the records, varied considerably between inquisitors. In some areas their use and method of remuneration highlight serious problems of moral hazard. Apart from the Sirmione incident, explicit evidence of exploratores and spie in this period comes mainly from Dominican sources. In the Marca Trevisana, the inquisitor Aiulfo is reported around 1304 to have employed a tavern keeper with heretic connections as an officialis and spy.43 Despite the long run of records for Florence, the only Tuscan example is under the unsavoury

41 The

practice seems to have begun around 1304 and was a prime cause of Treviso’s anguished complaint to the minister-provincial against Aiulfo, in which podestà, commune and inquisition officials acted together. See Rigon, introduction to Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, p. xxviii; G. Presutti, ‘Altri documenti su l’omonimo fr. Antonio da Padova OFM e l’inquisizione in Lombardia’, AFH 8 (1915), 662–7 (p. 663); Marangon, Pensiero ereticale, pp. 31–3; Collectoria 133, fols. 11r–12v, 13v (testimony asserting his actions were ‘causa defraudendi’ the complainants). 42 Muratori, ‘Pungilupo’, col. 126; Constanza’s statement reproduced in M. d’Alatri, ‘L’eresia nella Cronica di fra Salimbene’, in Eretici e inquisitori, I, pp. 65–74 (p. 71). 43 Marangon, Pensiero ereticale, p. 32; Collectoria 133, fol. 12r. The individual concerned ‘publice vocabatur Zaninus patharinus’ (‘was openly called Zanino the Cathar’); his father had been burnt.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Mino da San Quirico in 1332–34. This may reflect a real difference in practice between inquisitors of different orders; be an artefact of surviving documentation; or simply highlight changes in the pattern of offending dealt with by the inquisition. There was less need for actual spies where inquisitors dealt largely with clerical excessus (excesses), and could rely on gossips.44 Under the classic model of inquisition, the inquisitor progressed around his district, opening an inquisitio by means of ceremonial preaching. This commenced a period of grace during which heretics or those who suspected or knew of heresy could confess themselves or denounce others. There certainly were denunciations in these kinds of circumstance, while others were prompted to come forward with suspicions after shocking acts such as the burning in Bologna of the Cathars Bompietro and Giuliano in 1299.45 However, it was often not feasible for Italian inquisitors to go on circuit in this manner, partly because of generalised warfare and partly because many heretics – particularly the remaining Cathars and Waldensians – had retreated to remote areas. How, then, to get information – the necessary publica fama – on which to act? At least five Dominican inquisitors whose accounts survive openly solved the problem by using exploratores and spie. Others paid informers who were often impoverished former heretics, dressing up the act as charity, or else recorded uninformative payments to ‘one who served the office’. Marchesio da Brescia, inquisitor in Brescia, Cremona and Milan from 1311, puts expenditure on spies and exploratores foremost on his summary list of categories of necessary expense. But it is rarely possible to dig deeply into exactly what they did.46 One case where the activities of exploratores can be traced from first to last comes from the uncovering of a nest of Cathars in the village of Lu by Tommaso da Gorzano, inquisitor of the March of Genoa. Lu lies east and north of Asti, in the Monferrato. It is a tiny fortified enclave, occupying the top of a crag which stands isolated from the nearby hills. There is one road in and one out, along which anyone approaching can be seen for miles. In such a small place, strangers would be immediately identified.47

44 Bruschi,

‘Familia inquisitionis’, para. 73, reads the mention of an explorator under Mino as referring to a famulus working part-time (parti) as an explorator. I read it as meaning a famulus stationed, not parti but in Prato, in order to carry out legal citations on behalf of the explorator officii – a separation of the information-gathering and legal roles. Collectoria 251, fol. 20v: payment of a florin to ‘uni famulo qui stat parti/prati pro exploratore offitii et citat et requirit delatos Curie’. 45 ASOB, I, records several denunciations of this kind, some of rioters and others from citizens prudently remembering their neighbours’ eccentricities or heretical talk, e.g., docs. 33, 35. 46 Marchesio’s list, Collectoria 133, fol. 197v. 47 A siege of Lu is illustrated in G. Rubin de Cervin, ‘Il simbolismo della torre del medioevo ai nostri giorni: “Astro movente etiam hominem astros variari” ’, Castellum 39 (1997), 45–52, though the village’s isolation is not fully captured.

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Familia and the wider support system It is not clear how Tommaso first got wind that Lu might be worth investigating, but in June 1298 two exploratores were sent there, twice. Presumably, they adopted disguise. In July, he sent a nuncius, possibly to the local priest, followed by more exploratores. In the same month, a nuncius and two exploratores went to the larger nearby village of San Salvatore [di Monferrato], and others to Pomaro, a little further east.48 Tommaso’s vicar also visited the outlying farms at San Salvatore. Further exploratores visited Lu in October, but over the winter, when there were fewer excuses for travellers to be on the roads, they held back. By May 1299, the work at San Salvatore had borne fruit and a heretic there was imprisoned. In July and August, the exploratores were back in Lu (twice) and again in Pomaro. It was only in July 1300, after two years of probing and some seventeen visits, that suspicions were sufficiently confirmed to seize three Patarines – two men and a woman, Marcia. The accounts indicate that, in fact, it was the exploratores themselves who made the arrests. Marcia was put to the tormenta (rack) and after twenty-five days in prison, gave up others. Another female heretic was arrested in Lu by the inquisitor’s nuncii, and a man, Aicardo, in San Salvatore. Because Tommaso immediately wrote to fellow inquisitors in Milan, Pavia, Piacenza and elsewhere after the arrests, we can assume that the five captives named associates elsewhere. (This is one among many instances of networking and mutual support between inquisitors.) Patient investment in good scouting could also pay dividends over a lengthy period: more heretics were exposed by the Lu seizure in spring 1303, three years after the main capture.49 Tommaso does not name his exploratores, who are paid rather small amounts per trip – two or three solidi of Asti, half the pay of the torturers who racked the captive Marcia. Later, he credits Alberano da Milano and Arnaldo de Plebe as exploratores whose work also yielded valuable heretics; they were paid much bigger sums. However, a spy who uncovered seven heretics in 1302 remains anonymous.50 Francesco da Pocapaglia, inquisitor of western Piedmont, regularly employed the same two individuals, Taurino explorator hereticorum and Giacomo da Pavia explorator contra hereticos, over a long period. Francesco was partly based in Asti, like Tommaso, so it is conceivable

48 There are numerous settlements called San Salvatore in the March of Genoa, but San

Salvatore di Monferrato is closest to both Lu and Pomaro. 133, fols. 70v, June–July 1298; 71r, October 1298; 71v, May–July 1299; 72r, July–August 1299; 73rv, July–August 1300, 76v, February–March 1303. 50 Collectoria 133, fol. 76v, Alberano da Milano, the discoverer of G. Barba and Beatrice (‘qui fuit explorator G. Barbe et Beatricis’), another pair of Cathars, was paid the substantial sum of twenty turonenses grossi; in 1303, Arnaldo de Plebe received sixteen turonenses (coins of Tours, much used in northern Italy) in two instalments. However, fol. 76r, the anonymous explorator of seven heretics in November 1302 got only ten solidi six denarii in Genoese money. 49 Collectoria

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 the same exploratores worked for both inquisitors. Francesco paid much better than Tommaso, though we do not know how many trips were involved.51 The records of Tommaso and Francesco suggest that their use of exploratores was limited and the remuneration fairly modest. Pace da Vedano, inquisitor in Genoa from 1311 to 1317, shows twelve payments to spies and exploratores in that period, again on a modest scale and with minimal detail.52 A completely different picture emerges from the accounts of Marchesio da Brescia during his spell in Milan from June 1314. Of thirty condemnations/ confiscations listed, only five were achieved without the acknowledged participation of exploratores. Not only this, but instead of fixed pay, the exploratores were rewarded with a share of the goods seized – an instance of moral hazard if ever there were one. In nine cases, they top-sliced a quarter of the value of the heretics’ goods as their remuneration. In the other sixteen, they took a full third, equivalent to the statutory take of inquisition officials. Marchesio sought to argue that only the two-thirds residue should be counted as income for the office’s books, and consequently available for division with the inquisition’s partners.53 Marchesio’s accounts indicate few staff, and the Church had general difficulties with Visconti Milan in this period. Did his treatment of exploratores represent an exceptional means of progressing the negotium fidei without many resources, or was it a transition from paying necessary informers to the straightforward use of bounty hunters? More worryingly for our general understanding of inquisition finances, was Marchesio – a relatively inexperienced inquisitor – simply exposing honestly what others actually did but kept under wraps? No other inquisitor acknowledges financial claims of this sort by exploratores, though (on the authority of Ad extirpanda) officiales in Vicenza claimed the right to one third of the heretics’ goods they had been able to seize. Were some exploratores either actually officiales, or treated as such? On a similar theme, Ruggiero da Petriolo refers in one instance to the whole value of a confiscation being siphoned off by the prison authorities in various charges, and as we have seen, in the 1340s Pietro da L’Aquila’s famuli were said to be top-slicing pecuniary penalties.54

51 Payments

to Taurino in 1307–09, Collectoria 133, fols. 174rv, 176r; to Giacomo, fol. 175r; to an unnamed explorator in 1311, fol. 182r. 52 Collectoria 133, fols. 198v–205v. 53 Collectoria 133, fols. 196v, Marchesio’s transfer to Milan; 188v–90r, exploratores’ share of confiscations; 196r, 197v, other spending on spies. Sample wording: goods valued at eighty lire ‘of which the exploratores immediately had 20 lire, so what remained for the office was only 60 lire’ (‘de quibus habuerunt statim exploratores lb 20 ita quod non remanserunt apud officium nisi lb 60.’) 54 Collectoria 133, fol. 164r, Ruggiero (1311): ‘Also, I received 3 lire 5 solidi bolognesi from Roberga for the condemnation against her, all of which went to the notaries and the prison-keepers’. (‘Item recepi a Roberga pro condempnacione sibi facta quos omnes habuerunt notarii et custodes carceris, 3 lb 5 sol. Bon.’). It is not clear

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Familia and the wider support system Bruschi suggests the exploratores were all ex-heretics, and comes close to claiming that the many payments to ‘one who served the office’ were all to spies and informers.55 The patchiness of explicit information is puzzling, but her assumption is too sweeping. There is good evidence that some of the spies were indeed repentant heretics, but exploratores who undertook the physical capture of heretics in isolated spots (as at Lu) seem to be closer to bounty hunters, an occupation with a lengthy pedigree in its own right. It seems improbable, also, that generous profit sharing arrangements, like those used by Marchesio da Brescia, would be conceded to ex-heretics. Whilst some payments to ‘one who served the office’ may well be for information, there is no reason to suppose that all are. Where inquisitors regularly name the recipients and purpose of payments, it is apparent that a whole range of routine services is being paid for, and the same is likely to hold true for payments to unnamed individuals. As well as the exploratores, many inquisitors maintained relationships with rather pathetic, impoverished ex-heretics, usually women, hoping that they would provide useful titbits about their former circle. These dealings are often presented as the giving of alms, but their frequency (and the amounts involved) suggest there was more to it. Manfredo da Parma made seven payments to Johanna ‘quondam heretica’ (‘a former heretic’) between third quarter 1315 and fourth quarter 1317. The first and largest (four lire bon), was ‘because she had uncovered many heretics and their believers’; the rest (totalling fifty-three solidi in small amounts over two years) were ‘because of her poverty’. These were Manfredo’s only alms outside the convent.56 Lanfranco da Bergamo, who made frequent use of spies, similarly rewarded Helena quondam heretica of Viqueria, and Anexia da Piacenza, widow of a heretic, who undertook a number of missions for him over several years.57 In Florence, inquisitors are found on more than one occasion paying female attendants to inform either on their mistresses or on high-ranking female whether the money taken by the notaries refers to those keeping the prison books, or the main inquisition notaries, but if the latter it confirms suspicions that they received fee payments besides their salaries. For the 1308 testimony of Federico di Montebello about payment arrangements for officiales, see d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 174–5, doc. 7: ‘he replied that he received nothing beyond his due salary, rather, since it was stated in the papal constitutions that the third part of confiscated goods should be assigned to the officiales who had done the work, in fact dominus Federico had not actually had even his proper salary from the confiscated goods’. (‘respondit quod non recepit aliquid ultra salarium debitum; immo, cum in constitutionibus papalibus contineatur quod tertia pars bonorum confiscatorum debeat assignati officialibus, qui negotia ipsa peregerunt, non habuit ipse dominus Federicus salarium debitum bonorum confiscatorum’.) For the skimming of multe, d’Alatri, ‘Un’istruttoria’, pp. 55–6. 55 Bruschi, ‘Familia inquisitionis’, paras. 72–3. 56 Collectoria 133, fols. 132v–7r: ‘quia detenxit multos hereticos et creditores [sic]’. 57 Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, pp. 508–15; Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 136–7.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 prisoners they were supposed to be serving. Tommaso da Gorzano went so far as to place agents in prison, masquerading as prisoners, in order to solicit information.58 For at least some inquisitors, the exploratores and spie were clearly very important in doing their jobs, even if it was a slow process, requiring patience to provide results. But were they integrated with the regular inquisition team, or dependent on a private relationship with the inquisitor himself? Lanfranco da Bergamo’s former famulus became a spy for him, while the ex-heretic Helena is said to be part of his familia (indicating once again the elasticity of meaning of the term). In several cases (Lu; Mino da San Quirico’s spy at Prato) the exploratores worked closely with the inquisitor’s nuncii, who – being sworn officers – could execute legal formalities when suspicion crystallised. These individuals might best be regarded as long-term contractors to the officium, rather than as tied to the inquisitor personally. The case was different with the informers who were ex-heretics, like Manfredo’s pathetic Johanna. They may well have dealt with the inquisitor alone, in a desperate attempt to demonstrate true penitence.

Capture, imprisonment and punishment: who did what? Once heretics had been seized, inquisitors were faced with the question of transporting them to a place where they could be interrogated (and if necessary, tortured), and then imprisoned until sentence. These activities, together with the carrying out of the sentence itself, engaged a variety of service providers going well beyond the inquisitor’s own team. Although the papal constitutions laid responsibility for handling the inquisition’s prisoners on the civil authorities, mobilising assistance and securing captives raised practical problems which inquisitors solved in different ways. Some made a point of calling on the secular authorities to assist with arrest and the shepherding of captives in transit. Francesco da Pocapaglia credits the son of King Robert’s bailiff of De Monte with one capture, and the Tuscan inquisitors consistently used the podestà’s berrovieri (bravos). Others (like Tommaso da Gorzano, whose territory was a patchwork of different jurisdictions) never refer to the secular authorities, and give the impression that those paid for escort duty were simply casual hirings.59 Some were perhaps

58 Collectoria

133, fol. 77v, payment of twenty-one solidi by Tommaso in January 1304, to ‘many who helped’ in placing someone in prison so he could strike up an association with imprisoned heretics; Collectoria 249, fol. 54v, payment to wardress of the Cathar prisoner domina Ricca in Florence; Collectoria 250, fol. 115v, payments to ‘Pace et Dude servitialibus pro pluribus requisitionibus secrete factis de certis dominabus’ (‘[…] for many enquiries made secretly about certain ladies’). 59 Collectoria 133, fol. 174r, payment to the son of the bailiff of De Monte (‘baiulus de

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Familia and the wider support system members of militant confraternities – the crucesignati mentioned in the De officio inquisitionis as one of the arms of the inquisition – but if so they are not identified, and were perhaps unlikely to be found conveniently in rural areas.60 Ad extirpanda required the rector or podestà to turn over captives to the inquisitor within a set period. From this point there were differences over who physically had custody of prisoners, depending essentially on what accommodation was available. (Chapter 2 above notes some of the issues, especially over separation of men and women.) The key question was whether communal prison facilities actually existed. Long-term imprisonment as a punishment for offences was a new phenomenon of the late Duecento, and in the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries even the larger Italian communes did not have purpose-built prisons.61 The Stinche in Florence were built only in 1304, and prison accommodation in Padua in 1273–75 was so limited that the podestà threatened to cut off the arm of the inquisition notary to prevent him consigning more prisoners to the communal lock-up.62 For their own criminal cases, many cities contracted with convents or with private jailers to provide secure housing for one or both sexes. Inquisitors seem in practice to have done the same, using a variety of temporary expedients which could see prisoners shuttled between different facilities. In Modena, the Apostle Pietrobono Zamboni was first held in the bishop’s prison, then for forty days in the communal prison before being released without charge. In Bologna in 1299, the inquisitor Guido Capello tried unsuccesfully to get the abbess and sisters of SS Gervasio and Protasio to take custody of the wife of a German scriptor accused of heresy, provoking the nuns’ response that they would have nothing to do with the inquisitor. Other suspects in Bologna were placed in the prison of the convent of San Domenico itself, though by 1299 there are references to the carcer officii inquisitionis.63 Elsewhere, the bishop’s prison was used by the inquisition.

Montis’); Collectoria 250, Florentine examples include (fol. 25r) familia Inquisitoris travels into the Mugello with two bravi of the podestà of Florence (‘cum duobus beroviariis domini potestatis civitatis Florentie’) to capture a heretic in 1322; fols. 35v–6r, in August–September 1323, the familie of both the podestà and capitaneus of Prato assist in recapturing an escaped prisoner, and the Florentine capitaneus sends two famuli to help conduct him into Florence. Civic staff were paid for their time and generously supplied with wine in both cases. 60 De officio, pp. 17–18. 61 Geltner, Prigione medievale, for a general discussion. 62 ASVen, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 91/III, doc. 36. 63 ASOB, I, doc. 79, Pietrobono’s testimony in 1299 about an earlier arrest; docs. 367, 377, refusal to house the suspected heretic, Johamna; doc. 1, heretic Benvenuto da Cremona released ‘de carcere fratrum praedicatorum’ (‘from the Preachers’ prison’) in Bologna; docs. 328–9, in May 1299, Bompietro is held in carcere officii inquisitionis.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 The makeshift nature of prison arrangements is illustrated when, in August 1300, the jailer who had custody of the perfect Aicardo in the March of Genoa was reimbursed by Tommaso da Gorzano with money for a pair of boots rather than salary. It was not until a couple of years later that Tommaso entered into a stable relationship with an individual jailer, Oberto de Brayda. This was probably still a private jail, as it was only under Pace da Vedano in 1311 that the inquisition in the March of Genoa acquired its own prison. Even then (to judge by the construction costs), it was a rather small one. Over two decades later in Florence, where the inquisition already had its own facilities, it was still necessary to house a high-status Cathar woman, domina Ricca, in the home of the notary ser Vannis, along with an attendant who spied on her.64 The convenience of having their own lock-up induced some inquisitors from the late thirteenth century to develop prisons in or associated with the domus inquisitionis. Indeed, Benedetti suggests prisons were the earliest inquisition buildings. However, this was an expensive route if there were few prisoners, since it required both a warden and maintenance. Estimation of prisoner numbers is obscured by inconsistency in the recording of prison costs, but appears surprisingly small. In Florence, across the two years beginning July 1322 for which there are separate prison accounts, only ten named individuals are shown as being incarcerated, one of whom (dompnus Ranaldo da Cortona) may actually have been outhoused elsewhere in a private jail, as his costs are double the others and differently expressed (vettura letti – bed rental). In January 1323, when three prisoners were already in the jail, an extra set of shackles had to be bought to deal with a fourth.65 There are long periods when there appears to be only one prisoner, the unfortunate priest Bernardo Nuti who eventually died there in 1333, during the great Arno flood. He had been in prison for eleven years by then, unable to pay his original fine and steadily amounting debt for his keep.66 Most prisoners stayed for only a few days. Geltner has shown that staffing for the commune’s Stinche in Florence was quite elaborate, including medical staff and a chaplain. The inquisition prison was much more basic. The custos carceris was the administrator and financial manager, and across the period of record was either a notary or a senior familiaris. Only in October 1323 does an actual live-in turnkey appear. As much as to evolving canon law, this may have been a response to the embarrassment

64 Collectoria

133, fols. 73v, reimbursement to Aicardo’s jailer; 76r, in December 1302, to Oberto de Brayda; 199r, payment of twenty-six lib jan to construct a prison, under Pace da Vedano; Collectoria 249, fol. 54v, housing of domina Ricca. 65 Collectoria 250, fol. 74r, two fraticelli for a whole month and a third for a part-month cost one florin forty solidi, while a month’s maintenance for dompnus Ranaldo alone cost one florin twenty-one solidi. Purchase of extra shackles, fol. 25v. 66 Collectoria 250, fol. 35v, August 1323, first mention of Bernardo; Collectoria 251, fol. 85v, report of his death in the flood.

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Familia and the wider support system of two jailbreaks: one of the Cathar Gratia in 1321 and the second of several fraticelli plus Bernardo Nuti in August 1323. As a result, the notary Benvenuto de Trissanti lost his post as custos. Jailbreaks here and elsewhere suggest that prisons were neither stoutly built nor fully attended, enabling escapes in Florence through the thatched roof (judging by subsequent repair expenditure). In Bergamo, as we have noted, prisoners housed in the basement of the domus inquisitionis managed to escape by setting the whole building ablaze.67 In 1311, the Council of Vienne responded to complaints about inquisition prisons from many areas (especially southern France) by laying down stricter age and probity requirements for the custos carceris, and requiring two prison officials, one to be nominated by the bishop. The only evidence of two jailers in surviving Italian accounts is in 1334, when Giovanni Serafini and Salvetto Riccii are both named as custodes carceris in Florence. Better recording of prisoners’ costs from around 1311, and especially in the 1320s, may be a nod to the Vienne provisions.68 Prisoners could be tortured during their period in custody, in turn requiring their removal to hospital. Evidence about the involvement of the inquisitor’s own staff in torture is ambiguous. In Florence, the podestà’s staff conduct at least some torture on the inquisition’s behalf. When Francesco da Pocapaglia makes payments pro mutatoriis tibiarum, the implication is that he is paying professional torturers. But when Tommaso da Gorzano reimburses ‘the servitors who put the aforementioned heretic [Pietro Fallo] to the question’ (‘servitoribus qui posuerunt supradictum hereticum [Petrum Fallum] ad questionem’), they could be his own staff or outsiders. Around 1300, the nuntii and familiares of the Bologna inquisition undoubtedly attended confessions extracted under torture, as did their counterparts in the secular courts.69 Five inquisitors record payments to individuals surnamed or titled ‘Barberius’, whose role within the office and the inquisitor’s team is not 67 Geltner,

Prigione medievale, p. 42; Collectoria 250, fol. 79r, in July 1324, Florence, salary to ‘ser Cambio Bandinelli ministro custodis carceris’ from October 1323 for one year during which ‘he shall and must stay continuously to watch over the said prison’ (‘stetit et stare debet continue ad custodiam dicti carceris’); fols. 35v–6r, 75r, expenses in August–September 1323 related to the prison break and rebuilding; Collectoria 249, fol. 61v, expenses in June 1321 for the recapture of the Patarine Gratia, with the help of the priors of plebis pitiane (Pitigliano?). For Bergamo, Collectoria 133, fol. 210rv, ‘for repair of the domus officii burnt by the heretics’ (‘pro reparatione domus officii combuste ab hereticis’); and compensation to socius for burnt belongings. 68 Collectoria 251, fols. 84rv, Giovanni Serafini and ‘Salvettus Ricci familiaris et custos carceris officii Inquisitoris’. 69 Collectoria 133, fol. 185r, twelve solidi paid in 1313 to mutatoriis tibiarum (this probably refers to racking, but could be as straightforward as breaking the bones); fol. 71r, Pietro Fallo put to the question; ASOB, I, docs. 19–20, presence of familiares at confessions extracted under torture. Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 202 n. 98, discusses the purchase of possible instruments of torture.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 entirely clear. They are distinguished from the barbitonsor, needed to keep tonsures neat, and are probably barber-surgeons whose skills were deployed to conduct interrogations, to patch things up in the aftermath, or both. In Pavia, the domus officii Inquisitoris et Barbarie [sic] was a single establishment. In Bologna, Stefanino barbario was present in 1299 at interrogations of the heretics Bompietro and Giuliano which are known to have been conducted under torture, and in 1315–18 the Bologna accounts record salaries to two individuals titled Barberius. One is described as officialis, which suggests both a regular relationship and a connection to the officium rather than the inquisitor personally. Another, with Francesco da Pocapaglia in Piedmont, is described as nuncius officii. In most cases, however, the best guess is that these individuals were contractors used as needed, for either medical or interrogative reasons.70 The climax of the interrogation process was the delivery and execution of the sentence. This usually took place in the commune of original arrest, involving the re-transport of a by now rather battered heretic. Tommaso da Gorzano took one man from Savona to Genoa for questioning, and back again to Savona to be burnt, costing him ten Genoese pounds.71 Carrying out what has been called the ‘grand theatre’ of the inquisition required a good deal of organisation and manpower, whether the sentence was the imposition of yellow or red crosses (the latter for false witnesses) or relaxation to the secular arm. First, there were the clothes. The repentants were kitted out with new tunics, crosses had to be sewn, and the inquisitor’s ceremonial robes cleaned and beautified. The dais for the inquisitor’s public preaching had to be erected, along with special bleachers (palchetti) to seat those offenders, such as false witnesses, who were to be humiliated as part of their punishment. Trumpeters had to be procured, usually from the commune, to herald the event. Some sentences involved dragging the offender round the streets from church to church, or even whipping them from place to place. Very occasionally, as with the Apostle Dolcino of Novara, more serious damage was inflicted on the way to execution (Dolcino was pinched and burnt with red-hot irons). Sometimes this punishment or humiliation was carried out by the familia, as we have seen for Manovello, but sometimes by

70 Collectoria

133, fol. 215v, in Pavia in 1317, Jacobus de Burgo pays for repairs to the ‘domus officii Inquisitoris et Barbarie’; fol. 132r, in Bologna in 1315, Manfredo da Parma pays ‘Egidio barberio intuitu mercedis sue, 5 sol bon’ (on account of his wage); fols. 135r, 138v (1316, 1318), payments of twenty-five and fifteen solidi to ‘Damiano Barbario officiali nostro’; fol. 207r, payments by Marchesio to barbarii (plural); fol. 175v, payment by Francesco da Pocapaglia to ‘Bertotto Barberio, nuncio officii’. ASOB, I, docs. 19, 20, Stephaninus barbarius witnesses the interrogations of Bompietro and Giuliano, which the panel of sapientes had agreed (II, docs. 810, 811) could take place under torture. 71 Collectoria 133, fol. 78r, August 1304.

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Familia and the wider support system men hired for the job. It is not clear who was responsible for the torment of Dolcino.72 Much of the organisational task of staging the event fell to the inquisition team, using subcontractors for sentences short of execution. The logistics of burnings were largely handled by the civic authority, and included such details as taking up and relaying paving stones so they would not be scorched by the fire. In Bologna in 1299, it was the commune’s custodes carceris who erected the pyre itself, and were consequently threatened by spectators. In smaller centres such as Riva sul Garda, it was two inquisition officials – described as the commune’s syndics for the inquisition – who erected the pyre for a triple burning in 1304, and possibly also lit it (‘fecerunt preparari ignem’). In the March of Genoa, the inquisitor Tommaso da Gorzano personally sorted out the purchase of the wood, suggesting that in non-urban areas, or those with confused jurisdictions, the inquisitor became much more closely involved in executions than the papal constitutions envisaged.73 Although the execution of live heretics fell to the civic authority, it seems often to have been the inquisition which assumed responsibility for handling the acquisition and possibly the burning of exhumed bones. In May 1298, near Alessandria, the formal punishment of the dead Mia involved six gravediggers for the exhumation, at a cost of three turonenses each, with another three turonenses for the wood for the pyre as well as expenses for guarding the bones and ashes before and after the event. Attention to the ashes was necessary, as friends of the deceased sometimes tried to steal them for a Christian reburial. This is attested in the case of Bompietro in Bologna.74 72 Collectoria

250, fols. 24r, 25r, (October, November 1322), new garments for repentant heretics; 33v, July 1323, ‘for the construction of bleachers on which sat certain false witnesses while they were punished’ (‘pro costructione palchetti super quo steterunt quedam falsi testimonii quando fuerunt puniti’); 26r, in January 1323, payment to those who flogged Chiareno da Rovezzano across the city (‘illis qui scopaverunt Chiarinum de Rovezano per civitatem’); all references from Florence. Chiareno had just been fitted with the yellow cross. For Dolcino’s public torment, see J. B. Pierce, Poverty, Heresy and the Apocalypse. The Order of Apostles and Social Change in Medieval Italy 1260–1307 (London, 2012), p. 137. 73 The lifting of paving stones during an execution is found in more than one city: Severino, ‘Note sull’eresia a Siena’, p. 894, citing the Biccherna of 1286, ‘Item, 24 sol. quattuor rebaldis pro portatura lapides et corpus pactarene in campo fori’ (‘24 solidi to four workmen for the carriage of paving stones and the body of a Patarine woman in the campo fori’). Involvement of communal custodes carceris in the execution process in Bologna, see ASOB, I, docs. 220, 271. In 1254, the podestà’s outgoings noted payments to at least eleven workmen for an execution: Aldrovandi, ‘Acta S. Officii Bononie’, p. 236. For Riva sul Garda, see Segarizzi, ‘Contributo all storia di fra Dolcino’, doc. 18, p. 387. 74 Collectoria fol. 70v, exhumation of Mia, May–June 1298. It is possible that Tommaso sold her ashes, which are recorded among his receipts. ASOB, I, docs. 475–8 for Brandano da Saliceto’s mission to collect and bury the ashes of his dead friend,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 The whole process of rooting out suspected heretics, taking them captive, keeping them in custody and going forward to sentence was one where the inquisitor needed to rely on manpower outside his own immediate team, and often on good relations with the secular authorities. Some of the extra workers were supplied by communes, but it appears that many were independent contractors of all types who dealt directly with the office and were paid by it. We cannot tell whether these costs were reclaimed from the commune. Especially in Piedmont and the March of Genoa, inquisitors often had a much closer relationship with the details of the execution process than Church law envisaged. Elsewhere, however, some seem to have been prepared even to absent themselves from executions, and leave them entirely to the secular arm.75 There was no slavishly consistent practice followed here, but more an adaptation to circumstances.

Bankers, builders and laundresses Those concerned with the capture, custody and punishment of heretics and lesser malefactors were only one part of the inquisition’s wider support system, beyond the officials, notaries and servitors prescribed by Ad extirpanda. The inquisitor was at the heart of a complex ecology, which stretched all the way from carters of wood and hay to the bankers and financiers who held inquisition funds on deposit and to the seamstresses, embroiderers and laundresses who stitched undertunics and readied the linens of the Florentine inquisitors, as they prepared for their great public moments. To varying degrees, both Franciscan and Dominican inquisitors used external suppliers for domestic services, as well as for the frequent building works to repair and enhance their cells and the domus inquisitionis: for example, Francesco da Pocapaglia hired the wife of his notary to do his laundry when on the road. As with other employees, some of these providers can be traced across several years.76 Other services, such as shoemaking, usually came from within the convent.

Bompietro. For this episode, see also Thompson, ‘Lay versus clerical perceptions’, p. 719. 75 In Padua in 1273, in a wider dispute between the inquisitor and the podestà, the inquisitor claimed the podestà was obstructing the inquisition by not proceeding with an execution during the inquisitor’s absence. The podestà had waited because the individual had repented. See ASVen, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 91/III/36. 76 Collectoria 249, fol. 58r, payment to Fia sartorissa (seamstress) in October 1320 for stitching an undertunic for the inquisitor Pace da Castelfiorentino (‘pro cuscitura unius tunichini inquisitoris’); fols. 59r, 66r, 70r (modern calendar, January 1321, April 1322, September 1322) for the work of domina Nente, the laundress, helped by the famulus fratrum. In Florence, laundry was apparently not a task of the inquisitor’s

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Familia and the wider support system A service which had to be provided from outside was banking. In cities such as Bologna and Florence, the inquisition invested huge sums with bankers, who (in Florence) were sometimes the close relatives of inquisitors. Guido dei Fabbri Tolosini, for example, acted as the inquisition’s banker for several decades and also had a close relationship with the convent of Santa Croce.77 In Bologna, the banker Brunino Bianche Cose is sometimes described as the inquisition’s depositarius.78 The financial dealings of the office of inquisition and their entanglement with fourteenth-century banking collapses is a story which has not fully been told. The aim here is to flag up both the wide involvement of the inquisition in the economic life of medieval cities, and the enduring nature of its business relationships – which, like so many other connections, long outlasted individual inquisitors.

Conclusion To manage the different stages of the inquisition operation, inquisitors required a substantial lay support system, which engaged labour from many sources and at many different levels of society. Core support came from the familia, a term which appears to have been used rather narrowly to connote the familiares, and from the larger group of famuli. The evidence of the sources is that familiaris defines a rank or office, not a job function, and can be equated with the servitores appointed under Ad extirpanda and paid a salary agreed with the civil authority. As Benedetti notes, its members had fluctuating and overlapping roles and functions (‘compiti e mansioni fluttuanti e sovraposte’).79 Some of the core team were officiales of the Officium inquisitionis, but it is very clear that familia and officialis are not interchangeable terms. A wider circle of hangers-on and suppliers performed regular functions for the inquisition, though not necessarily full-time. At some points (as with familia or famuli. Nente is also paid for work in ornamenting a picture belonging to the inquisitor’s vicar ‘pro quadam laborerio facto in ornamento cuiusdam picture dicti vicarii Inquisitoris’ (Pace da Castelfiorentino, wearing a different hat). Perhaps embroidering a frame? See Collectoria 250, fol. 21r. For Francesco’s laundry payments, Collectoria 133, fols. 176r, 177r (1308–10). He evidently did do occasional laundry of his own, as we find payments for soap for washing clothes, Collectoria 133, fol. 183r. 77 Corsi, ‘Per la storia’, pp. 15–16, doc. 7, shows Guido Tolosini in 1289 operating between commune, inquisition office and the Santa Croce convent to receive the commune’s third share of confiscations and direct the proceeds to the construction of a protective wall by the Ponte Rubaconte. He was also to oversee the works. He appears as the inquisition’s banker in all extant accounts between 1319 and 1334. 78 ASOB, I, docs 273, 389, 397, 576; II, 642. Brunino is attested between 1299 and 1304, across three inquisitors. 79 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 193.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Pietro da L’Aquila’s sale of arms licences) this created the impression of an inquisitorial private army. For most of the inquisitors of whom we have detailed records, total regular manpower was well under forty, few of whom were salaried and most of whom can be traced across many years. However, the sources offer much less information about the numbers and roles of the officiales than is ideal. It is clear that in some places their numbers exceeded the canonical twelve by a wide margin (forty at Rimini in 1302). Yet they are almost entirely invisible in the accounts of the Florentine and Lombard inquisitors, and from the one good set of processes, from Bologna.80 It is however evident that there were strains between officiales such as Federico di Montebello in Vicenza and their inquisitors, and also within the body of officiales themselves. In Florence, these tensions led to the public reinterpretation of Ad extirpanda’s provisions on the share of confiscations due to the officiales, to focus reward on those who had played an active part in the seizure and sale of goods. There was no absolutely uniform structure for the inquisition office. Much depended on the nature of the territory and the make-up of the civil jurisdictions, as well as relationships with the secular powers. But there were real differences between the Franciscan approach (as demonstrated principally in Florence) and that of the Dominican Lombard inquisitors. In all types of territory, the Dominicans appear to have had tighter, smaller core teams with a higher proportion of higher-grade staff – assisted, as Chapters 6 and 7 will show, by extensive use of other friars. By contrast, the Franciscans used larger groupings of often part-time staff, drawing on the lay workforce of other Franciscan convents but not so much on fellow friars. Key Dominican lay staff had long backgrounds in communal service. This cannot be shown for Franciscan areas, except for the chief notary in Florence. Many inquisitors made heavy use of exploratores and spies to enable them to uncover heretical cells in places where they could neither expect local co-operation nor easily conduct the classic inquisitio. Mostly, accounts show the exploratores receiving fairly modest rewards. However, Marchesio da Brescia’s records reveal something very close to bounty hunting, with the exploratores taking a huge cut of the profits. Was this a special circumstance? Does it undermine what we thought we understood about inquisition finances? Or (a third possibility) are exploratores in some circumstances really the officiales, whose job was to pursue heretics’ assets as much as the heretics themselves? This analysis opens up questions, which need much closer examination, about how those working with the inquisition were actually remunerated. 80 Zanchino

Ugolini, De haereticis, publishes in his introduction an act of the inquisitor, bishop and podestà of Rimini in 1302 appointing the forty officials and the praecones and servitors of the inquisition (but not the notaries). See also Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo documentorum’, p. 73.

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Familia and the wider support system Discussion of the notaries and nuncii has already demonstrated the unsustainability of Richard Kieckhefer’s assertions on the temporary nature of core inquisition staffing. But it is worth stressing that successive inquisitors, far from hiring staff anew for every inquisitio, had relationships across many years not only with their familiares but also with exploratores, laundresses and bankers. The inquisition’s embeddedness in civil society is demonstrated by the sheer number of ordinary tradesmen, not to mention public officials of all kinds, with which it had dealings. In Florence, the office under Pace da Castelfiorentino in 1319–22 had regular transactions with at least twenty-five different merchants and tradesmen, from stationers to shoemakers to miniaturists. Most provided similar services to his successors. The inquisition had a very public side to its actions.

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6 Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum

The lay team of notaries, familiares and others provided the backbone of the inquisition’s day-to-day work. The inquisitor was, however, also heavily reliant on his closest clerical assistants, his vicars (deputies), and the more junior friars named as his socii, or companions. The role and powers of these members of the inquisition team have barely been touched on by past scholars, perhaps because they feature so little in inquisition manuals and handbooks.1 Inquisitors themselves did not spring fully–formed from anonymous mendicant ranks, so aside from the question of how vicars and socii functioned within the overall team, it is necessary to consider whether these posts were in any sense ‘training’ for future inquisitors. This leads on to a discussion of the inquisitor’s own cursus honorum. Despite similarities in both powers and duties, the two posts of vicar and socius were in principle very different. The vicar could – within limits – stand in for the inquisitor himself. By contrast, the socius had a function much more akin to that of a modern-day executive’s personal aide. His influence came not from special conferred powers, but from his close personal contact with the inquisitor, and others’ belief that he reflected the inquisitor’s own wishes.2 Given the need for confidence in their performance, the socii of office-holders within the mendicant orders (such as conventual and provincial priors) were elected by ballot of the members of the convent. It seems likely that this applied to the socii of inquisitors too, though they probably had somewhat more freedom to choose who they wanted. The choice of vicar was however subject to advice from the convent hierarchy.3 1 The

principles of ecclesiastical representation and the role of cognate posts, such as the bishop’s or papal vicar, have however been the focus of study, e.g., T. Boespflug, ‘La représentation du Pape au Moyen Âge’, MEFRMA 114/1 (2002), 59–71; L. Mayali, ‘Procureurs et représentation en droit canonique médiéval’, MEFRMA 114/1 (2002), 41–57. 2 Collectoria 251, fols. 79v–80r, illustrate this influence in respect of Mino da San Quirico’s socius, Roberto, who solicited bribes to moderate the inquisitor’s supposed wrath. 3 Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 155. The 1278 Milan provincial chapter

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum The significance of the clerical support staff has to be considered against the background of the tiny number of full inquisitors responsible for the whole land area of modern Italy. Before 1256, there were only four for the huge Dominican province of Lombardy. Although this number was doubled in March 1256, and increased further by the early fourteenth century, there were in our period at most ten inquisitors in upper Lombardy and three in the new lower Lombard province, created in 1303 by splitting the original Lombard province in two.4 The Franciscan provinces in Umbria and the Marche fared relatively better after the initial bedding-in period, with usually two inquisitors each for somewhat smaller territories. However, the very large Tuscan province had an allocation of only two inquisitors throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, one based in Florence and the other usually in Siena. There may at times have been only a single inquisitor actually in post.5 In these circumstances, the use of vicars or trusted clerical assistants was critical to an inquisitor’s ability to carry out his remit effectively, across both a large geographical area and more cases than one man could handle on his own. As early as 1246, the Council of Béziers took for granted that inquisitors would have assistance, and a number of letters show successive popes urging both Franciscan and Dominican provincials to supplement the clerical manpower available to inquisitors. For instance, in 1261 Alexander IV urged the Franciscan minister-provincial of the Provincia Romana to

ordered inquisitors to accept as their socii only ‘fratres religiosos et maturos’ (‘devout and mature brethren’), and to appoint vicars on the advice of the priors, sub-priors and lectors of the convent where the vicars were to be based. For the election of the socii of office-holders in the order, Kaeppeli and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, passim. The desire for consensus around the choice of socii is demonstrated at the chapter at Siena in 1295 (p. 122), which punished the brothers of three convents who had allowed the election of the prior’s socius to go to an unreasonable and divisive number of ballots (seventeen in the case of Rieti). 4 Provincial prior of Lombardy to appoint four inquisitors, Innocent IV (1254 May); Potthast 15,407. Doubling of number in Lombardy, Alexander IV (1256 March); Potthast 16,295 and Maisonneuve, Études, p. 319. 5 D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, pp. 341–50 gives a series of Franciscan inquisitors in central Italy. Although corrected in some respects by later work, this remains the most useful summary. Del Col, Inquisizione in Italia, p. 102, slightly updates d’Alatri’s series for Tuscany and at p. 94 summarises inquisitors in the March of Treviso. For Tuscany, Piana, ‘Silloge’, p. 36, comments that the close similarity between inquisitors operating in Siena with those listed for Florence gives good reason to doubt older assertions that there were two separate inquisitors from the beginning, one in Florence and one in Siena (‘la quasi identità di questi Inquisitori operanti in Siena con quelli indicati per Firenze […] da buon fondamento a dubitare su quanto afferma il Terrinca, della presenza di due distinti Inquisitori sin dal primo secolo, uno a Firenze ed uno a Siena’). Maisonneuve, Études, p. 325, speaks of two or three Franciscan inquisitors in each province by the 1290s. It was the March of Treviso which had three.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 team every inquisitor with two friars ‘providos et discretos’ (‘prudent and discreet’) to assist him in carrying out his difficult task.6 In his March 1262 Licet ex omnibus, Urban IV similarly ordered the prior-provincial of Lombardy to provide ‘duas religiosas et discretas personas’ to hear depositions, and in October followed this up with an instruction to the Preachers to supply a socius for each inquisitor, in similar terms to Alexander’s letter.7 However, it is often difficult to discern from the terminology of councils and papal letters what the exact nature of this ‘assistance’ was intended to be, whether from vicars, socii or in general from any brother of the order. Indeed, the popes themselves may not have been entirely clear. The evolution of thinking about the nature of appropriate support is perhaps evidenced in early moves to buttress inquisitors not with vicars but with notaries. Thus the Council of Béziers spoke of heretics’ abjurations being received ‘by your notaries or scribes, or by other ecclesiastics assigned to [this work]’ (‘per vestros notarios seu scriptores, vel per alios ecclesiasticos viros quibus hoc duxeritis committendum’). These roles were combined as early as June 1259, when (as Chapter 3 above noted) Alexander IV ordered the Umbrian ministerprovincial to appoint five or six friars to act as notaries for the Franciscan inquisitor Andrea da Todi, even though notarial office was forbidden to priests and a dispensation was therefore required.8 It seems likely that friar notaries were intended to have a wider role in giving a clerical imprimatur to some actions than secular notaries could have done. By the end of the century, as we have seen, friar notaries such as Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne in Bologna formally combined the offices of notary and socius, while at least one inquisitor’s vicar, Ioacchino da Bologna, is known to have been a notary. Though there may have been a degree of fudging about the conceptual distinction between vicar and socius, as well as between socius and friar notary, the practical differences between the posts were much clearer. Vicars, usually more senior in the order, were frequently based remotely, acting as the inquisitor’s deputies where he could not physically be present. By contrast, as can 6 For

1261 provision (Ne catholice fidei negotium), see Bullarium franciscanum, II, 414 n. 593; also Michetti, ‘Frati minori, papato e inquisizione a Roma’, p. 62. 7 Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici. Parte prima’, pp. 68–73, doc. 32 (Licet ex omnibus); pp. 73–4, doc. 33 (Ne catholice fidei negotium). The Dominicans thus received instructions over a year later than the Franciscans. 8 Council of Béziers, see edition in Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 214–15. Appointment of clerical notaries, see bull Cordis nobis est (June 1259) in Bullarium franciscanum, II n. 492; Bullarii franciscani epitome seu summa bullarum, ed. K. Eubel (Quaracchi, 1908), n. 1038; d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, pp. 51–2; Andrea da Todi may have exercised office in the Provincia Romana simultaneously with Umbria, ibid., p. 53. Andrea’s main notary was the friar Paolo da Norcia (see Chapter 3). Bruschi, ‘Familia inquisitionis’, para. 14 suggests that friar notaries were seen as an emergency stopgap where public notaries were unavailable. If this was the original intention, it was subverted very early: Urban IV’s Licet ex omnibus, cited above, seems to give blanket approval.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum be seen from the financial accounts of inquisitors’ travels, the socius tended to remain at the inquisitor’s side. As well as providing practical help, and no doubt offering psychological support in chewing over doubtful issues, he performed an important religious function: he was available to confess and absolve the inquisitor himself, or other team members, if they had become tainted through contact with a heretic or presence during his torture. Inquisitors had a particular need for a companion able to perform this function, but the requirement for a socius was part of mendicant DNA. Salimbene, criticising the movement of the Apostles under Gerardo Segarelli, explains the thinking: Their second foolish act is that they travel alone, because this is against Christ’s teaching, as Luke 10. 1 records: ‘he sent them two and two before […].’ Whence the Wise Man says [Ecclesiastes 4. 9–12], ‘it is better therefore that two should be together than one […] woe to him that is alone for when he falleth he hath none to lift him up […]. And if a man prevail against one, two shall withstand him.’9

The orders’ hierarchies took the need for a socius seriously, and all but the most mature friars were urged to travel with a companion to keep them on the straight and narrow.10 Despite the hundreds of bulls and consilia which extended and elaborated the inquisition’s powers and privileges during the second half of the thirteenth century, and notwithstanding their importance to the inquisition’s functioning, very little is said about the roles of the inquisitor’s clerical support. It is in fact a struggle to identify the precise origin and development of their powers, and it is evident that there was doubt about vicars’ powers throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. (A practical instance is the incident at Riva sul Garda with which this study opened, where the inquisitor’s vicar in the town took no action on an accusation because he did not wish to exceed his authority.) The reason for the silence is debatable. Had issues of authority and delegation simply not been fully thought through as they applied to the inquisition? Was it just that the underpinning legal principles of representation were themselves still evolving? Or did the papacy simply not wish to clarify a grey area? Whatever the reason, the outcome is that vicars and socii are almost unstudied by later scholars.11 The following discussion 9 Salimbene,

Chronica, p. 267. and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, p. 51: the 1279 provincial chapter at Salerno ordered all priors that friars arriving at their convent without a designated socius should not be allowed to move around or leave without one being assigned, so that ‘no scandal should arise through unwise company’ (‘propter incautam associationem nullum scandalum possit oriri’). Also, at pp. 58–9, the prior-provincial’s injunction at the 1281 Dominican chapter at Florence. 11 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, has one page (p. 375) in almost 600. The Dizionario dell’Inquisizione 3, at Vicariati, does little more than refer to vicars’ existence. Bruschi, ‘Familia inquisitionis’ focuses on lay staff and does not touch on the clerical support. 10 Kaeppeli

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 therefore extrapolates from analogous roles and attempts to illuminate the exact nature of the responsibilities of the vicar and socius by comparing the theory with what happened in inquisition practice. As in other fields, there were differences between the two orders in the way they treated the roles. A final issue is how these positions related to the career track for inquisitors themselves. Among the Dominicans, the individual named as the socius of the prior-provincial or diffinitor (elected adviser) often progressed to more senior office, after having proved himself capable. Was the same true for the socii of the inquisitor? Were the vicars also inquisitors-in-waiting, in a progression socius–vicar–inquisitor, or were they learned brothers appointed to shoulder some of the doctrinal and pastoral burden, without intending to become full inquisitors themselves? If the socius and vicar were not training grades, how did new inquisitors learn their job and what was their path to office? Bruschi has argued that the Franciscans of Tuscany regarded inquisitors in quite a lowly light until the first decade of the fourteenth century: they were, she says, the first rung on the career ladder.12 The role of inquisitor then joined the regular rotation between lector, custos, guardian and even ministerprovincial, though not necessarily in a fixed sequence. If Bruschi’s argument holds water, it poses the further question of why such a transition should occur at this point, either in Tuscany or anywhere else. But does it hold water? The orders differed in their attitude to the length of inquisition posts, which naturally affected career tracks. However, Bruschi’s specific claim seems unsustainable for either the Franciscans or the Dominicans. Full chronologies of inquisitors across the century 1250–1350 are lacking, let alone good information about individual careers. From a very early date, though, inquisitors in both orders are found moving freely to and from senior posts, in both directions. It is more debatable whether inquisitors’ standing changed in some way in the first decade of the fourteenth century. Possible reasons why this might happen are taken further in Chapter 7 below, which considers inquisitors’ changing relationships with the orders themselves.

The role and powers of the vicar The development of the structure and powers of the inquisition during the thirteenth century took place alongside the evolution of thinking in both canon law and ecclesiastical practice about representation and the nature

12 Bruschi,

‘Inquisizione francescana in Toscana’, p. 298, asserts that ‘from the available evidence, it seems that until the first decade of the Trecento, the role of inquisitor constituted the first step towards a career within the order’. (‘Dai dati disponibili sembra che fino al primo decennio del Trecento la carica di inquisitore costituisse il primo gradino verso una carriera interno all’ordine’). Thereafter, she contends, individuals became inquisitors after holding other office.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum of agency. Mayali comments that ‘the principle of representation was the keystone of the juridical and political edifice constructed by the canonists of the later Middle Ages. It was on this principle that, from the twelfth century onwards, the authority of the Church and the legitimacy of papal authority were based.’ The jurisconsults pronouncing on inquisitorial vicars were undoubtedly conscious of the wider debate, which was eventually codified in two rules of Boniface VIII’s Liber Sextus, promulgated in 1298. These affirmed, firstly, that a principal could do through an intermediary anything he had power to do himself; and secondly, that actions performed by a representative had the same force as those performed by the principal.13 This might seem to give ample authority for inquisitorial vicars to exercise wide powers. But the snag was that inquisitors were not, in fact, principals. Although they had many powers, they were themselves delegates of the Apostolic See in a way that bishops (say) were not. This created limitations which at least some inquisitors found restrictive. In the early flush of enthusiasm for combating heresy, the Council of Béziers had taken it for granted that inquisitors could co-opt others to perform part of their functions. The first legal consideration of whether inquisitors actually had any right to delegate their powers seems to go back only to around 1255, some twenty years after the office began. It was Quaestio IV of a number of fairly fundamental questions put to the jurist Guy Foulcques (later Clement IV) by the inquisitors of Languedoc, in a consilium which was much copied in Italian inquisition handbooks.14 Foulcques’s response is not very enlightening. He focuses on the source of authority of the inquisitor himself, whether it came from the provincial prior who appointed him to his ministry (no) or the pope who conferred the office via the prior (yes). He concludes that, as delegates of the ‘prince’ (the principal authority), inquisitors had the right to subdelegate. However, the actual powers that might be passed down to an inquisition vicar – ‘hearing witnesses and the like’ (‘audientiam testium et similia’) – are dismissed in so many words. The way in which the issue is addressed here may suggest that the query originated in an argument between priors and inquisitors over rights of appointment, rather than an attempt to explore the powers of the vicars themselves. Aside from general canon law thinking, the specific founding authority for the powers of an inquisitor’s vicar – in so far as there is one – is Clement IV’s 13 Mayali,

‘Procureurs’, p. 41, ‘Le principe de la représentation fut la clé de la voûte de l’édifice juridique et politique construit par les canonistes des derniers siècles du Moyen Âge.’ 14 For versions of Foulcques’s consilium, see Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 58–71, doc. 12; Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 193–204; Bivolarov, Inquisitoren-Handbücher. Papsturkunden und juristische Gutachten aus dem 13. Jahrhundert mit Edition des Consilium von Guido Fulcodii, pp. 206–55. If Bivolarov’s dating of the consilium to 1238–43 is correct, questions about delegation would recede to much closer to the beginning of active inquisition.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 1265 version of Licet ex omnibus. According to the gloss in the early fourteenth century treatise, the De officio inquisitionis (c.1325), this bull declared that the inquisitor could delegate to the vicar responsibility (i) for citations; (ii) for the examination of witnesses under pain of ecclesiastical censure; (iii) for excommunication of the recalcitrant whom the vicar had himself cited (plus their absolution if they then yielded themselves); and (iv) for the delivery and execution of non-criminal sentences issued by the inquisitor. What the vicar could not do was pronounce definitive sentence on his own authority.15 These conclusions in the De officio are filtered through glosses and case law, since Licet ex omnibus itself, like the conclusions of the Council of Béziers, is framed throughout on the assumption that the inquisitor will in fact have others to assist him. It is not prescriptive about the exact nature of the help. For example, the bull grants indulgences at the crusade level to ‘socii who are brothers of your order and to your notaries, who labour with you in furthering this business’ (‘sociis vero fratribus vestri ordinis et notariis vestris, qui una vobiscum in prosecucione huius negocii laborabunt’). This was clearly a much wider group than inquisitors’ vicars, and again indicates an early concentration on notaries as sources of wide-ranging support beyond their purely legal function. In fact, the term vicarius is not used in the bull, except in relation to the vicars of bishops. A complication was perhaps that in the early decades, inquisitors themselves might be appointed as the vicars of bishops.16 Inquisitors’ powers of delegation may also have differed by region and order. The De officio, emanating from the Dominicans in Bologna/Ferrara, cites a bull of Nicholas IV, Cum sicut est, allowing Franciscan inquisitors in the March of Treviso to delegate to other brothers of the order the power to absolve excommunications for heresy pronounced by the inquisitor himself. This goes further than the powers said to be in Licet ex omnibus and the citation of it as a privilege to the Franciscans implies that it was not replicated for the Dominicans. Inconsistency in powers of delegation is suggested also by Alexander IV’s Quod super nonnullis, addressed in 1258 to Franciscan inquisitors in Italy. This refers to a query by the prior of the Dominican convent in Paris (who had inquisitorial powers), about the appointment of ‘delegati vel subdelegati’ (‘delegates or subdelegates’). He was told to appoint ‘three or four suitable people’ who would have equal powers with

15 Licet

ex omnibus is included in several versions in the two handbooks, one Dominican and one Franciscan, preserved in the Biblioteca Casanatense, Rome, as MSS 969 and 1730, as well as in the Vicenza manual, Constitutiones sacre inquisitionis, edited by Lomastro Tognato, in L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 145–244. Also see Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici’, II, 290–1, doc. 12. De officio, pp. 16–17. 16 For example, in 1244 Ruggiero Calcagni, papal inquisitor in Tuscany, was appointed vicar of Ardingo, bishop of Florence (Tocco, Dante, doc. 4.)

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum himself (‘qui parem cum ipso habeant potestatem’).17 Again, this goes further than Licet ex omnibus. In 1276, the inquisitors Niccolò da Cremona and Daniele da Giussano tried to cut through the tangle by seeking legal advice on the powers of vicars from the bishop of Piacenza and a group of clerical and legal scholars. In words very similar to those contained in the De officio, the unqualified response in the consilium was that the vicar’s power was indeed restricted. He could not pass definitive sentence, because the inquisitor, as the pope’s delegate himself, could not subdelegate the core of his power.18 Lea rather testily questions why the inquisitors in 1276 bothered to seek legal advice at all: some questions are best unasked.19 However, it is plain that there was lack of clarity, leading to inconsistent practices. Although the 1276 consilium seems to have been observed in the Bologna/Ferrara area, inquisitors elsewhere preferred the more generous ius commune principle, skating over the nature of their own appointment. Thus in 1298 we find Tommasino Malabranchi, Franciscan inquisitor in the Romagna, appointing as his vicar Vincenzo da Bologna, lector of the Rimini convent, ‘in the city and district of Rimini and the lands of the diocese, so that on his behalf he may carry forward and undertake what the inquisitor himself can personally undertake’ (‘in civitate Arimini et districtuum et comitatus diocesi, ut vice sui possit omnia exsequi et facere que ipsemet inquisitor personaliter facere posset’). 20 Successive popes were generous in extending inquisitorial powers during the second half of the thirteenth century, but they did not see fit to resolve this particular issue conclusively. The inability of vicars to conclude cases thus remained a matter of dispute throughout the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, and was still undecided in 1376 at the time of Eymerich’s Directorium. Some other aspects of the vicariate were also not clarified until remarkably late (or at all). It was not, for example, until Clement IV’s Ne aliqui dubitationem in 1262 that it was established that the authority of inquisitors themselves continued during vacancies in the Holy See. This general provision (directed to the Friars Minor) was not extended to the Dominicans till 1290, and in 1265, as we have seen, the Lombard inquisitors had to write to Clement IV to urge him to ratify their decisions taken during the vacancy, following the practice of previous popes (‘iuxta formam summorum pontificum Innocentii, Alexandri et Urbani’).21 But asking questions about the continuation of

17 Lomastro

Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 188–92 (p. 190), Quod super nonnullis and citation. The bull was not issued to the Dominicans till 1260: see Maisonneuve, Études, p. 319 n. 108. 18 Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 111–14, doc. 25. 19 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, footnote to pp. 375–6. 20 Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’, p. 83, doc. 5. 21 Maisonneuve, Études, p. 326 n.152; Savignoni, ‘L’archivio storico del comune di Viterbo’, p. 306, doc. CVIII.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 inquisitors’ authority during papal vacancies prompted further queries about what happened to powers delegated to vicars when an inquisitor himself died or moved on. It is apparent that there was a good deal of cloudiness about vicars’ powers in general. The De officio, for example, describes the vicar as the secondranked officer of the inquisition, after the inquisitor himself, but its author frankly acknowledges that ‘I have found nothing about any special privileges (utilitates) of the vicar either in temporal or spiritual matters, unless he is understood as a socius’. This suggests either an elision in practice between the roles of vicar and socius (for which there is occasional independent evidence) or an important limitation on vicars’ activity. The key privilege granted to inquisitors and their socii was to absolve each other and members of the familia from sins incurred by contact with heretics, and to issue dispensations for other irregularities on a par with the powers of conventual priors.22 If vicars qua vicars were really excluded from such powers, the relationship between socius, vicar and inquisitor cannot be a linear progression from junior to senior, but something much more mutable and angular. The uncertainties point up a number of issues relevant to the arguments of this study. As the inquisition developed from a standing start in the 1230s, much initial activity was based on assumption and extrapolation from ius commune rather than specific delegation of powers. (We have already seen in Chapter 4 how the inquisition, especially in Italy, paralleled secular legal practice over citations.) It was only after the mid-thirteenth century, as the institution sought to define and regularise itself, that some fundamental questions were asked by inquisitors, and occasionally answered unhelpfully to them. Although there was much sharing between inquisitors of knowledge about privileges, practice and legal advice, there was also inconsistency in powers between different inquisitorial territories – fostered by the papal habit of bestowing privileges on inquisitors of a particular region or order, and failing to extend them uniformly to all inquisitors of either the same order or other provinces. Inquisitors were often aware of the nuances, though it is unclear whether they took account of them in practice. The fact that manuals of both orders incorporate or refer to privileges granted to the other suggests a desire for consistency and convergence of practice regardless of their own precise powers. The failure to clarify the powers of vicars also indicates that though the papacy was prepared to relax many other normal legal conditions to advance the negotium fidei (for example, on the good standing and identity of witnesses), there were limits to its willingness to allow inquisitors to replicate themselves. The evidence of excessive zeal among inquisitors, accumulating 22 De

officio, p. 16, ‘secundus officialis post inquisitorem est vicarius inquisitoris’; p. 17, ‘de utilitate vicariorum non invenio neque de temporali, neque de spirituali, nisi vicarii intelligantur esse socii’; also pp. 13–14, ‘Inquisitorum utilitates quales sint’.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum in the third quarter of the thirteenth century, perhaps warned the papacy that unrestricted subdelegation might be a dangerous move. But it may also be that it was too problematic to re-design the basic legal principles involved, requiring as it would both a rethinking of the inquisitor’s own position as a delegate of the Holy See and his relationship to the bishop. The repeated attempts during this period to find an acceptable balance between the role of inquisitors and the powers of bishops demonstrated the potential pitfalls. Evidence about the deployment of vicars is variable. Some inquisitors barely mention their existence. Manfredo da Parma refers to his vicar only twice in four years of accounts. Over eight years, Tommaso da Gorzano and Francesco da Pocapaglia also make very limited reference, though it is clear Tommaso has at least two vicars based respectively in Albenga and Savona.23 Non-appearance in financial accounts may perhaps be because vicars’ costs seem mainly to have been met by the convents where they were based and were consequently not fully reflected in expenses logs. Francesco’s records do however confirm one very important fact. As the De officio hints, vicar and socius could be the same person.24 The acts of the Bologna inquisition show a much richer and more varied picture of the use of vicars than do the financial accounts. We learn that inquisitors had several vicars simultaneously, a practice decried in canon law in respect of bishops.25 Guido Capello has ten recorded vicars over his seven years in Bologna, and his successor, Guido da Parma, at least three.26 Some of them, as in Ferrara and Modena, were standing appointments to cover particular geographical areas, comparable with the geographically based Franciscan appointment at Rimini cited above. Others were based in Bologna itself, as general adjuncts in despatching business. Some of the latter seem to have been nominated on a one-off basis to deal with individual cases. Thus Grimaldo da Saliceto, son of an important notary much involved in inquisition business, was appointed as vicar in 1303 with a remit restricted to one specific case. He is found on seven other occasions from 1299 onwards, either as a witness to proceedings or as a sapiens nominated by the prior to advise the inquisitor.27

23 Collectoria

133, fol. 76r, expenses payments to both vicars in January 1303. 133, fols. 174rv, payments in 1307 to ‘Gualvano vicario meo et socio’; fols. 178r, 179r, ‘Gualvano socio meo’ in 1310–11. Galvano seems to have been based in Chieri: fol. 183v, vicarius Charii. 25 However, Licet ex omnibus suggests that inquisitorial support should come from two approved friars. 26 Paolini, L’eresia, lists eight vicars (p. 13 n. 52), omitting Aymerico de Rodaldis and Nicholaus Tascherius, both vicars in 1303 (ASOB, II, docs. 611–13, 582). Guido da Parma’s vicars were Pinamonte da Bologna (ASOB, II, doc. 672 et seq.); Joacchino da Bologna (ASOB, II, docs. 796–7) and Bonvisino da Bologna (ASOB, II, docs. 800–2). 27 ASOB, II, doc. 610, Grimaldo as vicar; doc. 805, as sapiens. The status of witnesses is frequently not mentioned, so he may have acted as vicar earlier than 1303, on 24 Collectoria

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Some vicars specialised in particular types of work. Homobono da Bologna, a senior friar who had been lector in Bologna before 1297 and served several times as sapiens in connection with inquisition business, appears on over 130 occasions as either vicar or witness from 1297 to 1304. He had a special responsibility for dealing with female or disabled suspects and witnesses, including – in 1299 – delivering absolutions actually in the homes of female rioters. Joacchino da Bologna, a frequent assistant in inquisition business between 1299 and 1307, is similarly found taking confessions in a private house and is elsewhere identified as a notary. The order’s strictures against contact with women probably suggest both men were well on into middle age.28 The powers exercised varied even between vicars with more general remits. Milidosio de Corvis served both Guido Capello and his co-inquisitor, Manfredo da Parma, but was also Guido’s procurator in hearing evidence. Galvano da Budrio is described as ‘vicarius et subdelegatus’ of Guido’s predecessor, Florio da Vicenza, but elsewhere as procurator.29 Such nuances in terminology imply further layers in a mille-feuille of delegation. Powers could also be extended selectively. Pinamonte da Bologna had his appointment as vicar to Guido da Parma extended ex speciali commissione (by special commission) to enable him to rescind a sentence originally issued by Guido Capello. This is a nod towards the limitations noted in the De officio, but also shows that inquisitors felt themselves able to stretch the boundaries. Like the Franciscan appointment of a vicar in Rimini in 1298 and that of a vicar in Lodi for Jacobus de Burgo in 1317, the extension of Pinamonte’s powers was effected by a notarial instrument internal to the inquisition. However, the

occasions when he appears only in the capacity of witness. He was the son of dominus Pace da Saliceto. In Florence, Giacomo de Trissanti, the theologian brother of the notary Benvenuto de Trissanti, was also appointed vicar for a single case; Collectoria 250, fol. 41r. 28 Homobono as lector, ASOB, I, doc. 8; involved with cases of Contessa, docs. 47–8; domina Rengarda, I, docs. 49, 50, 53; II, doc. 809; and the scapegoated rioter Saviabona I, doc. 563; absolutions of women, some in private homes, I, docs. 131, 142–3, 285–312, 380–1, 428–40. As noted in Chapter 2, most cases involving women are heard not in the domus inquisitionis but in the church of San Domenico itself. Strictures against contact with women are frequent; but see Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 144, young friars not to hear women’s confessions (Bologna, 1264); p. 147, general prohibition on association with women (Bologna, 1269). In 1307, Homobono appears (ASOB, II, doc. 869) as one of a special panel convened to resolve a dispute between other jurisconsults. For Joacchino, ASOB, II, docs. 796–9. In 1305, he appears as notary of an agreement between the Dominican and Franciscan convents in Bologna: Bughetti, ‘Concordia inter Fratres Praedicatorum et Minores’, p. 285. 29 ASOB, I, docs. 56–7, Milidosio as Guido Capello’s vicar and procurator in 1299; doc. 572, as vicar to Manfredo, 1301. ASOB, I, doc. 1, Galvano as vicar; Parmeggiani, Consilia, p. 146 n. 247, as procurator.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum Rimini document made no mention of any recommended consultation with appropriate friars.30 The background of those named as vicars in Bologna shows that they were all senior and probably in mid-life. Homobono had already been lector in Bologna by his first appearance in inquisition documents in 1297. Tommasino de Tonsis was lector in Modena in 1299, and later Guido Capello’s vicar there, sitting alongside Aghisio da Bergamo. Nicholaus Tascherius was Guido’s vicar in 1303 whilst actually serving as conventual prior of Bologna. Tebaldo Tebaldi da Parma, vicar to Florio da Vicenza as well as Guido Capello, was himself prior of Bologna by 1307. The Dominican general chapters at Palencia in 1291 and Metz in 1298 had both banned conventual priors from serving either as inquisitors or vicars ‘lest the convent should be cheated of proper attention by the prior’s absence’. This significant prohibition, which does not seem to have been widely observed, is discussed further below, in Chapter 7.31 Just as lay staff continued from one inquisitor to another, vicars are found in the same role with successive inquisitors. This is unsurprising if they were appointed for knowledge and experience from a relatively small pool of senior staff. Leone and Tebaldo da Parma and Aghisio da Bergamo all served both Florio da Vicenza and Guido Capello, apparently in Modena. Francesco da San Giorgio appears to have been vicar both to Aldobrandino da Reggio, the first known inquisitor in Bologna, and to Florio da Vicenza, thus potentially over a twenty-year span. Bonvisino da Bologna was vicar to Guido da Parma in 1305, to the short-lived inquisitor Niccolò da Ripa Transone in 1310, and to his successor Ruggiero da Petriolo in 1311–12.32 Guido Capello and his co-inquisitor Manfredo da Parma also shared a vicar, Milidosio de Corvis. The source material is fractured, so some of these vicars may also have served other inquisitors.

30 ASOB, II, docs. 669–73 et seq.; doc. 672, instrument extending Pinamonte’s vicariate.

Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 155, (Milan chapter, 1278) vicars to be appointed on the advice of the priors, sub-priors and lectors of the place where the vicariate was to be exercised (‘quod faciant vicarios de consilio prioris supprioris et lectoris, ubi vicarii fuerint faciendi’). Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 199 cites a vicar’s appointment by Jacobus de Burgo, with powers to cite, investigate and announce sentences promulgated by the inquisitor. The appointment process is not evident from Benedetti’s extract. 31 Tommasino de Tonsis, ASOB, I, docs. 77–8, 82 (1299); II, docs. 616–18 (1304). Nicholaus Tascherius as vicar and prior, ASOB, I, docs. 582, 585. Ban on priors serving as inquisitors, Acta Capitulorum Generalium Ordinis Praedicatorum, ed. B. M. Reichert, 2 vols., MOFPH 3 and 4 (Rome, 1898–99), I, 261 (1291); I, 289–90 (1298). Tebaldo Tebaldi as vicar to Florio (thus before 1296) and to Guido, ASOB, I, doc. 79; as prior, ASOB, II, doc. 869. 32 Bonvisino: ASOB, II, docs. 800–2 (1305); Collectoria 133, fol. 164v, payment by Ruggiero da Petriolo to ‘Bonvisino qui vicarius fuerat tempore alterius inquisitoris scilicet fratris Nicolucii de Ripis’ (‘Bonvisino who had been vicar at the time of another inquisitor, that is, fra Nicoluccio da Ripa’).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Whilst the vicars were in general assigned to take depositions, confessions and deliver routine absolutions (especially those which required them to travel outside the city limits), the cases they handled were not trivial. Vicars handled some stages of several of Bologna’s causes célèbres, including early hearings in the cases of the Cathars Onebene da Volta Mantovana and Bonigrino da Verona, as well as of the Apostle Pietrobono Zamboni.33 Homobono took the confessions both of Contessa, widow of the recently burnt Bompietro, and of the very well-connected archdeacon Manfredo Mascara, who had advised the Cathar perfect, Giuliano bursario, to flee the inquisition. Both cases were politically sensitive.34 Was this accident, or were inquisitors using their vicars as sherpas to probe ahead in problem cases? A question posed at the beginning of this chapter was whether vicars were trainee inquisitors. The evidence from Bologna shows this was not the case among the Dominicans. Of seventeen individuals noted as inquisitors’ vicars in the published Bologna acts, only three, perhaps four, can be identified subsequently as inquisitors in their own right.35 Among the Franciscans, the picture is completely different. In the Marches of Treviso and Ancona, some vicars, such as Antonio da Lucca, lector of Vicenza, Vincenzo da Bologna, lector of Rimini, and Pietro da Penna San Giovanni did progress to become full inquisitors.36 Indeed, d’Alatri comments that in the Veneto, the vicariate was the step up to reach the rank of inquisitor, though he also acknowledges that it could be a re-entry point

33 ASOB,

I, doc. 1, Onebene dealt with by Galvano da Butrio; doc. 10, Bonigrino da Verona dealt with by Francesco da San Giorgio in 1273; doc. 79, Pietrobono dealt with successively by Aghisio da Bergamo, Tebaldo da Parma and Leone da Parma, across the tenures of two inquisitors. 34 ASOB, I, doc. 48, confession of Contessa; doc. 124, Manfredo Mascara. 35 Bonifacio da Ferrara, Guido Capello’s vicar for Ferrara in 1301, is named as inquisitor in Modena in 1307, stepping down in November 1310, and as Giovanni dei Pizigotti’s predecessor in Ferrara: ASOB, I, docs. 87–9; II, docs. 728, 731; Collectoria 133, fol. 138v. Nicholaus Tascherius, mentioned as vicar to Guido Capello in August 1303 at a point when he was already conventual prior of Bologna, was himself inquisitor of Bologna in October 1305: ASOB, I, docs. 582, 585; II, doc. 870. Tebaldo da Parma, vicar to both Florio and Guido Capello, is said by d’Amato, I Domenicani a Bologna, I, 202 to have been inquisitor in Bologna in 1310. Francesco da San Georgio was vicar in 1273 to Aldobrandino da Reggio; two documents of 1297 looking back to this period refer to him both as vicar and as inquisitor (ASOB, I, docs. 10, 8). 36 For Antonio da Lucca: Parmeggiani, Consilia, p. 84 n. 175; d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 152–5. Whilst lector of the Vicenza convent in 1288, Antonio was appointed vicar in Vicenza to Francesco da Trissino, then became inquisitor in his own right from 1293–95. For Vincenzo da Bologna, see Parmeggiani, ‘Inquisizione e frati Minori in Romagna’, p. 120. For Pietro da Penna San Giovanni, vicar to Giacomo da Orvieto before 1344 and later inquisitor himself, d’Alatri, ‘Un processo dell’inverno’, p. 79.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum for those resuming the role of inquisitor after a break.37 In Tuscany, however, vicars (and perhaps some socii) were normally themselves former inquisitors, enjoying a prolonged afterlife. Pace da Castelfiorentino, who laid down full office as inquisitor in Florence in July 1322, seamlessly continued as vicar of the new (but absent) inquisitor, Michele d’Arezzo. For the next twelve years he was associated with the Florence inquisition, as vicar successively to Michele, Accursio Bonfantini, possibly Pietro da Prato and certainly to Mino da San Quirico, gathering around himself a trusted group of staff – a familia within the familia.38 Pace’s position was not just an anomaly peculiar to one individual. Grimaldo da Prato was inquisitor of Florence twice, from around 1300–05 and from 1310 to 1315. He then retired to his home convent of Prato, but throughout the 1320s, when he must have been in his sixties or older, he was continually being called on for advice and to lend a hand with inquisition business (including assisting in reviewing Accursio Bonfantini’s accounts in 1329). When Michele d’Arezzo had to recuse himself in 1322–23 from decisions connected with the prosecution of Guido Tarlati, bishop and signore of Arezzo, Florentine inquisition activity appears to have been wholly led by the two ex-inquisitors, Grimaldo and Pace, acting as vicars, with Lando/ Landino, the inquisitor of Siena, brought in to sign off the decisions. 39 Antonio d’Arezzo, Pace’s immediate predecessor, also remained close to the inquisition in Florence. After leaving office in 1319, he was provided with accommodation and equipment by the office, carried out business with a nuncius and may possibly have served as socius during Michele d’Arezzo’s tenure (1322–25). He is also perhaps the same Antonio noted as socius to Pace (then vicar) under Mino da Quirico.40 The only break in the sequence of ex-inquisitors as vicar is in 1325–26, when Lapo dei Fabbri Tolosini, first guardian and then custos of Santa Croce, is reported as vicar of his relative, Tedisio. The mention is during the handover to Accursio Bonfantini: it is not clear whether he was active, or merely holding the fort as custodian

37 D’Alatri,

‘Inquisitori veneti’, p. 161. 249, fols. 68v, 69r; Collectoria 250, fols. 2r, 26r, 27r, 54v, 55rv; Collectoria 251, fols. 4v–5r, numerous other mentions to fol. 16r. Details of Pietro da Prato’s tenure are lacking, but during the interregnum before Mino’s arrival, Pace (described as veterem Inquisitorem, the old inquisitor) arranged for the continuation of inquisition business: Collectoria 251, fol. 4v. 39 Collectoria 251, fol. 68r, Grimaldo’s role in auditing Accursio’s final accounts; as vicar meting out punishments, Collectoria 250, fol. 49r. 40 Antonio’s activity: Collectoria 249, fols. 52r, 53r, Antonio olim inquisitore (former inquisitor) having office equipment bought for him (1319); Collectoria 250, fols. 22r, 32v (1322–23); 44r–45v, expenses including a copy of the ‘new decretals’ brought specially from Bologna (1324); 56r (1325); Collectoria 251, fol. 7r, as socius in 1332. Antonio was a common name, but the expenses are unlikely for a normal socius. 38 Collectoria

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 of inquisition resources.41 In fifteen years of Tuscan accounts no territorial vicariates are mentioned, a significant difference from the Dominican practice. However, it does seem that Pace’s first spell as vicar was mainly outside Florence.42 A similar incestuous pattern occurred in the Veneto. Francesco da Trissino appointed Antonio da Lucca as his vicar in 1288, was himself appointed Antonio’s vicar in 1295 and then succeeded him as inquisitor again later that year.43 The rotation of inquisition posts in the Marca Trevigiana through a tight clique of individuals has been posited as an important factor in the corruption scandals which beset the region at the turn of the century, leading eventually to the decision of Boniface VIII to imprison several inquisitors and remove responsibility for the inquisition in Padua and Vicenza from the Franciscan order. By contrast, the Dominicans appear not to have appointed ex-inquisitors to vicariates even where they were on the spot.44 Their experience was instead tapped by calling on them as sapientes.45 Although the Dominican inquisition was not scandal-free, the involvement of a much wider range of friars in the negotium fidei did help to keep new blood flowing and reduce the risk of bad habits developing. From this evidence, during the late thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries the role of the vicar was neither clear-cut in its powers nor consistent either regionally or in the way the two orders used the office to support their inquisitors. The vicar’s remit could sometimes be very limited, and (among the Dominicans) focused geographically. Contrary to expectations, there was no clear distinction between the roles of vicar, socius, friar notary and other friars assisting the inquisitor, all of whom were in some sense his agents. Indeed, it seems it was even possible for someone to act on behalf of the inquisitor without any indication of a formal delegation or procuration.46 Although the powers of vicars were constrained, according to legal consilia 41 Collectoria

250, fol. 9r; Collectoria 251, fol. 53r. he was continuing his activity against the rebels supporting the count of Montefeltro, mentioned by Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 366. 43 D’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, pp. 153–5, 171–3, doc 4. 44 Florio da Vicenza, Guido Capello’s predecessor as inquisitor in Bologna, retired to the Ferrara convent in about 1296. He is not recorded as vicar there, but did cling on to a lucrative role as controller of the goods of several Jewish girls, induced to convert and enter the nunnery of Santa Caterina. See Samaritani, ‘I frati Predicatori a Ferrara’, pp. 39–40; p. 35 for Florio’s personal share of their property. General biography: Parmeggiani, ‘L’inquisitore Florio da Vicenza’, pp. 681–99. 45 Of eight sapientes from within the order given a Christmas box by the inquisitor Ruggiero da Petriolo in Bologna in 1312, two were former inquisitors (Guido da Parma and Nicholaus Tascherius): Collectoria 133, fol. 167v. 46 Corsi, ‘Per la storia’, pp. 15–16, doc. 7, shows the guardian of Santa Croce acting in 1289 in the absence of the inquisitor, and apparently under the authority of the Twelve, to agree with the commune of Florence to apply funds from the office to build a wall by the Rubaconte bridge. 42 Perhaps

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum and to the De officio, this does not seem in practice to have hampered the inquisition’s work very much, possibly because relatively few cases actually involved criminal penalties. However, it is impossible to say whether the definition of offences was itself tailored to the vicars’ legal capacity. Perhaps most interesting in evaluating differences in the approach to inquisition between the two main mendicant orders is the difference both in the individuals they chose as vicars, and in the relationship between vicar and inquisitor. Irrespective of its place in the order’s cursus honorum, inquisition for the Franciscans was confined to a much tighter circle of individuals than it was for the Dominicans.

The role and powers of the socius Socius simply means companion, and some references to inquisitors’ socii mean just that – brothers who accompanied the inquisitor on his journeys, perhaps through difficult or dangerous terrain, or as a moral support.47 The focus here, however, is on the small band of individuals who, following papal prompting, were nominated by the orders to act as the inquisitor’s regular assistants for a period of time. We have seen that the Dominican order prescribed a consultation process for the choice of vicars. The socii of major office-holders in the Dominican order were however elected by ballot, either within the convent for those to assist the holders of conventual offices, or at the provincial chapter for those serving province-wide officers, such as the prior-provincial and the diffinitor. We do not know whether the same process was followed for inquisitors’ socii. By the last quarter of the thirteenth century, their selection almost certainly took place at or alongside the provincial chapter, or, in Lombardy from 1273, at an annual meeting of inquisitors, chaired by the prior-provincial with advice from the diffinitores, at which the inquisitors discussed between themselves issues relevant to the advancement of their office (‘ipsi [inquisitores] inter se conferre valeant de hiis que ad promotionem officii sui spectare videbuntur’). It seems likely that the agenda included staffing matters, as well as co-operation on cases, but it is unclear how names came to be put forward for selection.48 Socii did not necessarily come from the same convent as the inquisitor himself, suggesting they were either nominated by others or

47 Examples

of the more general meaning: Collectoria 133, fol. 71r, payment ‘in via de Cassine pro me et tribus sociis’ (1298, Tommaso da Gorzano); fol. 155v, payment for the return journey of a friar who had accompanied Ruggiero da Petriolo in 1311 from Bologna to Ferrara (‘fratri Bartholomeo de Magnanis qui associavit me usque Ferrariam, pro expensis in redditu suo usque Bononiam’). 48 Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 151, reference at the1273 Faenza chapter. The wider significance of this meeting is discussed in Chapter 7 below.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 spotted as likely candidates in the course of business.49 Judging by their dates of taking up post, socii in Franciscan Tuscany were also probably tapped at the provincial chapter. A natural assumption is that those chosen as socii were relatively young and less experienced, and perhaps being tested out for substantive office. However, this does not seem to be universally true of the socii of the mendicant orders’ post-holders, and it may therefore not be true for inquisitors’ socii either. The acts of Dominican provincial chapters show that there was no linear progression between socius and full office-holder in the order. In the Provincia Romana, for example, one Hugo Martellinus was named in 1259 as socius to the diffinitor. By 1268, he was founding prior of the new Rieti house, the sort of linear career track one might expect. But Salvo da Barga, twice socius to the diffinitor for the general chapters in 1273 and 1280 and diffinitor himself in 1290 and 1293 (when he was also prior of Perugia), is found in 1295 as once more socius to the diffinitor.50 Here, the socius was not a trainee but a mentor, a pattern comparable with the Franciscan use of ex-inquisitors as vicars discussed above. In inquisition accounts, most socii are given neither a place of origin nor a patronymic, making it difficult to track them. A rare example where an inquisitor’s socius can be traced further shows that those selected were not necessarily either junior or inexperienced. In 1312–13, Francesco da Pocapaglia, the very active inquisitor of western Piedmont, paid ‘fratri Paganino de Cuneo qui sociavit me et ivit pro officio, pro labore suo’ (‘fra Paganino da Cuneo, who accompanied me and travelled on behalf of the office, in return for his labour’). But in 1309–10, the same Paganino had been the socius of the prior-provincial, charged with collecting financial contributions from inquisitors in the run-up to the general chapter held at Piacenza.51 The prior-provincial’s socius was one of the most significant administrative posts in the order: the inquisitor’s socius was here, therefore, someone who had already made a mark. Inquisitors and their vicars were expected to be men of mature age, generally over forty. Their socii were probably somewhat younger, though old enough to be priests – over thirty, if the rules were observed. At the 1278 Milan chapter, inquisitors were admonished to accept as socii only friars who were religiosos et maturos (devout and mature): the admonishment might

49 Collectoria

249, fols. 62v, 69r; Collectoria 250, fols. 20rv, Giovanni da Pisa, new socius to Pace da Castelfiorentino from October 1322, arrived from the Pisa convent, bringing a gift of fish from the coast. Pace himself is not recorded as having visited Pisa at this point, so Giovanni was presumably nominated by the order. 50 Kaeppeli and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, pp. 24, 34, Hugo Martellinus; pp. 40, 55, 57, 96, 104, 116, 123, Salvo da Barga. 51 Collectoria 133, fol. 183v, 1312–13; fol. 177r, 1309–10, both instances while Francesco was himself in Cuneo.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum suggest some previous selections had not met these criteria. However, this was a period when appointments both to the priesthood and to posts in the order frequently breached the age guidelines, to judge by the number of exhortations on the subject. There is no reason to suppose the inquisition was significantly out of line with the rest of the order.52 The only socius whose age can be estimated reasonably accurately is Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, notary of the Bologna inquisition and socius to the inquisitor Guido da Parma. Assuming he was at least fifteen on admission as a notary in 1279, Francesco must have been forty or more by the time he took up the socius post in 1304. Vicars held office for a number of years, but among both Dominicans and Franciscans the appointment of the socius (or socii – some inquisitors had more than one) rarely lasted more than two years, and some less than that. Giovanni da Pisa, socius of Pace da Castelfiorentino, stayed only ten months, being replaced by Simone da San Giorgio when Pace stepped down from the inquisitorial post. In this case, we know that Simone had some involvement with the inquisition before his appointment.53 However, Leonardo, socius of Pace’s successor Michele d’Arezzo, served two years from September 1323 until September 1325, and the two socii of Accursio Bonfantini had overlapping terms of two to two and a half years.54 Manfredo da Parma, inquisitor in Bologna 1314–18, likewise had two overlapping socii, one (Guidocino) named over a span of thirty months in 1315–17 and the other (Francesco) in 1315 and 1316. Francesco was not only paid very handsomely but also undertook independent missions for the office: he may well be identical with Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, the long-standing friar notary and former socius, who would by then have been over fifty.55 By contrast, the Dominican Francesco da Pocapaglia names six (possibly

52 Kaeppeli,

‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 155, Milan chapter. The age requirement for inquisitors themselves was reaffirmed at the Council of Vienne in 1311 and embedded in the Clementines. The decisions of the Lombard chapter of 1271 in Ferrara, reinforced in 1272 and 1274 (pp. 148–9, 152) specified the minimum age for priesthood as thirty, after at least seven years in the order, plus further periods before outside confessions and the confessions of women could be heard. Age recommendations had also been made in 1258, 1261, 1264 and 1269. 53 Collectoria 250, fol. 20rv, Giovanni as former socius; payment for transport of his belongings back to his convent; Collectoria 249, fol. 66r, in April 1322, shoes for Simone da S Giorgio ‘because he serves the office’ (‘quia servivit officio’); Collectoria 250, fol. 21r, Simone’s first appearance as socius of the vicar in September 1322, payment for a pair of sandals (‘fratri Simoni socio dicti vicarii pro uno pario solarum’). 54 Collectoria 250, fols. 36v, 58r, Leonardo; 109r–47v, 113r–33v, Accursio’s socii, Giacomo and Bernardo, serve from April and October 1327 to September/October 1329 respectively. 55 Collectoria 133, fols. 132r, 137r, limits of mention of Guidocino; fols. 132v–34r (Francesco da Pocapaglia).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 seven) socii successively across the six-year period from 1308 to the end of 1314.56 This high turnover may be because his territorial remit was regarded as exceptionally demanding, or he may simply have been difficult to work for. A hint that his arrangements were unusual lies in the description of three of his socii not as socius meus, but as ‘frater […] qui sociavit me’ (‘brother […] who accompanies me’). This could suggest either a temporary arrangement, or that the persons concerned were – perhaps like Paganino da Cuneo – conferring a favour. There are hints that after leaving their posts and returning to their home convents, former socii remained connected with the inquisition and were called on for assistance. Although Pace da Castelfiorentino’s socius Giovanni left his post in July 1322 when Pace stepped down as inquisitor, we find him fifteen months later acting in his home convent of Pisa on behalf of the Florence office during a wide-scale alert after the escape of several fraticelli from the Santa Croce prison.57 This incident suggests that the rotation of socii was one way in which the orders spread awareness of inquisition work, and inquisitors built up a useful network of experienced contacts in different convents to act as eyes and ears. Unlike vicars, socii were fed, lodged and equipped at inquisition expense: they were treated in most respects as employees, on a par with the notaries and familiares. They were supplied with new clothing, often to a standard beyond the Rule. And, again unlike vicars, who were rarely remunerated, socii often received a salary or honorarium for their labours. The idea of a wage was frowned upon by the papal auditors, as is apparent from their marginal notations in sets of accounts, but in fact most inquisitors did make some sort of payment either annually or when the socius left office. In Bologna, Manfredo da Parma paid Guidocino a regular annual payment of ten lib bon ‘on account of his wage and labour’ (‘intuitu mercedis et laboris sue’). This was more than he paid his notaries. However, twice as much went to the other socius Francesco, reinforcing the supposition that he was identical with the friar notary Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, and thus capable of more complex work. In Piedmont, Francesco da Pocapaglia also remunerated most (though not all) of his socii. Among the Franciscans, however, payment was not usually expressed as a money wage, but as gifts of clothing, equipment or books, or sums for someone’s necessities (‘pro suis necessitatibus’). Remuneration by this route was sometimes extremely generous – more so than a wage would have been. Accursio Bonfantini’s socius Bernardo was rewarded with a bible, a breviary and its case and two collections of sermons, 56 Collectoria

133, fols. 176r, Alessandrino; 178r, Gualvano; 180r, Guglielmo da Allegnano; 182v, Baldo; 183v, Paganino da Cuneo; 184r, Guglielmo da Fossano; 186v, Guglielmo, possibly da Sorano. Guglielmo da Allegnano, Baldo and Paganino are referred to as ‘frater […] qui sociavit me’. 57 Collectoria 250, fol. 36v, September 1323.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum valued in total at more than twenty-two florins.58 All these items were queried by the auditors. The major religious function of the socius was to provide a companion and sounding-board for the inquisitor, able to give absolution when required and to assist in the formal, ritual aspects of the public theatre of inquisition. At a day-to-day level, his responsibilities alongside the rest of the inquisition team probably depended both on experience and on the particular inquisitor. In Florence, the socius was certainly extensively involved in writing up documents, and had his own seal of office and a lockable cella, a mark of prestige.59 There is some hard evidence of independent action on inquisition cases. In 1322, Giovanni da Pisa personally received a delegation of Eremitani friars, and soon after travelled to the pieve of S. Stefano a Campoli in the Val Pesana, along with the familiaris Borghino, presumably in connection with a case.60 The socius thus did not invariably travel with the inquisitor, which rather defeated their purpose as expressed by Salimbene. Giovanni’s presence is not mentioned when Pace da Castelfiorentino went to Pisa in May 1322 to deliver the sermo against Lapo de Gualanis, even though Pisa was his home town.61 By contrast, Dominican inquisitors in Lombardy such as Tommaso da Gorzano routinely record travelling expenses only as ‘pro me, socio et puero’.62 These differences may be an artefact of different styles of accounting, with the Florence accounts compiled by lay staff and concentrating on their fellows, or they may genuinely reflect a difference in the way the socius was used. The socius may have had some auxiliary role in the management of prisoners in the inquisition prison. In Bergamo, the socius Rufino slept in the domus inquisitionis rather than in the convent proper, and lost his belongings when the heretics imprisoned in the basement burned the building down. In Florence, some expenses of Accursio Bonfantini’s socius Giacomo are carried on the separate prison account, implying they were incurred for

58 Collectoria

133, fols. 132r–37r, three payments to Guidocino; 134r, Francesco; Collectoria 250, fol. 132v, gifts to Bernardo. There are thirteen previous payments for clothing and necessities. 59 Evidence of involvement by the socius in scribal activity: Collectoria 250, fols. 31r, purchase of ink and material for sealing; 38r, 41r, pen-sharpening knife, whetstone, pens and a temperatorium (ink-mixing pot) bought for one Florentine socius; Collectoria 251, fol. 71r, documents sealed with the socius’s seal. 60 Collectoria 249, fol. 66r, wine bought for the Eremitani brothers who visited the inquisitor’s socius (‘pro vino empto pro fratribus heremitatibus qui venierunt ad socium inquisitoris’); fol. 67r, expenses going to S. Stefano a Campoli. 61 Collectoria 249, fol. 66v, ‘pro expensis factis quando inquisitor ivit Pisis cum familia, equis et famulis ad dandum sermonem domini Lapi de Gualanis’. 62 Collectoria 133, fol. 75v, Tommaso da Gorzano (sample); 209v, Giovanni da Fontana, cost of staying at the Bergamo convent ‘cum socio, famulis et notario qui scripsit libros officii’.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 prison purposes.63 The socius was probably present during interrogations of witnesses and suspects and at the formalisation of inquisition acts, as appears from the records of Tommasino Malebranchi in the Marche.64 It is unfortunately not possible to confirm this for the Dominicans from the long run of 922 inquisition acts in Bologna, as they do not identify socii in the witness subscriptions.65 Our best description of the activities of a socius is the – hopefully atypical – account given of the doings of the corrupt brother Roberto, socius of Mino da San Quirico in Florence between 1332 and 1334. Witnesses called by the papal legate Pons Étienne describe Roberto as operating very much as Mino’s bagman: softening up his blackmail victims with frightening descriptions of the inquisitor’s supposed wrath towards them; collecting bribes offered in the hope that Roberto could persuade the inquisitor to ameliorate punishments; sniffing out suspects using his knowledge of his home town of Prato; and even acting as Mino’s pander. This unedifying account does not depict the socius acting in any truly religious role, but does suggest that those chosen as socii would have to have had the self-confidence to deal even with very senior clerics, such as the blackmailed abbot of San Pancrazio.66 The previous discussion indicated that only a small proportion of known inquisitors’ vicars went on to become inquisitors. A similar assessment for socii is near impossible because of the absence in most cases of identification beyond a first name. It is clear in Bologna that a number of friars who worked closely with the inquisition, such as Grimaldo da Saliceto, were building up the theological knowledge which would have been a requirement for an inquisitor. Together with his limited role as vicar, Grimaldo witnessed testimony or was deputed by the prior as a sapiens on nine occasions between 1299 and 1305. But he is not identified as a socius and cannot be traced further. Bonifacino dei Galluzzi appears on twelve occasions, including in 1307 as a sapiens, but is also not identified as a socius. Since his mother was the convicted heretic Rengarda, spared only because of the piety of her son, the inquisitor Guido Capello may have felt able to demand his services without yielding a formal position. However, Bonifacino’s relative Egidio dei Galluzzi, with a single appearance as an inquisition helper in 1299, did in fact progress 63 Collectoria

133, fols. 210v, 211v, Rufino and the prison break; Collectoria 250, fols. 109r, Jacobus socius in April 1327; 142v, payment ‘pro expensis fratris Jacob et dicto carcere’ in October 1329. 64 Fussenegger, ‘De manipulo’, pp. 81–3; Parmeggiani, ‘Inquisizione e frati Minori in Romagna’, pp. 119–20. Tommasino’s socius was Guglielmino da Cremona. 65 Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, the friar notary, self-identifies as socius. Some friars who appear frequently as witnesses in Bologna can be identified independently as the inquisitor’s vicars, but are not named as such. However, Franciscan acts from both Florence and the Marche describe witnesses as socii, where relevant. 66 Collectoria 251, fols. 79v–80r; 65v–6r, blackmail of abbots of San Pancrazio and San Salvo; 85v–86r, pandering, blackmail of abbot of Vallombrosa.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum to become an inquisitor in the late 1330s, one of the few recorded by the Dominican chronicler Ambrogio Taegio. Lamberto da Cingoli, inquisitor of Bologna from about 1321, does not appear in any capacity among the dozens of friars assisting the inquisition from 1296 to 1309. In Florence, Bernardo Ricci, socius of Accursio Bonfantini in 1327, was simply a friar of Santa Croce in 1347.67 The conclusion is that the post of socius to an inquisitor did not lead directly, if at all, to inquisitorial office. Socii probably progressed through other posts in their order, gaining experience and education, and eventually becoming inquisitors (if they did so) from the springboard of other positions. But socii who did not become inquisitors should not be dismissed as mere underlings. It is plain that Paganino da Cuneo, for example, was marked out in the Dominican order well before he became Francesco da Pocapaglia’s socius.

Inquisition and the cursus honorum If the posts of socius and vicar did not lead directly to inquisitorial office, what then was the course of an inquisitor’s career and his process of professional formation? Was he appointed after senior office in his order, or was the post of inquisitor ‘the first step’ in the cursus honorum of the order, as Caterina Bruschi proposes in connection with the Franciscans of Tuscany? She asserts that before the first decade of the fourteenth century, those accepting posts as inquisitors had no background in the order’s senior administrative offices, and that even if they then progressed to other offices, their internal career was despite the blight of their inquisitorial role, rather than because of it. It was, she says, only after the early Trecento (her tipping point seems to be the appointment of Antonio da Arezzo around 1316) that it became normal to become inquisitor after senior office elsewhere in the order. Examples she cites of those whose careers in the order are claimed to have blossomed only after becoming inquisitor include Salomone da Lucca, Caro da Arezzo, Alamanno da Lucca, Filippo da Lucca and Grimaldo da Prato, who between them held inquisitorial office in Tuscany for much of the period from 1281 to 1315.68 However, Salomone, Caro and Filippo became ministers-

67 Bonifacino

dei Galluzzi (in chronological order), ASOB, I, docs. 93, 44, 52–3, 64, 564; II 571, 791, 869 (as sapiens), 872. Egidio dei Galluzzi, ASOB, I, doc. 381, 1299; AGOP XIV 3.52/II, Ambrogio Taegio, Chronica amplior, fol. 133v, Egidio dei Galluzzi of Bologna as inquisitor, 1339. Lamberto da Cingoli: Biscaro,‘Dante a Ravenna’, pp. 89–90 has him inquisitor in Bologna by 1321; Reichert, Acta, p. 176 cites him in 1327. For Bernardo’s patronymic and presence at Santa Croce, see Panella, ‘Lapina da Firenze’, doc. 2 and notes. 68 Bruschi, ‘Inquisizione francescana in Toscana’, pp. 298–300.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 provincial immediately or shortly afterwards, whilst Grimaldo da Prato held office as minister-provincial of the March of Genoa between his two spells as Florentine inquisitor.69 Alamanno became guardian of Santa Croce on stepping down as inquisitor. Giovanni da Siena (not mentioned by Bruschi) was inquisitor in Siena certainly in 1297, custos there in the same year and inquisitor again by 1300; he might in fact have combined the two offices.70 It is unlikely that appointment to a post which led on swiftly to that of minister-provincial could be seen as a ‘first step’, or that the Franciscans would elect as minister-provincial someone who was untried in the order’s management roles. It is also worth noting that influence and prominence in the order did not only arise from tenure as lector, custos, guardian or minister-provincial. Scholarly and moral weight also counted. It is known, for example, that Caro da Arezzo (inquisitor in Florence certainly from 1289) was a master of theology, rewrote the Rule for the order of penitence and in 1277 was also one of the three named witnesses to Benedetto da Arezzo’s testimony about the granting of the Porziuncola indulgence, a vital economic issue for the order. This suggests that he was both prominent and well regarded before being attested as inquisitor.71 Andrea dei Mozzi, not discussed by Bruschi but inquisitor from around 1305 to 1310, was the nephew and namesake of the controversial bishop condemned by Dante, from a wealthy family close to the Angevins and (more importantly for this purpose), previously both custos of Santa Croce (1300–01) and regent lector of the Florence studium, teaching on Lombard’s sentences. He had both administrative and scholarly credentials.72 The problem with fully testing Bruschi’s thesis on her chosen ground of Tuscany is the paucity of detail about the careers of most Tuscan inquisitors in the second half of the thirteenth century: there is rich variation even

69 Ini,

‘Nuovi documenti’, p. 318 n. 5 for Grimaldo’s career. His appointment as minister-provincial in Genoa is not reported by Bruschi, who has him only as Florentine custos in 1305 and does not mention his first stint as inquisitor. 70 Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 331 n. 44; d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 350. Piron’s table at p. 341 shows movements between post-holders at Santa Croce over a decade. 71 For summaries of Caro’s career and involvement in rewriting the Rule of the order of penitence, d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 119 n. 30; M. d’Alatri, ‘Ordo Paenitentium ed eresia in Italia’, in Eretici e inquisitori, I, 45–63 (pp. 51–2); d’Alatri, ‘Nuove notizie’, p. 261. Acceptance of Benedetto da Arezzo’s testimony that an indulgence had been granted several decades previously for visitors to the Porziuncola chapel was financially important to the Franciscan order because there was no curial record of its granting. 72 Piron, ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 339, is however dismissive of his intellectual calibre; p. 341, as custos. For Andrea’s family background, S. Diacciati, ‘Andrea Mozzi’, DBI 77; P. E. Palendri, ‘Il vescovo Andrea dei Mozzi nella storia e nella leggenda dantesca’, Giornale Dantesco 32 (1929), 93–118. Some sources confuse the bishop and inquisitor of the same name.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum about their periods of office as inquisitor. Outside Tuscany, the thesis simply does not hold water, though it is true – as Parmeggiani points out – that the documented career progression of Franciscan inquisitors was not linear. From the very beginning of the order’s responsibilities in Italy those appointed as inquisitors included experienced and well-regarded individuals – as might be expected for a new task under the pope’s close eye. In Umbria, Andrea da Todi became inquisitor in 1259, after being guardian at the Tivoli convent in 1256. Within a year, he was wearing two hats as inquisitor in the Provincia Romana also.73 In 1265–66, Guido Principino was guardian of the convent of S. Francesco di Bologna, before becoming inquisitor in Rimini.74 In his closely researched article on the Franciscans’ involvement with inquisition in Romagna, Umbria and the Marche, Parmeggiani notes that a high proportion of Franciscan inquisitors in the late thirteenth century, both there and in the Veneto, came to office after having served at some point as lector. Many went on to become ministers-provincial, but the pattern of appointment was not all one way: Matteo da Chieti had already served as lector, minister-provincial and papal envoy to the East before being made inquisitor in 1297.75 Successive thirteenth-century popes attached high importance to the fight against heresy, and close personal contact between pope and individual inquisitors (both Dominican and Franciscan) is well attested. However ambivalent the Franciscan order was about involvement in inquisition, it is unlikely it would give an untested person access to a position of such influence. The chief inference from available data is that there was no single career track to the office of inquisitor, and that Bruschi’s ‘first step’ thesis is an artefact of the paucity of surviving evidence. There were, however, probably regional variations in career paths, driven partly by local needs, availability and varying periods in office. A similar conclusion holds for the Dominicans, though here there is no doubt that from a very early stage the office of inquisitor was intermixed with the holding of other teaching and administrative posts within the order – to the point that two general chapters in the 1290s forbade conventual priors from appointment as inquisitors or vicars, to avoid distraction from their main task. Peter of Verona himself – perhaps a special case – was conventual prior of Asti in 1248–49, in between his preaching and inquisitorial missions, and then moved to a similar post in Piacenza.76 Florio da Vicenza was prior of Vicenza from 1265 to 1270, moving to be sub-prior of the Venice convent until appointed inquisitor of Bologna in 1278 by the provincial of Lombardy, Bonanno da Ripa. Bonanno himself had been vicar to the Bologna inquisitor 73 D’Alatri,

Inquisizione francescana, pp. 50–3. Consilia, pp. 83–8, giving other bibliography. 75 Parmeggiani, ‘Inquisizione e frati Minori in Romagna’, pp. 120–2. For Matteo da Chieti, see d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, pp. 146–7 n. 51; also Chapter 2 above. 76 Prudlo, Martyred Inquisitor, pp. 54–5. 74 Parmeggiani,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Guglielmo da Cremona in 1276, before his election to the provincialate a year later.77 Meanwhile, Florio continued in office as inquisitor till at least 1293, while at the same time (1287) directing the Dominican studium at Bologna.78 There was no grade hierarchy here, just horses for courses. We are best informed about the careers of the Dominican inquisitors operating in and around Bologna. In the first two decades of the fourteenth century, there was a particularly complex rotation of posts involving priors, inquisitors, provincials and teachers in the various studia. We saw that Nicholaus Tascherius was prior of the major convent in Bologna, whilst at the same time – despite capitular prohibitions – acting as vicar to Guido Capello in 1303. He became inquisitor in 1305, and together with his predecessor, Guido da Parma, is found in 1312 still connected with the inquisition as a sapiens.79 Ruggiero da Petriolo, himself previously conventual prior in Bologna, was appointed inquisitor in November 1311 by Corrado da Camerino ‘qui erat provincialis in provincia nostra et nunc similiter est ad provinciale officium iterum transumptus’.80 Scarcely eighteen months later, Ruggiero took over as prior-provincial of lower Lombardy, while Corrado stepped down for a well-earned break teaching moral philosophy at the Bologna studium. In 1316, Ruggiero in his turn appointed Corrado as inquisitor of Ferrara, Modena and Reggio, where he served till at least 1318. Corrado’s classes at the studium were taken over by Lamberto da Cingoli, who became inquisitor in Bologna around 1320.81 It would be wrong to suppose from these movements within a tight geographical circle that inquisitors always remained in a single locality. An interesting example is Manfredo da Parma, attested as Guido Capello’s co-inquisitor in Bologna between 1299 and 1303 and sole inquisitor of a diminished Bologna office from 1314 to 1318 (after the division of the Lombard province into two parts led to a separate inquisition base in Ferrara). In between, Manfredo served as prior of the Venice convent, and in 1312 was assigned as vicar-general of the Dominican province of Hungary, then in 77 D’Amato,

I Domenicani a Bologna, I, 199. I Domenicani a Bologna, I, 200; Parmeggiani, ‘Florio da Vicenza’, pp. 681–3. The two differ over Florio’s dates as prior; the text above follows Parmeggiani. 79 Collectoria 133, fol. 167v, Christmas bonus to Nicholaus and Guido da Parma among eight consiliarii, including the lector of the convent. 80 Collectoria 133, fol. 163v, ‘who was the provincial in our province and now again is translated to provincial office’. Nunc means 1312, when Corrado was provincial during the chapter at Ferrara. Also see Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 172. Bruschi, ‘Familia inquisitionis’, para. 54, accidentally creates a hybrid inquisitor, Tommaso da Camerino. She means either Corrado da Camerino or Tommaso da Gorzano. 81 Collectoria 133, fols. 154v, Corrado’s appointment details; 157r, payment to Lamberto da Cingoli for taking Corrado’s classes when he became inquisitor. Corrado was also inquisitor in Aquileia at some earlier point: see repayment of loan to ‘fratri Ugolino predecessori nostro Aquilegie’, Collectoria 133, fol. 158v (late 1316). 78 D’Amato,

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum some turmoil. This proved to be a bed of nails, and the next general chapter at Metz in 1313 was forced to depose from office the prior of one Hungarian convent because he maltreated Manfredo and his colleague and attempted to deceive them.82 Perhaps nomination to the Bologna seat was thought suitable compensation. Important careers for mendicant friars did not always lie within the order alone. Inquisitors could progress in other ways, both before and after holding office. Personal connections with the Curia and the pope himself were an alternative route into inquisition and beyond, as with Florasio da Vicenza (chaplain to Urban IV), Guido Capello (familiaris of Benedict XI) and Florio da Verona. Some inquisitors went on to be bishops: Guido (again), the Franciscan Alessandro Novello da Treviso and two successive inquisitors of Verona. After a very brief spell as prior-provincial, Guido was elevated to the see of Ferrara in 1304, where he was maligned as ‘ille maledictus episcopus’ (‘that cursed bishop’); Alessandro became bishop of Feltre and Belluno in 1298, a couple of years after his tenure as inquisitor in the Veneto. In the 1270s, the Verona inquisitor Timidio Spongati moved across in 1275 to take over the episcopal chair, whence he directed the attack on the heretics of Sirmione, and was succeeded as inquisitor in 1276 by Filippo Bonacolsi da Mantova, eventually appointed as bishop of Trento in 1289 after refusing another see. As we have seen, he drew much of his inquisitorial team after him.83 There were more ways to advance in the Church than within the orders.

Conclusion There is still much that remains uncertain about the ways in which inquisitors acquired and used vicars and socii – who could sometimes be the same individual (as with Francesco da Pocapaglia’s aide, Galvano). Their roles and powers were often indistinct. Both were important to the execution of the inquisition’s business, but vicars in particular were used in different ways by the Franciscan and Dominican orders. In Tuscany, the Franciscan deployment of ex-inquisitors as vicars to their successors could at one level be interpreted as providing mentors and guidance. But it could also be an unhealthy relationship, keeping power within a tiny circle. In other Franciscan regions, inquisition posts were already kept within a tight clique before 1300, though it is not clear how far vicariates were involved. By contrast, the Dominicans were generally more open, using both territorial vicariates to extend the 82 Acta

Capitulorum Generalium, II, pp. 61, 66–7. biography of Guido Capello is in Paolini, L’eresia, pp. 8–11; as the unloved bishop of Ferrara, see Biscaro, ‘Dante a Ravenna’, p. 87, citing Chronicon Estense. For Filippo Bonacolsi, see career summary in d’Alatri, ‘Una sentenza’, p. 219 n. 1. For Timidio and his role at Sirmione, see Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo, pp. 76–81.

83 A partial

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 inquisitor’s reach in areas he did not visit frequently and academically qualified friars for specific tasks close to the inquisitor’s home base. The use of conventual priors as vicars, despite capitular prohibitions, is something which needs further investigation. It was, as the order recognised, a diversion from their main task, though it was certainly convenient during vacancies. Were there downsides to the use of vicars? The reluctance of the guardian of the Franciscan convent at Riva sul Garda in 1332 to follow up the suspicions of local officiales, for fear of overstepping his office of vicar to the inquisitor in Trento, illustrates one potential risk. Timidity was probably compounded by continuing uncertainty over exactly what a vicar could do on his own authority. It is also noticeable from the Bologna Acta how many of the high-profile heretics processed had started out being questioned by vicars. This could have been a deliberate ploy by the inquisitor to allow the vicar to break the ice, or it could indicate that vicars were too inexperienced to deal effectively with committed heretics. The inquisitors’ socii were not mere juniors, but (as confidantes, facilitators and extra clerical manpower) likely to be as significant in the inquisition’s administrative structure as the socii of other office-holders were to them. Inquisition socii were also sometimes experienced friars temporarily assigned to the inquisition. When they stood down and returned to their home convents, they potentially provided a network of contacts knowledgeable about the negotium fidei, on which the inquisitor could call in an emergency. There is some evidence from Florence and Pisa that this occurred. Was it more widespread? Neither vicar nor socius can be identified as a training route for future inquisitors. Some inquisitors did have experience as vicars, but it was not an invariable pathway. Insofar as there was a single preparatory post to gain the appropriate intellectual formation, it was likely to be that of lector, though not necessarily as the directly preceding post. In fact, inquisitors had a great variety of different experiences before and after taking up office. Some Lombard Dominicans spent time as co-inquisitors alongside a more experienced colleague (for instance, Anselmo d’Alessandria with Pagano da Lecco in the 1270s), but by the later thirteenth century it was normal for inquisitors to work independently, even if they frequently consulted colleagues.84 This perhaps reflects the more solid establishment over time of the officium inquisitionis, with experienced lay personnel able to provide back-up. The thirst for guidance manuals may also perhaps be connected with solo working by inquisitors. Caterina Bruschi’s suggestion that there was a change in the standing of Franciscan inquisitors within their order in the first decade of the fourteenth century seems untenable even in Tuscany. It is not true elsewhere or among

84 For

Pagano da Lecco, see Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 92.

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Vicars, socii and the cursus honorum the Dominicans. However, information about the early history of those who became inquisitors in the later thirteenth century is deficient. There was considerable variation in the length of time spent as inquisitor by different individuals, and this clearly affected overall career histories.85 The most surprising aspect of this analysis is the cloudiness attached to the actual powers of vicars and socii, with papal privileges for those assisting the inquisition apparently directed at a wide cadre of helpers within the orders. How these were deployed, and the general relationship with the orders, is examined in the next chapter.

85 See

discussion at pp. 61–2 above.

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7 The cuckoo in the nest? Inquisitors and their orders

The relationship between medieval inquisitors and their orders was multilayered and sometimes tense. Inquisitors occupied an independent office, in whose affairs their superiors were forbidden to interfere, but they were not detached from their order. Many had already been senior officers in its hierarchy, and at the end of their term of office (itself determined by the order), they expected to return to similar posts. The provincial ministers and priors who appointed them were their colleagues. They were based in local convents, and relied on the order to supply the vicars, socii and much other assistance without which they could not function effectively. Despite their wide powers and freedoms in office, inquisitors also remained friars subject to their order’s rules and discipline. The combination of independence in office and obedience outside it was both awkward for individuals to reconcile at a personal level, and hard to square with the needs of the job.1 The Franciscan and Dominican orders agonised in different ways over their role in inquisition and the extent of control exercised over how their inquisitors did their jobs. Both were committed to opposing heresy, but they often struggled to strike an effective balance between the growing demands of the inquisitorial cuckoo and their wider mission. Tensions played out at many levels, among them demands on space in convents, calls on the time and help of brother friars, concern over the handling of money flowing in from confiscations and penalties and fear at the impact of heavy-handed inquisition decisions on the mendicants’ relationships with the local community. In the last quarter of the thirteenth century, a belated regulatory attempt was made to impose accounting control over inquisitors’ spending and require them to submit accounts at provincial chapters, something which had long been standard for offices of the order itself. These measures interacted rather uneasily with the parallel and intermittent demands of the papal Camera, which began in the 1290s. Inquisitorial excesses were formally condemned, 1 Some

of these issues are helpfully explored, though for Provence, in Grieco, ‘A Dilemma of Obedience and Authority’.

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Inquisitors and their orders but the seriousness of the orders’ control effort must be doubted because of the many examples where the orders’ hierarchies ignored or were complicit in financial misbehaviour. At the same time, the orders themselves developed a heavy reliance on financial input from inquisitors. Inquisition contributions supported building projects, the routine costs of provincial chapters and the lifestyle of senior office-holders. Such entanglements unavoidably compromised the orders’ role in standard-setting. By the late thirteenth century, the mutual dependency between inquisitor and order was much greater than is commonly supposed. Inquisitors made enormous use of convent services to support their role, but they also paid handsomely for them. Their financial resources enabled them to exercise considerable patronage over both ordinary friars and senior office-holders. Many conventual friars were involved in inquisition activities, and rewarded for their assistance. This generosity was probably not forgotten when elections to posts in the order came around.2 Far from standing at arm’s length from inquisition, the orders’ hierarchies took sometimes shameless advantage of inquisitors’ resources to bolster their finances and pursue pet projects. This interdependence challenged the concept of inquisitorial autonomy in matters of office. Although in the thirteenth century battles were fought to secure formal acknowledgement of independence, by the early fourteenth century even the most peripatetic inquisitors had regular contacts with senior officials of the order at conventual, provincial and national level. The circumstances sometimes appear similar to a visitation. It is not easy to determine whether the prelates of the orders directly influenced particular inquisition investigations, but they certainly had the opportunity to do so through their frequent presence on advisory panels considering both individual cases and points of law. By the early fourteenth century, inquisition was deeply entwined with the life and economy of the orders, as it had long been into their career structures. The holding of dual offices exemplified this trend.

Evolving mendicant attitudes to their inquisitorial role The starting point for analysis of the interaction between orders and inquisitor has to be the orders’ general attitude to the practice of inquisition, as distinct from the defeat of heresy. This is problematic to determine because of the near-silence of many of the orders’ chronicles and administrative records on inquisition matters. Does this arise from a distaste for inquisition, or a belief that it was external to the orders themselves – not truly ‘their’ story? Even Peter of Verona is initially presented as a preacher against heresy rather

2 For

the buying of votes for Dominican offices through gifts, see Galvano, Cronaca Estravagante, p. 31.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 than an inquisitor. As Prudlo notes, ‘it was not until the end of the thirteenth century that the Dominican Order began to consider inquisitorial work as a central component of its mission, and its friars began to extol their saints as inquisitors.’ Part of this re-evaluation was the stream of Dominican thought which began – incorrectly – to present Dominic as the first inquisitor.3 Neither inquisition nor individual inquisitors feature strongly in early Dominican sources or accounts of notables. The sixteenth-century Milanbased chronicler Ambrogio Taegio, drawing on earlier records including the fourteenth-century chronicles of Galvano Fiamma, names just nine Lombard inquisitors, including Peter of Verona, in the full century from 1240 onwards. Two other notables (Guido Capello da Vicenza and the master-general Barnaba da Vercelli) had significant careers as inquisitors, which go unmentioned.4 Six of Taegio’s references are in passing, in connection either with episcopal appointments or death after elevation to another post. The only substantive mentions of inquisition are to the appointment of Guido da Sesto as first inquisitor of Lombardy in 1234 (and later, erroneously, to his death in 1240); to Florio da Vicenza’s contretemps in Parma in 1279, when the Dominican convent was burnt out, brothers killed and the order ejected from the city; and to the largely unsung murder of Pagano da Lecco in 1277.5 Contemporary necrologies are equally close-lipped. The necrology of the large Dominican convent of Santa Maria Novella in Florence began to be compiled in 1280. After a retrospective section back to 1225, it then contemporaneously records obituaries, with career highlights, of all members of the convent. Inquisition responsibility in Tuscany itself lay with the Franciscans after 1254, but friars originating from Santa Maria Novella spread far and

3 Prudlo,

Martyred Inquisitor, pp. 100–2 for the late start to the presentation of both Peter of Verona and Dominic as inquisitors. The thoughtful analysis by Caldwell Ames, Righteous Persecution, pp. 94–159, emphasises early ambivalence towards both Dominic and inquisition. Bernard Gui in his histories of the order and to some extent Galvano Fiamma are exceptions to the silence of chroniclers. 4 AGOP XIV, 3.52/II (Chronica amplior), fols. 2v, Guido da Vicenza (1303); 40v, Niccolò Tascherio of Bologna (1305); 62rv, 95v, Barnaba da Vercelli (1311, 1324); 97v, Pace da Vedano (1324); 130v–1r, Andalo da Padova (1339); 133v, Egidio dei Galluzzi of Bologna (1339). AGOP XIV, 3.53 (Chronica brevis), fols 27v, 35v, Peter of Verona and Raynerio Sacconi (1241, 1251); 23v–24r, 27v, Guido da Sesto of Milan (1234, 1240); 62r, Pagano da Lecco of Como (1277); 64v, Florio [da Vicenza] at Parma (1279). 5 Prudlo, Martyred Inquisitor, pp. 36–7 notes errors in the Milanese chronicle tradition. Guido da Sesto was still alive for the trial of Peter of Verona’s murderers in 1253. Two references to Peter’s appointments as prior of Asti and Como are dated incorrectly. For the background to Pagano da Lecco’s death, E. Pedrotti, I Venosta, Castellani di Bellaguarda (Milan, 1952). Salimbene and other chronicles, including Taegio, record the Dominicans’ expulsion from Parma, which is also mentioned by Paolo Sarpi, Discorso dell’origine, forma, leggi ed uso dell’Ufficio dell’Inquisizione nella città e dominio di Venetia (Venice, 1638), p. 16. Also see Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 92; Parmeggiani, ‘L’Inquisitore Florio da Vicenza’, pp. 684 et seq.

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Inquisitors and their orders wide. Though some modest careers are noted, between 1225 and 1400 only two are mentioned as inquisitors: the well-known Ruggiero Calcagni in the 1240s, and in 1363 a Lotario degli Ubaldini, who had moved to Bologna. It is possible that inquisitors were only chosen from home convents in areas for which the Dominicans had responsibility (itself an interesting suggestion). But it seems more likely that service with the inquisition was blanked out of the order’s CVs.6 The limited thirteenth-century references to heresy inquisition in both orders’ administrative records make it hard to discern evolving attitudes. The chapter records of the Dominican Provincia Romana span a full century from 1243 to 1344. Brothers are enjoined as early as 1250 to be more active against heresy, but the first actual mention of inquisitors against heresy is over forty years later, in 1291.7 Major changes affecting Dominican inquisition responsibilities in Italy, such as the 1254 partition of duties with the Franciscans and their re-acquisition for Padua and Vicenza in 1302, apparently troubled neither the general chapter nor the provincial chapters of Lombardy and the Provincia Romana. Inquisitorial appointments are not listed among personnel moves (probably because they were not strictly appointments within the order itself), and the first identified presence of an inquisitor at the general chapter is as late as 1321. Even the destruction of the Parma convent warrants only a context-free injunction to care for its displaced friars.8 Inquisitors and their special concerns become visible only slowly. The general chapter at Toulouse in 1258 ordered ‘fratres inquisitores et alii qui gerunt negocia regis’ only to ride in difficult country or where there is risk, riding normally being forbidden to Dominicans.9 Inquisitio was a wider function than heresy alone, but with the recent murder of Peter of Verona, this admonition possibly had heresy inquisitors in mind. The first unambiguous general chapter reference to heresy inquisitors is only in 1275, at Bologna, instructing them to take part in provincial chapters. The clear implication is that there had been opposition to their attendance. For the first time here we get a glimpse of the order coming to grips with inquisition.10

6 Necrologia

di S. Maria Novella, ed. S. Orlandi, 2 vols. (Florence, 1955), I, 4 (n. 14), 101 (n. 414). Though itself in Tuscany, the convent fell within the Dominican Provincia Romana, which had responsibility for inquisition in the Regno. 7 Kaeppeli and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, p. 10, Orvieto chapter, 1250, ‘quod fratres […] magis studeant contra hereticos’ (‘brothers should be more active against heretics’); p. 98, Spoleto chapter, 1291, heresy inquisitors exempt from universal confiscation of riding gear. 8 Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 157, Bologna chapter, 1280. 9 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, I, p. 94, ‘brother inquisitors and others who carry out the king’s business’, Toulouse chapter (1258). 10 Ibid., p. 181, ‘Inquisitors of heretical depravity shall take part in provincial chapters’, (‘Inquisitores heretice pravitatis capitulis provincialibus intersint’), Bologna chapter (1275).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 The reason for this general ordinance was, almost certainly, to reverse a decree made at the Lombard provincial chapter in Faenza in 1273, one of three measures in the 1270s which reflect internal tension in Lombardy between inquisitors and the order. In 1272, the provincial chapter held at Bologna had instructed omnibus inquisitoribus (again a term broader than heresy inquisitors) not to send any vicars to a convent without the advice of the prior and elders of that convent. At Faenza in 1273, heresy inquisitors were ordered to meet annually in a session chaired by the prior-provincial ‘and confer between themselves on matters to do with the advancement of the office’. They were not to attend the provincial chapter itself unless summoned by the prior for a specific reason. This provision on the one hand placed inquisitors’ discussions under the provincial’s control, and on the other barred them from an ex officio place in deciding the general business of the order. Finally, at Milan in 1278, a clutch of admonitions directed at heresy inquisitors concerned the need to accept only mature and religious socii and, again, to take advice from the conventual hierarchy in appointing vicars. Another provision urges that brothers should help inquisitors, not impede them.11 There are no further allusions to inquisition in the surviving records of either the greater Lombard province or of the post-1303 province of lower Lombardy.12 The inference from the admonitions in 1272 and 1278 is that Lombard inquisitors had made unwise and inconvenient choices of socii and vicars, and thereby ruffled the feathers of conventual priors. More difficult to interpret is the intervening measure on inquisitorial conferences. Establishing a regular meeting to discuss relevant matters clearly signals growing institutionalisation, acknowledging both inquisitors’ common interests and the desirability of collaboration against mobile heretics. But why does it emanate from a provincial chapter which had previously steered almost entirely clear of matters bearing on the inquisition? Was it an attempt to manage inquisitors’ activities under the chairmanship of the prior-provincial, notwithstanding the prohibition on direct intervention? Was it aimed at discussing staffing and succession planning, given their bearing on the career moves of others? Or was it intended to distance inquisition matters from those of the order, by restricting inquisitors’ voice and influence at the provincial chapter itself? Parmeggiani sets the 1273 ordinance firmly in the context of a developing normative approach to inquisition jurisprudence, an alternative to obtaining consilia from legal experts. In the overall picture, this is surely correct, but it ignores the internal politics of the order itself and the role

11 Kaeppeli,

‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 151, ‘et ipsi inter se conferre valeant de hiis que ad promotionem officii sui spectare videbuntur’, Faenza (1273); pp. 149–50, approval of vicars, Bologna chapter (1272); p. 155, choice of socii and vicars, Milan chapter (1278). See Chapter 6 above for other discussion. 12 The greater Lombard provincial chapter records end in 1293. For lower Lombardy, they survive for 1309–12.

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Inquisitors and their orders given to the prior-provincial.13 An alternative possibility is that the measures were prompted by the inquisitor-general, Gian Gaetano Orsini, who sought to improve inquisitors’ co-ordination. At almost exactly this time, Orsini instructed Italian inquisitors to share details of their arrests with French colleagues, a protocol which we can observe Lombard inquisitors such as Tommaso da Gorzano still obeying more than thirty years later.14 The 1275 Bologna general chapter’s swift insistence that inquisitors should indeed attend provincial chapters suggests that some did see the 1273 Faenza move as an attempt to downgrade inquisitors’ influence. In the 1290s, when we begin to have financial accounts, it is clear that Lombard inquisitors now regularly attended both provincial and, frequently, general chapters. From at least the early fourteenth century, they also held private gatherings, both alongside the chapter and on other occasions. There is evidence that the priorprovincial did call the community of inquisitors together for discussions. He might well also have chaired meetings of the sort envisaged at Faenza.15 The focus of Franciscan interest in inquisition is slightly different (and administrative records even sparser). A flood of questions put to successive popes from 1254 onwards demonstrates uncertainty over the order’s new role. The appointment of Orsini, as both inquisitor-general and then protector of the order a little later, could have been intended as a protective buffer by a beleaguered pontiff. By the 1270s, however, the particular bone of contention for the Franciscan order was the imposition of money penalties by inquisitors, something which conflicted head-on with mendicant ideals of poverty. The Council of Narbonne in 1244 had advised Dominicans to refrain from imposing money penalties ‘for the integrity of your order’ (‘propter vestri

13 Parmeggiani,

Consilia, pp. xiii–xiv. Inquisizione francescana, p. 98 n. 146, for the traditional chronology of Orsini, cardinal of S. Niccolò in carcere Tulliano, who became pope as Nicholas III in 1277. Parmeggiani, Consilia, p. xx, antedates his appointment as inquisitorgeneral to 1260. See Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 574–5, doc.11, for Orsini’s instruction to Italian inquisitors, issued in mid-June 1273. The month of the Faenza chapter is uncertain, but provincial chapters normally occurred in a June–September bracket. A good example of the exchange of information between inquisitors is at Collectoria 133, fols. 76rv, 82v. After capturing several heretics in Genoa in October 1302, Tommaso da Gorzano sent a nuncius to Toulouse and two more to Rome, and exchanged missives with the prior of Genoa. When the nuncius returned from Toulouse in January 1303, the heretics Michele and Arnaldo of Toulouse were seized in Genoa. Michele and his daughter were escorted to Toulouse in April 1303, Arnaldo remaining in prison. The inquisitor of Toulouse later recompensed Tommaso for his expenses. 15 The provincial (the ex-inquisitor Guido da Cocconato) called all inquisitors to Milan in December 1304: Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 253; Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, p. 526, accounts of Lanfranco da Bergamo; Collectoria 133, fol. 79r, Tommaso da Gorzano goes to Milan ‘to the provincial and other inquisitors, on office business’ (‘ad provincialem et ad alios inquisitores pro factis officii’). 14 D’Alatri,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 ordinis honestatem’), but the practice nevertheless remained widespread.16 At the 1272 general chapter at Lyons, the Franciscans went further by completely prohibiting their inquisitors from imposing financial penalties: Item ministri, in quorum provinciis inquisitio fit contra haereticam pravitatem, instituant inquisitores viros discretos et maturos et eis ex parte domini Joannis, qui praest officio, districte iniungant, quod poenitentiam vel poenam pecuniariam non imponant […]17

Despite the signal that Orsini, in his role as protector, had backed the new constitution (and may indeed have prompted it), there was immediate resistance. The Florentine inquisitor quickly sought legal advice on whether inquisitors were bound to obey. The jurists’ effective conclusion was that they were not. Since the panel of consultants included both the Tuscan ministerprovincial and a former provincial of the Provincia Romana, it was clear that support for the constitution was lacking among those who had to administer it. The order caved in and by 1292, the fiat had been downgraded to mere advice to ministers-provincial – they should persuade inquisitors (‘et eis suadeant’) instead of strictly forbid them (‘districte iniungant’).18 The Lyons council did however score one success. It imposed a requirement for inquisitors to submit financial accounts at the provincial chapter, as other office-holders were already required to do. It was not until twenty years later, at the general chapter at Montpellier in 1294, that the Dominicans brought themselves to do the same.19 Effective implementation of both measures was, however, a different story. These incidents may suggest that in tussles between inquisitors and orders, it was largely the inquisitors who won, asserting their freedom to choose types of punishment against the wishes of their order and imposing their presence on the order’s formal gatherings. But in the longer view, inquisitors were steadily becoming absorbed within the routine of the order. By the late 16 Text:

Parmeggiani, Consilia, p. 28, doc. 5 (Q XVII Ut fratres Predicatores a pecuniariis poenitentiis abstineant). Evolving policy: Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 471–3. Discussion: Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, mainly pp. 453–65. One reason for the increasingly heavy use of financial penalties was that the proceeds went entirely into inquisition coffers and were not shared with communes. 17 ‘Ministers in whose provinces there is inquisition against heretical depravity shall appoint discreet and mature men as inquisitors, and on behalf of the lord Giovanni, who rules over the office, shall strictly forbid them from imposing money penances or penalties […]’. A. Callebaut, ‘Le chapitre général de 1272 célebré a Lyon’, AFH 13 (1920), 305–17, argues that the dates and business of two separate chapters at Lyons in 1272 and 1274 were confused and conflated. D’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 22 n. 69, is an accessible source of the original text. 18 Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. 99–100, doc. 20; Oliger, ‘Alcuni documenti’, p. 194 for text and dating (to before 1278). Modification of statute: Bihl, ‘Statuta generalia Ordinis’, p. 77. 19 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, I, p. 273.

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Inquisitors and their orders thirteenth century, there are signs of a new determination to impose discipline on them, not only as friars but also in the conduct of their office. In 1291, in the most explicit criticism to date, the Dominican general chapter at Palencia sharply warned inquisitors to do better, on pain of removal from office. It also forbade dual office-holding between inquisitors and priors.20 The ban was reiterated at Metz in 1298, with the added explanation that it was to ensure conventual priors did not short-change their convents by taking on extra appointments which required them to be frequently absent. The provision was seen as sufficiently important to be detailed in both versions of Taegio’s chronicle, and it is very likely that it was in fact aimed at Guido da Cocconato, inquisitor of Milan. Over this period, Guido combined the offices of inquisitor and prior of San Eustorgio, and of inquisitor and priorprovincial of Lombardy. As late as 1304 Guido was still both inquisitor and prior-provincial (‘inquisitore et provinciali’). He was not unique: we saw in Chapter 6 that in 1303 Nicholaus Tascherius acted as the inquisitor’s vicar whilst prior of Bologna. The inability of the order to prevent dual officeholding even in high-profile cases illustrates both the limits of its control, and the extent of the inquisition’s absorption into its business. But these instances also show the good sense of the injunction: Galvano Fiamma records that Guido had to step down from the conventual priorate because of a conflict between his role, as prior, as a judge in a contested case appealed to the pope, and his role, as inquisitor, as a witness in the same case.21 Notwithstanding the introduction of accounting requirements, inquisitorial excess and financial malfeasance became a problem in Italy for both Franciscans and Dominicans by the start of the fourteenth century. (As documented by Given and Friedlander, clashes in southern France began in the 1280s and reached a peak in 1299–1305.)22 As a result of long-standing and serious financial malpractice, and following a joint complaint by city and bishop, the Franciscans in 1302 and 1303 suffered first the humiliation of the imprisonment of their inquisitors by Boniface VIII, then the loss of control of

20 Acta

Capitulorum Generalium, I, p. 261, Palencia 1291, ‘Inquisitores heretice pravitatis officium suum solito diligencius exequantur, alioquin per priores provinciales corrigantur, vel ab officio penitus amoveantur. Proviso quod priores actu non fiant inquisitores, et facti ab altero duorum officiorum, prout cicius fieri poterit, absolvantur.’ (‘Inquisitors of heretical depravity shall carry out their office with due scrupulousness, otherwise they will be corrected by the priors-provincial or removed from office completely. Providing that the priors by this act do not [themselves] become inquisitors, and if they are appointed to both offices by another person, they shall lay it down as quickly as possible.’) 21 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, I, pp. 289–90, Metz (1298); AGOP, XIV 3.52, Chronica amplior, fol. 14r; AGOP, XIV 3.53, Chronica brevis, fol. 78r. Guido da Cocconato’s dual roles in 1297 and 1303–04: Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 265–6 (reporting comment by Galvano), 253, 257; Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, p. 525. 22 Given, Inquisition and Medieval Society; Friedlander, The Hammer of the Inquisition.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Padua and Vicenza to the Dominicans. In 1307–08, Franciscan and Dominican inquisitors and ex-inquisitors were both subjected to further investigation by the papal legate, Guillaume de Balait. Mariano d’Alatri has argued that these events owed more to papal efforts to change established practice on the division of confiscated goods than to deep-rooted corruption. This may be a factor but it is hard to read the evidence against the Veneto inquisitors and feel that (as d’Alatri almost claims) they were the victims of a libel.23 With this background, it is puzzling that there is a resounding silence in Dominican records on inquisition affairs between 1294 and the general chapter at Florence in 1321. Under the mastership of the theologian Hervé de Nédellec, the chapter then launched a broadside against inquisitorial excesses ‘whether in the method of conducting business, in the extortion of money or in ostentation in food, dress and observance of the rule’ (‘sive in modo procedendi sive in extorsione pecuniarum seu eciam in pompis et victu et vestitu et observancia regulari’). Priors-provincial (some of them former inquisitors) were charged to investigate inquisitors’ behaviour – both personal and in the conduct of their office – and to dismiss notable backsliders.24 Importantly, the chapter also ruled that inquisitors must render accounts of their personal possessions to their conventual prior, as well as office accounts to the priorprovincial. This statement was the first explicit pronouncement in nearly a century that Dominican inquisitors did not have a personal space free of the order’s control: they were subject to the same rules as other friars in respect of personal matters, such as obedience to the conventual prior, while matters of the inquisition office were reserved to the provincial.25 This condemnation might perhaps be a very swift reaction to John XXII’s Exigit ordinis of 2 May 1321, addressed to the Lombard inquisitors, which criticised inquisitorial misbehaviour in Bologna, particularly around the granting of arms to unsuitable people. It might also have been prompted by feedback from the rolling papal audit of Lombard inquisitors, still taking place under the supervision of Arnaldo, bishop of Bologna.26 But another 23 D’Alatri,

‘Due inchieste’, p. 233; on the wider issue, see d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’; Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza; Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum; Biscaro, ‘Marca Trevisana’. 24 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, II, p. 134, condemnation of excesses, Florence (1321). The provision on extortion of money was reconfirmed at Vienna in 1322 and ordered to be ‘inviolably observed’ (p. 141). 25 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, II, p. 130, ‘Declaramus autem, quod inquisitores heretice pravitatis de personalibus priori suo conventuali, sed de pertinentibus ad officium priori provinciali racionem reddere teneant.’ 26 For Exigit ordinis, see Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 201–2. The chapter was held just after Ascension, which in 1321 fell in mid-May. It is not clear whether the master could yet have known of the bull, or of John’s intention to issue it. For the audit, see Collectoria 133, fols. 129 et seq. It seems to have remained uncompleted, perhaps because Arnaldo fell out of favour, and the extent of any rolling feedback to the Dominican hierarchy is unknown.

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Inquisitors and their orders reason to remind inquisitors of the need for high standards may lie in the same chapter’s examination of the beliefs of a group of Dominicans from the Provincia Romana, who termed themselves spirituals. Franciscan spirituals are well known, equivalent Dominican sympathies much less so. It is not surprising that the order wanted to take swift action lest any scandal arise (‘ne […] aliqua scandala oriantur’). As the Franciscans had originally but unsuccessfully done, they sought to handle the issue as a matter of internal discipline. The culprits’ beliefs (which in fact were judged not heretical) were considered by the sixteen diffinitors of all the Dominican provinces, under the master’s chairmanship. In the Italian contingent, this group contained at least three present and former inquisitors.27 The treatment of the inquisition in the records of the Dominican and Franciscan orders over the century from 1250 onwards suggests that orders and inquisitors both initially struggled to absorb their new responsibilities and find an equilibrium between inquisitors as papal delegates and inquisitors as friars. From an insistence that the role of ministers- and priors-provincial was simply to appoint inquisitors (resisting even their power of removal), relationships evolved so that inquisition office was held alongside office in the order. The prior-provincial convened inquisitors’ meetings, financial accounts had to be rendered in the same way as for other office-holders, and eventually the Dominican general chapter asserted the right to challenge inquisitors’ conduct of the office’s business. These changes did not mean that the order was effective on a day-to-day basis in actually shaping inquisitors’ behaviour. But they did represent a gradual absorption of the inquisition into the order itself, aided by the revolving door of appointments between inquisitors and other senior posts. The other face of this process is exemplified at the 1327 Perpignan chapter, where we find a panel set up by the master (and ex-inquisitor) Barnaba da Vercelli to give a consilium requested by the Bologna convent on the quintessentially internal matter of determining a friar’s ‘home’ convent. Of the panel’s seven members, two were inquisitors and one a long-time inquisition vicar.28 The Franciscan experience followed a similar curve, though heavily influenced by the order’s internal doctrinal strife. Despite the integration of inquisition within the cursus honorum, we do not see at an institutional level the same growing involvement of the order’s senior officers with the actual business of inquisition as there was among the Dominicans. But there was

27 Acta

Capitulorum Generalium, II, p. 137. The sixteen diffinitors included Benedetto de Pesculo, ‘inquisitor, diffinitor regni Sicilie’ (‘inquisitor, diffinitor of the kingdom of Sicily’), the first time an inquisitor is named as such in general chapter proceedings; Rogerius de Marcia, diffinitor of lower Lombardy (i.e., Ruggiero da Petriolo, twice prior-provincial of lower Lombardy and inquisitor in Bologna, 1311–12); and Filippo da Como, diffinitor of upper Lombardy and previously inquisitor of Pavia. 28 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, II, p. 175.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 plenty of contact between the inquisitors of, say, Tuscany and the ministerprovincial or general. Changing attitudes towards the inquisition are illustrated at the provincial chapter of the Roman province, held at Rieti in 1316. Here, inquisitor heads the list of ‘any office of the order’ from which brothers were excluded if they had been imprisoned for a ‘sin against nature’. It was also confirmed that both inquisitors of heresy and those appointed as visitors were eligible at the provincial chapter for election to other offices within their custodia (subdivisions of provinces, under the control of a custos appointed by the minister-provincial) of origin. Small signs, but indicative of integration. 29

Inquisitors as friars: tension between Rule and role Underlying some of the orders’ difficulties with inquisitors was the conflict between the requirements of their rules and the necessities of an inquisitor’s job. Should inquisitors be treated like other friars, or should rules be bent to forward the negotium fidei (and if so, how far)? The tension was real, and worsened during the thirteenth century as inquisitors acquired premises, staff and a sizeable income from confiscations, not all of which was divided as Ad extirpanda envisaged. In their few public pronouncements, the orders did seek to enforce the same standards for inquisitors as other friars, but privately, things were different. Individually, some inquisitors were clearly conscious of the challenge they faced in reconciling their two roles. Others, however, allowed themselves to forget their obligations almost entirely: there were good reasons for the Dominicans’ general criticism in 1321 of inquisitors’ excesses in dress, food, behaviour and indeed religious observance. However, the impact of condemnation was vitiated by the hierarchy’s own enjoyment of the benefits inquisitors produced. Maintaining an appropriate lifestyle was a continuing challenge for all friars, not just those facing the demands of inquisitorial office. As both orders fell away from their original austerity, their thirteenth century records repeatedly reiterate the need to obey the Rule over such matters as simplicity of clothing, walking rather than riding, not carrying money and avoiding contact with women. Practical problems of observance arose especially when friars took on roles outside the order itself.30 Initially, the orders sought

29 A.

G. Little, ‘Constitutiones Provinciae Romanae, anni 1316’, AFH 18 (1925), 356–73, p. 371, right to election in own custodia; p. 369, sin against nature. Inquisitors were ranked higher than lector or guardian of a minor convent, whose sin could apparently be overlooked. Another sign of absorption is the inclusion of inquisition-related exempla: L. Oliger, ‘Liber exemplorum Fratrum Minorum saeculi XIII, excerpta e Cod. Ottob. Lat. 522’, Antonianum 2 (1927), 203–76 (pp. 272–3), examples 141, 142. 30 For posts outside the order: Andrews and Pincelli, Churchmen and Urban Government.

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Inquisitors and their orders to bind their friars to simplicity, as for example in 1252 in the Dominican Provincia Romana, when the chapter insisted that all must abstain from meat, even when dining with senior churchmen outside the convent. By 1289, the mood had eased. In the same province, brothers who were papal notaries and officials were exempted from the rules about diet and the obligation to eat only within the convent.31 There was no similar concession for heresy inquisitors, implying that they were expected to obey the normal standards of behaviour for all friars. One constant source of friction between inquisitors’ needs and the orders’ rules involved riding and the keeping of horses. The 1258 Toulouse general chapter accepted that Dominican inquisitors might need to ride where there was danger or rough terrain, but the provision plainly expects compliance where possible. In 1291, the Palencia chapter acknowledged that the rules on riding and carrying money were inconvenient, but nonetheless reiterated them, and tightened access to special dispensations. In 1308, recognition that he was normally expected to walk is signalled in the way the inquisitor of western Piedmont, Francesco da Pocapaglia, justifies his expenses: ‘I was obliged to buy horses, without which I would not have been able to carry out inquisition effectively in Piedmont, because the places where the heretics and Waldensians live are very distant and dangerous.’32 Analysis both of Francesco’s travels and those of his colleague Tommaso da Gorzano in the March of Genoa demonstrates that they covered an enormous mileage, and could not reasonably have done so on foot. Tommaso did initially try, as his shoe repair bills testify, but was eventually forced to ride. Besides the need for costly feed and stabling, using horses led inexorably to other breaches of the rules. For example, the order forbade all-weather riding garments such as leather capes, though here an exception was made for inquisitors.33 Access to such items, or the money to purchase them on office expenses, led to a minor form of corruption: thus Tommaso da Gorzano gifted the visiting priorprovincial with riding gear to accompany him on a journey, while Francesco da Pocapaglia ostentatiously left only his used capes for his successor, the former prior-provincial Barnaba da Vercelli.34

31 Kaeppeli

and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, p. 91, at Viterbo 1289, papal notaries, vice-chancellor and chamberlain exempted from requirement to eat in the convent. 32 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, I, p. 94, Toulouse 1258; p. 262, Palencia 1291. Francesco’s justification, Collectoria 133, fols. 172v–3r, ‘Ego frater Franciscus predictus habui necesse emere equos sine quibus inquisitio non potest fieri convenienter in partibus Pedemontis propter loca multum distantia et periculosa in quibus habitant heretici et Valdenses’; also Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 192. 33 Kaeppeli and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, p. 98 (1291). Inquisitores heretice pravitatis were exempted from a general confiscation of riding equipment and capes. 34 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 191–2, for Francesco’s riding gear. Collectoria 133,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 The Franciscans had similar doctrinal problems with riding, leading to a notable confrontation in Treviso in 1263, where the inquisitor Bartolommeo Mascara denied the authority of the (Franciscan) bishop of Treviso because he rode a horse.35 Seventy years later in Tuscany, inquisitors travelling in the contado adopted the uneasy and expensive compromise of having a retainer take hired horses back to the livery stable in Florence once the inquisitor had reached his destination. Evasive measures of this kind were condemned in the constitutions of some Franciscan provinces, indicating that as late as 1313 the order had not given up on trying to impose more austere earlier standards.36 Inquisitors could argue, with some justification, that riding was necessary to do their jobs. It was harder to justify breaches of the orders’ sumptuary rules, which again are reiterated throughout our period in the records of general and provincial chapters. Although some inquisitors apparently lived frugally (Francesco da Pocapaglia and Tommaso da Gorzano stand out), others signally failed to observe an appropriate lifestyle, spending freely on furs and clothing made from superior materials. Nor were they held to account by the order. In 1312, the Dominican provincial chapter of lower Lombardy, held at Ferrara, affirmed the sumptuary rules and emphasised that no brother, of whatever standing, was exempt (‘nullus frater, cuiuscumque condicionis vel status existat’).37 Yet Giovanni dei Pizigotti, inquisitor of Ferrara and present at the chapter, was the most notoriously spendthrift of all the Dominican inquisitors for whom we have records. Examples include personal food expenditure of fifty-nine lire bolognesi in one week alone in 1311, whilst in 1312 he spent the extraordinary sum of 120 lire bolognesi on his own clothing.38 If the chapter’s admonition was aimed at him, it had no effect. Perhaps the banquet Giovanni hosted for the chapter and his subsequent Christmas gift of wine to the prior-provincial spoke more loudly.39 Contact with women was another area of basic compliance with the rule which potentially caused problems for inquisitors of both orders. The fol. 78r, Tommaso da Gorzano’s purchase of riding capes for the prior-provincial and sub-prior. 35 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, MS 957, Documenti Trivigiani, II, doc. 177, ‘those who ride well-fed horses cannot preach the Gospel of the Lord’ (‘non possunt illi qui equitant pingues equos predicare Evangelium domini’). For the context of the dispute, da Milano, ‘Antecedenti inediti’, pp. 2–12. 36 F. Delorme, ‘Constitutiones provinciae Provinciae (saec. XIII–XIV)’, AFH 14 (1921), 415–34 (pp. 427, 430), dated to 1313. Using a guardian, vicar, procurator or other brother to hire carriages or horses indirectly was strongly condemned, as were ‘equitationes et asinationes’ (riding on horses or donkeys). 37 Kaeppeli, ‘Acta provinciae Lombardiae’, p. 170. 38 Collectoria 133, fols. 140v, food expenditure, Feb 1311; 143r–5r, clothing, 1312. Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 479 for a summary of Giovanni’s overall spending on clothes. 39 Collectoria 133, fol. 144v, for a banquet for the provincial chapter, four lire bol. (‘pro pietantia quam feci capitulo provinciali, 4 lb. bon.’); gift of wine to the provincial, twelve solidi.

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Inquisitors and their orders claim that inquisitors used their powers to pursue improper relations with women is widely found in both France and Italy, and may of course be a smear (though the evidence against Mino da San Quirico is very detailed). Inquisitors could not avoid dealing with women heretics or witnesses, but some seemed readier than others to exploit vulnerability or simply use women’s services, as we saw in Chapter 5 in respect of female spies and employees. In general, the Franciscan inquisitors of Tuscany had a more relaxed attitude to unnecessary contact with women, as seen in the extensive use made by several inquisitors of the nunneries of Montedomini and Monticelli, which they also helped with money and grain during a period of famine. The ladies of Montedomini also received a loan of 100 florins in 1329. Pace da Castelfiorentino even used the sister of another friar to do shopping for him.40 In Bologna, the high proportion of dealings with women carried out in the public arena of the church of S. Dominic rather than in the domus inquisitionis signals consciousness of the rule. One of the most important areas where inquisitors’ personal obligations as friars conflicted with the necessities of their office was in the handling and management of money. Both orders were insistent that brothers must not carry money, a point reiterated throughout our period. But the inquisition ran, in effect, a sizeable business, with all the money-handling that would imply.41 Confiscations and the imposition of money penalties for heresy involved not only seizing goods and property, but also calling in business debts owed to those convicted. Daily bills and wages had to be paid, not only for the main domus inquisitionis, but also whilst travelling. If there was a temporary cash flow problem, it was common for inquisitors to lend or borrow money, both between themselves and with commercial bankers. Sometimes, both loans and debts were at interest. None of these activities sat easily with provisions intended to create a firewall between mendicants and the taint of cash.42 40 Collectoriae

249, fol. 54v, in 1320, payment to the sister of fra Bartolo for the expenses she undertook for the inquisitor (‘soror fratris Bartoli pro expensis quas fecit pro inquisitore’); 250, fol. 129r, in 1329, gift of bread to ‘the ladies of Montedomini’ during famine. For Montedomini and Monticelli generally, Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1933), p. 165. Several inquisitors used the former as a regular picnic spot, even importing their own cooks, for instance Collectoriae 249, fol. 57r, Pace da Castelfiorentino in August, 1320; 250, nine references in Accursio Bonfantini’s accounts to feasting at Montedomini. 41 Murray, ‘Medieval Inquisition’, p. 170, writing in 1986, calculated that the accounted revenues of Mino da San Quirico in his two years in office were worth over £1.5 million, or some £4.2 million in 2017 terms. In this case, there was also substantial unaccounted revenue. 42 Instances of lending and borrowing: Collectoriae 133, fols. 89v, 95v, 99v, Florio da Verona’s dealings with bankers and money-changing; 249, fol. 42v, loan involving Pace da Castelfiorentino. Franciscan ban on usurious debt, Delorme, ‘Constitutiones provinciae Provinciae’, p. 421, ‘he who contracts a usurious debt is ipso facto

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 For the Franciscans more than the Dominicans, the actual physical handling of money presented a problem, which was generally addressed by interposing a proxy between inquisitor and cash: deploying lay members of the familia as purse holders, or using a convent’s procurator as a purchasing agent. The Florentine inquisitor Mino da San Quirico (1332–34) famously ‘observed’ the Rule by requiring his blackmail victims to drop payments directly into his purse, so his hands would not be soiled with lucre.43 Dominican inquisitors did not resort to such hypocritical devices, but they did need to carry substantial sums, sometimes in several different currencies, to meet the needs of the road. In the March of Genoa, Tommaso da Gorzano routinely handled eleven different currencies, plus their gold/silver exchange issues, as he moved across a patchwork of jurisdictions. There are frequent references in the accounts of both Dominican and Franciscan inquisitors to the use of a campsor (money-changer).44 Both orders did seek – though with little success – to prevent the insidious moral hazard posed by the ability to levy money penalties instead of other spiritual or confiscatory penances. This problem worsened by the turn of the century, as ‘proper’ heretics were increasingly replaced by those being punished for excessus or heretical words, where property confiscation was a less common penalty. However, the most difficult area to control – and there is scant evidence that the orders tried it – was how inquisitors actually managed and spent the revenues for which they were responsible. This issue was fraught with ambiguities, not least the question of whether the orders actually had any responsibility in the matter. By the 1270s, the Franciscans made a step in the right direction by requiring inquisitors to present accounts. But how were such requirements exercised in practice, and what use did the orders make of the information they had demanded?

Holding inquisitors to account On the surviving evidence and recorded capitular requirements, Italian inquisitors came late to the business of keeping accounts. This is unlikely. Fairly sophisticated inquisitorial accounts (broken down by type of expenditure) survive in Toulouse and Albi from as early as 1255–56, when the Dominicans took responsibility previously held by the episcopal inquisition

suspended from any legitimate acts’ (‘debitum ad usuram contrahens ipso facto ab actibus legitimis sit suspensus’). 43 Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1933), p. 191, for Mino’s demand; p. 196, Boccaccio’s ‘dei frati minori che denari non osano toccare’ (‘friars Minor who don’t dare touch money’). 44 C. M. Cipolla, Il fiorino e il quattrino. La politica monetaria a Firenze nel 1300 (Bologna, new edn 2013) discusses the complexities of exchange rates in just one centre.

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Inquisitors and their orders there.45 We have seen that the first explicit move by the orders themselves to require accounts from inquisitors was at the Franciscan general chapter at Lyons in 1272. This obliged inquisitors to submit an annual account of income and expenditure at the provincial chapter to experts nominated by the minister and the diffinitors.46 The Dominicans appear to have followed suit only in 1294, when inquisitores heretice pravitatis were instructed to submit sworn annual accounts of expenses and receipts at the provincial chapter, for onward transmission by the prior-provincial to the master of the order. However, there is no evidence from Italy that any such accounts actually were seen by or transmitted to the master. Nearly thirty years later, the 1321 Florence chapter took the further step of requiring Dominican inquisitors to split their accounts, distinguishing their personal possessions (accountable to the conventual prior) from their office accounts (supervised by the provincial).47 The 1272 and 1294 provisions cannot possibly represent the beginning of inquisitorial account-keeping itself. Since both Franciscans and Dominicans routinely demanded regular accounts from office-holders in the order, the ordinances may only have been a formal assertion that the requirement did indeed apply to inquisitors. Some kind of regular accounting process by inquisitors – not necessarily involving the orders – clearly took place from around the middle of the thirteenth century, because of Ad extirpanda’s instruction to divide the proceeds of confiscations with local communes and the wider Church. We know for certain that Dominican inquisitors in Italy kept detailed records prior to the 1294 Montpellier instruction: when Lanfranco da Bergamo, inquisitor of Pavia, was summoned to Anagni in June 1295 (along with ‘all other inquisitors’) in order to make a reckoning with the papal chamberlain, he was able to show full accounts from when he took office three years earlier.48 Lanfranco made a further reckoning with the chamberlain in 1296, but only in 1304 did Benedict XI’s letter Ex eo quod formally order Dominican inquisitors in Lombardy to submit routine annual accounts to the Camera, rather than have them supervised by the diocesan as Nicholas IV had required.49 Judging from Lanfranco’s experience, this instruction was either ignored or interpreted simply as requiring accounts to be kept ready for inspection. He 45 E.

Cabié, ‘Compte des Inquisiteurs des Diocèses de Toulouse, d’Albi et de Cahors, 1255–56’, Revue du Tarn 22 (1905), 111–33, 215–29 (p. 224). 46 Statuta generalia Ordinis, p. 51; Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, pp. 475–6. 47 Acta Capitulorum Generalium, I, p. 273; II, p. 130. 48 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 153–78, discusses papal accounting demands and special enquiries from 1295 onwards. Neither she nor Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, touches on the kind of accounts kept previously or those rendered to the communes. It is unclear whether the 1295 summons to Anagni also involved Franciscan inquisitors. 49 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, pp. 108–9; text of Ex eo quod, Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici. Parte seconda’, pp. 306–7.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 submitted no further accounts to the Camera before leaving office in autumn 1305, though he presented a final, third, reckoning in 1307 to the envoy, Guillaume de Balait.50 Under Boniface VIII and his successors, the papal drive to improve revenues imposed new and unpredictable pressures on inquisitors, by seizing any surplus of receipts over expenses. Paolini argues that these moves saw the end of the tripartite division of heresy receipts, and led to falsification and inflation of expenses (‘gonfiando le spese’) and behavioural change to protect working capital.51 The focus here is, however, on how the orders themselves exercised their own accounting requirements. Did their constitutions reflect a real attempt to hold inquisitors accountable, or were they purely declaratory? Did they challenge inquisitors’ financial management and seek to improve standards? Was there a link between the orders’ accounting demands and papal pressures, or did the systems run in parallel? Beginning with the question of basic compliance, did inquisitors actually present accounts as directed, and by what process? Benedetti has shown that other office-holders did not always comply with requirements.52 Lanfranco da Bergamo and Tommaso da Gorzano, whose accounts together span 1292–1305, both regularly record attending the provincial chapter but make no mention of accounts presented there, nor of episcopal oversight. Both, however, gave detailed records to papal representatives, when asked. Francesco da Pocapaglia, of western Piedmont, briskly notes his costs in 1308 for going to the provincial chapter at Bergamo ‘to present there the account of receipts and costs’ (‘ad reducendum ibi computationem de receptis et expensis’), but tells us no more. His own surviving accounts begin in 1307 with his quittance for an unknown earlier period from the envoy Guillaume de Balait. Thereafter, however, he maintains records from one chapter to the next, suggesting a routine accounting timetable. The messy records of Florio da Verona, Dominican inquisitor of Padua and Venice, refer to accounts rendered at the Vicenza provincial chapter in 1307 and that of Verona in (perhaps) 1308. In both cases he indicates either that the accounts were reviewed within the order, or that the computations were checked. By 1312, from the records of Marchesio da Brescia, there is unequivocal evidence that accounts were not

50 Benedetti,

Inquisitori lombardi, p. 155, correctly notes that ‘per gli inquisitores haereticae pravitatis i conti sembrerebbero essere sempre aperti’ (‘the books seem always to have remained open’). Inquisitors could be called on years later to present the books relating to their period of office. This raises the question of archiving. It is not clear whether an individual inquisitor’s accounts stayed with the office or accompanied him to his next post. 51 Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 477. 52 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 106 discusses attempts in the 1270s to improve accounting practice by all Lombard office-holders.

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Inquisitors and their orders only rendered at the chapter but that their content was reviewed with some sort of standard in mind.53 Marchesio presented his books at the chapter in Genoa in 1312, for scrutiny by an audit committee consisting of Ottone da Porta Cumana, prior of Milan, and three fellow present or former inquisitors: Thomas of Asti [da Gorzano]; Francesco da Pocapaglia and Raimondo da Villalta. This committee judged the accounts acceptable, because he had personally received nothing from the goods of the officium, and his expenses were only ‘those approved’ (‘que sunt ordinate’). This last is a telling phrase implying some judgement about appropriateness. Marchesio clearly took his fellows’ comments as long-term approval: it is the first and only occasion when he mentions presenting his account, and his later years are extremely summary. 54 Florio da Verona’s affairs were scrutinised at the 1307 chapter by a small committee of a conventual prior and at least two friars. One was Manfredo da Parma, previously co-inquisitor in Bologna, the other possibly the former Franciscan inquisitor, Alessio da Mantova.55 Another ratio took place on Florio’s move of office between Padua and Venice (though this just involved an arithmetical check by two computatores), whilst a further accounting was to the conventual prior at Treviso alone, purpose not evident. After Florio’s death in office around 1308, a final ratio was carried out and witnessed by the prior of Padua and six friars, before the balance of funds was handed over to the co-inquisitor, Gerardino da Reggio.56 Florio’s accounts highlight that inquisitors were subject not only to financial review at the provincial chapter, but also to numerous other scrutinies, especially when they moved post. Whether these were purely arithmetical exercises, or involved some judgement about appropriateness is arguable. However, they do show the important role of conventual priors in the office’s financial management, both as auditors and as holders of deposits during and between tenures. Other sets of Dominican accounts show priors

53 Collectoria

133, fol. 175v, Francesco, 1308; fol. 96r, Florio: ‘the account of all expenses incurred by fra Florio inquisitor after the account rendered in the provincial chapter celebrated at Vicenza in 1307’, (‘de racione omnium expensarum facta per fratrem Florium inquisitorem post racionem factam in capitulo provinciali Vicencie celebrato MCCCVII’); fol. 94v refers to a ratio at this chapter and at Verona. Fol. 195v, Marchesio’s account, 1312. 54 In 1312 Tommaso da Gorzano was no longer inquisitor in the march of Genoa; his post is unknown. Marchesio’s term of office lasted at least to 1319 (Collectoria 133, fol. 188v). 55 The Dominican inquisition in Padua and Vicenza was still separating its financial affairs from those of the discredited Franciscans, who were under the thumb of papal auditors, so Alessio’s presence is not impossible. But it may be a homonym. 56 Collectoria 133, fol. 91v, prior of Treviso; fol. 93r, computatores; fol. 94v, 1307 chapter; fol. 96r, handover to Gerardino.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 performing a similar role, again pointing up the nexus between inquisition and the order’s hierarchy. By the early fourteenth century, Dominican inquisitors did not, then, lack scrutiny by officers of the order. But its purpose was vague, and there was no attempt to impose consistency of form, let alone content. It is too early in accounting history to expect consistent treatment of loans, debts and write-offs, but the wide variation in basic presentation between different inquisitors would itself have thwarted any true accountability. Some accounts are compiled weekly, others quarterly, others have no real date markers throughout the inquisitor’s whole tenure. Some are set out in excruciating detail, others at the most summary and uninformative level. None uses the systematic division into type of expense visible in the Toulouse accounts some sixty years earlier.57 Nor do we know if the same audit committee reviewed all inquisitors. With Florio da Verona, inquisition expenses and income are hopelessly muddled with his responsibility for managing the building costs of Benedict XI’s intended funerary chapel. For all inquisitors, a fundamental unclarity in the record is whether receipts from confiscations represent the whole of a heretic’s property or only the residue after the share of others has been netted off. Chapter 5 above noted that some inquisitors sought to deduct exploratores’ finding fees before receipts were brought to account; others mention the officials’ share similarly.58 Whole areas of cost, such as for prisons, are absent from most inquisitors’ records. The conclusion has to be that although the Dominicans in Lombardy did possess by at least 1307 the rudiments of a formal system for scrutinising inquisitors’ expenditure and receipts, it was hopelessly ineffective as a means of holding them to account. The involvement of inquisitors in scrutinising their peers may have been an attempt to reconcile independence in office with obedience to the Rule, but it did not encourage hard questions. There was no real interest in the accounts’ actual content or any effort to impose consistency. The 1312 chapter at Genoa might have agreed that Marchesio da Brescia’s expenses were only ‘que sunt ordinate’, but the ability of the scrutineers to determine that is highly questionable. The surviving Franciscan records are all from Florence and much later. They show that, by 1320, accounts were both regularly presented at the provincial chapter and scrutinised. But whereas the Dominicans let inquisitors scrutinise their fellows, the Franciscan audit was conducted by discreti nominated by the diffinitors and the minister-provincial. The composition of 57 There

is some evidence that the Toulouse categorisation was known in Lombardy, if not used: Marchesio da Brescia lists twelve ‘allowable’ categories of expenditure at the end of his accounts, similar to those used in Toulouse, but does not use them as a basis for assigning expenditure: Collectoria 133, fols. 197v–8r. 58 Officials’ share, Collectoria 133, fol. 82r (Tommaso da Gorzano).

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Inquisitors and their orders the audit committee varied annually, so no one had a consistent view across successive years. In 1320, the books of Pace da Castelfiorentino were overseen by three friars, office unstated; in 1321 by the three custodes of Pisa, Arezzo and Chiusi (one a friar who had also reviewed the 1320 books); in July 1322, by one guardiano and two brothers not named as holding any office. One of these, Giacomo da San Gimignano, ‘who checked the office’s account at the chapter’ (‘qui vidit rationem officii in capitulo supradicto’), was paid a large fee for his work.59 He may have been the computator who worked out whether the books were in deficit or surplus: this seems to have been the only test applied, and was probably not an easy one. The changing personnel of the review panel made it difficult to check the accounts for appropriateness, accuracy or consistency between years. Pace’s accounts include, for example, the purchase of devotional paintings by Taddeo Gaddi, which it is hard to see as a necessary expense. The computator’s own fee is itself duplicated, showing there were no year-on-year checks.60 It seems likely that both the Dominican and Franciscan audit committees relied on inquisitors’ sworn assurances about need and accuracy. The Dominican constitution at Montpellier in 1294 had required accounts to be sworn. At the papal audit review of the Franciscan Pace’s accounts, he was obliged to swear that he had no other books than the ones delivered, and that they contained a full account of his receipts and expenses. The oath was a heavy one – ‘swearing while touching the Holy Gospels held in the hands of dominus Pons’ (‘ad sancta dei evangelia corporaliter tacta libro iuranti in manibus dicti domini Pontii’). It seems likely that a similar oath was administered at the chapter, and that the reviewers did not see further questioning as their job.61

59 Collectoria

249, fols. 41v, 55v–6r, 1320 (Florence); fols. 42rv, 60r, 1321 (Cortona); fols. 44r, 68r, 69r, 1322 (Montepulciano). The convoluted construction of the Tuscan accounts means that determining the bottom line probably required some effort. There is evidence of specialist correction, e.g., where receipt of a loan has been wrongly entered as income instead of a debt (fols. 42v, 43r). Audit fees were also paid in 1320 (Collectoria 249, fol. 56r), 1324 and 1325 (Collectoria 250, fols. 44r, 57v, 58r). 60 Collectoria 249, fols. 66r, 68r, 69r, payments to Taddeo Gaddi for pictures in 1322. For Pace’s spending on art, see Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 359. In Michele d’Arezzo’s accounts (Collectoria 250, fol. 20v), the computator Giacomo’s 1322 audit fee is entered a second time. 61 Collectoria 249, fol. 37r. Pace’s accounts are bound with material from Pons Augier, the collector for vacant benefices and also (fol. 3r) ‘super receptis ab inquisitoribus heretice pravitatis in Tuscia de condempnacionibus et confiscationibus officii dicti inquisitionis pro parte Romanam ecclesiam contingente’ (‘in respect of the share due to the Church of Rome over the receipts of the inquisitors of heretical depravity in Tuscany from the condemnations and confiscations of the inquisition office’). According to Bongia, Pons also reviewed Antonio d’Arezzo’s accounts, which have not survived. Bongia does not mention any review of Pace’s accounts earlier than the enquiry by Pons Étienne in 1334. See Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), pp. 348–9.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 The relationship between annual accounts required by the orders and the intermittent papal audit demands is far from clear. Indeed it is uncertain whether the surviving accounts held in the Vatican are identical with those presented to the chapters. The two sets of demands were not integrated chronologically or in objectives. The Lombard inquisitors were held to account by the papacy on only three known occasions between 1295 and 1307. When the Florentine notary, Giovanni Bongia, was quizzed by Pons Étienne in 1334 over accounts to the Camera during his twenty-year-plus tenure (covering eight inquisitors), he could recall only two demands, one under Antonio da Arezzo (1315–19) and a second under Accursio Bonfantini (1326–29), which is not mentioned in Accursio’s accounts themselves.62 By contrast with the weak tests applied by the orders, the occasional accounts rendered to the Camera did involve views about the appropriateness of spending. In the audit of the Lombard inquisitors begun under Arnaldo, bishop of Bologna in around 1319, the records of some inquisitors – notably Giovanni dei Pizigotti – are full of indignant sidelining and marginalia, especially on the high expenses claimed for hospitality and clothing. (Almost all Giovanni’s clothes purchases are annotated by the auditor.) The order’s own review might properly have questioned such spending because of breaches of sumptuary rules; the Camera’s objective, however, was simply to minimise ‘allowable’ costs so as to maximise the surplus that might be claimed by the papacy. But unless the condemnation of excesses at the 1321 Dominican general chapter reflects the auditors’ feedback, their views on appropriateness do not seem to have penetrated to the order. In attempting to hold inquisitors accountable for their financial management, neither the Franciscan nor the Dominican order seems to have concerted action with the papacy. Unwillingness to impose effective standards might have arisen from hesitation over the boundaries of their responsibilities. It is more likely, however, to be linked to a reluctance to probe too closely. The inquisition was increasingly a cash cow, as inquisitors became ever more deeply embedded in the life and economy of both individual convents and the order at large.

Mutual benefits: inquisitors and local convents Chapter 2 discussed inquisitors’ routine reliance on local convents for accommodation, maintaining a cella even where there was a dedicated domus inquisitionis, and making extensive use of other parts of the premises to conduct business. Like other friars, inquisitors used the infirmary and 62 Collectoria 251, fols. 68rv. According to Bongia, Accursio accounted to the Dominican

Guglielmo Dulcini da Monte Albano (bishop of Lucca, 1330–49), apparently working with the former Florentine inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato.

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Inquisitors and their orders (sometimes but not always) the convent’s shoemaker, tailor, vestiarius (robemaster) and barber. But dependence on the convent’s assistance went far beyond the simple provision of food, lodging and a place to store belongings. Inquisitors utilised other friars in a wide variety of support roles. Brothers were co-opted to act as witnesses during depositions and interrogations, to carry messages to and from other convents when for some reason the inquisition’s nuncii were not available, as additional hands in the scriptorium, and to accompany the inquisitor and his socius on expeditions where extra manpower was needed. Porters, gardeners, bellringers and muscular conversi helped with baggage, publicising preaching and manhandling prisoners. Particularly among the Franciscans, convent servants were freely called on to supplement inquisition staff. The demands on time extended to the most senior members of the convent, in particular lectors, guardiani and those with legal qualifications: they served on advisory panels, including giving consent to torture or advising on sentencing, and regularly took part in consilia alongside lay jurists. Hamilton asserts that ‘only a few members of the Dominican and Franciscan orders were involved in the work of inquisition’.63 This is not correct. A very high proportion of friars in a convent could be caught up in inquisition business, sometimes over lengthy periods. Between 1291 and 1309, 165 named brothers in Bologna acted as witnesses or advisers, of whom thirty-one served as sapientes. Twelve different priors, sub-priors and lectors participated. Many representatives of the Franciscans and other religious orders joined them. Since the surviving Acta clump around a few dates, probably many more individuals were involved across the whole timespan. Between 1319 and 1322, the Franciscan Pace da Castelfiorentino lists payment for special services to twenty-nine named brothers of Santa Croce (about a fifth of its total strength), as well as three guardians and two lectors from other convents. There would have been others who were unnamed or not directly paid.64 Pay for such helpers is expressed in a variety of ways: as straightforward wages (salarium, merces); as recompense for time and effort; often (for the more junior helpers) simply as recognition of services. Especially among the Franciscans, rewards frequently took the form of practical gifts, such as new sandals or a tunic. Papal auditors tended to query ‘wage’ payments to vicars and socii, but to pass amounts expressed as in recognition of services or time spent.65 The actual practice of the negotium fidei (and its financial rewards)

63 Hamilton,

Medieval Inquisition, p. 38. ‘Un couvent sous influence’, p. 327 for numbers of friars at Santa Croce. 65 Andrews and Pincelli, Churchmen and Urban Government, make clear that clerics performing tasks for the communes did not act for free. There was no reason why those assisting the inquisition with their skills should go unrewarded either. The concept of opportunity cost was understood, if unstated. The inquisitor himself 64 Piron,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 was thus not just a matter for the inquisitor and his team, but for the whole convent. As well as direct payment for assistance, inquisitors were expected to meet both the costs of their keep and any other expenses arising from their use of convent facilities and resources. The way in which they did this varied between areas and between the orders, and often went far beyond the simple reimbursement of costs. In Florence by around 1324, the inquisitor paid a regular monthly sum ‘as is customary’ (‘ut moris est’) to the convent’s procurator, Giacomo Bonini, to meet daily living costs for himself and his socius. Giacomo handled other expenses, such as organising special celebrations on the inquisitor’s behalf, and kept his own account book of his expenditure.66 When visiting convents outside Florence, lodging costs for the lay team were paid to the convent’s hospitiarius (guest-master) according to a daily tariff. The Dominican inquisitors of upper Lombardy and western Piedmont did not pay regular monthly amounts, perhaps because they travelled so much. A lump sum at the end of a stay defrayed the costs of both the lay and clerical team, and expressed gratitude. Thus in 1315 Giovanni da Fontana paid thirtytwo lire imperiali eighteen solidi to the Bergamo convent ‘in which I stayed for a long period with my socius, my servants and the notary who keeps the office’s accounts’. This was a very large sum, given his recent arrival in post, and the papal auditors annotated it for investigation. A little later, six lire imperiali went to the Genoa convent ‘in quo fui longo tempore cum socio et famulo’. It is difficult to tell whether any kind of implicit tariff underpinned these sums, since there are inconsistencies. For instance, in 1307–08, Francesco da Pocapaglia paid five lire for himself and his socius to the Franciscan convent of Cuneo for a twelve-day stay, followed swiftly by the smaller payment of two lire to the same convent for a much longer eighteen-day stay. He then presented the convent with an extra nineteen solidi ‘in recompense of their expenses’, perhaps because ‘their minister’ was present.67 With varying degrees of generosity, all inquisitors supplemented reimbursements of expenses with additional cash donations or gifts in kind to the convents where they stayed regularly. Some gave food items, wine or firewood but the most popular gesture was to fund a meal (pietancia) for the whole convent. The expenditure was justified in different ways: to celebrate is never recorded as receiving money payments when in office, though some inquisitors (like Tommaso da Gorzano) register smallish sums pro me or ‘pro meis necessitatibus’. 66 Collectoria 250, fol. 26r, February 1323, ‘expenses […] as set out in Giacomo’s [account-] book’ (‘expensis […] prout patet in libro dicti Jacobi’); fol. 32v, May 1323, ‘ut patet in libro suo’. The monthly subvention settled at two florins from 1324. In 1322–23 it was often around six florins. 67 Collectoria 133, fol. 209v, Giovanni da Fontana, 1315; fols. 174rv, Francesco da Pocapaglia in 1307–08. He lodged with the Franciscans because Cuneo lacked a Dominican convent.

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Inquisitors and their orders a feast day, honour an important visitor, mark the inquisitor’s arrival or departure or simply to recognise the convent’s efforts on the inquisitor’s behalf. In November 1319, the recently appointed Pace da Castelfiorentino paid four gold florins for a pietancia for the whole Santa Croce convent ‘pro expensis quas sustinet pro officio et pro ipso Inquisitore et socio’ (‘for the costs it had been put to on behalf of the office and the inquisitor and his socius’). Four months later, eighteen florins went on a series of feasts for the officiales, the Inquisitor’s familia and the convent in recompense for their efforts on behalf of the office (‘pro pietanciis pluribus factis officialibus et familie Inquisitoris et conventu fratrum minorum de Florentia in recompensatione laborum quos pro officio sustinent’). And in May 1321, he chipped in over fifteen florins to assist the convent (‘in adiutorium conventus’) to entertain the Dominican master-general. Ironically, the master was in Florence for the chapter which condemned inquisitorial excess in his own order.68 The papal auditors disregarded modest donations and the occasional offertory supper, perhaps because they themselves were beneficiaries.69 But some inquisitors went over the top. Within less than a month of taking office, Giovanni dei Pizigotti, inquisitor of Ferrara, threw three feasts for the entire convents of Ferrara and Bologna. The one at Bologna, the largest Dominican convent in Italy, cost over twenty lire. In under five years, he hosted at least twenty-seven more such events, including dinners for both the provincial and general chapters of the order.70 He also repeatedly used inquisition funds to buy dinner and wine for the prior-provincial, the current and former masters of the order and their entourages, and to entertain guests in the convent hospicium. Friars at every level were directly rewarded for assistance and advice, sometimes in cash and sometimes with new sandals or clothing. At Santa Croce, two porters received sandals in July 1322, and in October 1323 they and other brothers got both sandals and capes.71 Francesco da Pocapaglia paid eleven solidi to two unnamed friars who accompanied him in dangerous territory (‘qui sociaverunt me per loca periculosa’) and three lire to a named friar at Chieri for transcribing a volume of the office’s books (‘pro transcribendo uno volumine librorum officii’).72 But these sums paled besides 175 lire bolognesi paid by Giovanni dei Pizigotti in August 1313 to a group of clerics from three orders who were doctors of canon and civil law (‘clericis 68 Collectoria

249, fols. 54r, 1319; 55r, 1320; 60v, 1321, including a contribution to a Holy Thursday supper. Pietancia (pitancia in Lombard texts) implies a religious or dutiful offering, but in inquisitors’ accounts seems just to mean sponsoring a meal. 69 In 1307, Francesco da Pocapaglia presented the two papal nuncii who had just audited his accounts with fish, bread, wine, spices and fruits (Collectoria 133, fol. 173v). 70 Paolini, ‘Le finanze’, p. 479 estimates the total cost at 164 lire. 71 Collectoria 249, fols. 20r, 37v. 72 Collectoria 133, fols. 187r, 179v.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 religiosis ordinum predicatorum et minorum et heremitarum doctoribus utriusque iuris’) for their learned counsel. Such contributions must have represented an important element in the general economy, both of the host convent and of the order’s hierarchy. However, they also made it very difficult either to rebuke inquisitors for excess or to deliver unfavourable opinions.73

Inquisitors and the hierarchy of the order Giovanni’s huge payment to clerical jurisconsults brings into focus the inquisition’s financial interaction with the senior members of both orders. The most straightforward manifestation was payment for advice to individuals. Sitting on the inquisitor’s panel of sapientes could be a lucrative regular activity for conventual office-holders, learned brothers and former inquisitors. While conventual priors could recommend individuals as sapientes, the size and frequency of their remuneration was wholly in the gift of inquisitors with an eye to their careers. Thus in 1311, Ruggiero da Petriolo in Bologna (former prior, soon prior-provincial) paid over fifteen lire bolognesi to a panel of four doctors and seven friars, who included the prior, the former sub-prior and a former inquisitor. Each doctor got forty solidi, each friar twenty, except one doctor of both laws (‘doctor utriusque juris’) who got an extra ten. At Christmas 1312, his panel of eight involved five friars, including the lector and this time two former inquisitors, Nicholaus Tascherius and Guido da Parma.74 Besides participation in consultative panels, senior members of the hierarchy were paid for one-off advice. Giovanni dei Pizigotti paid Corrado da Camerino, several times prior-provincial and later Giovanni’s successor as inquisitor. Corrado in his turn paid the prior and lector of the Modena convent fifteen lire. They may genuinely have offered counsel, but paying for advice was only the most acceptable facet of a culture of treating senior office-holders. Many expenses had nothing to do with inquisition business. There was no reason why inquisition funds should finance, for example, cloth for the provincial’s tunic or the master’s travelling budget for going to the Curia.75 73 Collectoria

133, fols. 145v–9r; 148v (payment of 175 lire). 133, fols. 165r, 167v. Many of the friars are identifiable as sapientes used by Guido Capello and other inquisitors from the 1290s onward. In 1311, ‘Nicholaus’ is probably Nicholaus Tascherius, clearly identified in the 1312 list, rather than Niccolò da Ripa Transone, Ruggiero’s predecessor. 75 Collectoria 133, fol. 148r, in August 1313, twenty-five lire from Giovanni dei Pizigotti to Corrado, ‘who often advises the office’ (‘qui sepe consuluit officium’); fol. 151v, hospitality to Corrado and the prior of Bologna; fols. 159v, in 1317 under Corrado da Camerino, payment to prior of Modena; 157v, in 1316, eleven lire for cloth for the 74 Collectoria

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Inquisitors and their orders The scale of treating was considerable, especially in Florence and lower Lombardy. In his first year in post (1323), the Franciscan Michele d’Arezzo made twelve gifts of food (wine, hard cheese, meat, capons, fish, tunny-fish) to assorted notables, including the lector of Santa Croce. Pace da Castelfiorentino entertained the minister-general four times in September–October 1321 (including a gift of cloth), as well as hosting the Dominican master-general a few months earlier.76 In 1314–18, Manfredo da Parma, inquisitor of Bologna, made fourteen separate payments to the prior-provincial, the master and the prior of Modena for meals, comforts in the infirmary, or just straight cash, in addition to his other offerings to the convent community and payments of expenses.77 Maintaining a comfortable lifestyle for the prior-provincial and the master of the order was only part of the developing financial dependency. By the early fourteenth century, the hierarchies had begun to regard inquisitors as cash cows, able to help meet the order’s running costs, to subsidise students, to sponsor events such as the provincial or general chapter and to contribute generously to the order’s building projects. They were encouraged in this by Benedict XI, who in late 1305 ordered four inquisitors of upper Lombardy to produce the large sum of 200 florins for the shrine of Peter of Verona.78 When did this trend begin? In the oldest Italian accounts, those of Lanfranco da Bergamo and Tommaso da Gorzano, running up to 1305, there are many references to contributing to joint inquisitorial projects (including the cost of envoys to the Curia), but not to subsidies to the order in general. By 1309, however, the prior-provincial of upper Lombardy (separated from the lower Lombard province by 1303) had begun to levy an annual contribution from all inquisitors towards the costs of provincial management. In 1309, Francesco da Pocapaglia paid the provincial’s socius ‘what I owed the provincial as a contribution to the province – one florin’ (‘fratri Pagano de Cuneo quam debebam provinciali pro contributione provincie – 1 flor’). Within a short period, the contribution – recorded by four inquisitors in upper Lombardy – became standardised at five florins a year.79

provincial’s tunic; fol. 132v, in 1313, under Manfredo da Parma, twelve lire for the master’s travel costs. 76 Collectoria 249, fols. 62v, twice; 63r, twice. 77 Collectoria 133, fols. 130r–8v. 78 Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, p. 525, accounts of Lanfranco da Bergamo; Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, p. 164. 79 Collectoria 133, fol. 177r, Francesco da Pocapaglia; fol. 210v, in 1316 Giovanni da Fontana, inquisitor at Bergamo, pays ten gold florins ‘to the prior-provincial for the province’s contribution for two years’ (‘priori provinciali pro contributione provincie pro duobus annis, 10 flor. auri’); fol. 212r, in 1317, another ten florins, also for two years; fol. 213r, possibly 1318, a further five florins for one year (‘priori provinciali pro contributione unum annum, 5 flor. auri’).

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Alongside the ‘provincial contribution’, the prior-provincial began to exact random sums from some inquisitors to cover the ‘excess’ costs of the inquisition’s use of convent facilities across the province. Francesco paid two demands in 1315–16, just before and just after the provincial chapter at Vercelli. One was of four lire ten solidi ‘for the expenses I incurred in the province […] and in various convents on account of the office’ (‘pro expensis quos feci in provincia […] et diversis conventibus ratione officii’). The second, of three gold januini (coins of Genoa) was made ‘on the orders of [the provincial] for the expenses I incurred in convents in the province’ (‘de mandato suo [provinciali] pro expensis per me factis in conventibus provincie’). The phrase ‘de mandato suo’ might suggest that Francesco was compelled unwillingly to make the payment.80 In the same period, it also became the norm for inquisitors as a group to finance some or all of the costs of the provincial or general chapter, as well as their own get-together associated with it. All five of the inquisitors of lower Lombardy record payments at the provincial or general chapters ‘pro contributione Inquisitorum’ (‘as the inquisitors’ contribution’) or towards the cost of a feast for the chapter. Giovanni dei Pizigotti, who had the misfortune to have both the general and provincial chapters taking place in his bailiwick, made such subventions four years running. The tariff seems to have been ten lire bolognesi apiece for the general chapter, five at the provincial chapter.81 Similar subventions to the costs of the chapter, the earliest in 1301, were also made by some upper Lombard inquisitors.82 Were such contributions offered freely, demanded as a matter of obedience or extracted because the province and order needed money? Inquisitors varied greatly in their liberality, but in general they were not stingy. Some were uncomfortable with the increasing demands. Just as Francesco da Pocapaglia registered a payment made on the provincial’s orders, so Giovanni dei Pizigotti – the most spendthrift of the Lombard inquisitors – noted that it was on the master’s orders that he endowed a perpetual lamp on the shrine

80 Collectoria

133, fols. 187v, 199v, Pace de Vedano, Genoa, 1311, ‘Item lb 3 sol 6 provinciali pro expensis factis in conventibus’; 215r, Giacomo de Burgo, Lodi, 1317, ‘Item, provincie pro expensis factis in conventis’. 81 Collectoria 133, fols. 153v, Giovanni dei Pizigotti, 1315, ten lire bol. for a meal presented to the general chapter by the Inquisitors (‘in pietantia facta capitulo generali ab Inquisitoribus, 10 lib. bon’); similar 142r, 144r, 149r for provincial chapters; fols. 132r, Manfredo da Parma, 1315, payment of ten lire bol. for his share of the same meal, also twelve lire bol. ten solidi for meals at the arrival and departure of the master at the chapter; 134v, five lire bol for 1316 Ferrara provincial chapter. 82 In 1301 Lanfranco refers to ‘parte mihi contingente’ (‘my share’) of the costs of the Piacenza chapter, as if it were a normal thing: Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, p. 523. Collectoria 133, fol. 212r, in 1317 Giovanni da Fontana pays ‘pro […] subventione facta capitulo’ as part of a larger sum of his expenses at the chapter.

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Inquisitors and their orders of St Dominic, bought a cape for the former Bologna prior (and ex-priorprovincial) Andalo da Bologna, and financed a student in the university.83 By no later than the beginning of the fourteenth century, therefore, inquisitors were not only making substantial contributions to the running costs of the convents they visited but were also regularly complying with requests to finance a wide variety of the order’s general activities. The financial demands were so routine that a tariff had developed, and neither priors-provincial nor masters of the order saw any inconsistency in diverting money which they knew was owed to the papal Camera. The interdependence of inquisitor and order had clearly reached new levels of complexity. An unanswered question is how far the hierarchy of the orders used this close involvement to influence the inquisition’s work. Despite the formal ban on intervention in the work of the office, the highly political nature of much inquisition activity makes it inconceivable that the higher echelons of the Dominican and Franciscan orders did not seek to exercise influence, or that the inquisitors did not consult them. By the early fourteenth century, the rotation of senior posts meant that many priors, guardians and ministersprovincial, and even masters of the order, had inquisitorial experience under their belts, and were in a position to offer knowledgeable advice. There was also frequent contact between inquisitors and the senior hierarchy, in contexts which strongly suggest discussions over inquisition strategy. Benedetti has highlighted the close links between Lanfranco da Bergamo and Guido da Cocconato, the experienced inquisitor who for several years combined the role with that of prior-provincial of Lombardy, and convened meetings of inquisitors to discuss business. The Lombard inquisitors also had frequent personal and business contacts with successive masters of the order, especially Niccolò da Treviso, master 1296–1300, and later elevated to the papacy as Benedict XI.84 Some masters intervened directly, as for instance in 1305 in ordering Lanfranco da Bergamo (and perhaps other inquisitors too) to provide subventions to an inquisitor of the new lower Lombard province ‘since he has nothing with which to carry out his office’ (‘quum nihil habebat pro exequendo officio suo’).85 When Tommaso da Gorzano travelled to Pavia in company with the new master in 1301, they must have discussed current matters while on the road.86 The Franciscans of Florence had repeated 83 Collectoria

133, fol. 154r, for purchases on the master’s orders. Franciscan inquisitors also supported students: Collectoria 250, fol. 51r, payment to ‘Monaldo scolari Inquisitionis’, of whom there is no further trace. For Andalo, prior-provincial of lower Lombardy from 1304 in succession to Guido Capello, see Bronzino, ‘Documenti riguardanti gli eretici. Parte seconda’, pp. 301–6, bulls of Boniface VIII and Benedict XI. 84 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi, esp. pp. 251–8, 278–9, reporting discussions with Niccolò. 85 Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, p. 526. 86 Collectoria 133, fol. 74v, July 1301.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 dealings with both the minister-provincial and the general of the order, which is not surprising given the order’s internal rifts, the upheavals in Florentine government in the 1320s and the conflict between pope and imperial claimant. Priors and ministers-provincial must have known their inquisitors well, which makes it the more strange that they did not intervene in Italian inquisition affairs in the one way that mattered: stripping embarrassing office-holders of their posts. They had both the papal authority and instructions from general chapters to remove the recalcitrant, but they did not do so. The ministers-provincial in the Veneto, such as Bartolommeo da Mascara, were perhaps too deeply involved in inquisition to take action ahead of the scandal of 1302. In Tuscany, Michael of Cesena is said to have lamented that he did not have Mino da San Quirico clapped in irons for life. His order that Mino not be appointed to any other office in the Tuscan province was overwhelmed in the aftermath of the Franciscan schism, and missions from the Florence convent to plead for Mino’s dismissal because of the damage he was doing to the order fell on deaf ears.87 Both the Franciscan and the Dominican orders were conflicted and hesitant about their relationship with their inquisitors, even past the turn of the fourteenth century. Efforts from the 1270s onwards to impose discipline on inquisitors as friars, and especially to require financial accounts like other office-holders, were not followed through systematically. Simply at the level of accounting, it took until 1321 for the Dominicans to find a satisfactory equilibrium in principle between inquisitors’ roles as friars and as papal delegates. Effective compliance was however restricted by poor technique and the difference in objectives between the orders. In many respects, it can be argued that the efforts of the papal Camera frustrated rather fostered true accountability. Most scholarship on the finances of the inquisition has focused on papal audit demands, but the interaction with the order’s own requirements merits further study. How serious were the orders’ exhortations against excess? Senior officeholders, often themselves former inquisitors, both received and actively sought subventions from inquisition funds. To put it no more strongly, there was a marked disconnect between the language of admonition at provincial and general chapters and the actual behaviour of the prelates of the orders. A weight of responsibility falls on the prelates of the orders for the bad reputation the inquisition developed by the first half of the Trecento. A consistent theme of this study has been to show that the inquisition was not a hermetic system, but highly dependent on (and open to) other institutions. In the case of relationships with their orders, the inquisition both interpenetrated conventual life and – particularly among the Dominicans – was itself steadily sucked into the business of the order, to the point of

87 Biscaro,

‘Firenze’ (1933), p. 184; Collectoria 251, fol. 72r.

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Inquisitors and their orders becoming an arbiter of its internal rules.88 At Santa Croce in the 1320s, a fifth of the manpower of the convent was paid to assist the inquisition. Inquisitors may have initially protested independence, but they could not function without their order’s support. It seems highly likely that the reverse was also true in convents which were inquisition bases.

88 See

p. 209 and n. 28 above.

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8 An uneasy relationship: inquisitor, bishop and civil power

Previous chapters have shown that the medieval Italian inquisition was not a solo performance by the inquisitor but a team effort, heavily reliant both on its lay and clerical staff and on the main mendicant orders, with which it was much more closely integrated than is often supposed. We now take a step back to evaluate the overall relationship between the inquisitor and his major institutional partners, the commune and the diocesan bishop, as it developed over the century following Ad extirpanda. The bull created a three-cornered framework within which the partnership (and its inevitable tensions) might be managed. How robust did this prove in practice? Where – and why – did adjustments occur? In pursuing heresy, did the inquisitor become primus inter pares, as is often suggested, or was the situation more nuanced?1 Although the inquisition quickly entrenched itself as a bureaucratic institution over this period, acquiring physical property, establishing staff and routines, and accumulating new powers and privileges, in Italy it did not fully succeed in dominating its lay and clerical partners. This was partly because inquisitors, small in number, needed both their aid and their authority, and partly because of the robustness of civic structures and the potential for commune and bishop to make common cause against an over-mighty inquisitor. Indeed, in some cases civil authorities became less acquiescent and more aggressive in asserting their rights as time passed. An important factor was that the inquisition’s replacement activities after extirpating the Cathar heresy had little public resonance and could lead both to serious clashes and loss of moral authority. Such weaknesses (and their own financial interest) made bishops and civic authorities unwilling to cede their roles in relation to heresy, though they did not necessarily exert them all the time. 1 For

example, Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 350–51, rubric ‘Fruitless opposition of the bishops’; Maisonneuve, Études, p. 319 ‘La compétence des inquisiteurs en matière d’hérésie devient à ce point exclusive qu’elle paraît bien supplanter celle des évêques.’ (‘At this point, the inquisitor’s powers in matters of heresy became so exclusive as to seem to supplant those of the bishops.’)

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power The most obvious factor affecting the inquisition’s relations with cities and bishops was the current state of local politics. This was not a straightforward binary choice between Guelf and Ghibelline. The equation of Ghibelline sympathies with heresy, except through a tendency to be branded rebels, is an old canard rebutted by a number of scholars, including recently Baietto and Lomastro Tognato. In her detailed work on Vicenza, Lomastro Tognato shows that even arch-Ghibellines such as Ezzelino III da Romano occasionally persecuted Cathars. Cities such as Treviso, emerging from overt Ghibelline rule, were anxious to show co-operation with the Church, but they could be pushed too far by arrogance on the part of the inquisitor.2 On the other hand, pro-Church sympathies did not necessarily mean the inquisitor had an easy run. Florence and Bologna were generally pro-papal, but in both cities civic relations with inquisitors enjoyed a rollercoaster ride. In 1299, Bologna rioted in protest over an execution, as Guelf Parma had done twenty years earlier – an event which lasted in folk memory and was cited by some of the Bologna rioters.3 The city later went in short order from renewing in 1332 its voluntary formal subjection to the Church (which had involved giving the papal legate control of the most basic laws) to sacking the legate’s dwelling in fury in 1334 and ejecting him and a constellation of clerics from its territory. This led to a lengthy interdict. Even before that, the city’s attitude towards the inquisition has been characterised as one of passive resistance.4 Florence expelled several inquisitors, and threatened one with his own pyre unless he stopped meddling in city politics. However, it could be argued that it was the very certainty of generally pro-Church sympathies that encouraged inquisitors such as Pietro da L’Aquila to push their luck.5 As the Guelf-Angevin ascendancy across northern Italy gradually waned from the 1280s onwards, the complexity of popular and factional politics within and between towns makes it unsafe to generalise about likely civic attitudes to heresy, to the Church or to the reception of the inquisition. The 2 L. Baietto, Il papa e le città: papato e comuni in Italia centro-settentrionale durante la prima

metà del secolo XIII (Spoleto, 2007), pp. 38–63, usefully dissects the role of heresy in papal policy towards the cities in the early thirteenth century. Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, explores the entanglement of religion and politics under Ezzelino I and II (who probably was a Cathar) and goes in depth into Ezzelino III’s religious orientation, pointing up instances of anti-heretic actions (pp. x, 21–4, 30–1). 3 ASOB, I, doc. 150. Thompson, ‘Lay versus Clerical Perceptions of Heresy’, p. 714 n. 51, notes, however, that some Bolognese were confused about which city was involved. 4 Relations with Bertrand du Poujet: L. Ciaccio, ‘Il Cardinal-legato Bertrando del Poggetto in Bologna (1327–1334)’, AMRom 3rd s. 23 (1904–05), 85–196, 456–538 (pp. 468, 482–8); L. Frati, ‘Il saccheggio del Castello di Porta Galliera nel 1334’, AMRom 4th s. 2 (1911–12), 41–90. On Bologna’s general attitude to the inquisition as ‘un atteggiamento di resistenza passiva’, see Giansante, ‘L’inquisizione domenicana a Bologna’, p. 226. 5 For Pietro: d’Alatri, ‘Un’istruttoria’.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 great mid-thirteenth century religious enthusiasms were now also receding, taking with them a source of inquisitors’ support from the various societies of the faithful. In the 1240s, Peter of Verona had been able to call on militias of the faithful to support his activities (or Catholic gangs to beat up their Cathar rivals in the street, as Bernard Hamilton memorably remarks), and the confraternities subsequently had a role in a number of city governments. But Housley concludes in relation to Parma, which was formally Guelf from the 1260s until 1303, that the control of the anti-heretic Societas cruxatorum (Society of Cross-wearers) was waning by ‘as early as 1282–83’.6 The De officio inquisitionis of around 1325 still places the crucesignati behind the inquisitor and his vicar as the third pillar of the inquisition, but there is scant evidence in the fourteenth century that they played any real role in its support.7 Political labels and the role of the confraternities were probably less influential in fixing the style of relations between the inquisition and its partners than personal ties between the inquisitor and the civic or episcopal elite. Chapter 2 above noted the close links which existed in both Verona and Florence, extending also to some inquisition officials. However, the embedding of the inquisitor and his team in certain strata of civic affairs did not prevent occasional upsets, and sometimes encouraged inquisitors to meddle in communal affairs in the interests of their families or political allies. Inevitably, relationships between inquisitors and the partner bodies often turned on personalities. Zeal for the faith could blind some inquisitors to the wider picture, including the needs of papal politics. Though some became trusted figures in civic life, others set themselves up on pedestals (as one infuriated podestà in Padua remarked), or embarked on unhelpful feuds like that of Guido Capello against the Este. Alessio da Mantova in Padua and Treviso and Grimaldo da Prato in Florence attracted angry reactions because of their high-handedness, but others – like Angelo da Rieti in Viterbo in the 1280s and Florio da Vicenza in Ferrara in the 1280s/90s – played an important part in civic life. The same inquisitor could have different experiences in different cities: Florio da Vicenza, successful in Ferrara, was responsible for the order’s expulsion from nearby Parma in 1279. Did he modify his approach through hard-won experience, or is it simply that (whatever the

6 Housley,

‘Politics and Heresy in Italy’, esp. pp. 204–5, usefully demonstrates both the arc of the militant confraternity movement and the early inquisition’s use of confraternities as private armies. Prudlo, Martyred Inquisitor, shows how Peter marshalled popular fervour into support for the inquisition in both Milan and Florence. Hamilton, Medieval Inquisition, p. 77, has a different take. 7 Confraternities did provide hospital facilities for inquisition prisoners and sometimes acted as jailers. In Bologna in 1299 (ASOB, I, docs. 16–18), the visionary friar Avancius (who had been racked) and Bruneta, a suspected Cathar, were both under the care of the devoti, the Bolognese Flagellants. Florence also made use of such services.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power inquisitor’s approach) different city environments could occasionally prove unmanageable?8

Inquisitors and bishops Across the third quarter of the thirteenth century, the inquisition in Italy pursued two main strategic aims. One was to force cities to incorporate the papal/imperial constitutions against heresy into their statutes, which enabled the enforcement of Ad extirpanda and gave the inquisition a foothold. Some inquisitors took this mission very literally, regardless of what antiheretic provisions already existed in city statutes. But almost before the ink was dry on Ad extirpanda, the second aim of many inquisitors appeared to be to diminish the bishops’ role by eliminating requirements to consult or co-ordinate with them over investigations and sentences. This was resisted. The advent of the papal inquisition in the 1230s had not removed bishops’ responsibilities for the doctrinal purity of their flock. Though some bishops were content to see the hard work of pursuing heresy taken over by the new creations, others were keen to retain a voice and were concerned about the impact of inquisition on their diocese. There were tensions, too, over the general influence of the mendicant orders. The gradual appointment from the mid-thirteenth century of bishops who were themselves Dominicans or Franciscans could fuel problems, rather than the reverse, by adding internal doctrinal disputes or conflict between the orders into the mix. Hence, as we saw in Chapter 7, the internal Franciscan dispute over the ethics of riding led to the inquisitors Bartolommeo Mascara and Rufino being ejected from Treviso in the midst of their sermo generalis by Bishop Alberto Ricco. Relations between inquisitor and bishop, both Franciscans, were so bad that Bartolommeo later also accused Alberto of turning Venice against him.9 8 Angelo

mediated between the Orsini cardinals and the commune of Viterbo to end their bitter territorial dispute, and was given full power (as procurator of the commune) to decide peace on whatever terms he liked. He even entreated Honorius IV on the commune’s behalf in the conflict: Savignoni, ‘L’archivio storico del comune di Viterbo’, docs. CXXXVI, CXXXVIII. For a different view, d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, pp. 149–50. For Florio in Ferrara, see Parmeggiani, ‘Florio da Vicenza’, pp. 684–6. For over a decade, he controlled the nunnery of Santa Caterina, personally managing the goods of several nuns of Jewish extraction. He also witnessed business dealings of the three marchesi d’Este (pp. 689–91). See too Samaritani, ‘I Frati Predicatori nella società ferrarese’, 5–48; V. Colorni, ‘Ebrei in Ferrara nei secoli XIII e XIV’, in Miscellanea di studi in onore di Dario Disegni (Turin, 1969), 69–106. 9 Savignoni, ‘L’archivio storico del comune di Viterbo’, p. 304, doc. CV (dated to 1263–64): ‘infamando eum [Bartolomeum] quod machinabatur in terre Venetie […] inducendo dictum ducem quod fecerat exire dictum inquisitorem confusum de Venetiis sicut confusus exiverat de civitate Tarvisii’ (‘slandering [Bartolommeo, by

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 In the face of pressure from both sides, the thirteenth-century popes changed their minds repeatedly about the details of inquisitors’ formal obligations to consult bishops and the extent to which either party could commence or conclude actions, or carry them on in parallel, without the consent or knowledge of the other.10 Whilst Innocent IV tried to ensure co-operation, in the spirit of Ad extirpanda, Alexander IV in 1257 backtracked, giving more freedom to inquisitors. Further changes to the relationship – in different directions – were instituted by Urban IV, Clement IV, Gregory X and Boniface VIII. In Lombardy, Nicholas IV required inquisitors to submit their accounts for review by the diocesan, while Benedict XI removed the requirement. Only with the Council of Vienne and Clement V’s Multorum querela was the issue of mutual communication finally settled from the papal viewpoint, coming down on the side of a requirement to consult and agree. Yet no sooner had this been confirmed in John XXII’s issue of the Clementines than the Tuscan inquisitors sought to wriggle out of it by seeking a legal opinion on ‘doubts’, just as they had tried to emasculate the Council of Lyons’ 1272 ban on money penalties.11 Lea and Maisonneuve took the view, based on papal documents and inquisition writings, that inquisitors did succeed in imposing themselves as the dominant force over the bishops in the pursuit of heresy.12 The evidence on the ground in Italy is much more nuanced. There were undoubtedly personality clashes and squabbles over individual cases, but regardless of the changing state of formal requirements, inquisitors with common sense did seek the reinforcement of the bishop’s authority, either by consulting him or by proceeding jointly on sensitive matters. In Bologna around 1300, we find Guido Capello (not short of self-confidence) taking care to involve the bishop or his vicar directly in decision making, and to imply episcopal support by holding hearings in the episcopal palace (though this may have been due to shortage of other space).13 When himself bishop of Ferrara and embroiled in saying] he was plotting in the Veneto […] inducing the Doge to eject the inquisitor in short order from Venetian lands, just as he had been ejected from the city of Treviso’). 10 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, p. 335 and d’Alatri, ‘Il vescovo’, pp. 119–25 summarise the successive changes and back-tracking. 11 Parmeggiani, Consilia, doc. 47. Cino da Pistoia and Decco da Figline were among the sapientes. The consilium was still regarded as sufficiently authoritative to be incorporated in the Florentine inquisition manual (MS Cas. 1730) as late as 1396. 12 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 356–60. 13 Inquisitor and bishop jointly chaired the meeting of sapientes who advised on whether Bompietro and Giuliano should be treated as relapsed heretics (ASOB, II, docs. 804, 807). The bishop’s vicar or vicar-general participated in other stages of the process. ASOB, I, docs. 8–10 (decisions on Bonigrino da Verona) also show Guido’s care to involve representatives of the Franciscans and other religious orders (including a former Franciscan inquisitor, Matteo Buoferra), in controversial decisions.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power a difficult situation with the Este, Guido in his turn was consulted by Corrado da Camerino, formerly prior-provincial and undoubtedly sensitive both to papal ordinances and to power relationships.14 The Florentine inquisitors regularly involved the bishop of Florence, and used the bishop of Fiesole as a sapiens.15 Indeed, as d’Alatri comments, ‘in truth, it was practically impossible for an inquisitor to function in a diocese without the bishop’s collaboration’. (‘Invero, era quasi impossibile che l’inquisitore funzionasse in una diocesi senza la collaborazione del vescovo.’)16 Some formal matters forced the two parties to co-operate, as for example when the inquisitor wished to issue a discretionary interpretation of the papal constitutions.17 But inquisitors also needed the bishops (and vice versa) to bolster their authority in contentious matters and to smooth over difficulties. A minor example is after the execution of the Cathars Bompietro and Giuliano in Bologna in 1299, when Guido Capello proceeded impetuously to sell their goods without giving the podestà chance to do his job. The bishop personally chaired a panel which retroactively validated his action, on the casuistical grounds that the podestà had not himself sold them within the canonical time limits.18 At a different level of political contentiousness, it was the bishop of Verona, Timidio Spongati, who took the lead – in concert with Alberto and Mastino della Scala – in assailing the Cathar stronghold of Sirmione in 1276, going over the head of the recently appointed inquisitor, Filippo Bonacolsi. It is significant that Verona’s own recent anti-heretic legislation, like that of some other cities, still gave the bishop prime place. However, Timidio was himself the immediate past inquisitor: the dynamics between bishop and inquisitor in such instances must have been interesting.19 In John XXII’s campaigns against the Visconti and Este, the high stakes for papal politics often forced bishop and inquisitor to stand together, and in the first three decades of the fourteenth century Franciscan inquisitors, in particular, found themselves having to turn to the bishops to help deal with the fraticelli/Spirituals.20 Tackling the Spirituals showed how the different 14 Collectoria

133, fols. 155v–6r. On taking up post in Ferrara, Corrado visited the bishop three times within a couple of weeks, and quickly had the bishop’s vicar as one of his panel of sapientes. 15 The bishop and archdeacon of Fiesole were frequent sources of advice: Collectoria 250, fols. 27r, 39r, 55r (all 1323). 16 D’Alatri, ‘Il vescovo’, p. 121. 17 For example, the 1314 joint pronouncement by the bishop of Florence Antonio dell’Orso and the inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato, or that of 1323 between the bishop of Pistoia Baronto Ricciardi, and the inquisitor Michele d’Arezzo: Parmeggiani, Consilia, docs. 46, 49. 18 ASOB, II, doc. 805. 19 For the attack on Sirmione, see Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo a Verona’, pp. 78–81. 20 For a concise account of the joint proceedings against Matteo and Galeazzo Visconti by Barnaba da Vercelli and his team, together with the archbishop of Milan, see L. Besozzi, ‘I processi canonici contro i fautori dei Visconti negli anni 1322–24’, ASL

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 powers and responsibilities of the two clerical arms could sometimes be usefully complementary. In 1312, during the earlier stages of the dispute in Tuscany, the Church still sought to avoid treating the Spirituals as doctrinal heretics. But the leaders of the movement had taken over the Franciscan convents of Arezzo, Asciano and Carmignano, ejecting other friars. Arezzo was a city with a Ghibelline past, cathedral canons who were sympathetic to the Spirituals’ cause, and a brand new bishop, Guido Tarlati, whose family history was not pro-papal. How to winkle the Spirituals’ leaders out of the convent without a fuss? Perhaps because Guido Tarlati was still on his way back from his consecration in Avignon, Clement V did not direct bishop and inquisitor jointly to deal with the Spirituals, but instead mandated a committee of three non-local bishops/archbishops (Genoa, Bologna and Lucca) to bring the situation under control as a question of obedience to superiors. Porchetto Spinola of Genoa undoubtedly knew personally the Tuscan inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato, who had recently returned from serving as minister-provincial of the March of Genoa to become Florentine inquisitor for a second time. The neat solution was for Grimaldo, preaching in the duomo of Arezzo, to accuse the recalcitrant Spirituals of impeding the inquisition by denying access to the domus inquisitionis, located inside the convent precincts. The device allowed the Church to engage the inquisition and its powers without addressing the theological aspect of the Spirituals’ disobedience.21 Even in ordinary cases, bishops continued through the thirteenth century and into the fourteenth to play both an independent and a collaborative role in investigating and punishing heterodoxy. In 1273, also in Arezzo, Bishop Guglielmo Ubertini stepped in during a gap in inquisitorial tenure to enforce the previous inquisitor’s requirement that a repentant heretic should be guarded by faithful Christians on his deathbed. This incident is significant for two reasons. The sentence itself was overtly collaborative, specifying that the requirement might be enforced either by the bishop or by the inquisitor (‘de licencia nostra vel inquisitoris’). And when it came to the point, although the bishop was not personally in Arezzo, he was kept closely enough in touch with an individual heretic’s state of health to be able to send instructions.22 10th s. 3 (1977), 294–302; and ‘I processi canonici contro Galeazzo Visconti’, pp. 235–45. 21 Ini, ‘Nuovi documenti sugli Spirituali’, esp. pp. 331–3, docs. 9, 10. Some of the Spirituals maintained contact with Franciscan inquisitors in a naïve attempt to swing their sympathies. Francesco Bartoli, a leader of the movement in Arezzo, corresponded with the inquisitors Accursio Bonfantini and Pietro da Prato: see A. Mercati, ‘Frate Francesco Bartoli d’Assisi michelista e la sua ritrazzione’, AFH 20 (1927) 260–304. 22 Pasqui, Documenti per la storia della città di Arezzo, II, doc. 648; d’Alatri, Inquisizione francescana, p. 78, describes Guglielmo as supportive of the inquisition.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power Bishops sometimes had their own decided ideas about the management of heresy. In 1279, a row erupted in Padua between the inquisitor Alessio da Mantova, who wanted to sentence a heretic to cross-wearing, whereas the bishop, Giovanni Forzate, wanted him exiled. In 1310, also in Padua, the bishop sat as iudex ordinarius in a heresy case.23 In Siena in 1312, the Dominican bishop Ruggiero da Casole, ‘sapendo apparteneresegli l’Ufficio d’Inquisitore contro l’Eresia tanto in Siena che nella sua diocesi, ed essendo impedito per molti affari della sua Chiesa e vescovado’, appointed the prior of the Dominican convent to act in his place in matters relating to heresy.24 His predecessor Bonfiglio in 1244 had delegated his authority to both orders, but Siena was now Franciscan inquisitorial territory. Ruggiero’s decision to delegate his role to a Dominican may have been his personal background or (more likely) a desire to have a counterweight to the Franciscan viewpoint in light of the urgent problems with the Spirituals. Rigon argues that in the March of Treviso, the bishops took back a substantial part of their anti-heretic role during the decade of disruption surrounding the condemnation of the local Franciscan inquisitors by Boniface VIII in 1302. There is evidence of this in Treviso itself. In October 1323, the bishop’s vicar Giacomo da Carrara conducted an inquisition against Gabriele Roncinello for heretical words and beliefs, and passed definitive sentence, involving both a money penalty (payable to the bishop’s camera) and spiritual penalties. The inquisitor contested this, claiming to be himself the bishop’s vicar, but a consilium of sapientes upheld Giacomo’s position. A year later, Giacomo also took action against a female usurer for heresy, declaring that the case fell outside the inquisition’s remit.25 Rights over the pursuit of usury were contested, but the 1323 incident clearly shows the bishop’s tanks parked on the inquisition lawn. Evidence about the interaction between inquisitor and bishop frequently comes from instances of discord, so care is needed to avoid skewed conclusions. But these examples illustrate that, in Italy at least, the papal inquisition 23 Rigon, introductory essay in Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, pp. vi–vii, xxii n. 89; also

Marangon, Il pensiero ereticale, p. 8 n. 9. A. Pecci, Storia del vescovado della città di Siena (Lucca, 1748), p. 254, ‘conscious of being part of the office of Inquisition against heresy both in Siena and in the diocese, and being hampered by the business of the Church and bishopric’. Also Severino, ‘Note sull’eresia a Siena’, p. 904. A special licence was obtained from the prior-provincial of the Provincia Romana to enable the conventual prior to deputise for the bishop in inquisition matters, presumably respecting the prohibitions against dual office issued at the chapters of Palencia and Metz in 1291 and 1298 (see Chapter 7 above). Ruggiero’s reason for delegation was a good one, as he had been appointed the pope’s vicar-general in Rome. 25 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, Documenti Trivigiani 6, doc. 91 (pp. 261–8); doc. 94 (pp. 271–6). A further case of the bishop proceeding against a usurer for heresy in 1357 is at vol. 8 (pp. 444–8). Marangon, Pensiero ereticale, pp. 40–4, publishes the proceedings against Roncinello. 24 G.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 did not wipe out the episcopal inquisition in the thirteenth century or indeed the fourteenth. Rigon and Marangon have presented convincing evidence for its continuation in the Marca Trevisana across a lengthy period.26 It seems likely that if sources were less patchy, we would find its survival in many other areas, not least because the bishop, or his representative, was a permanency, whereas inquisitorial manpower was thin on the ground. Lea argues that the papal inquisition dominated because its dedicated purpose made it more efficient: ‘however zealous an episcopal official might be, his efforts were necessarily isolated, temporary and spasmodic’. But equally there were long periods when no inquisitor visited a particular city, letting the machinery run down. We have seen, for example, that in 1368 the inquisitor Egidio, appointed to Ferrara and Modena three years earlier, arrived in Modena for his first visit to find the office much neglected by his vicars, with the ‘books’ (probably the registers of processes) ‘enormiter defalcatos’ (‘terribly diminished’).27 What we do not know, from lack of evidence, is how regularly and robustly bishops in different areas involved themselves in the Ad extirpanda role of approving inquisition staff for appointment. We have seen that in some places, such as Padua, the inquisitor tried to assert total control over the nominations. This shows strained relations, and it is no coincidence that soon after, bishop and commune made common cause in complaining to the pope about the inquisition.28 But elsewhere there is evidence of a flow of staff between inquisition office, episcopal curia and linked ecclesiastical offices, just as previous chapters have shown happened with civic functions and posts in the orders. In Verona, the inquisition team migrated with the inquisitor-turned-bishop to Trento. In Florence, the notary Lippo Benincase, first seen in 1313 subscribing to the bishop’s publication of Clement V’s letters against the rebel Spirituals, and in the 1320s an inquisition notary, appears in 1345–46 in the household of the papal collector. As well as smoothing relations, this cross-fertilisation probably also assisted in normalising juridical and operational practices between the different branches of the Church. Further detailed exploration of local links between the inquisition and the episcopal curia would undoubtedly offer more insights into this web of relationships.29 26 Marangon,

Pensiero ereticale, pp. 34–5, 30 n. 146. Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 364–5; Biondi, ‘Il “Sacro Tribunale” a Modena (1292–1785)’, p. 76. 28 See Parmeggiani, Consilia, doc. 41 for a summary of the dispute over nominations. 29 Ini, ‘Nuovi documenti’, doc. 21. Corsi, ‘Firenze 1300–1350’, pp. 63–6, lists those approved to bear arms in the office of the inquisitor, the bishop’s curia and the household of the papal collector. Ser Lippo Benincase (p. 65) appears on several occasions as an inquisition notary in the 1320s and 1330s. Other identifications are less certain because of the scarcity of patronymics in inquisition accounts. However, several of the bishop’s nuncii at that time may be connected with individuals working for the inquisition in the 1320s. 27 Lea,

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power In assessing the bishop–inquisition relationship, the bishop–city dimension should also be borne in mind. The bishop’s loyalty sometimes lay with his diocese, not with the inquisition. When Bishop Alberto Ricco of Treviso fell into dispute with the inquisitor in 1262, he was supported by the city, who sent ambassadors to the Curia alongside him and reported back on the different parties’ arguments before the pope – an amazing vignette of diplomatic activity for such an early date. When Padua and Vicenza took their dossier of complaint about inquisition misbehaviour to Boniface VIII in 1301, the bishop of Vicenza accompanied the cities’ envoys to support them. By contrast, successive archbishops of Milan, excluded from their see for years on end by political disputes and repeated interdicts, saw the inquisition as essential troops in the struggle to quieten their unruly flock.30

Inquisitors and civil authorities: the problem of statutes The interaction between inquisitors and civil authorities was in many ways more complex than the relationship with the bishop. The podestà was torn between conflicting priorities. His key responsibility was to the community to which he was bound by oath. City statutes frequently laid duties on him personally and set out methods of proceeding which were both at variance with Ad extirpanda and with evolving inquisition practice. Thus the 1264 post-Ezzelino statutes of Vicenza laid it on the podestà to proceed against ‘hereticos et gazaros’ (‘heretics and Cathars’) and set out very tough penalties, which among other things reserved all goods confiscated from a heretic to the commune, not merely the one third under Ad extirpanda. Money penalties on fautors and receptators were to be divided between the accuser and those who effected the capture. As with the Siena statutes of 1262, the inquisition was not mentioned: the commune’s statutory partner was the bishop, the formidable Bartolommeo da Breganza.31 When the inquisition was admitted to a city, it imposed practical demands for staffing, prisons and support which it was often difficult to meet and which conflicted with the city’s own statutes and priorities. Vice versa, the admission agreement often included restrictions, such as not proceeding against those from outside the diocese, or going outside the diocese to do so, which aligned with the bishop’s responsibility but were problematic for inquisitors. Objections to the inquisitor’s actions frequently led to excommunications levied against the podestà and governing councils personally. Even allowing that we know more about incidents of discord than periods of good relations, there is no doubt that the relationship was a tricky one. 30 Galvano, Cronaca Estravagante, p. 285, cap. 29, pithily lists the successive archbishops

of Milan ejected by their flock. Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 33–4.

31 Lomastro

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Historians of heresy commonly describe the main inquisition mission in Italy from the 1250s onwards as being to force cities to incorporate the papal and imperial constitutions against heresy into their statutes. This met resistance for many reasons: in Genoa, for example, reluctance was overtly based on a belief that the papacy had no locus in relation to the city’s own laws. The process is well described from the Church perspective by Maisonneuve, and from that of the cities by Padovani.32 However, even when pester power or genuine conviction had persuaded cities to incorporate the papal constitutions in their statutes, problems remained because of the poor fit between inquisition requirements and communal provisions. By around 1260–70, most first-rank Italian cities already had duties to combat heresy in their statutes, even if (like those of Vicenza) they were expressed in ways which did not precisely tally with the requirements of the papal constitutions. Cities such as Siena had well-developed arrangements which, as Chapter 1 above showed, distributed responsibility between Church and state according to severity of heretical involvement, the aim being to bring lesser cases within the well-honed civic procedures for dealing with criminals and banniti. The Vicenza statutes, which Lomastro Tognato describes as fragmentary, seem to be proceeding on similar lines of thought.33 However, provision in statutes was not a completely reliable guide to what happened in practice. Even into the fourteenth century, a number of significant cities actually have no anti-heresy provisions in their surviving statutes. One such was Modena, whose 1306–07 statutes (according to Padovani) have no norms against heresy. Yet the city had possessed a domus inquisitionis earlier than 1299 and received a visit from the inquisitor Guido Capello that year, so he could preach against the Colonna. Cremona (long known as a hotbed of heretics) apparently lacked provisions as late as 1339. The 1327 statutes of Arezzo are also silent, though we have seen earlier in this chapter that the city received inquisitors as early as 1273, had a domus inquisitionis in the precincts of the Franciscan convent by at least the first decade of the fourteenth century, and accepted preaching by the Florentine inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato against the Spirituals in 1312.34 The form of the Arezzo statutes is probably explained by the lengthy interdict of the 1320s and the excommunication of the bishop-signore Guido Tarlati. But these instances show that it cannot be assumed that silence about

32 Maisonneuve,

Études, pp. 315–19; Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’, esp. pp. 378–90. 33 Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 32–3: ‘queste norme [statutes of 1264], soprattutto se confrontate con altre disposizioni – ad esempio […] con l’analoga legislazione di altre città – appaiono frammentarie, quasi incomplete’. 34 For Modena and Cremona: Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’, pp. 379–80, n. 110. For Arezzo: Statuto di Arezzo (1327), ed. G. M. Camerani, Fonti di storia aretina 1 (Florence, 1946).

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power heresy in a particular set of statutes implies either rejection of the inquisition or absence of action against heresy by the Church or the civil power. The political context at the date of the statutes has to be taken into account. To this extent, Padovani’s otherwise extremely valuable analysis is flawed, as he does not compare statutory provisions with the known presence of the papal inquisition or contemporary relations with the Church. Even when cities eventually did agree to incorporate the papal constitutions in their statutes, they went about it in very different ways. Some transported the Frederician and papal constitutions wholesale into a separate book of the statutes, taking no account of whatever else was there.35 Others accepted the obligation by way of separate agreements and riformagioni (statute reformulations) which never actually entered the main lawbook, and of which many have not survived. Cividale del Friuli took the core of Ad extirpanda into its statutes but appears not to have included other provisions. A great many modified the Ad extirpanda provisions in some way. In Verona, the 1270 statutes (the first to mention heresy) placed the duty to capture and punish heretics jointly on the shoulders of the podestà and the bishop. Although Ad extirpanda was incorporated in essence, the statutes omitted the entire requirement to supply ‘twelve good men’, two notaries and two servitores to staff the officium inquisitionis.36 Yet we know this did not reflect lack of anti-heretic action, because of the contemporary evidence of the careers of Verona inquisition staff and the existence in 1270, 1280 and 1285 of a cacciagazaro (Cathar-hunter), also described as officialis inquisitoris. In 1285, he is termed cacciagazaro pro Ecclesia Verone. The activities of one of these, Enrico, extended to Ferrara, where he accosted Armanno Pungilupo in the street with threatening remarks on the lines of ‘I know who you are. I’ll feel your collar.’ Cipolla has argued, on the basis of a document of 1273, that in Verona the inquisitor personally acted as an agent of the commune, and we saw earlier that the Treviso inquisitor in 1323 claimed to be the bishop’s vicar.37 These unusual local structures are documented over a lengthy period, and suggest that the handling of inquisition – as between the three partners – was

35 For

example, Florence (1325 recension); Verona (1328, recension of Cangrande). The disconnect in Florence between civic and religious provisions is so complete, including their being written by a different scribe, that Caggese omitted the antiheresy constitutions from his edition of the 1325 statutes. 36 Leicht, ‘La lotta contro gli eretici in Friuli’; Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’ p. 385. For Verona, see Chapter 1 above (text referenced at n. 30) and Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’, pp. 73–4. 37 See Chapter 3 above for the Verona inquisition notaries, Symon and Bongiovanni di Bonandrea. For the cacciagazaro of Verona, who threatened Armanno Pungilupo: Muratori, ‘Pungilupo’, cols. 120, 124 (1270), 127 (1285); Cipolla, ‘Il patarenismo’ pp. 77–8. His presentation of the inquisitor as the commune’s vicar may be based on a misinterpretation of some dog-Latin, but it is certainly true that the cacciagazari are at different points described as acting pro Ecclesia Verone and pro Comuni Veronensi.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 not nearly as uniform as papal pronouncements and inquisition handbooks imply. Very rarely in the thirteenth century does it appear that cities actually amended the pre-existing content of their statutes to align the obligations on the podestà with the papal and Frederician constitutions (themselves not completely consonant). Sometimes a bridge was made via the podestà’s oath, with a pledge to obey the Church or be a good Guelf; this did not serve to reconcile the differences of detail. The confused and sometimes contradictory mixture of obligations was worsened by inconsistency between different thirteenth-century inquisitors on what the papal constitutions actually were.38 Padovani observes delicately that the Church’s desire to reform the ‘varied congeries’ of Italian city statutes ‘did not always have the desired effects’. With this uneven ground to build on, we should not therefore expect complete conformity in the organisation of the inquisition and its interaction with the civil power in each individual city.

Local agreements Ad extirpanda mandated the provision of certain staff and laid down pay conditions for officials travelling outside the home base. But its requirements must have been supplemented by local agreements covering other details, such as the level of regular pay, the selection process and period of office of inquisition staff and officials, the handling of prisoners and mutual accounting. Agreement on the number of inquisition staff allowed to bear arms inside city limits was another sensitive issue, as was the ability of the inquisitor to pursue cases outside city limits and against citizens from elsewhere.39 Local arrangements covering some of these points certainly existed in Florence, Venice, Verona, Padua and Treviso, and probably Vicenza, but surviving detail is surprisingly scanty.40 38 Four

bulls were incorporated at the inquisitor’s behest in both the statutes of Como in 1255 and those of Ferrara in 1268, but only two were the same (Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’, p. 383 nn. 120, 121). Differences in the anti-heretic statutes of four Italian cities and the Patriarchate of Aquileia are compared in Zanella, ‘Malessere ereticale’, pp. 27–9. 39 The pursuit in Venice of a citizen of Verona formed part of the 1302 malfeasance accusations by Padua and Vicenza against the Franciscan inquisitors: Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, docs. 188–97. The breach was particularly egregious because the inquisitor demanded the accused present himself repeatedly for questioning, but failed to appear in person. 40 The accounts of several newly appointed inquisitors refer to confirming privileges with local rulers. These may relate to local arrangements but, as was discussed in Chapter 2, are more likely refer to papal bulls or generic agreements to accept the inquisition. The latter is perhaps implied by the 1276 recension of the Verona statutes, which confirms otherwise unknown ‘promises and oaths made

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power From the late thirteenth century, the statutes of the larger Italian cities often went into enormous detail about the process of selection of civic officials. Their class, political background and personal qualities might all be specified. Yet it is hard to find any provisions at all concerning the conditions of appointment of officials to deal with heresy, whether as part of the inquisitor’s team or in roles for which the city was usually responsible, such as the custody of prisoners. Although, under Ad extirpanda, the cities had responsibility for maintaining up-to-date copies of the papal constitutions on heresy on behalf of all the partners (and some provably did so), one casualty of Innocent’s tripartite structure was that no one apparently owned the job of archiving matters concerning the office of inquisition itself. In Florence, some kind of local settlement existed from at least the 1280s covering the numbers of officials the city would accept, the process of accounting for heretics’ goods and the disposition of the proceeds. In 1284, the city had nominated a syndic to act for all interests in sequestrating and selling heretics’ goods. A decision of 1289 on the use of the commune’s surplus from heresy confiscations was directed by a special council to be recorded in the provisions to do with building a wall at the Ponte Rubaconte (modern Ponte alle Grazie), adjacent to Santa Croce.41 The surplus was subsequently redirected to pious rather than public works: for ten years to the building of Santa Reparata, then for five years to works at Santa Croce and Santa Maria Novella jointly.42 Under Grimaldo da Prato, probably around 1310 in his second term as inquisitor, a new management agreement was negotiated between city and inquisitor, and was still current in 1334, nearly twenty-five years later. It covered the numbers and agreed pay of inquisition staff, a matter of interest to the inquisitor’s partners because his costs affected the surplus available for partition with them.43 However, it clearly did not cover all issues of possible dispute, as bitter disagreement broke out a decade later over proper accounting arrangements and the city’s demands to verify its due share. This led to the city’s edict Contra officium of November 1320. Relations

at the request of fra Florasio […] in the matter of the Patarines’ (‘promissiones et sacramenta facta ad requisitionem fratris Florasii […] super facto paterinorum’), probably datable to 1262–63: Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’, p. 385 n. 129. 41 Corsi, ‘Per la storia‘, pp. 6, 15, doc. 7. The commune’s share in earlier years was apparently directed to maintaining the city walls: Dameron, Florence and its Church, p. 301. Using funds on the wall adjacent to the bridge and the Franciscan convent was a neat way of segueing between pre- and post-1252 provisions. 42 Corsi, ‘Firenze 1300–1350’, p. 50 n. 78. 43 The agreement ‘per publicum instrumentum’ is mentioned by Pace da Castelfiorentino when testifying in the process against Mino da San Quirico in 1334 (Collectoria 251, fol. 70r). Grimaldo was inquisitor 1300–05 and 1310–15. The agreement itself has not been located, but the timing may be associated with problems over arms-bearing which led to the issue of new synodal provisions by Bishop Antonio dell’Orso in 1310–11: see Corsi, ‘Firenze 1300–1350’, pp. 34, 55 n. 98.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 continued fractious into 1321, when it appears that Manovello di Giacomo, the nuntius and familiaris, was taken prisoner by the retinue of King Robert’s vicar, and had to be ransomed.44 In Treviso, relations between inquisitor and city had been bad since the turn of the century because of the arrogant behaviour of fra Aiulfo, which as we have seen led to a fruitless protest to the minister-provincial. At one point, inquisition staff were arrested for unnecessarily breaking curfew. Although the city continued to perform its duties, such as reading the antiheretic constitutions regularly and keeping copies up to date for the use of all partners, surviving civic records show a series of discussions in 1313, 1314, 1315, 1317 and 1340 on staffing limits, arms-bearing and other matters (such as the extent to which the inquisitor could operate outside the city and diocese). The flurry of activity was prompted by the inquisitor’s concern over recent restrictions on the bearing of arms inside the city and limits on the numbers of his staff who could do so. Agreement was finally reached only in 1317 after the intervention of the papal legate, Cardinal Bertrand du Poujet, following an embassy for which the city had to borrow the funding from the bishop. This was another instance of continuing episcopal involvement in inquisition and backing of the civil authority. The agreements made in the early Trecento were presumably not the first, and also seem to have been at variance with the city’s statutes. The 1340 exchange, when Treviso had been sucked into Venice’s orbit, was apparently made in ignorance of the 1313–17 decisions and consilia. It refers to ‘old’ statutes restricting the number of officiales to eight, rather than Ad extirpanda’s twelve.45 Treviso’s several changes of regime and political structure across the early fourteenth century may be to blame for the loss of collective memory. In Padua before 1273 a compact set the daily tariff the town would meet for the cost of prisoners. This emerges from a sulphurous dispute between inquisitor and podestà over proper custody arrangements for women, with the podestà declaring himself willing to pay a higher tariff to ensure they were suitably housed.46 An agreed daily tariff is also dimly visible under-

44 Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 360; Collectoria 249, fol. 59r. Biscaro associates the capture

with Manovello’s role in keeping the books, but he did not assume this particular duty until some years later. At this point he is simply described as nuntius. 45 Notarised evidence of actual public readings of the constitutions survives in Treviso for 1303, 1304, 1311 (three times) and 1312. See Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, Documenti Trivigiani 3 (appendix), docs. 2–5. For the arguments from 1313 on, Documenti Trivigiani 4, docs. 80, 165 (1313–14); 5, docs. 3, 135, 142 (1315–17); 8, doc. 128. 46 ASVen, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 91/III, doc. 36. Da Milano, ‘L’istituzione dell’Inquisizione a Venezia’, pp. 194–6, discusses the dispute and publishes extracts of the 1275 resolution by Orsini, but does not focus on its actual cause.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power pinning surviving prison accounts for Florence and Siena.47 In 1299, again in Padua, the commune sought to have the period of office of inquisition officials limited to five years. Since Ad extirpanda specified a six-month term, there must have been a previous local agreement to vary it.48 One local agreement whose text has survived, perhaps because its achievement was of intense political interest to both parties, was that with Venice. The city finally consented to admit the inquisition in August 1289, and the agreement was both confirmed by Nicholas IV’s bull Accedentes ad Apostolicam Sedem and inscribed in the city’s book of pacts. Ilarino da Milano, in his study of the tortuous process of threat and negotiation, describes it as a model convention with a state. It was considered sufficiently important at the time to be reproduced in at least one inquisition handbook elsewhere, though sadly other inquisitors did not incorporate their own pacts. However, although the agreement committed Venice to receive inquisitors and to give them all the help they required, even this omitted some significant business detail which must have been required to give it effect.49 As with Florence, the Venice agreement demonstrates that the nitty-gritty of dealings with heresy and its financial consequences could be hidden in peculiar places. The treaty itself was agreed by the Maggior Consiglio and reflected in the Doge’s oath of office. But the daily responsibility for financial issues to do with the papal inquisition was laid on the office responsible for grain supplies and prices. Meantime, as Padovani has noted, following the seventeenth-century historian Paolo Sarpi, the previous ducal inquisition was not superseded by the arrival of papal inquisitors. It continued in parallel with a completely separate organisational and financial structure, which since 1270 had depended on the provveditori (superintendents) of canals and aqueducts. Sarpi asserted that the ‘mixture of civil and ecclesiastical’ (‘misto di secolare e d’ecclesiastico’) continued to his own day, insisting in fact that both were essentially subject to secular control because the inquisition could only operate under the agreed terms.50 This might have been true in

47 Collectoria

250, fols. 20v–1v, 74r–81v. For Siena, see Severino, ‘Note sull’eresia a Siena’, p. 895, imprisonment of Rossolino and Gheri Montecchiesi in the communal prison at the inquisitor’s behest (1306), costing twelve denarii each ‘come si conviene in una poliza’ (‘according to an agreement’). 48 Parmeggiani, Consilia, doc. 41. 49 Da Milano, ‘L’istituzione dell’Inquisizione a Venezia’, p. 204 n. 1, describes it as ‘an example of a special agreement with a state’ (‘tipo di convenzione particolare con uno stato’). It is reproduced in MS Cas 969, which seems to be from Dominican Ferrara; Parmeggiani ascribes MS Cas 969’s origin only to ‘ambito veneto’. Surprisingly, the Venice agreement is not included in the Constitutiones Sacre Inquisitionis of Vicenza, dated by Lomastro Tognato to before 1302. See Parmeggiani, Consilia, pp. lxxxvi–xc, for a codicological description of the (very hard to read) MS 969; Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 145–56 for discussion of the Constitutiones. 50 Da Milano, ‘L’istituzione dell’Inquisizione a Venezia’, pp. 182, 204 et seq., financial

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 principle, but as other Italian cities discovered, it was more difficult to impose in practice.

The handling of competing responsibilities The continuation of a secular involvement in heresy in Venice is usually seen as exceptional. The evidence presented here shows that independent civic responsibility towards the pursuit of heresy continued long after the arrival of the papal inquisition and the duty imposed by Ad extirpanda to support it. Unfortunately, we know little about how the podestà’s statutory duties were exercised in practice and how clearly (if at all) they were demarcated from those of the inquisitor. In 1298 in Treviso, the podestà imprisoned and fined a man ‘who was accused twice of maligning God and the Holy Virgin Mary’ (‘qui accusatus fuit iniuriasse Deum et Sanctam Mariam virginem per duas vices’). If this was blasphemy, it was also a matter for the podestà in other cities.51 But what constituted blasphemy was a grey area, as demonstrated by the inquisitor Bonagiunta da Mantova’s pursuit of a prankster in Vicenza territory who entertained drinkers in a tavern by pretending a dish of lasagne was the Host.52 Some communes may have sought to avoid conflict by focusing their independent activity on areas such as magic and sorcery, which were excluded from the inquisition’s remit by Alexander IV’s Quod super nonnullis of 1256 and 1269, and again in Boniface VIII’s Liber Sextus. Others, like Bologna, did soften the earlier civic mandate to act independently against heresy, and in the 1335 statutes specifically instructed co-operation with the officium inquisitoris [sic]. Whereas its 1288 reform had assigned untrammelled power to the podestà to inquire into, identify, punish and condemn groups including heretics and their receivers (‘hereticos et eorum receptatores’), in 1335 the issues on which he had to take action by himself (per se ipsum) were reframed to focus mainly on unnatural behaviour, magic and sorcery: Contra sodomitas et lenones ipsorum. Et contra hereticos et herettichorum receptatores. Et contra divinatores vel experimenta facientes. Transfiguratores, contra inchantatores. Et contra ydollas facientes. Et contra affaturatores et affaturatrices et contra Mathematichos.53

arrangements; Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’, pp. 381–2; Sarpi, Discorso dell’origine dell’Ufficio dell’Inquisizione a Venetia, p. 17. 51 Michielin, Acta Comunitatis Tarvisii, Quaternus expensarum, p. 967. The accuser was rewarded with one third of the fine. Blasphemy was also reserved to the podestà in Florence: Corsi, ‘Firenze 1300–1350’, p. 56, n. 104. 52 Marangon, Pensiero ereticale, pp. 26–8. 53 The meaning of some terms is unclear, but a rough translation is ‘Against sodomites and their lemans. Against heretics and their receivers. Against diviners

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power Attempts of this kind to distinguish fields of activity and prevent conflict between overlapping competences were however doomed by the inquisition’s own ‘mission creep’ and change in focus as major heretic groups were eliminated.54 This process began quite early, despite the bans on inquisition intervention in either sorcery or usury. In 1299 in Bologna itself, it was the inquisitor (not the podestà) who heard witnesses against the obnoxious monk, Giacomo Flamenghi, for activities including fortune telling, a medieval version of the three card trick, and hanging his abbot upside down over a well. His alleged badmouthing of Boniface VIII probably tipped the balance between the partners.55 In Treviso, the podestà and commune took the opportunity of the provincial chapter being held in the city in 1304 to petition the Franciscan minister-provincial over the inquisitor Aiulfo’s seizure of goods from a woman condemned for sorcery, as well as his intervention in a usury case. They specifically cited his breach of the Liber Sextus provisions. It is noteworthy that the commune’s appeal was also on behalf of the officium inquisitionis, indicating once again that the officium and the inquisitor himself were differentiated. The implication is that the officium had acted for the civic interest in this cluster of issues.56 In Tuscany, it is difficult to discern any clear rationale over who did what. In Siena in 1293, the commune burnt the alchemist Capocchio on its own account, but seven years earlier acted on the inquisitor’s behalf to execute another alchemist, Griffolino da Forlì, for claiming he could fly. The distinction between the two cases seems to be that Capocchio’s claim to turn base metals into gold was regarded as more akin to the secular offences of fraud or counterfeiting, whereas Griffolino (if speaking the truth) must have been engaging in dark arts. Another woman was burnt by the commune as a witch in 1290, but it is not clear who the condemning authority was.57 By 1361,

and alchemists, transfigurers [shape-changers?], incanters of spells, makers of voodoo dolls, male and female infatuators [proto-hypnotists?] and astrologers’: see Padovani, ‘Inquisizione del podestà’, pp. 391–2 nn. 146–50. The statutes were revised while the city was under interdict but attempting to repair relations with the pope, after ejecting Cardinal Bertrand du Poujet: see Frati, ‘Il saccheggio’. 54 The change in the focus of inquisition activities is illustrated by a surviving inquisition register from Modena, which (apart from a clutch of cases against the supporters of Ludwig of Bavaria) begins in 1349 and according to Biondi deals largely with cases of magic and sorcery: Biondi, ‘Lunga durata’, pp. 73–90. John XXII’s obsession with sorcery is well documented, in particular in his case against the Visconti. 55 ASOB, I, docs. 44, 46, 410, 49–52; also Paolini, L’eresia, pp. 147–9. The inquisition took a series of witness statements, but the outcome of the case is missing from the Acta. 56 Collectoria 133, fols. 11r–13v; Biscaro, ‘Marca Trevisana’, pp. 166–9; Marangon, Pensiero ereticale, pp. 31–3, publishes most of the text relevant to the commune’s complaints over inquisition involvement in sorcery and usury. 57 For Capocchio and Griffolino: Mengozzi, ‘Documenti Danteschi’, pp. 128–9, 126; woman burnt in 1290, Severino, ‘Note sull’eresia a Siena’, pp. 894–5.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 the Siena inquisition was pursuing the priest of Sassetta, Paolo di Andrea of Corsica, for sorcery and soothsaying. In Florence, in the same inquisition province, mid-fourteenth century and later cases of sorcery were (according to Brucker) handled by the city judges. But it was the inquisition which condemned the astrologer Cecco d’Ascoli in 1328.58 Regardless of canon law or city statutes and across both the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there was clearly considerable variation over who did what, even within the same inquisitorial territory. As with the episcopal inquisition, the line between inquisitor and civic partner was drawn differently in different places, and subject to many influences. Information on the independent civic role is patchy, with much probably still to be excavated from city records. What we do not see is an inexorable advance by the papal inquisition, eliminating all other powers against heresy.

Was Ad extirpanda’s division of duties observed? The main support responsibilities allocated to the civil power related to the physical seizure and sale of heretics’ goods, the maintenance of prisons and the carrying out of ‘final’ – capital – punishments. This represented both a conceptual view of appropriate ‘religious’ as opposed to ‘secular’ functions and a practical recognition of the greater expertise and resources of civil authorities in confiscating and valuing property. Every Italian city routinely used confiscation against banned criminals, rebels and opposing political factions. A further responsibility, often overlooked, was the commune’s role in maintaining copies of the papal constitutions and publicising them by public readings: we have seen this upheld in Treviso. The execution of living victims seems throughout to have remained largely the province of the civil power, though many inquisitors had a very active role in setting the stage. It is less clear how far the communes involved themselves in the ritual burning of those convicted post mortem, which in many areas accounted for a high proportion of ‘executions’ by the late thirteenth century. In Florence in 1285, the inquisitor Salomone da Lucca ordered the ‘potestatem secularem’ to exhume and burn the bones of Bruno degli Adimari. It took eighteen months for the podestà to react, from which we can infer disagreement over his involvement. In Bologna, Guido Capello in 1299 also

58 For

the priest of Sassetta: Piccolomini, ‘Documenti senesi’, pp. 233–45. For handling of sorcery cases in Florence: G. A. Brucker, ‘Sorcery in early Renaissance Florence’, Studies in the Renaissance 10 (1963), 7–24. Brucker appears (p. 8) to locate the Sassetta case in the thirteenth century, and gives an erroneous date of 1322 for Cecco d’Ascoli’s execution. For Cecco, the most accessible account is by L. Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science during the first Thirteen Centuries of our Era, 2 vols. (New York, 1923), II, 948–68; also Biscaro, ‘Firenze’, (1930), pp. 268–70.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power took the view that the podestà’s task encompassed both living and dead.59 Elsewhere, however, inquisitors do appear to take direct responsibility for exhuming dead heretics and conducting the burning, perhaps where (as in the March of Genoa) there were confused jurisdictions.60 It was a different matter with confiscations, where, notwithstanding the canonical distinctions, inquisitors very rapidly began to encroach on the podestà’s assigned functions. The extent of inquisitors’ takeover of the handling of heretics’ property varied across Italy, and was characterised by a much less public approach than when the same task was carried out by the communes. The transformation in practices can be illustrated by a few examples. In October 1269, the goods of domina Palmeria ‘buried a heretic’ were sold in Treviso in a notably complex and formal procedure. Palmeria’s property, consisting of her dowry interest in a house with a tower, land and outbuildings, had been seized in August by the commune’s procurators, acting on the inquisitor’s request to the podestà. When time came to sell, a triple horn call by the city’s preco in ‘the three usual places’ announced the public sitting of the consilium extimarie (valuation panel). Here, in the podestà’s presence and with bells tolling, the two extimatores et venditores Communis Tarvisii (assessors and sale agents of the commune of Treviso) transferred ownership of Palmeria’s dowry value of 1,400 lire in the property to two notaries, procurators for the inquisitors Nascimbene and Bartolommeo, and for the commune respectively. Fourteen officials and two ‘precones deputati omnibus super officio heretice pravitatis pro Communi Tarvisii’ (‘heralds delegated by the commune of Treviso for all matters concerning the office of heretical depravity’) were present. However, the property itself was assessed at 2,000 lire, more than the dowry value, and a nephew had an interest too. Knocking off 600 lire for this reason, the residue was divided into three parts, one to the Church, one to the officiales of the inquisition and the third to the commune, each third share being worth 466 lire 13 solidi 4 denarii. The Church’s share (but not apparently that of the officiales) was immediately sold back to the commune for cash deposited with one of the officiales. The nephew also sold his share to the commune on the same day, but curiously at 466 lire

59 For

Salomone, see Corsi, ‘Per la storia’, pp. 11–15. For Bologna, ASOB, I, doc. 117, instruction to Ruggiero Aliprandi, the podestà’s iudex et assessor that he should have the bones of the said Rosafiore exhumed and burnt (‘quod deberet facere extumulari et conburri ossa dicte Rosaflore’), even though the priest who had buried her had been ordered to exhume her personally. 60 In May 1298 Tommaso da Gorzano organised the exhumation and burning of the Cathar Mia and paid the costs of the manpower and wood for the pyre. Rather ghoulishly, he then appears to have sold her ashes: Collectoria 133, fols. 70v, 82r. Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori lombardi’, pp. 455–6 speculates that the sale was to her relatives; ashes had however many commercial uses. In Bologna in 1299, the friends of the executed Bompietro mounted a raid to rescue his remains from the still smoking pyre for decent burial.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 13 solidi 4 denarii, rather than the 600 lire valuation of his interest. He retained a right to buy it back within twelve months.61 Here we can see both the confiscation process and the division of the proceeds operating as Innocent IV probably intended, transparently and with solemnity. However, under papal norms, if the podestà did not sell heretics’ property within three months of its ‘publication’, the right to sell devolved to the inquisitor himself.62 So in November 1280, again in Treviso, the inquisitor Alessio da Mantova sold the property of another deceased heretic, Almengarda, on the basis that the podestà had not done so in the stipulated time. The procedure here was very different. Alessio declared he had taken formal advice on his power to act from the bishop, the local Dominican prior and the Franciscan guardian, and then proceeded directly to sell Almengarda’s goods to her widower, Leone da Robegano, for 400 lire of Venetian parvi. The valuation was ratified not by professional assessors but by the representatives of several confraternities, some with contiguous properties. Moreover, the transactions were completed not in the palazzo comune with bells ringing to notify the public, but in the far less accessible surroundings of a corridor of the bishop’s palace and the stairway of the Franciscan convent.63 Fast-forward to Bologna in May and June 1299, and we find the Dominican inquisitor Guido Capello acting completely independently to dispose of the properties of the Cathars, Bompietro and Giuliano, within days of their execution. Indeed, Guido falsified the podestà’s position by claiming he had not acted within the canonical period, and got his legal powers retrospectively approved by the bishop six months later. The only valuation was by a magister lignaminis, a master-carpenter, not an independent assessor, and the process was both unpublicised and carried out in the domus inquisitionis. As we saw in Chapter 4, the actual seizure of Giuliano’s property had been undertaken by inquisition nuncii and procurators, not (as in the 1269 Treviso example) by communal officials at the inquisitor’s request. The two hats worn by the nuncius Benincasa Martini were the closest the Bologna commune came to the whole process, although in the sale the goods are represented as ‘goods confiscated by the office of inquisition for the podestà of Bologna’ (‘bona que sunt confisschate officio inquisitionis per potestatem Bononie’). 64 61 Michielin,

Acta Comunitatis Tarvisii, docs. 87–91. Two contemporary versions of the main document (doc. 87) exist, plus Scoti’s eighteenth-century transcript, which includes some additional names of officiales. 62 ‘Publication’ meant announcement of the owner’s infamation of heresy, not conviction. Chapter 1 above notes that the time window given to the podestà was modified by Alexander IV to assist the Franciscan cash flow. 63 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, Documenti Trivigiani 3, docs. 70–1. 64 ASOB, I, docs. 133 (rental of Giuliano’s house); 151 (valuation); 332 (sale); 331 (agreement to sell Bompietro’s property); II, doc. 805 (retrospective permission). Sentence was pronounced on 12 May 1299, Giuliano’s house rented out on 14 May, valued on 17 May and sold by 1 June.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power There is no doubt that in several areas, inquisitors dominated the process of seizure and sale of properties from the last decades of the thirteenth century onwards. This frequently led to mistrust and ill feeling, and probably to a sense of detachment by the civic authority from the negotium fidei. Sale documents insist that the inquisitor acts because the podestà has failed to carry out his duty within the specified time frame; rarely do we have the documentation (as for Bologna) to show that this was a fiction. However, even in cities such as Padua and Vicenza, where relations between inquisitor and commune were extremely poor, the podestà did continue to handle some sales of heretics’ goods throughout the period. In 1296, for example, the podestà of Padua publicly sold three pieces of farmland with houses for the rather low total price of eight lire eight solidi of grossi veneziani. The purchaser was probably an inquisition official, and the sale contained a clause validating it even if the valuation were later found to be inaccurate. Since two of the three parcels of land were contiguous with property already owned by the canons of Padua, the suspicion must be that both parties colluded to set the value low so the property could be sold on to the Church cheaply. The wording may hint that the podestà really had overrun the time limit and might now be acting under some duress – with the inquisitor’s ‘advice and consent’.65 The surplus of the commune’s share from heresy confiscations was often made over to the Church for pious purposes, such as church building. This was a considered act. The forced philanthropy of unrealistically low valuations has been less remarked. Especially where the inquisitor himself handled sales, such valuations allowed religious bodies (and a cloud of individuals linked to the inquisitor or office of inquisition) to acquire property cheaply, in practice defrauding other interests.66 In Treviso the prior-provincial of the order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, the Cavalieri Gaudenti, was able to buy centre-city land for its church and convent for a mere five Venetian grossi in this way from the estate of the notary Alberto da Guinizzone, re-convicted in 1298 some twenty-four years after death. Although seemingly half the clergy of the Marca Trevisana lent their support to the sale, the commune was nowhere involved.67 Sales by the inquisitor or his representative were not only less transparent than those by the podestà, but typically made no mention of the rights of 65 Bonato,

Il Liber Contractuum, doc. 235, pp. 560–4. cut-price sales were specifically conceded by Vicenza in 1283, as a means of alms: d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’, doc. 34 (riformagione of 1283). 67 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale, Documenti Trivigiani 3, fols 88–9; A. Serena, ‘Fra gli eretici trevigiani’, Archivio Veneto-Tridentino 3 (1923), 169–202 (pp. 172–8); Federici, Istoria dei Cavalieri Gaudenti, II, 116–19; Marangon, Pensiero ereticale, pp. 24–5. Alberto was originally convicted and signed with the cross by the bishop before 1272; a further process was begun but not pursued by Alessio da Mantova prior to Alberto’s death. The suspicion is that Pietrobono Brusemini revived accusations in 1297 simply to hand a prime urban site to the Cavalieri Gaudenti. 66 However,

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 the other interests. In principle this should have been sorted out during regular mutual accountings, but in some well-known cases there was clearly concealment of sums owed. Justified belief that the inquisition was cheating the commune in a variety of ways was behind the actions taken by the communes of Padua and Vicenza, supported by their bishops, to complain to Boniface VIII in January 1302. Both the pope and his investigator, Gui de Neuville, ordered the parties to produce their account books and prove that payments were made and received. The cities’ response included what is now known as the Liber Contractuum, a dossier of suspect transactions excavated from public notarial records on behalf of the communes. It copies 398 acts by sixty different notaries across the Marca Trevisana, covering the forty-year period from May 1263 to August 1302. It includes not only sales at unrealistically low valuations or where the commune had seen nothing of the proceeds, but also instances where the inquisition had looted or mishandled bequests by pious citizens for charitable purposes. How far the balance of responsibility for conducting sales had tilted towards the inquisition is shown in the composition between Vicenza and the by then ex-inquisitor Antonio da Padova, in August 1302, discussed above in Chapter 1. Of seventy-two sales, only four had been handled by the podestà, one of them to his close relative.68 Inquisitors in the Marca Trevisana over-reached themselves in arrogating secular functions to an extreme degree, which was perhaps why relations with their partners broke down as badly as they did. Elsewhere, responsibility for confiscations and resultant sales appears a little more equally shared between the partners, though tilting towards the inquisition as time passed. In Florence, the city regularly appointed syndics – not part of the officium inquisitionis though paid from inquisition funds – to work with the inquisitor to represent the civic interest in calculating what was owed to whom. Financial accounts show that during the 1320s the Florentine inquisition assiduously held each departing podestà to account during his sindication period, though (as the city’s edict Contra officium shows) the city did not feel the inquisition’s own books were equally open. In Siena, commune and inquisitor both engaged in sales in the 1270s, 1280s and 1290s, and accounted to each other. The commune also undertook executions and physical punishments, such as the amputation of the tongue of a patarine.69

68 Bonato,

Il Liber Contractuum, doc. 259. The timespan covered by the composition is not specified, but most of the sales relate to the property of the large and wealthy de Pileo family (the relatives of the inquisitor Guido Capello). At least some of these occurred by 1298. For other discussion of the scandal: Rigon in his introductory essay to Bonato; d’Alatri, ‘Inquisitori veneti’ (composition with Antonio da Padova at doc. 74) and ‘Due inchieste’; Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza; Biscaro, ‘Marca Trevisana’. 69 Severino, ‘Note sull’eresia a Siena’, pp. 893–5.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power Prisons were the third major area where the civil power had support responsibilities. The Council of Vienne in 1311 confirmed that the provision and payment of a prison warder, who should be over forty years of age and of good character, was something which fell to the commune, with the approval of the bishop. Like Ad extirpanda, it also specified that inquisition prisoners should be held separately from criminal cases. However, actual practice over the management of both secular and inquisition prisoners remained very varied across Italy. Many communes had only fragmentary prison provision until well into the fourteenth century, using instead the prisons of convents or private jails. There were thus practical difficulties in observing papal requirements to keep heretics or heresy suspects separately from other prisoners, especially whilst also separating male and female prisoners. Inquisitors acquired their own prisons from at least the 1290s onward, and billed the commune for them, but the motivation may have been as much to compensate for civic inadequacies as to usurp functions. Hardly any inquisitors include the running costs of prisons in their accounts until the second decade of the Trecento. They covered principally the cost of feeding prisoners without resources, and give no data on those who could meet their costs. It is unclear whether the absence of previous mention just reflects poor accounting skills or the fact that costs were being directly met by the civil authorities. In Florence, where the inquisition had both its own prison and a clear agreement that the commune would meet the costs, accounting practices changed from September 1322 to maintain a separate prison account, which was offset against the commune’s third of confiscation income.70 The only Dominican inquisitor regularly to record the maintenance costs of prisoners is Pace da Vedano in the March of Genoa, though these are intermixed with his general expenses. A few years earlier in the same area, Tommaso da Gorzano paid private jailers but only very occasionally mentions prisoners’ living costs. The evidence is too jumbled to draw firm conclusions about shifts in responsibilities, though it is clear that in the first decades of the fourteenth century the inquisition in Italy did generally acquire its own prison premises, distinct from those of the bishop, convent or commune. Direct evidence of active civic involvement with the inquisition’s prisoners comes from Padua in 1275, in an already cited dispute between inquisitor and podestà over the housing of prisoners. This involved both those awaiting execution and a bigger group who had not yet been sentenced or possibly even interrogated, all held (apart from the women) in the same communal lock-up. In Treviso in 1298, the city’s payment of a solidus a day to the ‘spaderio custodi carcerum patarinorum’ (a sword-bearing assistant to the warden of the Cathar prisons) is recorded in its list of expenses alongside other costs and salaries. In Siena in 1304, the three Montecchiesi brothers

70 Collectoria

250, fol. 71r.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 were sentenced to life imprisonment and were handed over by the inquisitor Filippo da Lucca to the podestà, who also conducted the sale of their goods. They can be traced until 1306 via the commune’s payment of twelve denarii each for their keep. In this case, Severino comments on ‘a prompt and efficient partnership between the the inquisition and the civil power’ (‘un efficiente e pronto collegamento fra inquisizione e potere civile’).71 Responsibility for imprisonment ran the gamut from holding a suspect before investigation, to incarcerating them while under interrogation and perhaps torture, to the relatively new concept of lifelong imprisonment by way of punishment. How these functions were divided between inquisitor, commune and bishop varied a good deal. It seems to be the case in Italy that the commune took on the extreme ends of the spectrum: those sentenced to life imprisonment or awaiting execution, plus some holding of newly arrested suspects awaiting transfer to either bishop or inquisitor. The inquisitor, meanwhile, dealt with other categories. However, attempts at rationalisation of responsibilities rapidly become blurred when, as in Florence in the 1320s, the compact with the city gave the inquisition responsibility for the prison and whoever the inquisitor might choose to put in it, at the commune’s cost. This suggests that all categories of detainee were intended. In practice, most prisoners in the Florence inquisition prison seem to have been held for quite short periods, though we can trace the prison life of the unlucky priest Bernardo Nuti over eleven years, for inability to pay a fine for a minor infraction. The inference from this somewhat scrappy evidence is that from the end of the thirteenth century inquisitors took on much more of the daily responsibility for imprisonment, although financial responsibility continued to be borne by the civil power. This shift was probably not a power grab by inquisitors, but can be seen as a practical response to the real difficulties experienced by many communes in housing inquisition prisoners appropriately. In respect of confiscations and sales, however, it is evident that by the same point there had been an enormous shift in the balance of actual – if not legal – responsibility as between podestà and inquisitor.

Conflicts between inquisitor and commune Relations between inquisitors and civic authorities varied greatly, and surviving evidence is, as ever, more frequent where there were disputes rather than examples of harmonious working. Some inquisitors were certainly either blinkered or had an overdeveloped sense of self-importance in the demands 71 Acta

Comunitatis Tarvisii, p. 970. In the year covered by the paylist, there are only two payments for victuals for the commune’s prisoners and no specific mention of heretics. Also Severino, ‘Note sull’eresia a Siena’, pp. 889–90, 898–9.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power they placed on the civil power. In 1263, Urban IV excused the inquisitor Florasio’s excommunication of the Doge of Venice as driven by zeal for the faith, not arrogance (‘zelum fidei non superbiam’). Perhaps Florasio was indeed motivated by faith, but civic authorities elsewhere saw inquisitors as both meddlesome and behaving in a way inappropriate to their cloth. In the same area in 1304, the podestà of Treviso specifically accused the inquisitor Aiulfo of not behaving like a follower of Francis but of being an overbearing and impatient tyrant. Arrogant behaviour was not restricted to Franciscans. In 1299, the Dominican Guido Capello excommunicated a hapless Bologna gatekeeper who had done no more than request a toll, and soon after threatened a large group of civic leaders in Modena with excommunication for failing to maintain the canalside pathway near the domus inquisitionis.72 The Padua dispute, documented in 1275, is more revealing over the nuances of relationships and the attitudes of the parties. There was evidently longstanding tension over prison facilities: the podestà, the Venetian nobleman Michele d’Orio, admitted threatening to cut off the inquisition notary’s hand to prevent him consigning any more prisoners to the overcrowded facilities in the basement of the palazzo comune. The overcrowding may be why some women prisoners were let out on parole and, according to the inquisitor, visiting taverns. The culmination was when the inquisitor Alessio da Mantova took umbrage because Michele had failed to execute two condemned heretic women during his (Alessio’s) absence. Alessio excommunicated Michele as a fautor of heresy, whereupon Michele (according to Alessio) angrily declared that he would have him thrown out of the friars Minor and pulled off whatever pedestal he was on (‘quod […] de ordine fratrum minorum deici te faceret de quodam podio in quo eris’). The podestà’s justification is illuminating: the convicted women wanted to repent, and he stayed the execution until Alessio’s return to allow him to reconsider. As the Bologna riots of 1299 also showed, lay views of compassionate Christianity differed from those of the inquisition. It is surprising that the inquisitor expected executions to go ahead in his absence, still less in such circumstances.73 Even into the fourteenth century, inquisitors sought to assert themselves by punishing the civil power for obstruction, though with limited results. In Como in 1303, Guido da Cocconato imposed a substantial fine on the podestà’s vicar and nuncius for failing to help in the pursuit of heretics. Fifteen

72 For

Florasio (bull Cordi nostro gladius): ASVen, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 91/III, doc. 28; also da Milano, ‘Antecedenti inediti’. For Aiulfo, see Zanella, ‘Malessere ereticale’, p. 38n.; Rigon, introduction to Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, p. xxix; Marangon, Il pensiero ereticale, pp. 31–3. For Guido, ASOB, I, docs. 97, 105, 100 (toll); 81, 83 (Modena). 73 ASVen, Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari 91/III, doc. 36. Da Milano, ‘L’istituzione dell’Inquisizione a Venezia’, pp. 195–6 for extracts from the correspondence.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 years later, the accounts of Giovanni da Fontana, inquisitor of Bergamo, are littered with fines imposed on smaller communes for not taking action against the heretics (followers of the Apostle Dolcino) in their midst.74 However, city magistrates frequently showed they would not be cowed by inquisitors, though they adopted different strategies to deal with them. Some challenged outright decisions they saw as political meddling. In 1245 in Florence, amid political upheaval, the podestà annulled sentences issued by the inquisitor Ruggero Calcagni. As late as 1316, in a very different political situation, the bargello appointed by the parte guelfa, Lando Bicchi of Gubbio, threatened to put Grimaldo da Prato on his own pyre unless he withdrew processes to bar two civic office-holders on grounds of heretical ancestry.75 Others adopted less confrontational tactics: in 1332, when the commune of Prato was faced with a similar attempt by Mino da San Quirico to taint the gonfaloniere because of his ancestry, the city fathers consulted the bishop of Pistoia and then paid Mino hush money.76 Conflict was often played out on the streets, where communes fought (sometimes literally) to assert their right of control. In Florence in 1321, Manovello di Giacomo, then the inquisitor’s new nuncius, was arrested by the familia of the podestà’s vicar, and had to be ransomed. This followed the commune’s riformagione Contra officium which attempted to ensure better accountability from the inquisitor. A few years earlier in Treviso, one of the commune’s complaints to Gui de Neuville’s enquiry was that inquisition officials had been abroad during curfew, when there was no need.77 Repeated tussles over both the numbers of inquisition officials and in particular the numbers entitled to bear arms demonstrate civic determination not to be overborne. In Florence this dispute culminated in 1346 in the city’s withdrawal of all co-operation with the inquisitor, except in cases of the death sentence, and the expulsion of Pietro da L’Aquila from the city. This situation was very far from Henry Lea’s vision of ‘all resources of the state at service of the inquisition’.78

74 Como,

see Tocco, ‘Nuovi documenti’, p. 99. Bergamo, see Collectoria 133, fols. 208v–9r. 75 For the 1245 events, see Padovani, ‘L’inquisizione del podestà’, p. 377; J. Kirshner, ‘Calcagni, Ruggero’ in DBI 16; Tocco, Dante, doc. 17. Threat against Grimaldo, see process of 1328 against Lando, published by Fumi, ‘Eretici e ribelli nell’Umbria’ (1900), p. 251; Corsi, ‘Firenze 1300–1350’, pp. 52–3. Twelve years later, the inquisition was still unsuccessfully trying to punish Lando for his irreverence. 76 Collectoria 251, fols. 76v–9r, testimony of Prato civic officials. 77 Collectoriae 249, fol. 59r; 133, fol. 12v, also Bruschi, ‘Familia inquisitionis’, para. 79 n. 172. For Contra officium, Biscaro, ‘Firenze’ (1929), p. 360. 78 Corsi, ‘Firenze 1300–1350’, pp. 54–6; d’Alatri, ‘Un’istruttoria’; Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. xi, 342.

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Inquisitor, bishop and civil power

A shift in power? The traditional picture of a quickly dominant papal inquisition is not borne out by the evidence presented here. On the contrary, the involvement of both bishops and civic authorities in the pursuit of heresy lasted far into the fourteenth century. The power dynamics were much more complex than scholars such as Lea allow. Although inquisitors did plainly try to present themselves as pre-eminent in the partnership established by Ad extirpanda, cities and bishops never completely yielded their independent role. In some instances, they clawed back earlier positions, often when inquisitors had over-reached themselves. As the office of inquisition became firmly established, the balance of activities between commune and inquisition did indeed shift, with inquisitors assuming a greater role in selling confiscated goods and probably in the management of prisoners. But it is arguable whether this demonstrated increased inquisition dominance or merely acquiescence by the cities in letting the inquisitor handle a tiresome tranche of business, so long as they received their fair share. City officials were in general not cowed by inquisitors’ threats and demands, though sometimes (as with Prato and Mino da San Quirico) they opted for the quiet life. There is in fact evidence in Florence and Treviso in the fourteenth century that civic administrations felt able to impose more robust standards on inquisitors’ behaviour, even ejecting them from the city if they presumed too far. The partnership imposed by Ad extirpanda was a little battered, but survived.

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Conclusion The difference between intention and execution has always been the bane of governments, and was particularly so for the medieval Church, relying as it did mainly on spiritual authority. The institution of the inquisition was an unusual attempt to create a new operational arm. When thinking about its development in Italy over the century from 1250 to 1350, I found Richard Kieckhefer’s fundamental discussion of the office very useful in shaping my approach and helping to frame questions which would get the best out of the source material. It encouraged me to look closely at the inquisitor’s staff, who they were and what they did, and it provided me with the fundamental question and theme. How far was the medieval inquisition a loose association of separate personal jurisdictions, rather than an institution functioning cohesively both over time and across regions?1 Secondly, how the papal inquisition really interacted with its episcopal and secular partners after Innocent IV’s imposition of a tripartite structure in 1252 is clearly a crucial issue. While much attention has been paid to the position as set out in manuals and consilia, the real details of daily relationships have been much less considered. Inevitably, we find a picture which diverges in many respects from what was contemplated in Ad extirpanda. And thirdly, the inquisitors’ relationship in practice with the mendicant orders, of which they were senior members but from whose control they were theoretically liberated, raises a host of issues which rapidly extend beyond their personal dilemmas of obedience into the economic role of the Church in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. In exploring these major questions, other points were thrown up. In a study which aims to cover as much territory as this, there are also inevitably things which are missing or under-considered or could be set out differently. Some issues I was unable to resolve to my own satisfaction, though further work might bring rewards. But there are some broad conclusions which seem justifiable. Richard Kieckhefer helpfully provides criteria by which to test his own hypothesis, the most important being his argument that there was no continuity in inquisition staffing.2 He accepts that permanent staff, especially inherited by one inquisitor from his predecessor, would be strongly suggestive of institutionalisation. Chapters 3, 4 and 5 above demonstrate beyond question that in medieval Italy, both in urban settings with an inquisitor in continuous residence and in lesser centres, many lay staff – not just the notaries, but also 1 Kieckhefer, 2 Ibid.,

‘Personal jurisdiction’, pp. 38–40. pp. 54–5.

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Conclusion the nuncii, the familiares, the famuli, various contractors and to some extent, the officiales – enjoyed lengthy careers with the officium inquisitionis. Some progressed up a promotion ladder (for example, Nascimbene Adelardi in Bologna and Giovanni Serafini in Florence). Others introduced their sons and other relatives to inquisition work, in some cases establishing three-generation dynasties that can be traced for over forty years, like that of Alberto da Ponziano, the viator and officialis at Verona. Also in Verona, the careers of the Bonandrea family from at least 1270 show a similar lengthy attachment to the office. Continuity of employment is demonstrable not only from pay records and witness subscriptions to documents, but from the staff’s own words, as for instance when Giovanni Bongia testified in 1334 that he had been the Florence inquisition notary for over twenty years and Federico di Montebello in 1308 testified to a career of at least fifteen years (but he could not quite remember how long) as an officialis. Because we can show similar patterns in Franciscan Florence and the Marca Trevisana and in Dominican Bologna and Ferrara, it seems reasonable to infer that we would see them in other areas too, if records had survived. Continuous employment of this kind means that in many areas lay staff long outlasted not only the inquisitors they served, but also the podestà and bishops who might originally have been involved in their selection. They provided the glue which held the institution together, and were able to develop the set habits of work and local practices which characterise a bureaucracy. On the other side of the coin, a cadre of experienced staff, especially notaries, relieved inquisitors themselves of the need to understand more fully the law which underpinned their role. As Zanchino lamented, this was not necessarily a good thing.3 Examining the careers of inquisition staff to establish continuity highlighted other points of particular interest. It is clear that many were servants of two masters, working simultaneously for inquisitor and commune (Benincasa Martini and Lapo Cultri in Bologna). Others were embedded in local convents (the notaries Opizo da Pontremoli and Benvenuto de Trissanti in Florence, Ferarisio de Lambrusca in Ferrara, a host of more junior staff in Florence and Prato) or combined inquisition and civic work under two hats, as with several notaries and nuncii in Bologna. These dual appointments are distinct from borrowing the services of convent or indeed commune employees to meet temporary workflow needs, something which also happened frequently. Both features strongly suggest a high degree of integration of the inquisition within routine civic or convent functioning, and correspondingly the opportunity for two-way influence on practices. There is less evidence in the sources I have consulted of joint working with episcopal households, though Lippo Benincase in Florence shows that this could happen, as does the example of

3 See

Chapter 3 above, p. 91.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 inquisition staff following Filippo Bonacolsi when he moved to take up the see of Trento. The origin, family background and experience of inquisition lay staff tends to contradict the view advanced by Lea and buttressed by the lurid accounts of Florentine chroniclers that inquisition service particularly attracted ‘the reckless and evil-minded’.4 Nor should they be blackened as menials or uneducated desperados. Posts with the inquisition were often one phase in lengthy and distinguished public careers. Inquisition notaries in Florence convened the panel of jurisconsults and consulted bishops by themselves. In both Florence and Bologna, the notaries were involved in rewriting the city statutes. In Florence, the familiaris Manovello di Giacomo maintained records in Latin, had the honorific ‘ser’, and (if his prison accounts are to be trusted) displayed a notably compassionate attitude to prisoners, buying them clothes, blankets, plates and other conveniences. His colleague Borghino was the son of dominus Chiarato. There were undoubtedly intermittent clashes with several civic authorities over the activities of the inquisitor’s retinue (during one of which Manovello was arrested), and there were certainly some bad apples among them. But this was true also for the commune’s own comparable employees, one reason for the extensive statutory controls on nuncii.5 Inquisition lay staff ought to be repositioned within the wider body of civic and convent employees who were their colleagues, not treated as uniquely different. Their role as court servants has also been undervalued and misrepresented, partly by simple misunderstanding of the function of the nuncius. Other factors besides continuity of staffing are also powerfully suggestive of the gradual building of an institution which transcended individual and local remits, and was rooted in the community. Attempts to concert practice and activity were not only fostered centrally, through top-down instructions from the inquisitor-general, Gian Gaetano Orsini, but also through manuals, personal contact and exchange of information between inquisitors themselves. Orsini’s instruction to Italian inquisitors to copy details of their seizures to colleagues in the Languedoc dates to 1273. We do not have the right sort of information from the Marca Trevisana, but the Lombard inquisitors in particular operated collectively, jointly planning strategy, meeting regularly as a whole group, consulting freely with each other and, as Benedetti shows, collaborating financially or during illness.6

4 Lea,

Inquisition of the Middle Ages, p. 381. 1299, a Bologna communal nuncius was described as a man of mala fama after a rampage around the loggia of the palazzo comune, knocking iron helmets off their mounts. In 1313, another turned himself in after knifing someone. Despite the city’s employment precautions, it could no more ensure responsibility than the inquisitor could. ASB, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/II/1, fols. 1rv (1299); 83/1, fol.10r (1313). 6 Benedetti, Inquisitori lombardi: the issue is considered at many points, but pp. 258–74 5 In

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Conclusion Most striking is the interaction between inquisitors of different orders. Although Franciscans and Dominicans differed in several respects in the way they approached business, in particular in the handling of both clerical and lay support to the inquisitor, the orders regularly involved each other in consultations and co-operated over cases. The Franciscans in Florence dealt regularly with the Dominicans in Bologna, exchanged good practice tips and arrested suspects in their territory to hand over to the Bolognesi, including the last claimed Cathar bishop in Italy.7 These are the actions of professionals who recognised the advantages of collaboration and sought to build a collegiate approach across different orders and territories. There were changes over time in the distribution of duties envisaged in Ad extirpanda between the three parties. Especially in the Marca Trevisana, Franciscan inquisitors rapidly took on a much larger share of confiscations and sales than was ever intended, though usually there was a formal nod to the podestà’s duty. To some extent, this change in the pattern of responsibilities was due to the licence given by Alexander IV to the Franciscans – but not the Dominicans – to ease their cash flow in the early days of their entry into inquisition. While Dominicans did conduct some sales, the impression is that they did not transgress the 1252 division of tasks to the same extent. However, this impression may be an artefact of the evidence: more local data on confiscations and sales from Dominican areas would help to resolve this question. Inquisitors also sometimes involved themselves much more closely in executions than was probably ever contemplated, and by 1300 many ran their own prisons, even if the costs were borne by the communes. But the reason for the changes in the actual carrying out of duties is important: were they a successful assertion of inquisitorial supremacy within the partnership, or else seen by civic authorities as simply a business convenience when they had other things on their plate? Were the communes happy to let inquisitors get on with investigations and sales, providing the financial pacts were kept? It is noteworthy that when Florence withdrew co-operation from the inquisition in the 1340s, in the dispute with Pietro da L’Aquila, the exception made was in carrying out capital punishment, which was clearly seen as a secular function. It is not safe to assume that other partners meekly gave way to papal inquisitors, either in terms of ceding jurisdiction or submitting to their demands. The tension between inquisitor and bishop over rights of involvement was not

(the affair of Pagano da Pietrasanta) illustrate the frequency and complexity of relationships. 7 MS Cas 1730, the early fourteenth century handbook from the Florence inquisition office, includes a legal consilium supplied to the Franciscan inquisitor Grimaldo da Prato by ‘Guido, inquisitor of Lombardy’, possibly Guido da Parma of Bologna (fols. 143ra–4vb). In 1321, after capturing the claimed bishop Cione, Pace da Castelfiorentino headed straight to Bologna: Collectoria 249, fol. 59v.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 fully resolved even by Multorum querela, as the Tuscan inquisitors’ immediate questioning of it showed. But their accounts also show how frequently they consulted bishops or bishops’ vicars on matters of doubt. There is continuing evidence of episcopal inquisition into heresy in the fourteenth century, especially in Padua and the Marca Trevisana. This manifests both as independent action, as in Treviso in the 1320s, and as active episcopal involvement in cases conducted by papal inquisitors. A hundred and fifty years later, also in Treviso, we find inquisitor and bishop’s vicar sitting jointly in tribunal, in the bishop’s palace.8 Throughout the period, clashes repeatedly arose between city and inquisitor. In some ways they got worse during the fourteenth century, as inquisitors lost moral authority by their excesses and cities pressed for more open accounting arrangements. However, the podestà’s duty to pursue heretics remained embedded in the statutes of those cities which accepted anti-heretic laws. Indeed, the inquisition needed an independent civic duty to persist, in order to pursue heretics on the many occasions and in the many areas where an inquisitor was not present. Inquisitors reinforced the civic duty every time they fined communities for not delivering heretics. In Venice, the papal and ducal inquisitions ran alongside each other as separate systems. Elsewhere, there is less evidence that city magistrates actively asserted independent jurisdiction over doctrinal heresy, but the picture is clouded by the decline in heresy generally from around 1300, leaving the inquisition to focus on clerical excessus and minor infractions such as blasphemy, usury or eating meat in Lent. Jurisdiction over some of these cases was both argued and arguable. As with cases from Siena and Florence, there was no consistency even within one inquisitorial territory, whatever the theoretical state of the law. The 1304 complaint against the inquisitor Aiulfo in Treviso shows that inquisitors ignored canon law over soothsaying and usury, even when the position had been very recently restated in the Liber Sextus. Sometimes there were direct challenges to the inquisitor’s pretensions, as when the bargello Lando Bicchi in Florence threatened to burn Grimaldo da Prato on his own pyre unless he withdrew a meddlesome process. Lando still remained unpunished twelve years later. Mostly, however, in places as different as Treviso and Florence, civic authorities constrained inquisitors not by direct opposition but by asserting their rights of control over their own territories. They restricted numbers in the inquisitor’s entourage to those set out in Ad extirpanda (or sometimes less), limited his geographical competence and made inquisition staff obey the same rules of conduct as applied to the city’s own employees – even to the extent of imposing dress codes. The communes permitted the inquisition to function, but it did not have impunity.

8 For

the 1319 Florentine consilium on Multorum querela, see Parmeggiani, Consilia, doc. 47. For relations in Treviso, Tozzato, Treviso e l’inquisizione, pp. 53–60.

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Conclusion Early legislation – Urban IV’s 1262 bull Catholice fidei negotium – exempted inquisitors from the control of their orders in the exercise of their office. However, inquisitorial office was sometimes combined with very senior posts in the orders themselves, such as that of the prior-provincial of Lombardy and prior of the major Milan convent, notwithstanding that this was contrary to Dominican general chapter instructions. The Lombard prior-provincial convened meetings of all inquisitors in the province, and among both Dominicans and Franciscans, conventual priors were the back-up during vacancies or absences. This suggests that inquisitors (and the officium inquisitionis) were more closely directed by the orders than is commonly supposed. They were certainly heavily dependent on the orders for all kinds of personnel and support, with at least a fifth of the friars at Santa Croce being involved with the inquisition over the period for which we have accounts. Inquisitors of both orders contributed substantially from office funds to recompense both convents and order for their support. It is thus not correct to think of the inquisition, at least by the early fourteenth century, as a matter confined to a small group of specially selected friars. It was part of the mainstream of mendicant life, in both orders. Although the orders did ultimately require accounts, their intermittent fulminations against inquisition excesses had little effect. It is hard to escape the impression that, by at least the late 1290s, the orders were merely going through the motions of reproof. From well before 1300, in both main mendicant orders, a substantial cadre of senior staff had experience both of inquisition work and of the main posts in the order’s cursus honorum. The conclusion has to be that, as the body of friars with inquisition experience built up in the senior ranks of both Dominicans and Franciscans, it became increasingly difficult for all concerned to observe any distinction between the interests of order and of inquisition. An incompletely resolved puzzle is the nature of the officium inquisitionis. By the time inquisitors were admitted to most Italian cities, secular legal responsibilities to pursue heresy were well established. They varied in their precise structure, but – from cities as far separated as Siena and Vicenza – their general intention was to bring the pursuit of heretics and their supporters so far as possible within the same legal regime as applied to criminals. The statutory duties were frequently backed up (Milan, Vicenza, Verona) by an office of ‘twelve good men’ to act against heretics, replicated in the requirements of Ad extirpanda. These earlier arrangements did not simply vanish with the arrival of papal inquisitors, and the way in which the ‘twelve good men’ mutated into the officium inquisitionis may not have been the same everywhere. The arrangements in the Marca Trevisana seem to have been particularly varied. The officium was not just a name for the office or function performed by the inquisitor, nor simply a collective description of his familia, though some referred to it in this manner. Evidence from many sources identifies 263

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 the officium as an independent legal entity, sitting between commune and inquisitor, whose primary duty was to handle confiscated goods on behalf of all interests and whose officials were not answerable to the inquisitor alone. The Treviso inquisition seal discussed in Chapter 2 is a graphic instance of the office’s joint nature. The distinction between inquisitor and officium is shown (among other possible examples) by the lawsuit over release of funds brought by the Veneto inquisitors against the Padua officialis Mascara dei Mascara in 1303.9 In many respects, the officium inquisitionis sits alongside civic offices, such as the officium bannitorum, which performed a parallel function in confiscating the goods of civil rebels and criminals. The precise nature of the officium and in particular of its officiales is unresolved. In some places, it is closely integrated into civic functioning. Elsewhere the officiales seem to work more directly with the inquisitor and his familia. I speculate that the position differed, depending both on the pre-existing arrangements and on the influence wielded by particular inquisitors. Apart from ex-officio members, such as the appointed notaries and servitors, the officiales themselves ranged from possible torturers on the inquisitor’s team (those named Barberius), through the street policing function of the Cathar-catcher Enrico in Verona, who threatened to finger Armanno Pungilupo’s collar, to local dignitaries, like Federico di Montebello in Vicenza or the Mascara family of Padua, who were notaries, judges and closely linked to inquisitors by family ties. Many were probably involved in the tracing, valuation and sale of heretics’ goods. Some officiales may however have been members of military confraternities, such as the Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary, which provided armed back-up to the inquisition. The appointment of as many as forty officiales in Rimini in 1302, recorded by Zanchino, makes it clear that the range of functions in this group must have been quite wide, while the Florentine reinterpretation of Ad extirpanda in 1323, to restrict a share of confiscations to those actually engaged in obtaining the proceeds, indicates that not all officiales were regarded as equal. The changing role of the confraternities in relation to the inquisition is another topic which could benefit from detailed local studies. An organisational issue which also needs exploring further is the way inquisitors related to the smaller jurisdictions within their territory. Usually, an inquisitor’s remit covered several dioceses, which included many towns and villages with differing suzerainty and jurisdictional powers. A sample trawl of surviving statutes of these subsidiary units found no evidence of anti-heretic provisions in them, although Ad extirpanda theoretically required all jurisdictions, large or small, to service the inquisitor with notary, servitores and the twelve good men. When Guido Capello went on a visitation from Bologna to Modena and Reggio in 1299, he was supported by some

9 ASV,

Instrumenta miscellanea 370; Biscaro, ‘Marca Trevisana’, p. 150.

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Conclusion staff from Bologna and others of local origin. Ferrara switched over three decades between having an inquisitor in residence to being a dependency of the Bologna inquisitor, and back again, whilst maintaining the same inquisition notary. In the Marca Trevisana in the 1290s/1300s, the names of those conducting sales for the inquisitor imply that there were regular notaries for the inquisition in most of the small communities visited. However, it is clear from Alberto da Bassano’s 1332–33 inquisitio in Riva sul Garda, a dependency of Trento, that locally there were then a couple of officiales, nominated by the commune, and a rather ineffective vicarial appointment at the local convent. Despite a many-layered local history of heresy, there was no one who actively took forward allegations. Surviving inquisition accounts do not reflect the costs of maintaining even a skeleton team in other locations. A summary composition with other jurisdictions is occasionally found (for example, in Francesco da Pocapaglia’s dealings with King Robert’s bailiff, or in the Florentine inquisition’s dealings with Prato and Mangone). But the sources are far from giving a clear picture of how the inquisitor accounted to these subsidiary centres, how (or if) his expenses were met by them, and to what extent an active inquisition team permanently existed in places he visited rarely. An inquisitor’s dealings with smaller communities could be fraught, as witness the irritation caused in Treviso by inquisitor Aiulfo’s private agreements with the men of Conegliano.10 As Guido Capello found with the men of San Martino in Argine, it was also not easy to engage the larger local power in problems encountered in the contado. One thing which does emerge clearly from this study is that there were recognisably different styles of inquisition as between the two main mendicant orders. These began with differences in their terms of office and career tracks, and the way in which they used vicars. From the sources available, it appears that the Franciscan inquisition relied much less on maintaining close ties with the civic authorities and much more on parlaying lay assistance from those already employed by their own order. Their support teams were larger but possibly less highly qualified. The Dominicans tended to have smaller support groups, with – at any rate in Bologna – both notaries and nuncii with strong backgrounds of civic employment. Neither order had clean hands, though it does seem that a number of Dominican inquisitors in upper Lombardy and Piedmont retained an austerity and zeal for the faith which is not apparent among Franciscan inquisitors. This speculation may however be only the product of geography and surviving data. Is it possible to draw general conclusions over a century of inquisition activity in Italy? In his old but influential study L’eresia del male, Raoul

10 Rigon,

introduction to Bonato, Il Liber Contractuum, p. xxviii; Biscaro, ‘Marca Trevisana’, pp. 172–3.

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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350 Manselli asserted that local (including political) factors in relation to heresy were so overwhelming that it was impossible to synthesise: ‘ogni città ha avuto una sua storia ereticale caratteristica’.11 But exploring local factors does not give answers either. The well-known Becker–Stephens exchange over heresy and inquisition in Florence shows that even very detailed local investigations into political, economic and religious developments do not yield consensus. They simply take debate to another level of detail, though this can throw interesting light on social connections. The medieval inquisition in Italy was not totally uniform in its arrangements, partly because it was handled by two different orders, but mainly because it was built on foundations of local statute and administration which were not themselves uniform. Understanding the variations is important, but despite them Italian inquisitors did build a recognisably common institution. However, it was one which was deeply integrated in practice into the functioning of the communes themselves, which continued to play an active and necessary role well into the fourteenth century. Inquisitors also continued to rely regularly on bishops, and of course on their parent orders. This study has also shown how open many of the inquisition’s activities were. It is best understood as an integral part of the social fabric of medieval Italy, existing by permission of the communes and bishops to fulfil a religious duty but with its powers ultimately limited by what the public would accept.

11 R.

Manselli, L’eresia del male (Naples, 1963), p. 279 (‘every city had its own particular history of heresy’). Cinzio Violante countered that local histories combine to create the general picture. Dalarun lights on this same Manselli quotation to introduce his valuable study ‘Hérésie, commune et inquisition à Rimini’, p. 641.

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Bibliography Unpublished primary sources Bologna, Archivio di Stato [ASB] Comune, Curia del podestà, Inquisicionum et testium, 47/I, 47/II, 47/III, 48, 48 bis, 67, 83 Comune, Memoriali Soprastante alle prigioni 1239–1445 Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale dell’Archiginnasio Fondo Ridolfi Rome, Archivium Generale Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, Santa Sabina [AGOP] Sezioni II; XIV Rome, Biblioteca Casanatense MS Cas 969 MS Cas 1730 Treviso, Biblioteca comunale MS 957, Vincenzo Scoti, Documenti Trivigiani (12 vols.) Vatican City, Archivio Segreto Vaticano [ASV] Camera Apostolica, Collectoriae 133, 159A, 249, 250, 251, 252, 404, 421A Instrumenta miscellanea 326, 370, 406, 616 Venice, Archivio di Stato [ASVen] Corporazioni religiose soppresse, S. Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, 91/III (Convento Frati Inquisizione)

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Bibliography Pia, E. C., ‘I registri del chierico notaio astigiano Giacomo Saracco: principali tipologie documentarie per la definizione di relazioni economiche (1285– 1316)’, MEFRMA 122/2 (2010), 319–25. Piccolomini, P., ‘Documenti senesi sull’inquisizione’, BSSP 15 (1908), 233–46. Pierce, J. B., Poverty, Heresy and the Apocalypse. The Order of Apostles and Social Change in Medieval Italy 1260–1307 (London, 2012). Pini, A. I., Città, chiesa e culti civici in Bologna medievale (Bologna, 1999). Piron, S., ‘Un couvent sous influence. Santa Croce autour de 1300’, in Économie et religion: l’expérience des ordres mendiants (XIIIe–XVe siècle), ed. N. Bériou and J. Chiffoleau (Lyons, 2009), pp. 321–55. Piron, S., ‘Bonagrazia de Bergame, auteur des Allegationes sur les articles extraits par Jean XXII de la Lectura super Apocalipsim d’Olivi’, in Revirescunt chartae, codices, documents, textus. Miscellanea investigationum medioevalium in honorem Caesaris Cenci OFM collecta, ed. A. Caciotti and P. Sella, 2 vols. (Rome, 2002), II, 1065–87. Praedicatores, Inquisitores, I: The Dominicans and the Medieval Inquisition. Acts of the 1st International Seminar on the Dominicans and the Inquisition, Rome, 23–25 February 2002, Institutum historicum fratrum Praedicatorum, Dissertationes historicae 29 (Rome, 2004). [Praedicatores] Prudlo, D., The Martyred Inquisitor: The Life and Cult of Peter of Verona (†1252) (Aldershot, 2008). Prunai, G., ‘I notai senesi del XIII e XIV secolo e l’attuale riordinamento del loro Archivio’, BSSP 3rd s.12 (1953), 78–109. Purcell, N., ‘The Apparitores: A study in social mobility’, Papers of the British School at Rome 51 (1983), 125–73. Rao, R., ‘Il sistema politica pavese durante la signoria dei Beccaria (1315– 1356): “élite” e pluralismo’, MEFRMA 119 (2007), 151–87. Renucci, G., ‘Le chiese e i conventi’ in Treviso nostra, ed. L. Polo (Treviso, 1964), pp. 165–91. Renucci, G., Le insegne araldiche del comune di Treviso (Treviso, 1986). Ridolfi, A. C., ‘Indice dei notai bolognesi dal XIII al XIX secolo’, ed. G. Grande Venturi, L’Archiginnasio 84 (1989), pp. 27–292. Rigon, A., ‘Conflitti tra comuni e ordini mendicanti sulle realtà economiche’, in L’economia dei conventi dei frati minori e predicatori fino alla metà del Trecento. Atti del XXXI Convegno internazionale, Assisi 9–11 ottobre 2003, (Spoleto, 2004), pp. 339–62. Rist, R., The Papacy and Crusading in Europe, 1198–1245 (London, 2009). Roach, A. P., The Devil’s World (Harlow, 2005). Roach, A. P., ‘The Relationship of the Italian and Southern French Cathars, 1170–1320’, (unpublished D.Phil. thesis, University of Oxford, 1989). Robson, M., The Franciscans in the Middle Ages (Woodbridge, 2006). Roncagli, G. G., ‘Rolandino Passegeri’, AMRom 3rd s. 9 (1890–91), 72–9. Rubin Blanshei, S., ‘Criminal Justice in Medieval Perugia and Bologna’, Law and History Review 1 (1983), 251–75. 283

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Bibliography Zanella, G., ‘Armanno Pungilupo, eretico quotidiano’, Atti dell’Accademia delle Scienze dell’Istituto di Bologna, classe di scienze morali 72, Rendiconti 66 (1977–78), 153–64; repr. in Zanella, Hereticalia: Temi e discussioni, pp. 3–14. Zanella, G., ‘Florio da Vicenza’, DBI 48 (1997). Zattoni, G., ‘Bolle pontefice inedite dell’Archivio arcivescovile di Ravenna (da Lucio III [1181–85] a Bonifacio VIII [1294–1303])’, AMRom 3rd s. 25 (1906–07), 378–412.

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Index Abbreviations: ​(i) OP = Order of Preachers (Dominicans); (ii) OFM = Order of Friars Minor (Franciscans); (iii) inq. = inquisitor; (iv) bp = bishop; (v) pp = prior-provincial (OP); (vi) mp = minister-provincial (OFM); (vii) mg = master-general (OP), (viii) d. = dominus Acconcio Ricoveri da Prato, notary, iudex ​ 101 n. 33 Accounts/accountability ​18–21, 46, 53, 98–9 n. 27, 214–15, 216–20, 252 doubts over accuracy ​21–22 falsification ​21 closure ​216 n. 50 standards ​216–17, 218–19 orders’ involvement ​214–20 for prisons ​21 different styles ​191 for personal goods ​208 Liber Conum ​20–1, 149 n. 16 Accursio Bonfantini, OFM, inq. ​71, 85 nn. 75, 77, 86 n. 80, 88–9, 103 n. 39, 150 n. 19, 151–2, 155, 185, 189 n. 54, 190, 191, 193, 220 Age qualifications ​189 n. 52, 206 Aghinetto, famulus ​153 Aghinolfo of Borgo San Lorenzo, nuncius ​ 141 Aghisio da Bergamo, OP, vicar ​183, 184 n. 33 Agnese di Carrara ​51 n. 72 Aicardo, heretic ​159, 164 Aicardino di Litolfo ​84 Aiulfo [da Vicenza], OFM, inq. ​60 n. 5, 105, 152, 157, 244, 247, 255, 262, 265 Alamanno da Lucca, OFM, inq. ​193 Albenga ​181 Alberano da Milano, spy ​159 Alberigo, OP, inq ​31 Alberto da Bassano, OFM, inq. ​1 n. 3, 43 n. 49, 140, 156, 265 Alberto da Guinizzone, notary and heretic ​251 n. 67 Alberto da Ponziano, viator ​140 n. 71, 141, 259 Alberto della Scala of Verona ​107, 235 Alberto di Carbone, notary ​107–8 n. 50, 109, 110, 130, 131 Alberto Ricco, OFM, bp ​233, 239

Albi ​214 Aldobrandino da Reggio, OP, inq. ​183, 184 n. 35 Alessandria ​71, 78, 89, 100 n. 31, 150 n. 18, 167 Alessandrino, OP, socius ​189 n. 56 Alessandro Novello da Treviso, OFM, inq, bp ​197​ Alessio da Mantova, OFM, inq. ​63 n. 13, 217, 220, 232, 237, 250, 255 Almengarda, heretic of Treviso, 250 d. Altafronte, heretic ​151 n. 22 Altopascio, convent of ​86 n. 80 Ambrogio Taegio, OP, ​31, 192, 193 n. 67, 202 Anagni, 215 n. 48 Ancona, March of ​184 Andalo da Bologna, OP, pp ​227 Andalo da Padova, OP, inq. ​202 n. 4 Andrea da Todi, OFM, inq. ​59 n. 2, 174, 195 Andrea dei Mozzi, OFM, inq. ​86 n. 79, 88, 194 n. 72 Andrea del Valle, notary ​99, 104 Andrea, famulus ​149 n. 16, 153–4 n. 34 Anexia da Piacenza, spy ​151 Angelo da Rieti, OFM, inq. of Viterbo 232, 233 Angelo da Todi, OFM, inq. ​93 n. 7, 117 Anibaldo, Roman senator ​30, 33, 49 Anselm of Alessandria, OP, inq. ​67, 198 Antonio da Arezzo, OFM, inq. ​86, 103, 185 n. 40, 193, 220 Antonio da Lucca, OFM, vicar & inq. ​ 184 n. 36, 186 Antonio da Padova, OFM, inq. ​43 n. 51, 50, 252 Antonio dell’Orso, bp of Florence ​235 n. 17, 243 Apostles ​155, 175 Arezzo ​155, 156, 219, 236, 240 domus inquisitionis at ​236, 240

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Index Ardingo, bp of Florence ​178 Armanno Pungilupo, heretic ​43, 62, 101, 126, 137, 155, 241, 264 Arnaldo de Plebe, spy ​151 Arnaldo of Toulouse, heretic ​205 n. 14 Arnold, bp of Bologna ​20, 208, 220 Artusio, OP, notary ​96 n. 19, 101, 102 n. 34 Arms, carrying of ​129, 146–7, 170, 242, 244 Asciano ​236 Ashes, sale of, 40, 167 n. 74, 249 n. 60 Assisi ​71 Asti ​52 n. 75, 78, 89, 158–9, 195, 202 n. 5 Avancius, friar and heretic ​232 n. 7 Aymerico de Rodaldo, OP, vicar ​181 Azo, canonist ​122 Baldo, OP, socius ​189–90 n. 56 Banking ​169, 213 n. 42 Bannitor, role of ​123 n. 12, 124 n. 14 Baratores, role of ​123 n. 10, 138 Barberius ​165–6, role of 264 Stefanino, Egidio, Damiano, Bertotto ​ 165–6 Barberino di Mugello, convent ​141 Barba, G., heretic ​159 n. 50 Barnaba da Vercelli, OP, inq, pp, mg ​63 n. 15, 202, 209, 211, 235 n. 20 Baronto Ricciardi, bishop of Pistoia ​235 n. 17 Bartholinus Ysenardi, nuncius ​130 n. 33 Bartholo da Leccio, notary ​94, 97 n. 22, 100 Bartola, widow ​148 Bartolo, OFM ​213 Bartolommeo d’Amelia, OFM, inq. ​77, 93 n. 7 Bartolommeo da Breganza, bp of Vicenza ​ 239 Bartolommeo de Magnis, OP, temp. socius ​187 n. 47 Bartolommeo Gradenigo, doge ​114 Bartolommeo Mascara, OFM, inq, mp ​ 106, 212, 228, 233, 249 Bartolommeo Piccolomini ​88 Beatrice, heretic ​159 n. 50 Becco di ser Ugolino Bongiovanni Rubei, banker, procurator ​130–3 Belluno ​197 Benedetto Caetani [Boniface VIII] ​45 Benedetto da Arezzo, OFM, 194 n. 71

Benedetto de Pesculo, OP, inq. ​209 n. 27 Benincasa Martini, nuncius ​131–4, 136, 141, 250, 259 Benvenuto da Cremona ​81 n. 65, 163 n. 63 Benvenuto da Orvieto, OFM, inq. ​59 n. 2 Benvenuto dei Campesani, notary ​118 Benvenuto de Trissanti, familiaris, iudex, notary ​88, 96–7, 99, 101 n. 33, 102 n. 37, 103 n. 40, 105, 116, 117, 149, 150, 182 n. 27, 259 Berga [Roberga], heretic ​135, 137, 160 n. 54 Bergamo ​75 n. 42, 77, 117, 165 n. 67, 191, 216, 222 chapter at ​216 Bernard Délicieux, OFM ​8 Bernard Gui, OP, inq, bp ​10, 24, 52, 135 Bernard, saint ​26 Bernardo Nuti da Prato, priest ​94–5 nn. 14–15, 111, 150, 164, 254 Bernardo [Ricci], OFM, socius ​189 n. 54, 190–191 n. 58, 193 Bertino Ristori, nuncius ​139 n. 66 Bertrando del Poggetto [Bertrand du Poujet], cardinal, legate ​231 n. 4, 244 Bettino, famulus fratrum of S. Croce ​141 Biliotto, notary, 115, 148 Bishops responsibilities against heresy ​25–6, 31, 36–7, 234 complementary powers ​235–6 consultation with ​40 n. 39, 234–5 duties under Ad extirpanda ​39–41 as lead official of inquisition ​41 as inquisitors ​31, 197, 262 relations with inquisitors ​40, 68, 69, 114, 132, 214, 230, 233, 234, 235, 236, 237–8 advantages over inquisitors ​45, 238 joint interpretation of constitutions ​ 104, 235 involvement in appointments to officium inquisitionis ​238 roles of bishops’ vicars ​178, 234 n. 13, 262 receiving inquisitors’ accounts ​46, 52 responsibility to diocese ​239 Blasphemy ​246 Boccaccio ​9–10, 214 n. 43

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Index Bologna ​31, 60, 69, 73, 79, 81, 84, 87 n. 81, 91 n. 3, 93, 95, 100, 101, 102, 104, 105, 107, 111, 115, 116, 123, 124, 126–7, 131, 133, 136, 139, 148, 151, 155–6, 163, 167, 169, 174, 179, 184, 187 n. 47, 190, 192, 195–6, 203, 204, 208, 213, 221, 223, 224 n. 75, 225, 230, 234, 236, 246–7, 248, 251, 255, 259, 261, 264–5 criminal court records ​18 Bompietro bursarius, heretic ​130 n. 33, 131, 133, 137, 158, 163, 166, 167, 184, 234, 235, 249 n. 60, 250 n. 64 Bonacursius, OP, notary ​96 n. 19 Bonacursius da Verona, son of Albertino, nuncius 140 n. 71​ Bonagiunta da Mantova, OFM, inq. ​246 Bonandrea family ​89, 241, 259 [see also Symon, Bongiovanni, Giovanni] Bonanno [da Ripa], OP, vicar, pp ​67, 195 Bonfiglio, bp ​37–8, 237 Bongiovanni di Bonandrea, notary, cleric ​ 106–7, 241 n. 37 Boniface VIII, pope, 19, 41, 45, 53 n. 79, 60, 61, 62, 63, 207, 216 Bonifacio da Ferrara, OP, vicar, inq. ​184 n. 35 Bonifacino dei Galluzzi, OP ​192–3 n. 67 Bonifatio, monk ​95 Bonigrino da Verona, heretic ​107, 108 n. 50, 184, 234 n. 13 [see also Rosafiore] Boninsegna da Trento, OFM, inq. ​61, 100, 106 n. 47 Bonvisino da Bologna, OP, vicar ​69 n. 29, 181 n. 26, 183 Borghino Chiarati ​140 n. 71, 152, 191, 260 Bosco ai Frati, convent of ​66 Bovatino da Mantova, jurist ​42 n. 45, 113 n. 65 Brandano da Saliceto, notary ​167 n. 74 Brescia ​28, 31, 38, 69, 70 n. 34, 83 n. 71, 135, 158 Bressanino di Niccolò, officialis at Riva sul Garda ​1 Bruneta, heretic ​232 n. 7 Brunino Bianche Cose, banker ​169 Bruno degli Adimari, heretic ​248 Buccinatores ​123 n. 10, 138 Bulls, significant Ad abolendam ​27 Ad extirpanda ​38–44, 48–50, 52, 118–19,

125, 160, 162–3, 170, 215, 239, 253, 257 Catholice fidei negotium ​44 n. 53, 263 Commissi nobis ​32–3 Cum adversus ​33 Cum sicut est ​178 Excommunicamus ​49 Ex eo quod ​46 n. 61, 53, 215 Exigit ordinis ​208 Extravagantes ​47 Licet ex omnibus ​60 n. 4, 66 n. 21 Multorum querela ​234, 262 Ne aliqui dubitationem ​45 Ne inquisitionis negotium 44 n. 53 Orthodoxae fidei ​33 n. 23 Quod super nonnullis ​51, 178, 246 Super extirpatione  ​52 Vergentis in senium ​27 Cacciagazzaro [Cathar-hunter] ​241, 264 Calderino famulus fratrum of Prato ​154 n. 35, 141 Cambio Bandinelli, turnkey ​150, 165 n. 67 Cambio, stationer ​94 n. 14 Capocchio, alchemist ​247 Carmignano ​236 Caro da Arezzo, OFM, inq. ​193, 194 n. 71 Cassiano, toll collector ​1 Cassine ​100 Castel Fiorentino ​141 Castiglione ​94, 105 n. 45 Cecco d’Ascoli, astrologer ​115, 248 Cettino Benricevuti da Prato, notary ​84, 102, 103, 111, 112 n. 62, 147, 152–3 Charles I of Anjou ​55 Chiareno da Rovezzano, heretic ​167 n. 72 Chieri ​138, 223 Chiusi ​219 Church councils Béziers ​173, 174, 177–8 Fourth Lateran ​28 Narbonne ​28 Toulouse ​28, 43 Vienne ​40 n. 39, 47, 52, 149 n. 16, 165, 189 n. 52 Cino da Pistoia, jurist ​40, 234 n. 11 Cione, Cathar bp ​261 n. 7 Cividale del Friuli ​35–36, 241 Civil authority and heresy Roman law origins ​29, 32–3 Frederick II’s legislation ​32–3

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Index anti-heresy statutes ​33, 39, 61 n. 7, 233, 246 aligning with secular crimes ​32, 34, 135–6, 263 differences in approach ​241 continuing independent duty ​34, 39, 230, 239, 257, 261–2, 266 bishop as statutory partner ​239 inquisitor as agent of civil power ​241 Ad extirpanda, duties under ​39, 127, 136, 239, 244, 253 modification of ​241 maintaining papal constitutions ​41, 243–4 assessors and valuers ​43–4, 249 catching heretics ​162–3, 167–8 punishments, role in ​49, 83, 127, 131–2, 133 n. 46, 136, 166–8, 252 transparency of procedure ​138, 143, 249–50, 251, 261 prisons ​253, 261 admission of inquisition ​48 local agreements ​69, 97, 113–4, 163, 239, 253–7 [see also Florence, Venice] conflicting priorities & blurred responsibilities ​239, 246–7 relations with ​68, 79, 97, 113, 134, 163, 231 disagreements ​255–6, 262 protests ignored ​228, 244 permits to carry arms ​115 n. 72, 129, 146, 170, 242, 244 attempts to control inquisition staff ​ 128–9, 244 role in supplying staff joint appointments 107 n. 49. 122, 125, 131, 136–7, 138–9 numbers and salaries ​93, 123, 244 background of notarial staff ​108–10, 265 staff movement between commune, episcopate and inquisition ​97 n. 22, 117, 128–9, 138–9 in smaller communes ​216, 265 division of costs and receipts ​39, 49–50, 97, 113, 116, 239, 243, 252 confiscation and sale 46–9, 249–50, 251–2, 261 sale of lumber ​40 allocation of surplus ​251 audit of books ​43, 97 n. 22, 125, 152 n. 28, 252

Clementinae [Liber Septimus] ​47 age qualifications ​189 bishops ​234 permission of usury ​51 n. 71 Como ​135, 202 n. 5, 242 n. 38, 255 Contra officium ​97 n. 22, 243–4, 252, 256 Conegliano ​157, 265 Colonna, family ​71, 121, 130, 133, 240 Conrad of Marburg, proto-inquisitor ​30 Constanza da Bergamo, spy ​152 Constitutio contra haereticos Lombardiae ​32 Constitutions of Melfi [Liber Augustalis] ​ 32–3 Consultatores ​45 n. 56 [see also sapientes] Contessa, heretic, widow of Bompietro ​ 182 n. 28, 184 Corrado da Camerino, OP, inq, pp ​67, 68 n. 28, 69, 70 n. 34, 73, 79, 196, 224, 235 Cortona ​86 n. 80 Cremona ​158, 240 Cuneo ​138, 222 Cursor ​123, 124 n. 16 [see also Spinello] Decco da Figline, jurist ​79, 154 n. 35, 234 n. 11 De Monte, count of ​138, 162 n. 59 De officio ​28 n. 10, 68, 126, 178, 181, 182, 232 De Pileo [Capello], family 166, 252 n. 68 [see also Federico di Montebello, Guido Capello] Deotesalvo Bartolomei Carbonis, notary ​ 92 n. 3 Daniele da Giussano, OP, inq. ​179 Devoti ​232 n. 7 Dino del Mugello, jurist ​101 Dolcino of Novara, heretic ​62, 166–7, 256 Dolcinists, 63, 77 n. 47 Dominic, Saint ​30 n. 17, 202 Dominican Order [Order of Preachers] beginnings ​29–30 geographical responsibility in Italy ​ 54–55 Domus inquisitionis/officii ​74, 76–7 n. 49, 79, 80–2, 83, 84, 132, 152, 168, 182 n. 28 as office accommodation ​153, 156, 191, 236, 240 as base for torture ​166 [see also Barberius] Donato Partis, heretic 129, 130 n. 33

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Index Donato Puccii, familiaris and nuncius ​ 125–6, 141, 147 n. 9 Duda, serving woman ​162 n. 58 Egidio dei Galluzzi, OP, inq. ​112 n. 64, 192, 193 n. 67, 202 n. 41, 238 Egidio da Parma, OP, inq. ​51 n. 72 Enrico, cacciagazzaro (Cathar hunter) of Verona ​241, 264 Enrico da Milano, OFM ​33 Enzo, king ​79 Este, family ​114, 232, 235 Exploratores see Spies Ezzelino III da Romano ​28, 38, 231 n. 2 Faenza ​204 chapter at ​187 n. 48 Falconico, famulus, Borgo S. Lorenzo ​141 Familia background of ​152 distinctions within ​147–9, 153 duties ​150–1 length of service 150–2 meaning of ​144 pay and expenses ​146–8, 153 size ​153–6 spies as members of ​161–2 Familiaris [servitor], rank not job ​169 as officialis ​42, 103 differences in regional usage ​148–9, 151 salaried ​147 Famulus meaning of ​148–9 difference between orders ​147–9 horse holding ​153 Federico da Mantova, OFM, vicar, guardian at Riva ​1 Federico di Montebello, officialis ​42, 106, 113, 116, 160–1 n. 54, 170, 259, 262, 264 Feltre ​197 Ferarisio/Ferrarino de Lambrusca, notary ​ 99, 101, 102, 116, 117, 259 Ferrara ​27, 43, 63, 69, 75 n. 41, 76, 85, 93, 100–1, 102, 116, 117, 126, 137, 155–6, 179, 181, 184 n. 35, 187 n. 47, 189 n. 52, 196, 212, 223, 226 n. 81, 234–5, 238, 242 n. 38, 259, 265 Fermo ​67 Fia, seamstress ​168 n. 76 Fiesole, bp of ​235 n. 15

Figline ​79 Florence ​68, 82, 86, 94, 102, 104, 111–17 passim, 123–8 passim, 131, 138–9, 147–8, 150–1, 161, 208, 215, 221, 223, 225, 230, 232, 235, 238, 242–8, 256–9, 261, 265 appointment of syndic ​43, 89, 243, 252 Contra officium ​97 n. 22, 243–4, 252 disputes with inquisitor ​256 inquisition costs borne by commune ​ 50, 115 notaries’ pay ​94 prisons ​68, 82, 163, 244–5 local agreement ​242–3 statutes against heresy ​34 Florasio da Vicenza, OP, inq. ​61 n. 7, 197, 255 n. 72 Florio da Verona, OP, inq. ​20, 68 n. 28, 69 n. 30, 85 n. 75, 197, 213 n. 42, 216, 217 n. 53, 218 Florio da Vicenza, OP, inq. ​11 n. 36, 67, 76 n. 45, 80 n. 60, 101, 102 n. 34, 182, 183, 186 n. 44, 195–6, 202, 232, 238 n. 8 Fiesole, bp of ​235 n. 15 Filippo Bonacolsi da Mantova, OFM, inq, bp ​61 n. 7, 88 n. 85, 89, 107 n. 49, 140, 197, 235, 260 Filippo da Como, OP, inq. ​209 n. 27 Filippo da Lucca, OFM, inq. ​193, 254 Filippo di Guido Bontalenti, notary ​109 Foulcques, bp of Toulouse ​29 Fourth Lateran Council ​28 ​[see Church Councils] Francesco Bartoli of Assisi, OFM (Spiritual) ​236 n. 21 Francesco Buvalelli, 92 n. 3 Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, OFM, notary, socius ​95, 96 n. 19, 105, 111, 116 n. 73, 174, 189, 192 Francesco da Figline ​84 Francesco da Pocapaglia, OP, inq. ​61, 63 n. 15, 68 n. 28, 69, 89, 99, 138, 149, 153, 159–60, 165–7, 168, 181, 188, 189, 193, 197, 211–12, 216–17, 222–3, 225, 226, 265 Francesco da S. Giorgio, OP, vicar ​183, 184 nn. 33 and 35 Francesco da Trissino, OFM, inq. ​184 n. 36, 186 Francesco, OP, socius ​189 [see Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, 190]

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Index Francis, Saint ​71 Franciscan Order [Order of Friars Minor] chapter of Lyons ​51 conflict with papacy ​64 convent officials ​1 early actions against heresy ​29, 54 n. 82 inquisitors’ length of service ​62 loss of Padua and Vicenza ​55 martyrs ​65 opposition to money penalties ​51, 205–6 power to sell heretics’ goods ​52 role in Italy ​54 Frederick Barbarossa, emperor ​27 Frederick II, emperor ​32, 38 Constitutio contra haereticos Lombardie ​ 32 Constitutions of Frankfurt ​33​ Constitutions of Melfi [Liber Augustalis] ​32 Statutes of Catania ​32 Friars, false ​68 n. 26 Fucino [Celano] ​67 Gabriele Roncinello, heretic ​237 Galvano, OP, socius to Francesco da Pocapaglia ​189 n. 56, 197, 256 Galvano da Budrio, OP, vicar ​182, 184 n. 33 Galvano Fiamma, OP, chronicler ​29 n. 13, 79 n. 53, 207 Gemma Bonfantini ​89 Genoa ​69, 78, 100, 145, 158, 166, 167, 205 n. 14, 214, 218, 222, 236 chapter at ​217 Genoa, March of ​70, 78, 217, 249 Gerardo di Guido Bontalenti, notary 109 Gerardo Segarelli ​175 Gerardino da Reggio, OP, inq. ​217 Giacomo, OFM, socius ​189 n. 54, 191 n. 63 Giacomo, nuncius ​154 Giacomo Alberto Martelli, notary ​117 Giacomo Bonini, famulus fratrum ​222 Giacomo da Carrara, bp’s vicar, Treviso ​ 237 Giacomo da Orvieto, OFM, inq. ​184 n. 36 Giacomo da Pavia, spy ​159, 160 n. 51 Giacomo da San Gimignano, OFM, auditor ​219

Giacomo da Verona, OP, notary ​96 n. 19 Giacomo di Giordano, notary ​105 Giacomo de Trissanti, OFM, vicar ​88, 94, 105, 181–2 n. 27 Giacomo Flamenghi, monk ​247 Giacomo Saracco of Asti, cleric-notary ​ 103​ Giacoppino da Medicina, jurist ​109 Gian Gaetano Orsini, cardinal ​13, 15, 205 n. 14, 260 Giannino Bonacolsi, podestà, Verona ​88 n. 85 Giovanni, famulus and spy ​153–4 Giovanni di Bonandrea, notary ​107 Giovanni Bongia, notary ​98 n. 26, 100, 102, 103 n. 40, 110 n. 59, 111, 112, 115, 116, 117, 147, 149, 152, 220, 259 Giovanni d’Andrea, jurist ​45 n. 56, 46 n. 49 Giovanni da Fontana, OP, inq. ​63 n. 15, 68 n. 28, 117, 222 n. 67, 225 n. 79, 226 n. 82, 256 Giovanni da Pisa, OFM, socius ​187 n. 49, 189 n. 53, 190, 191 Giovanni da Siena, OFM, inq. 194 Giovanni dei Pizigotti, OP, inq. ​68 n. 28, 87 n. 81, 184 n. 35, 212, 220, 223, 224, 226 Giovanni de Rochis, OP, notary ​96 n. 19, 107 Giovanni di Niccolò, heretic ​153 Giovanni Forzate, bp of Padua ​237 Giovanni Serafini, familiaris and custos carceris ​148, 151, 153, 165 Giovanni Villani, chronicler ​13, 146 Giuliano bursarius, heretic 106, 129, 130 n. 33, 132 n. 43, 137, 158, 166, 184, 234 n. 13, 235, 250 n. 64 Giuliano da Mantova, OFM, inq. ​89 n. 90 Gratia, heretic ​111, 165 Griffolino da Forli ​247 Grimaldo da Prato, OFM, mp, inq. ​86 n. 79, 94, 112, 155, 185, 193, 220, 232, 235 n. 17, 236, 240, 243, 256, 261 n. 7, 262 Grimaldo da Saliceto, OP, vicar, sapiens ​ 181, 192 Guardus, viator, Verona ​125–6 n. 19 Guala da Bergamo, OP, bp, inq. ​31 Guglielmo da Allegnano, OP, socius, 189–90 n. 56 Guglielmo da Cremona, OP, inq. ​195

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Index Guglielmo da Fossano, OP, socius 189–90 n. 56 Guglielmo da Sorano, OP, socius ​189–90 n. 56 Guglielmo Dulcini da Monte Albano, OP, bp ​220 Guglielmo Laigonis/Aygonis ​110, 117 Guglielmino da Cremona, OFM, socius ​ 192 n. 64 Guglielmo Ubertini, bp of Arezzo ​236 Gui Foulcques [Clement IV] ​45–6 n. 56, 177 Guicciardino da San Gimignano, OFM, inq. ​120 n. 8 Guido Bontalenti, notary ​104, 107–9, 110, 116, 117, 141 Guido Capello da Vicenza, OP, inq, bp ​ 9 n. 30, 24, 42, 62–3, 69, 76, 79, 93 n. 7, 106, 107, 114, 121, 129, 130 n. 33, 132, 134, 136–7, 155, 156, 163, 181, 182, 183, 184 n. 35, 186 n. 44, 192, 196, 202, 227 n. 83, 232, 234, 235, 246, 248, 250, 252 n. 68, 255, 264, 265 Guido de Baysio, jurist ​45 n. 46 Guido da Sesto, OP, inq. ​31 n. 20, 202 n. 5 Gui de Neuville ​10, 19, 42, 104, 114, 252, 256 Guido da Cocconato, OP, inq, pp ​78, 205 n. 15, 207, 227, 255 Guido da Parma, OP, inq. ​81, 96 n. 19, 111 n. 61, 181, 182, 183, 186 n. 45, 189, 196, 224, 261 n. 7 Guido dei Fabbri Tolosini, banker ​15, 169 Guido notarius, Florence ​94, 97 n. 22 Guido Principino, OFM, inq. 195 Guido Signoritti, friar, notary ​96 n. 19, 116 Guido Tarlati, bp of Arezzo ​155, 185, 236, 240 Guidocino, OP, socius ​189, 190 Guillaume de Balait ​10, 19, 20, 42, 104, 216 Helena da Viqueria, ex-heretic, spy, poss familiaris ​161–2 Henrigiptus Zacharie, bannitor ​131 Henry VI, emperor ​27 Henry VII, emperor ​69 n. 32 Hervé de Nédellec, OP, mg ​208

Homobono da Bologna, OP, vicar, lector ​ 182–3, 184 Honorius III ​33 Hic est modus ​68 n. 27 Hugo Martellinus, OP ​188 Hungary – Manfredo da Parma in ​196–7 Ildebrandino, familiaris ​84, 152 n. 29 Inquisition birth of ​25–31 French system ​3 crusade ​8–9, 27 confraternities, support from ​8–9, 28, 38, 104, 146, 162–3, 232 n. 7 inquisitio 12, 43, 156, 158, 170 as legal tribunal 12–13 public attitudes towards 10, 76–7, 134, 231, 255 [see also Parma] uneven geographical development ​58, 241–2, 244 local agreements between orders ​56, 261 bishops, relations with ​40–1, 46, 132, 232–5 bishops, differences in powers from ​ 262 bishops, joint action with ​23, 234–5, 236 bishops, exchange of staff with ​238 lead against heresy contested ​41, 230, 248 conflict with civil power ​97, 113–4, 118–9, 131–2, 239, 242–3 conflict with own officiales ​42, 104 start-up costs ​52 financial model, intended ​38–44, 85–7 financial model, deformation ​250–1 confiscations and sales ​27, 104, 130–2, 250–1 division of surplus ​104–5, 106 other sources of finance ​51 n. 72, 54, 86–7 n. 80 manuals ​11, 127, 198 [see also De officio, Hic est modus] penalties ​5 n. 12, 27 n. 7, 32, 76–7, 127, 144, 167–8, 248 penalties, money ​51, 205–6 handling money ​155–6, 213–14 changing volume of business ​118, 155, 164 secrecy ​121 structure ​38, 124, 145, 148–9, 232

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Index Jacobutius de Zapolino, famulus/ familiaris ​156 n. 39 Jean de Gascoigne, town crier ​139–40 Johamna, ex-heretic, spy ​161–2 Johanna, suspected heretic ​163 n. 63 Juvenalis, OFM ​92 n. 6

women, treatment of ​81, 212–13 Inquisitors appointment procedures ​31 n. 20, 59–69, 73 appointment, form of ​66–8 appointment, consultation on ​65–6 appointment, papal intervention in ​ 59–60, 63–5 as bishops’ vicars ​237 as bishops ​31, 197 duration of appointment ​61–2, 176 instruments and seals ​66–7, 67–9 confirmation of privileges ​242 n. 40 numbers ​48, 173 geographical responsibility ​66–7 delegation of powers ​44 [see also vicars] gaps/variation in powers ​14, 44–5, 45, 47, 178, 261 advice and consultation ​184–6, 234 n. 13, 234–5 handling money ​155–6, 213–14 accounts/accountability, see separate heading accommodation ​74–7 n. 49, 78 nn. 50 and 52, 80–2, 84, 132 accommodation, personal ​75, 80 n. 61, 81 accommodation for staff ​152–3 [see also domus inquisitionis] family background ​88–9, 171 scholarship ​9 n. 30, 97 n. 23, 194, 196 exemption from orders’ supervision ​ 16 n. 48, 56, 263 cooperation between ​15, 48, 56, 58, 63, 159, 180, 230, 260, 263 closeness to papacy ​195, 197 corruption and excess ​5–6, 9–10 n. 32, 19, 53, 114, 207–8, 212–13 reliance on convent support ​221, 224, 263 payment for convent services ​221–3, 222 n. 66, 223–5 provincial contribution ​225–9 pietancie ​222–3 careers ​194–7, 198 Ioacchino da Bologna, OP, notary, vicar ​ 96 n. 19, 174, 182

Lamberto da Cingoli, OP, inq. ​80 n. 60, 114, 192, 193 n. 67, 196 Landino, famulus of Prato ​154 n. 35 Lando Bicchi da Gubbio, bargello of Florence ​256, 262 Lando/Landino, OFM, inq. of Siena ​155, 185 Landolfo Bonomei ​92 Lanfranco da Bergamo, OP, inq. ​20, 22, 53, 61, 68 n. 28, 69, 73, 76, 77, 78, 81, 84, 86, 153, 154, 161, 215–16, 225, 227 Lapo Cultri, nuncius, familiaris ​132–4, 137, 150, 259 Lapo dei Fabbri Tolosini, OFM, vicar, custos of Santa Croce, Florence ​15, 185 Laundry and tailoring ​84 n. 72, 168 n. 70 [see Fia, Nente] Leonardo, OFM, socius ​189 Leone da Parma, OP, vicar ​183, 184 n. 33 Leone da Robegano, husband of heretic Almengarda, Treviso ​250 Leone Vannis, famulus ​153 n. 33 Liber Augustalis see Constitutions of Melfi Liber Contractuum ​22–3, 51, 252 Liber Conum ​20–1, 149 n. 16 [see also Accounts] Liber Septimus ​47 [see also Clementinae] Liber Sextus ​46, 177, 246–7, 262 Lippo Benincase, notary ​238 n. 29, 259 Lodi ​51 n. 72, 69, 226 Lolo baratore 138 n. 64 Lorenzo d’Ancona, OFM, inq. ​5 n. 11, 61, 65, 91 Lotario degli Ubaldini, OP, inq. ​203 Lu ​52 n. 75, 158–9, 160 Lucca ​152 n. 26, 156, 236 Ludwig of Bavaria ​121, 247 Lyons, chapter of ​206 n. 17, 215, 234

Jacobus de Burgo, OP, inq. ​68 n. 28, 69, 70 n. 34, 182, 183 n. 30, 226 Jacobinus de Turri, notary ​110 n. 56

Magic ​51 n. 71, 262 Manfredo da Parma, OP, inq. ​63, 68 n. 28, 70 n. 34, 80, 93, 96 n. 19, 109,

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Index 117–18, 124, 129 n. 31, 137, 148–9, 153–4, 156 n. 39, 161–2, 181, 182–3, 189, 190, 196, 217, 225, 226 n. 81 Manfredo dei Mascara, archdeacon ​106, 184 Mangone, commune of ​151, 265​ Manovello di Giacomo, familiaris and nuncius ​94, 98, 139, 141 n. 72, 150, 166, 244, 256, 260 as custos carceris ​150–1 Marchesio da Brescia, OP, inq. ​68 n. 28, 70 n. 34, 83 n. 71, 158, 160 n. 53, 161, 170, 216–7, 218 Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, chronicler ​ 13, 140 Marcia, heretic ​159 Marsilio Manteghelli, jurist ​101 Marsoppo, notary ​148 Martino, famulus ​149 n. 46 Martino da Cento, notary ​104, 110 Martino Spagnolo, jurist ​130–1 Mascara dei Mascara, officialis, notary, judge ​106, 113, 264 Mastino della Scala ​235 Matthew of Acquasparta, cardinal ​68 n. 26 Matteo Buoferra, OFM, inq. ​234 n. 13 Matteo da Chieti, OFM, inq, mp ​63 n. 14, 195 Meglore Bonacorsi, notary ​140 Meglore/Meliore Albertini, nuncius ​140 n. 71 Mendicant orders and inquisition ambivalence towards ​4, 180, 183, 201–5 role in pursuing heresy ​37–8, 94, 190 role of provincial’s socius ​73 role during inquisitorial vacancies ​85 n.75, 185, 186 n. 46 acting as bishops’ vicars ​37–8, 237 differences in style between orders ​ 124, 139, 154–6, 170, 176, 178, 184–6, 265 combining conventual and inquisitorial office 207 nn. 20, 21 tensions between conflicting duties ​ 210–11, 211–12, 212–13, 218 inquisitors’ demands on convents ​74, 82–5, 125, 141, 153–4, 200, 220, 259 inquisitors not fully autonomous ​201, 204–5, 206–7, 208, 217–18, 220–22, 227, 263

progression in career structure ​200, 206–7, 209–10, 218, 220, 224, 228, 259, 263 financial nexus ​201, 205–6, 220–7 accountability ​205–6, 208, 218, 220, 228, 263 failure to set standard 217–18, 219, 220, 228, 263 approaches ​OFM, 214, 217, 218–19; OP, 214, 215, 217 complicit in financial misbehaviour ​ 201, 205–6, 224–5 role in supplying staff ​125, 153–4, 204 role in appointments to officium inquisitionis ​43, 114 appointment of socius ​172, 204 sanctions on those without socii ​175 co-operation between orders 261 use of inquisitors for internal discipline ​209 Metz, general chapter of ​183, 196, 207 Mia, heretic ​131 n. 37, 167, 249 n. 60 Michael of Cesena, OFM, mp ​62, 150 n. 19, 228 Michel LeMoine, OFM, inq. ​64 n. 17 Michele d’Arezzo, OFM, inq. ​71 n. 36, 84, 124, 151–2, 155, 185, 189, 225, 235 n. 17 Michele d’Oria, podestà ​82 n. 67, 255 Michele of Toulouse, heretic ​205 n. 14 Milan ​28, 83, 86, 158–9, 160, 204, 207, 235 n. 20, 239 boni homines ​29, 43, 263 chapters at ​183 n. 30, 188 Millanino da Milano, familiaris, nuncius ​ 120, 130, 132 Milidosio de Corvis, OP, vicar ​182–3 Mino Daddi da San Quirico, OFM, inq. ​ 15, 19, 21, 24, 60 n. 5, 79, 81, 83, 85 n. 75, 92, 95 n. 15, 98 n. 27, 103 n. 39, 111, 112, 115 n. 71, 135, 148, 150 n. 19, 152, 158, 162, 185, 192, 213 n. 41, 214, 228, 243 n. 43, 256 Modena ​27, 28, 79, 93, 100, 112 n. 64, 156, 163, 181, 183, 184 n. 35, 196, 224–5, 238, 240, 247, 255, 264 Monaldo, scholar ​227 n. 83 Monda, suspected heretic ​1 Money-lenders, clerical use of ​26, 213 n. 42 Monferrato ​158 Montecchiesi brothers ​253–4

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Index Monticelli, convent ​213 Montedomini, convent ​213 Montefeltro, count of ​186 n. 42 Money penalties ​205–6 Montpellier, general chapter at ​206, 215, 219 Mugello ​100, 152 Napoleone Orsini, cardinal ​109, 155 Nascimbene, OFM, inq. ​249 Nascimbene Adelardi, nuncius and familiaris ​126 n. 23, 129–30, 135, 137, 140 n. 72 custos carceris ​149, 151, 154 Nente, laundress ​168 n. 76 Niccolò da Cremona, OP, inq. ​179 Niccolò da Ripa Transone, OP, inq. ​60–1, 68 n. 28, 69 n. 29, 183, 224 Niccolò da Treviso, [Benedict XI], OP, mg ​ 46, 227 Nicholaus Tascherius, OP, vicar, inq. ​181 n. 26, 183, 184 n. 35, 186 n. 45, 196, 202 n. 4, 207, 224​ Notary as officiales ​42, 93, 104, 114 careers 103, 104, 107, 110 differences between orders ​96 n. 20 duties ​97–9 friars as notaries ​95–6 n. 19, 116 n. 73 independence of ​111 influence of ​118–19 instead of vicars ​174, 178 malpractice ​114, 252 mobility of ​99–100 needed to authenticate documents ​91, 92 nn. 5–6 numbers ​93–5, 114, 117 oathbound ​126 n. 23 ownership of inquisition records ​ 115–6 pay and expenses ​114, 156 qualifications ​95–6, 100–1, 114 separate pole of authority ​92, 102–3, 114, 117 term of office ​116 top-slicing of costs ​50 n. 69 violence against ​92, 255 witnessing torture ​98 n. 24 working for other bodies ​117 Nuncii appointment processes ​124, 126 n. 23, 136–7

citing witnesses 121–2, 126–7 dangers in employment ​134–5​ decline in status ​126, 139–40, 142 distinctive dress imposed by communes ​128–9 diverse pay arrangements ​125, 133 duties ​120–21, 127, 135 history ​122–3 literacy ​139 method of public announcement ​123, 131–2 numbers ​123–4, 154–5 oath-bound ​126 officer of the court ​120–1 penalties for misbehaviour ​128 n. 30 public identification 128 reputation ​120 sanctions on performance ​128 n. 30 shared employment with civil authorities ​122, 128–9, 131, 136 similarity of civil and inquisition procedure ​135 witnessing and carrying out punishment ​133–4 n. 46 Nuto Marmorario da Castiglione ​105 n. 45 Oberto de Brayda, jailer ​164 Oberto Pelavicini ​28, 38, 61 n. 7, 79 Officium inquisitionis between church and state ​121, 264 careers with ​103, 259​ composition ​41, 104, 137–8 during vacancies ​112 duties ​39–44, 48, 104, 264 independence ​41, 93, 102–3, 117, 263–4 legal personality ​76, 125 n. 18 origins ​28–9 own staff ​125 n. 18 property holdings ​76, 79, 80, 83, 89 sale of goods ​107 size of ​13 Officiales [boni homines] appointment ​39 n. 37, 41, 42, 43 n. 50, 126 carriage of arms ​146, 170 city defence ​28–9, 42–3 community duties towards ​39, 241 conflict with inquisitors ​41 n. 44, 106, 113, 114, 117 in statute ​263

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Index numbers 104, 114, 124 pay and expenses ​40, 49, 50, 104, 116 re-interpretation of Ad Extirpanda 264 status ​125–6 spies as ​157 term of office ​40–1, 107, 112, 116 two masters ​117, 136–7 use of local staff ​99 who were they? ​104, 137, 169–70, 264 Onebene da Volta Mantovana ​81 n. 65 Opizo da Pontremoli, notary ​99, 100, 101 n. 33, 102, 103, 116, 117, 259 Orbetano di Nicolà, notary ​100 n. 32 Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary [Cavalieri Gaudenti] ​28, 65, 251, 264 Ordo processus Narbonensis ​121–2 Orvieto ​26, 75 n. 41, 92, 93, 100 n. 32, 138, 203 n. 7 Cathar activists in ​26 n. 3 Osimo, lords of ​65 Ottone da Porta Cumana, OP, prior ​217 Pace, serving-woman ​162 n. 58 Pace da Castelfiorentino, OFM, inq, vicar ​81, 84, 85 n. 77, 86, 103, 141, 147, 150 n. 19, 155, 160, 168–9 n. 76, 170, 183, 187 n. 49, 189, 190, 191, 213, 219, 221, 223, 225, 243 n. 43, 261 n. 7 Pace [da Vedano], OP, inq ​68 n. 28, 78 n. 52, 164, 202 n. 4, 226, 253 Pace di Saliceto, notary ​181–2 n. 27 Padua ​19, 31, 42, 47, 61, 63, 67, 71 n. 35, 82, 84, 104, 107, 113, 118, 129, 152, 163, 168 n. 75, 186, 208, 217, 232, 237, 242, 244, 251 Paganino da Cuneo, OP, socius ​188, 189–90 n. 56, 193, 225 Pagano da Lecco 198, 202 n. 4 Pagano da Pietrasanta ​28, 65 n. 19, 70, 261 Palencia, general chapter at ​183, 207 Palmeria, heretic of Treviso ​249 Papacy fiscal policy ​11, 21, 52–4, 216 intervention in appointments ​59–61 Paniccia di Giovanni Bongia, notary ​111 Paolo di Andrea, priest of Sassetta ​248 Paolo da Norcia, OFM, notary ​95, 174 Parma ​76, 77 n. 46, 202–3, 231, 232 Pavia ​61, 69, 73, 75 n. 42, 76, 77, 81, 86, 123–4, 153, 159, 227 Perpignan, chapter at ​209

Peter of Verona, OP, inq, saint ​9, 31, 55, 134, 195, 201–2 n. 4, 203, 232 Piacenza ​42, 79, 84, 159, 179, 195, 226 n. 82 general chapter at ​188 Piccolomini see Bartolommeo Pierino/Picchino Bonfantini, familiaris, syndic ​81, 152 n. 28 Pietro da Collemezzo, cardinal ​68 n. 27 Pietro di Benincasa Martini 141 Pietro da l’Aquila, OFM, inq, mp ​19 n. 57, 60 n. 5, 129, 146, 148, 160, 170, 231, 256, 261 Pietro da Penna S. Giovanni, OFM, vicar, inq. ​184 Pietro da Prato, ​OFM, inq. ​21, 85 n. 75, 103 n. 39, 112, 185 Pietrobuono Brosemini, OFM, inq. ​113 n. 65, 251 n. 67 Pietrobono Zamboni, Apostle ​163, 184 Pietro Fallo, heretic ​165 Pinamonte Bonacolsi da Mantua ​88 n. 85, 107 Pinamonte da Bologna, OP, vicar ​111 n. 61, 182–3 n. 30 Pisa ​156, 219 Pistoia ​26, 104, 156 Pomaro [di Monferrato] ​159 Pons Étienne, papal legate ​115 n. 71, 135, 148, 151, 192, 220 Ponte Rubaconte ​169, 186 n. 46, 213 Popes Alexander IV ​38, 43, 44, 51, 52, 95, 173, 174, 178, 234, 246, 261 Benedict XI [Niccolò da Treviso] 46, 52–3, 69, 197, 215, 218, 225, 254 Benedict XII ​64, 65 Boniface VIII ​19, 23, 45, 46, 53, 60, 130, 177, 186, 234, 246, 252 [see also Benedetto Caetani] Clement IV ​38, 39, 40, 43, 45, 56, 60, 66 n. 21, 69, 77, 126 n. 23, 177–8, 179, 234 [see also Gui Foulcques] Clement V ​40, 47, 52, 66, 67, 126 n. 23, 234, 236, 238 Gregory IX ​28, 31, 49 Gregory X ​234 Honorius III ​33 Honorius IV ​63 Innocent III “material sword” ​28 n. 8 Innocent IV ​25, 31, 38, 40, 49, 50, 179, 234

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Index John XXII ​47, 64 n. 18, 65, 114, 135, 208, 234 Lucius III ​54 Nicholas III see Gian Gaetano Orsini Nicholas IV ​63 n. 14, 215, 234 Urban IV ​44 n. 53, 61 n. 7, 174, 179, 197, 234, 255 Porchetto Spinola, archbishop of Genoa ​ 236 Porziuncola indulgence ​194 n. 71 Prato ​21, 22, 27, 79, 83, 104, 111, 112, 125, 138, 141, 147, 151, 154, 156, 158, 162, 185, 252–3, 255, 256, 262, 265 Preco see nuncius Prisons ​39, 75 n. 41, 78, 81 n. 65, 82 n. 68, 85, 94, 97, 125 n. 18, 150–1, 156, 163–5, 191, 253–4 equipment ​75 n. 41, 164–5 jailbreaks ​165 tariff for ​244–5 varied responsibilities for ​253–4 Puer see famulus Raimondo da Villalta, OP, inq. ​217 Ranaldo da Cortona, dompnus ​164 n. 65​ Raniero Sacconi, OP, inq. ​31 n. 20, 39 n. 37, 51 n. 72, 59 n. 2, 202 n. 4 Reggio ​108 n. 50, 121, 124, 138, 156, 196, 264 Rengarda, heretic ​182 n. 28, 192 Ricca, heretic ​162 n. 58, 164 Rieti ​61 n. 7, 188, 210 Rimini ​27, 28, 34, 90, 95, 104, 126, 179, 181, 182, 195, 264 Riva sul Garda ​1, 156, 175, 198, 265 Robert of Anjou, king ​69, 162, 244, 265 Robert le Bougre ​30 Roberto [da Prato], OFM, socius ​192 Rodulfo de Montecalvo, OP ​81–2 n. 66 Rolandino, notary ​99, 101, 117 Rome ​205 n. 14 ​[see also Anibaldo] Rosafiore ​131–2, 134, 249 n. 59 [see also Bonigrino da Verona] Rufino, OP, socius ​191 n. 63 Ruggero da Casole, bp ​37–9, 55, 237 n. 24 Ruggiero Aliprandi, ​iudex at Bologna ​ 249 n. 59 Ruggiero Calcagni, OP, inq, bp ​92, 178, 203, 256 Ruggiero da Petriolo, OP, inq, pp ​60, 67, 68 n. 20, 69, 70 n. 34, 87 n. 81, 93,

109, 137, 148–9, 160, 183, 186 n. 45, 187 n. 47, 196, 209 n. 27 [Rogerius de Marcia] 224 Ruglietto, preco ​122 n. 8 S. Domenico, church of, Bologna ​163 S. Eustorgio, convent of, Milan ​207 S. Fermo, convent, Verona ​117 S. Francesco di Bologna, convent ​195 SS. Gervasio and Protasio, convent ​163 S. Liberale, protector of Treviso ​71 S. Lorenzo, church, Vicenza ​49, 106 S. Martino di Aposa, church of, Bologna 132 S. Martino in Argine ​134, 137, 265 S. Pancrazio, abbot of ​115 n. 71 S. Pancrazio, convent of ​192 n. 66 S. Salvatore [di Monferrato] ​52 n. 74, 159 S. Salvo, abbey of ​129 n. 66 S. Stefano a Campoli, pieve ​191 S. Tommaso del Mercato, church, Bologna ​130, 132 Sta Caterina, Bologna ​132 Sta Caterina, Ferrara ​186 n44 Sta Croce, Florence, convent ​18, 23, 86 n. 83, 88, 103, 117, 169, 186 n. 46, 190, 193, 194, 223, 225, 229, 243, 263 Sta Maria Novella, Florence, convent ​ 202, 243 Sta Reparata ​49, 243 Salomone da Lucca, OFM, inq. ​101 n. 33, 193, 248 Salerno ​175 Salimbene de Adam, chronicler ​76–7, 175, 202 n. 5 Salvetto Ricci, custos carceris and famulus ​ 165 Salvo da Barga, OP ​188 Salvo Vivaldi, puer ​145 Sapientes, use of ex-inquisitors as advisors ​186, 186 n. 45, 196, 224, 234, 235 n. 14, 237 Sardinia ​63 n. 13, 236 Sarzana ​153 n. 33 Sassetta ​248 Savona ​145, 166, 181 Scriba ​103, 117 Seals of office ​70–74 n. 37 Servitors see familiaris Sicily ​32, 38

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Index Siena ​36–8, 71, 85 n. 77, 148, 237, 239, 245 n. 37, 263 heresy prohibited in statutes ​36–8, 263 role of bp ​37–8, 237 role of OP after 1254 ​55–6 Simone da San Giorgio, OFM, socius ​189 n. 53 Simone da Spoleto, OFM, inq. ​59 n. 3, 64 n. 18 Sinibaldo Gentili da Cingoli ​80 Sirmione ​157, 235 Sita da Lucca, nuncius ​135 Societas cruxatorum ​232 Socius ​87, 172 appointment and duties ​172, 175, 191 age qualification ​188 differences between orders ​188 elided with role of vicar ​180–1 indulgences ​178 information network ​198 length of service ​189–90 pay and expenses ​190 powers of ​180 progression of ​192–3 qualifications ​172–4 n. 3 reason for ​175, 191 selection of ​187–8, 204 training role? ​176, 188, 198 Spies ​52 n. 75, 153, 157, 170 ex-heretics as ​161–2 payment of ​159–62 Spinello, nuncius ​123 n. 9, 125 n. 17, 147 n. 9, 155 Spirituals [fraticelli] ​64, 155, 235, 238, 240 Spoleto, duchy of ​12–13, 64 Stables ​75, 78 n. 50, 79, 81 Stefano di Spagna OP, pp ​31 Support staff see notaries, nuncii, familia, familiaris, famulus, laundry, banking, spies numbers ​13, 93–5, 114, 145, 154–6, 244, 262 continuity, 13–14, 107, 136–7, 140–41, 259 appointment of ​243 use of commune’s staff ​124 n. 15, 138–9 use of convent staff ​141, 200, 220, 259 away from main base ​156–7 differences in staffing patterns ​156 at time of pressure ​94, 97, 154–5

career structure ​136–7 overlapping descriptions ​148–9 quality of ​26 accommodation for ​152–3 prison warders ​78, 94, 164–5 role in punishments ​144, 165–6, 166–7 Symon di Bonandrea, notary ​107, 117, 241 n. 37 [see also Bonandrea family] Taddeo Gaddi, artist ​81 n. 63, 219 Tancredo da Rimini, OFM, notary ​95 Taurino, spy ​159, 160 n. 51 Tebaldo Tebaldi da Parma, OP, vicar ​183, 184 n. 33 Tedisio dei Fabbri Tolosini, OFM, inq. ​ 15, 85 n. 75, 88, 151, 185 Thomas Bonacursii de Thuscis, notary ​ 91–2 Timideo Spongati, OFM, inq, bp ​125–6, 197, 235 Tinghus Bonfantini ​89 Tivoli, convent of ​195 Tommasino de Tonsis, OP, vicar ​183 Tommasino Malebranchi, OFM, inq. ​61, 66–7, 179, 192 Tommasino, nuncius ​139 n. 65 Tommaso da Como, OP, inq. ​65 Tommaso da Gorzano [Thomas of Asti], OP, inq ​20, 22, 61 n. 9, 68 n. 28, 70 n. 34, 71 n. 35, 73, 78, 89, 98 n. 27, 99, 100, 145, 149, 154, 158, 159–60, 162, 164, 165–6, 167, 181, 187 n. 47, 191, 205 nn. 14–15, 211–12, 214, 216, 217, 225, 227, 249, 253 Tortona ​71, 154 Toulouse ​29, 203, 205 n. 14, 214, 218 Tractatus de haereticis ​91 Trento ​89 Treviso ​138, 157, 178, 184, 186, 212, 217, 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, 239, 244, 246, 247, 248–9, 251, 253, 254, 257, 262 city records ​18 n. 55 compliance with Ad Extirpanda ​41 complaint against inquisitors ​60 n. 5, 255–6, 265 numbers of officiales ​114, 126 seal ​71–2, 264 share of costs borne by commune ​50 Treviso, March of [Marca Trevisana], 10 n. 32, 71, 84, 106, 114, 157, 251, 252, 260, 261, 262, 263​

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Index Trumbatores ​123 n. 10 Turaloglu, gardener ​154 n. 35 Tuscany ​60, 66, 68 n. 26 dioceses ​60, 63 inconsistent inquisitorial approaches within ​246–8 Uberto, bp of Vicenza ​26 Ugo di Giacomo Caleffi, notary, iudex ​ 101 n. 33 Ugolino, OP, inq. (of Aquileia) ​196 Uguccione, draper ​109 Umbria ​71 Usury ​51 n. 71, 63, 157, 237 n. 25, 262 Vacancies ​44–5 notaries during ​112 vicars during ​180 inquisitors’ powers during ​178–9 Vallombrosa, abbot of ​192 n. 66 Vannis, notary ​164 Vannis Puccii, nuncius of syndics ​141 Venetico Michaelis, notary ​92 n. 3 Venice ​34, 35, 61 n. 7, 67, 70, 71 n. 35, 140 n. 71, 195–6, 216, 233, 242 admission of inquisition ​67, 245–6 continuing civil involvement ​245–6, 262 heresy prohibited in statutes ​34, 245 local agreement ​245 n. 49 notaries ​95 n. 16 Vercelli ​33, 226 Verona ​46, 48, 61 n. 7, 88–9, 117, 123, 125, 140, 216, 232, 238, 242 n. 40, 263 Council of ​27 Cacciagazzaro/Cathar hunter ​264 heresy constitutions adopted ​241 heresy in statutes ​34–5 Vicars, role and powers of ​172, 177–9, 180, 184, 187, 237 appointment of ​172–3 n. 3 choice of ​204

differences between orders ​183–6, 197–8 elided with socius ​181 n. 24, 174, 186–7 failure to clarify powers ​174, 180–1, 186–7 indulgences to wider group 178 length of service ​183 qualifications/qualities ​173–4, 181–3 notaries act instead of ​174 numbers ​181 seals ​73 training role? ​176, 184 types of appointment ​174, 181, 186 unpaid ​190 varying delegations 181–3, 186 Vicenza ​19, 42, 43, 46, 47, 61, 84, 104, 105, 118, 160, 186, 195, 206, 216, 242, 246, 251–2 Boni homines ​43 Cacciagazzaro/Cathar hunter ​43 post-mortem condemnations ​46 poverty of diocese ​26 role of bishop ​239 statutes at variance with Ad extirpanda ​ 239, 263 viator ​122 Vincenzo da Bologna, OFM, vicar, inq. ​ 179, 184 Visconti, lords of Milan ​64, 135, 160, 235 Viterbo ​27, 77, 233 Women, treatment of ​81 n. 66, 82, 182 n. 28 arguments over custody ​68, 82, 244–5 contact with ​212–3 Zacharias Zanibalbi de S. Agate ​130 n. 33 Zanchino Ugolini ​54 n. 81, 91, 99, 170 n. 80, 259, 264 Zanino Adelardi, preco ​141 Zanino Paterino, spy ​157 n. 43

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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages 1 Heresy and Heretics in the Thirteenth Century: The Textual Representations, L. J. Sackville (2011) 2 Heresy, Crusade and Inquisition in Medieval Quercy, Claire Taylor (2011) 3 Heresy, Inquisition and Life Cycle in Medieval Languedoc, Chris Sparks (2014) 4 Cathars in Question, ed. Antonio Sennis (2016) 5 Late Medieval Heresy: New Perspectives, Studies in Honor of Robert E. Lerner, ed. Michael D. Bailey and Sean L. Field (2018) 6 Heresy in Late Medieval Germany: The Inquisitor Petrus Zwicker and the Waldensians, Reima Välimäki (2019) 7 Inquisition in the Fourteenth Century: The Manuals of Bernard Gui and Nicholas Eymerich, Derek Hill (2019) Details of other York Medieval Press volumes are available from Boydell & Brewer Ltd.

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I

nquisition against heresy in Italy was a partnership between the papal inquisitor, usually a Dominican or Franciscan friar, the local bishop and the civic authority; and it is generally considered that the inquisitor was the leading figure, from the mid thirteenth century onwards. This book seeks to question whether this is true. Through an examination of the roles of the different partners, and in particular the part played by the lay and clerical staff of the inquisition, it offers a much more diverse picture, arguing that the inquisitor was often supplicant rather than dominant, and the civil authority continued to play a major part. Dominicans and Franciscans took different approaches to inquisition, and related in different ways to their parent orders. Drawing on a wealth of unpublished sources, the book analyses these divergences, and shows the internal operations of the inquisition. It also teases out the lives and histories of the individuals who spent their careers working for the inquisition – notaries, messengers, spies and many more – and shows how inquisition against heresy was part of the civic fabric of the Middle Ages. JILL MOORE has researched in several Italian medieval and Renaissance

fields, before, during and after a career in the British civil service and gained her PhD from Birkbeck, University of London. Cover image: Fitzwilliam Museum MS 278 b, Thomas Aquinas teaching a group of men, by Niccolò di Giacomo da Bologna, from a fourteenth-century antiphoner. By kind permission of the Trustees.

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION IN ITALY, 1250 –1350

HERESY AND INQUISITION IN THE MIDDLE AGES

JILL MOORE

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION IN ITALY 1250 –1350

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and 668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US)

YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS

JILL MOORE