The pope’s special representatives “in the matter of heresy” moved in. The Inquisition had come to town.

The roots of the Inquisition go back to the 11th and 12th centuries, when various dissident groups began springing up in Catholic Europe. But the Inquisition proper was inaugurated by Pope Lucius III at the Synod of Verona, Italy, in 1184. In collaboration with Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I Barbarossa, he decreed that any person who spoke or even thought contrary to Catholic doctrine would be excommunicated by the church and duly punished by the secular authorities. Bishops were instructed to seek out (Latin, inquirere) heretics. This was the beginning of what was called the Episcopal Inquisition, that is, placed under the authority of the Catholic bishops.

Harsher Measures

However, as it turned out, in Rome’s eyes the bishops were not all sufficiently zealous in ferreting out dissidents. So several succeeding popes sent out papal legates who, with the help of Cistercian monks, were empowered to carry out their own “inquiries” into heresy. Thus, for a time, there were two parallel Inquisitions, called the Episcopal and the Legatine Inquisitions, the latter more severe than the former.

Even this harsher Inquisition was not sufficient for Pope Innocent III. In 1209 he launched a military crusade against heretics in southern France. These were mostly Cathars, a group that mixed Manichaeism with apostate Christian Gnosticism.a Since Albi was one of the towns in which the Cathars were particularly numerous, they came to be known as Albigenses.

The “holy war” against the Albigenses ended in 1229, but all the dissenters had not been stamped out. So that same year, at the Synod of Toulouse in southern France, Pope Gregory IX gave a new stimulus to the Inquisition. He arranged for permanent inquisitors, including one priest, in every parish. In 1231 he enacted a law whereby unrepentant heretics would be sentenced to death by fire and repentant ones to life imprisonment.

Two years later, in 1233, Gregory IX relieved the bishops of their responsibility to seek out heretics. He set up the Monastic Inquisition, so called because he appointed monks as official inquisitors.

Pope-Approved Torture

In 1252 Pope Innocent IV published his bull Ad exstirpanda, officially authorizing the use of torture in the ecclesiastical courts of the Inquisition. Further regulations for the way torture was to be used were promulgated by Popes Alexander IV, Urban IV, and Clement IV.

At first the ecclesiastical inquisitors were not allowed to be present when the torture was administered, but Popes Alexander IV and Urban IV removed this restriction. This enabled the “questioning” to continue in the torture chamber. Similarly, as originally authorized, torture was to be applied only once, but the papal inquisitors got around this by claiming that renewed sessions of torture were merely “a continuation” of the first session.

The Spanish Inquisition, authorized by Pope Sixtus IV in 1478, was first directed against the Marranos, or Spanish Jews, and the Moriscos, or Spanish Muslims. Many of these, who had adopted the Catholic faith out of fear, were suspected of continuing to practice their original religion secretly.

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Pope Innocent IV authorized the use of torture