Inquisition and Its Organisation in Italy 1250-1350

HERESY AND INQUISITION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
IN ITALY, 1250 –1350

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION
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of unpublished sources, the book analyses these divergences, and shows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.
JILL MOORE
YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
INQUISITION AND ITS
ORGANISATION IN ITALY
1250 –1350
An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
YORK
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US) 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
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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.
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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
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from the British Library
The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of

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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
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’? 120
5 The familia and the wider support system 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 stimu-
lating, 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 Archivum Franciscanum Historicum

AFP Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum
AGOP Archivium Generale Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum, Santa
Sabina
AMRom Atti e Memorie della Regia Deputazione di Storia Patria per le
province di Romagna
ASB Archivio di Stato, Bologna
ASI Archivio Storico Italiano
ASL Archivio Storico Lombardo
ASOB 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)
ASRSP Archivio della Società Romana di Storia Patria
ASV Archivio Segreto Vaticano
ASVen Archivio di Stato, Venice
AV Archivio Veneto
BISIME Bullettino dell’Istituto storico italiano per il medio evo e Archivio
Muratoriano
BSPU Bollettino della Deputazione di Storia Patria per l’Umbria
BSSP Bullettino senese di storia patria
CH Church History
Collectoria ASV, Camera Apostolica, Collectoria
DBI Dizionario biografico degli italiani
JEH Journal of Ecclesiastical History
MEFRMA Mélanges de l’École Française de Rome: moyen âge
MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica
MOFPH Monumenta Ordinis Fratrum Praedicatorum Historica
Muratori, Antiquitates Italicae Medii Aevi, V, Dissertatio Sexagesima,
‘Pungilupo’ ed. L. A. Muratori (Milan, 1741), cols. 102–48
PL Patrologia Latina, ed. J. P. Migne, 221 vols. (Paris, 1857–66)
Potthast Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, ed. A. Potthast, 2 vols.
(Berlin, 1874–75)
PP Past & Present
Praedicatores 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)
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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
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Inquisition in Italy, 1250–1350
This incident throws valuable light on the practical organisation of inqui-

sition 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 organi-
sation, 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 confrater-
nities; 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 signif-
icant 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.
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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 sixteenth-
century 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 inquisi-
tion’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 demoli-
tions 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.

10 Bernard 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 sentence-
book 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).
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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 inqui-
sition, 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 margin-
alising 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 concen-
trating 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 inqui-
sitionis 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 inquisi-
tion’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 letter-
atura 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 mendi-
canti 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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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 govern-
ments, 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 casti-
gated 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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[…] 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’.

32 G. 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).
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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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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 office-
holders had no organisational connection with their colleagues elsewhere. It
is uncontested ground that, in the words of Henry Kelly, the medieval inqui-
sition 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, under-
taken by bishops or by secular magistrates, which both preceded the papal
inquisition and continued alongside it. Indeed, the persistence of these alter-
native 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).
38 The 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).
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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 institu-
tional 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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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 behind-
the-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’ appoint-
ments 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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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 responsi-
bility.’ 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 proce-
dural 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 inquisi-
tion’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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can be hard to spot.54 As Padovani makes clear, civic or diocesan documen-

tation 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 obliga-
tions 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-eight-
eenth 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 inquis-
itors 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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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 embez-
zlement and other crimes against the inquisitor Mino Daddi da San Quirico,
during which the legate demanded the accounts of most of Mino’s prede-
cessors 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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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 inquisi-
tor’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 inqui-
sition 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 acces-
sible 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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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
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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 automati-
cally 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 impris-
onment 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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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 inquisi-
toriale 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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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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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 commis-
sioned 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 circum-
stances 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 propo-
sition 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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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 inqui-
sition’, 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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Secular legislation and responsibility
Major organisational changes in 1252 and 1254 created the office of inqui-
sition 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 haere-
ticus 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 legis-
lation; 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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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 inquis-
itors 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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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 consid-
erably. 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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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 neces-
sarily 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 consti-
tution 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 provi-
sions 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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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 inqui-
sition 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, notwith-
standing 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.
32 For 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.
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These provisions have to be read in the light of another part of the consti-
tution, 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) signifi-
cantly 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 inqui-

sitionem 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 pravi-
tatem 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 examina-
tionem 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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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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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 admin-
istrative 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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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-manage-
ment.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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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 inqui-
sition. 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 excommu-
nicated 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.
41 De 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
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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).
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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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 testi-
monii) 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 consti-
tutions. 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 inqui-
sitio, 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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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.

53 For 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.
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nuisance for all concerned, but had implications for the validity of inves-
tigations 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 signif-
icant 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 respec-
tively 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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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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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 codico-
graphical 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.
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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 inquis-
itors 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 three-
cornered 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 inquisi-
toris 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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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 arrange-
ments, 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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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.

69 Calculations 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.
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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 origi-
nally 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.

71 For the direction on action against usurers, see J. Chiffoleau, ‘L’inquisition francis-
caine 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.
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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 mishan-
dling 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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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 appar-
ently 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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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-thirteenth-
century 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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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 scandal-
hit 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 infor-
mation 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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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 devel-
opment, 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, notwith-
standing 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 inquis-
itors 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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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 devel-
opment of an institution, the question is what actually happened in practice.
The following chapters start to open up this topic.
86 Kieckhefer, ‘Personal Jurisdiction’, pp. 38–9.

87 Ibid., p. 55.
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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.
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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 inter-
mittent 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 inqui-
sizione, 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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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 provin-
cials 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 inquis-
itors 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 prior-
provincial, even though he succeeded another inquisitor (Niccolò da Ripa
4 MS Cas 1730, fols. 128va–9ra (Licet ex omnibus); also Potthast 19,416.

5 In 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.
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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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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 inter-
vention 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 gener-
alibus 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 diplo-
matic 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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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 minister-
provincial 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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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 denunci-
ation. 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 inter-
vention, 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 Fora 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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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 stand-
ardise 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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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 ‘privi-
leges’ 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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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 insti-
tutional 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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Alessandria, he gave instructions for the imprisonment of a heretic, a trans-

action 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 unfor-
tunately 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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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 inqui-
sition, 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 circum-
stances, 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 inquisi-
tor’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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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 house-
keeping, 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 provin-

cialium 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 discre-
torum.’ (‘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 chapter-
house 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 accommo-
dation, 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 inquisi-
tor’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 hospi-
tality 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 unfor-
tunate 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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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 distri-
bution 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 comman-
deering 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 inquisi-
tor’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, accommo-
dation 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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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 surpris-
ingly, 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 circum-

stances 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 Ferrara-
based 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 inquisi-
tor’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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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 predica-
torum’ (‘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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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 accom-
modate 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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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 representa-
tives. 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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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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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 accom-
modation 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 organi-
sation, 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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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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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 accom-
panying 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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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 consul-
tation 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 accommo-
dation 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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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 inquisi-
tor’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 IlQuaternus 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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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, origi-
nated 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.

89 Collectoria 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.
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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 insti-
tutional 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 imperitis-
simus’, 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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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 inqui-
sition 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 inqui-
sition? 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 recom-
mended 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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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 inquisi-
tor’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 inquisi-
tion’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

11 Collectoria 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
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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 inqui-
sition 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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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 inqui-
sition, 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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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 inqui-
sition 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 author-
ities. 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 inquisi-
toris’, 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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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 attes-
tation – 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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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 inqui-
sition affairs but with virtually all Franciscan business in the province. His
immediate task was, however, to satisfy the papal legate over the wherea-
bouts 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 perma-
nently 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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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 juris-
diction 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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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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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 inqui-
sition, 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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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 Florence-
based 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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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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other vacancies) jointly exercising their power to interpret the papal consti-
tutions: 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 recom-
mended 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.
44 Bartoli 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.
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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 minister-
provincial) 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.

47 P. 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 inqui-
sition 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.
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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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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 quali-
fication 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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by his appointment in 1299 (when already very busy with the Bologna inqui-
sition) 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 intro-
duced 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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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 poten-
tially 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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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 prerequi-
sites 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 inquisi-
tor’s absence, Cettino personally convened and consulted the inquisition’s
60 Panella,‘Lapina’, pp. 153–78.

61 ASOB, II, docs. 669–70, 673 et seq. The vicar was Pinamonte da Bologna, hearing
cases ex speciali commissione for Guido da Parma (August 1304).
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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 minister-
provincial 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 combi-
nation 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, discus-
sions 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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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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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 unflat-
tering 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.
68 By 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.
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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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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 inquisi-
tion’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 connec-
tions, 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.
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devotion. Others came from a background of civic office and perhaps had
quite different drivers: security, income, factional politics. As with every-
thing 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 cartu-
laries 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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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 inquis-
itors. 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 Collectoria133, fols. 130r–1r, condemnations; fols. 136v, 137rv, notary numbers.

81 Collectoria133, 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]).
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the inquisition seemed to feel free to modify the specific provisions of Ad extir-
panda 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.

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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 excori-
ating 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 inqui-
sition 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

2 Bruschi, 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.
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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 inquisi-
tor’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 commu-
nication 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 inqui-
sition 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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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 inqui-
sition 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 termi-
nology) 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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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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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 infor-
mation 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 inqui-
sition 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).
14 For 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.
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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 inter-
mittently 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 profes-
sionally of lower standing than notaries, the nuncius officii was counted
among the servitors of the inquisition required to be provided by Ad extir-
panda, 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 tempo-
rarily 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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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 (‘sacra-
mento 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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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 inqui-
sition 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 desig-
nated 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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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 repre-
sented. 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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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 appar-
ently 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 require-
ments 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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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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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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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 respon-
sible 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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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 identi-
fiable 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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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 excom-
munications 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 inqui-
sition, 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.
49 Collectoria 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 under-
standably 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
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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 long-
distance 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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administration of justice, but also to the shared responsibility for the pursuit
of heresy. As discussed in Chapter 1, both Ad extirpanda and earlier legis-
lation 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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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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means that the small group of servitors formally appointed under Ad extir-
panda 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 commu-
nication. 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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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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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).
70 Liber 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
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communal nuncius in Bologna for fourteen years before he appears in inqui-

sition 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 counter-
parts, 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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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 admin-
istrators 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, communi-
cating 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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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 organisa-
tional 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 inter-
rogation – 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 adminis-
trative cohort.
76 Collectoria251, 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 inqui-
sition’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.
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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 entre-
preneur 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 institution-
alisation 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 trans-
lated 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.

2 The 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.
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(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 conten-
tious 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.

5 G. 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 permis-
sions in Florence; Collectoria 250, fol. 24v for preparation of ‘apodixias officialium et
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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 inqui-
sitionis 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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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 inqui-
sition 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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da Petriolo (1311–12) or Manfredo da Parma (1314–18) in their accounts.

However, Nascimbene Adelardi, the by then very senior nuncius and famil-
iaris, 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 famil-
iares 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 inqui-
sition 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 office-

holder 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 famil-
iaris 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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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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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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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 inqui-
sition, 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 mainte-
nance 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 inqui-
sition, 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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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 famil-
iaris 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 hereti-
corum’). 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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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 consti-
tuted. 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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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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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, notwith-
standing 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 arrange-
ments, 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.

39 The 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 contri-
bution: 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 inquisi-
tion’s attempt to dislodge the Spirituals who had taken over the convent.
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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 acknowl-
edgement 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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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 documen-
tation; 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 expend-
iture 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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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.
49 Collectoria 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.
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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 explora-
tores 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 diffi-
culties 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 inexperi-
enced 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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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 recip-
ients 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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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 juris-
dictions) 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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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 impris-
onment 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 unsuc-
cesfully 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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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 famil-
iaris. 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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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 expend-
iture). 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 confes-
sions 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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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 inter-
rogative 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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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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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 extir-
panda. 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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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 inqui-
sition 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 fluctu-
ating and overlapping roles and functions (‘compiti e mansioni fluttuanti
e sovraposte’).79 Some of the core team were officiales of the Officium inqui-
sitionis, 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.
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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 reinter-
pretation 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 jurisdic-
tions, 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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Discussion of the notaries and nuncii has already demonstrated the unsus-
tainability 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 minia-
turists. 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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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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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 minister-
provincial 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 inquisi-
tor’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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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 elabo-
rated 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 inquisi-
tor’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.

10 Kaeppeli and Dondaine, Acta provinciae Romanae, p. 51: the 1279 provincial chapter
at Salerno ordered all priors that friars arriving at their convent without a desig-
nated 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.
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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 minister-
provincial, 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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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 enlight-
ening. 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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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 repli-
cated 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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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, inquis-
itors 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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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 second-
ranked 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 dispensa-
tions 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 Deofficio, 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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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 inqui-
sition 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.
24 Collectoria 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
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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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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 poten-
tially 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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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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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.

38 Collectoria 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.
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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-inquis-
itors 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 inquis-
itors. 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.

42 Perhaps 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.
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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 [inquisi-
tores] 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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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 inquis-
itors’ 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 contribu-
tions 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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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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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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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 concen-
trating 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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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 unfortu-
nately 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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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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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 admin-
istrative 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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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.

74 Parmeggiani, 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.
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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.

78 D’Amato, 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).
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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 inter-
preted 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 ActaCapitulorum Generalium, II, pp. 61, 66–7.

83 A partial
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.
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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 suspi-
cions 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 experi-
enced 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 inqui-
sitionis, 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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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 multi-
layered 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 inqui-
sition 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 compro-
mised 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 circum-
stances 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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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 Milan-
based 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 unmen-
tioned.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 contem-
poraneously 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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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 respon-
sibilities 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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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’ discus-
sions 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 insti-
tutionalisation, 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 devel-
oping 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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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 prior-
provincial 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.

14 D’Alatri, 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 inquisitor-
general 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’).
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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 pravi-

tatem, 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 minister-
provincial 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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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 prior-
provincial 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 office-
holding 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, inquisi-
torial 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 pravi-

tatis 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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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 proce-
dendi 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 prior-
provincial. 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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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 influ-
enced 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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plenty of contact between the inquisitors of, say, Tuscany and the minister-
provincial 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 inqui-
sition-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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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 prior-
provincial 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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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, cuius-
cumque 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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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 Collectoriae249, 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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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 inquis-
itors 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 expend-
iture) 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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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 inquis-
itors 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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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 haere-
ticae 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 accom-
panied 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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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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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 explora-
tores’ 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 scruti-
neers 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 inquis-
itors 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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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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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 chron-
ologically 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 appropri-
ateness 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 margi-
nalia, 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 accom-

modation, 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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(sometimes but not always) the convent’s shoemaker, tailor, vestiarius (robe-
master) 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 inqui-
sition’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.

64 Piron,‘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
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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 procu-
rator, 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 thirty-
two 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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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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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 inqui-
sition’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).

74 Collectoria 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
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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 inquis-
itors 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 contri-
bution 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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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 contri-
butione 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 provin-
ciali 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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of St Dominic, bought a cape for the former Bologna prior (and ex-prior-
provincial) Andalo da Bologna, and financed a student in the university.83
By no later than the beginning of the fourteenth century, therefore, inquis-
itors 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 ministers-
provincial, 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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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 instruc-
tions 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 require-
ments merits further study.
How serious were the orders’ exhortations against excess? Senior office-
holders, 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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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 insti-
tution 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 inquisi-
teurs 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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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’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 anti-
heretic 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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In the face of pressure from both sides, the thirteenth-century popes

changed their minds repeatedly about the details of inquisitors’ formal obliga-
tions 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 direc-
tions – 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 incorpo-
rated in the Florentine inquisition manual (MS Cas. 1730) as late as 1396.
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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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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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 conse-
cration 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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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 conclu-
sions. 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.
24 G. 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.
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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 perma-
nency, 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 inqui-
sition 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.

27 Lea, 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.
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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 diplo-
matic 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 excommu-
nications 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.
31 Lomastro Tognato, L’eresia a Vicenza, pp. 33–4.
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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 arrange-
ments 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 inqui-
sitionis 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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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 consti-
tutions 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 servi-
tores 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 caccia-
gazaro (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 anti-
heresy 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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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 require-
ments 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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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 condi-
tions 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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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 anti-
heretic 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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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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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 heret-

tichorum 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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Attempts of this kind to distinguish fields of activity and prevent conflict

between overlapping competences were however doomed by the inquisi-
tion’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 oppor-
tunity 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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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 differ-
ently 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 ‘potes-
tatem 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 Forthe 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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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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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 retrospec-
tively 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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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 valua-
tions 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.

66 However, 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.
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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, responsi-
bility 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 inqui-
sitionis 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 inquisi-
tion’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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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
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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 respon-
sibility for imprisonment, although financial responsibility continued to be
borne by the civil power. This shift was probably not a power grab by inquis-
itors, 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 – responsi-
bility 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 ActaComunitatis 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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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 long-
standing 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 illumi-
nating: 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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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 inqui-
sition 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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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 inquis-
itors 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 conti-
nuity 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

2 Ibid., 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-gener-
ation 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 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 compa-
rable 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 misrep-
resented, 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 instruc-
tions 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.

5 In 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
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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 colle-
giate 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 responsi-
bilities 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 inqui-
sition 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 inquis-
itors, 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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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 inquisi-
tionis) 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 require-
ments 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
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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 confis-
cating 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, servi-
tores 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 inqui-
sition 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 inqui-
sition 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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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 arrange-
ments, 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 insti-
tution. 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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286
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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 Albi 214

101 n. 33 Aldobrandino da Reggio, OP, inq. 183,
Accounts/accountability 18–21, 46, 53, 184 n. 35
98–9 n. 27, 214–15, 216–20, 252 Alessandria 71, 78, 89, 100 n. 31, 150 n.
doubts over accuracy 21–22 18, 167
falsification 21 Alessandrino, OP, socius 189 n. 56
closure 216 n. 50 Alessandro Novello da Treviso, OFM,
standards 216–17, 218–19 inq, bp 197
orders’ involvement 214–20 Alessio da Mantova, OFM, inq. 63 n. 13,
for prisons 21 217, 220, 232, 237, 250, 255
different styles 191 Almengarda, heretic of Treviso, 250
for personal goods 208 d. Altafronte, heretic 151 n. 22
Liber Conum 20–1, 149 n. 16 Altopascio, convent of 86 n. 80
Accursio Bonfantini, OFM, inq. 71, 85 Ambrogio Taegio, OP, 31, 192, 193 n. 67,
nn. 75, 77, 86 n. 80, 88–9, 103 n. 39, 202
150 n. 19, 151–2, 155, 185, 189 n. 54, Anagni, 215 n. 48
190, 191, 193, 220 Ancona, March of 184
Age qualifications 189 n. 52, 206 Andalo da Bologna, OP, pp 227
Aghinetto, famulus 153 Andalo da Padova, OP, inq. 202 n. 4
Aghinolfo of Borgo San Lorenzo, nuncius Andrea da Todi, OFM, inq. 59 n. 2, 174,
141 195
Aghisio da Bergamo, OP, vicar 183, 184 Andrea dei Mozzi, OFM, inq. 86 n. 79,
n. 33 88, 194 n. 72
Agnese di Carrara 51 n. 72 Andrea del Valle, notary 99, 104
Aicardo, heretic 159, 164 Andrea, famulus 149 n. 16, 153–4 n. 34
Aicardino di Litolfo 84 Anexia da Piacenza, spy 151
Aiulfo [da Vicenza], OFM, inq. 60 n. 5, Angelo da Rieti, OFM, inq. of Viterbo
105, 152, 157, 244, 247, 255, 262, 265 232, 233
Alamanno da Lucca, OFM, inq. 193 Angelo da Todi, OFM, inq. 93 n. 7, 117
Albenga 181 Anibaldo, Roman senator 30, 33, 49
Alberano da Milano, spy 159 Anselm of Alessandria, OP, inq. 67, 198
Alberigo, OP, inq 31 Antonio da Arezzo, OFM, inq. 86, 103,
Alberto da Bassano, OFM, inq. 1 n. 3, 43 185 n. 40, 193, 220
n. 49, 140, 156, 265 Antonio da Lucca, OFM, vicar & inq.
Alberto da Guinizzone, notary and 184 n. 36, 186
heretic 251 n. 67 Antonio da Padova, OFM, inq. 43 n. 51,
Alberto da Ponziano, viator 140 n. 71, 50, 252
141, 259 Antonio dell’Orso, bp of Florence 235 n.
Alberto della Scala of Verona 107, 235 17, 243
Alberto di Carbone, notary 107–8 n. 50, Apostles 155, 175
109, 110, 130, 131 Arezzo 155, 156, 219, 236, 240
Alberto Ricco, OFM, bp 233, 239 domus inquisitionis at 236, 240
287
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Index
Ardingo, bp of Florence 178 Benedetto de Pesculo, OP, inq. 209 n. 27

Armanno Pungilupo, heretic 43, 62, 101, Benincasa Martini, nuncius 131–4, 136,
126, 137, 155, 241, 264 141, 250, 259
Arnaldo de Plebe, spy 151 Benvenuto da Cremona 81 n. 65, 163 n.
Arnaldo of Toulouse, heretic 205 n. 14 63
Arnold, bp of Bologna 20, 208, 220 Benvenuto da Orvieto, OFM, inq. 59
Artusio, OP, notary 96 n. 19, 101, 102 n. n. 2
34 Benvenuto dei Campesani, notary 118
Arms, carrying of 129, 146–7, 170, 242, Benvenuto de Trissanti, familiaris, iudex,
244 notary 88, 96–7, 99, 101 n. 33, 102 n.
Asciano 236 37, 103 n. 40, 105, 116, 117, 149, 150,
Ashes, sale of, 40, 167 n. 74, 249 n. 60 182 n. 27, 259
Assisi 71 Berga [Roberga], heretic 135, 137, 160
Asti 52 n. 75, 78, 89, 158–9, 195, 202 n. 5 n. 54
Avancius, friar and heretic 232 n. 7 Bergamo 75 n. 42, 77, 117, 165 n. 67, 191,
Aymerico de Rodaldo, OP, vicar 181 216, 222
Azo, canonist 122 chapter at 216
Bernard Délicieux, OFM 8
Baldo, OP, socius 189–90 n. 56 Bernard Gui, OP, inq, bp 10, 24, 52, 135
Banking 169, 213 n. 42 Bernard, saint 26
Bannitor, role of 123 n. 12, 124 n. 14 Bernardo Nuti da Prato, priest 94–5 nn.
Baratores, role of 123 n. 10, 138 14–15, 111, 150, 164, 254
Barberius 165–6, role of 264 Bernardo [Ricci], OFM, socius 189 n. 54,
Stefanino, Egidio, Damiano, Bertotto 190–191 n. 58, 193
165–6 Bertino Ristori, nuncius 139 n. 66
Barberino di Mugello, convent 141 Bertrando del Poggetto [Bertrand du
Barba, G., heretic 159 n. 50 Poujet], cardinal, legate 231 n. 4,
Barnaba da Vercelli, OP, inq, pp, mg 63 244
n. 15, 202, 209, 211, 235 n. 20 Bettino, famulus fratrum of S. Croce 141
Baronto Ricciardi, bishop of Pistoia 235 Biliotto, notary, 115, 148
n. 17 Bishops
Bartholinus Ysenardi, nuncius 130 n. 33 responsibilities against heresy 25–6,
Bartholo da Leccio, notary 94, 97 n. 22, 31, 36–7, 234
100 complementary powers 235–6
Bartola, widow 148 consultation with 40 n. 39, 234–5
Bartolo, OFM 213 duties under Ad extirpanda 39–41
Bartolommeo d’Amelia, OFM, inq. 77, as lead official of inquisition 41
93 n. 7 as inquisitors 31, 197, 262
Bartolommeo da Breganza, bp of Vicenza relations with inquisitors 40, 68, 69,
239 114, 132, 214, 230, 233, 234, 235, 236,
Bartolommeo de Magnis, OP, temp. 237–8
socius 187 n. 47 advantages over inquisitors 45, 238
Bartolommeo Gradenigo, doge 114 joint interpretation of constitutions
Bartolommeo Mascara, OFM, inq, mp 104, 235
106, 212, 228, 233, 249 involvement in appointments to
Bartolommeo Piccolomini 88 officium inquisitionis 238
Beatrice, heretic 159 n. 50 roles of bishops’ vicars 178, 234 n. 13,
Becco di ser Ugolino Bongiovanni Rubei, 262
banker, procurator 130–3 receiving inquisitors’ accounts 46, 52
Belluno 197 responsibility to diocese 239
Benedetto Caetani [Boniface VIII] 45 Blasphemy 246
Benedetto da Arezzo, OFM, 194 n. 71 Boccaccio 9–10, 214 n. 43
288
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Bologna 31, 60, 69, 73, 79, 81, 84, 87 125, 160, 162–3, 170, 215, 239, 253,
n. 81, 91 n. 3, 93, 95, 100, 101, 102, 257
104, 105, 107, 111, 115, 116, 123, 124, Catholice fidei negotium 44 n. 53, 263
126–7, 131, 133, 136, 139, 148, 151, Commissi nobis 32–3
155–6, 163, 167, 169, 174, 179, 184, Cum adversus 33
187 n. 47, 190, 192, 195–6, 203, 204, Cum sicut est 178
208, 213, 221, 223, 224 n. 75, 225, 230, Excommunicamus 49
234, 236, 246–7, 248, 251, 255, 259, Ex eo quod 46 n. 61, 53, 215
261, 264–5 Exigit ordinis 208
criminal court records 18 Extravagantes 47
Bompietro bursarius, heretic 130 n. 33, Licet ex omnibus 60 n. 4, 66 n. 21
131, 133, 137, 158, 163, 166, 167, 184, Multorum querela 234, 262
234, 235, 249 n. 60, 250 n. 64 Ne aliqui dubitationem 45
Bonacursius, OP, notary 96 n. 19 Ne inquisitionis negotium 44 n. 53
Bonacursius da Verona, son of Albertino, Orthodoxae fidei 33 n. 23
nuncius 140 n. 71 Quod super nonnullis 51, 178, 246
Bonagiunta da Mantova, OFM, inq. 246 Super extirpatione 52
Bonandrea family 89, 241, 259 [see also Vergentis in senium 27
Symon, Bongiovanni, Giovanni]
Bonanno [da Ripa], OP, vicar, pp 67, 195 Cacciagazzaro [Cathar-hunter] 241, 264
Bonfiglio, bp 37–8, 237 Calderino famulus fratrum of Prato 154
Bongiovanni di Bonandrea, notary, cleric n. 35, 141
106–7, 241 n. 37 Cambio Bandinelli, turnkey 150, 165 n.
Boniface VIII, pope, 19, 41, 45, 53 n. 79, 67
60, 61, 62, 63, 207, 216 Cambio, stationer 94 n. 14
Bonifacio da Ferrara, OP, vicar, inq. 184 Capocchio, alchemist 247
n. 35 Carmignano 236
Bonifacino dei Galluzzi, OP 192–3 n. 67 Caro da Arezzo, OFM, inq. 193, 194 n. 71
Bonifatio, monk 95 Cassiano, toll collector 1
Bonigrino da Verona, heretic 107, 108 n. Cassine 100
50, 184, 234 n. 13 [see also Rosafiore] Castel Fiorentino 141
Boninsegna da Trento, OFM, inq. 61, Castiglione 94, 105 n. 45
100, 106 n. 47 Cecco d’Ascoli, astrologer 115, 248
Bonvisino da Bologna, OP, vicar 69 n. 29, Cettino Benricevuti da Prato, notary 84,
181 n. 26, 183 102, 103, 111, 112 n. 62, 147, 152–3
Borghino Chiarati 140 n. 71, 152, 191, Charles I of Anjou 55
260 Chiareno da Rovezzano, heretic 167 n. 72
Bosco ai Frati, convent of 66 Chieri 138, 223
Bovatino da Mantova, jurist 42 n. 45, 113 Chiusi 219
n. 65 Church councils
Brandano da Saliceto, notary 167 n. 74 Béziers 173, 174, 177–8
Brescia 28, 31, 38, 69, 70 n. 34, 83 n. 71, Fourth Lateran 28
135, 158 Narbonne 28
Bressanino di Niccolò, officialis at Riva Toulouse 28, 43
sul Garda 1 Vienne 40 n. 39, 47, 52, 149 n. 16, 165,
Bruneta, heretic 232 n. 7 189 n. 52
Brunino Bianche Cose, banker 169 Cino da Pistoia, jurist 40, 234 n. 11
Bruno degli Adimari, heretic 248 Cione, Cathar bp 261 n. 7
Buccinatores 123 n. 10, 138 Cividale del Friuli 35–36, 241
Bulls, significant Civil authority and heresy
Ad abolendam 27 Roman law origins 29, 32–3
Ad extirpanda 38–44, 48–50, 52, 118–19, Frederick II’s legislation 32–3
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anti-heresy statutes 33, 39, 61 n. 7, 233, Clementinae [Liber Septimus] 47

246 age qualifications 189
aligning with secular crimes 32, 34, bishops 234
135–6, 263 permission of usury 51 n. 71
differences in approach 241 Como 135, 202 n. 5, 242 n. 38, 255
continuing independent duty 34, 39, Contra officium 97 n. 22, 243–4, 252, 256
230, 239, 257, 261–2, 266 Conegliano 157, 265
bishop as statutory partner 239 Colonna, family 71, 121, 130, 133, 240
inquisitor as agent of civil power 241 Conrad of Marburg, proto-inquisitor 30
Ad extirpanda, duties under 39, 127, Constanza da Bergamo, spy 152
136, 239, 244, 253 Constitutio contra haereticos Lombardiae 32
modification of 241 Constitutions of Melfi [Liber Augustalis]
maintaining papal constitutions 41, 32–3
243–4 Consultatores 45 n. 56 [see also sapientes]
assessors and valuers 43–4, 249 Contessa, heretic, widow of Bompietro
catching heretics 162–3, 167–8 182 n. 28, 184
punishments, role in 49, 83, 127, Corrado da Camerino, OP, inq, pp 67,
131–2, 133 n. 46, 136, 166–8, 252 68 n. 28, 69, 70 n. 34, 73, 79, 196, 224,
transparency of procedure 138, 143, 235
249–50, 251, 261 Cortona 86 n. 80
prisons 253, 261 Cremona 158, 240
admission of inquisition 48 Cuneo 138, 222
local agreements 69, 97, 113–4, 163, Cursor 123, 124 n. 16 [see also Spinello]
239, 253–7 [see also Florence, Venice]
conflicting priorities & blurred Decco da Figline, jurist 79, 154 n. 35, 234
responsibilities 239, 246–7 n. 11
relations with 68, 79, 97, 113, 134, De Monte, count of 138, 162 n. 59
163, 231 De officio 28 n. 10, 68, 126, 178, 181, 182,
disagreements 255–6, 262 232
protests ignored 228, 244 De Pileo [Capello], family 166, 252 n. 68
permits to carry arms 115 n. 72, 129, [see also Federico di Montebello,
146, 170, 242, 244 Guido Capello]
attempts to control inquisition staff Deotesalvo Bartolomei Carbonis, notary
128–9, 244 92 n. 3
role in supplying staff Daniele da Giussano, OP, inq. 179
joint appointments 107 n. 49. 122, Devoti 232 n. 7
125, 131, 136–7, 138–9 Dino del Mugello, jurist 101
numbers and salaries 93, 123, 244 Dolcino of Novara, heretic 62, 166–7, 256
background of notarial staff 108–10, Dolcinists, 63, 77 n. 47
265 Dominic, Saint 30 n. 17, 202
staff movement between commune, Dominican Order [Order of Preachers]
episcopate and inquisition 97 n. beginnings 29–30
22, 117, 128–9, 138–9 geographical responsibility in Italy
in smaller communes 216, 265 54–55
division of costs and receipts 39, Domus inquisitionis/officii 74, 76–7 n. 49,
49–50, 97, 113, 116, 239, 243, 252 79, 80–2, 83, 84, 132, 152, 168, 182
confiscation and sale 46–9, 249–50, n. 28
251–2, 261 as office accommodation 153, 156, 191,
sale of lumber 40 236, 240
allocation of surplus 251 as base for torture 166 [see also
audit of books 43, 97 n. 22, 125, 152 n. Barberius]
28, 252 Donato Partis, heretic 129, 130 n. 33
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Donato Puccii, familiaris and nuncius Figline 79

125–6, 141, 147 n. 9 Florence 68, 82, 86, 94, 102, 104, 111–17
Duda, serving woman 162 n. 58 passim, 123–8 passim, 131, 138–9,
147–8, 150–1, 161, 208, 215, 221, 223,
Egidio dei Galluzzi, OP, inq. 112 n. 64, 225, 230, 232, 235, 238, 242–8, 256–9,
192, 193 n. 67, 202 n. 41, 238 261, 265
Egidio da Parma, OP, inq. 51 n. 72 appointment of syndic 43, 89, 243, 252
Enrico, cacciagazzaro (Cathar hunter) of Contra officium 97 n. 22, 243–4, 252
Verona 241, 264 disputes with inquisitor 256
Enrico da Milano, OFM 33 inquisition costs borne by commune
Enzo, king 79 50, 115
Este, family 114, 232, 235 notaries’ pay 94
Exploratores see Spies prisons 68, 82, 163, 244–5
Ezzelino III da Romano 28, 38, 231 n. 2 local agreement 242–3
statutes against heresy 34
Faenza 204 Florasio da Vicenza, OP, inq. 61 n. 7, 197,
chapter at 187 n. 48 255 n. 72
Falconico, famulus, Borgo S. Lorenzo 141 Florio da Verona, OP, inq. 20, 68 n. 28,
Familia 69 n. 30, 85 n. 75, 197, 213 n. 42, 216,
background of 152 217 n. 53, 218
distinctions within 147–9, 153 Florio da Vicenza, OP, inq. 11 n. 36, 67,
duties 150–1 76 n. 45, 80 n. 60, 101, 102 n. 34, 182,
length of service 150–2 183, 186 n. 44, 195–6, 202, 232, 238
meaning of 144 n. 8
pay and expenses 146–8, 153 Fiesole, bp of 235 n. 15
size 153–6 Filippo Bonacolsi da Mantova, OFM, inq,
spies as members of 161–2 bp 61 n. 7, 88 n. 85, 89, 107 n. 49,
Familiaris [servitor], rank not job 169 140, 197, 235, 260
as officialis 42, 103 Filippo da Como, OP, inq. 209 n. 27
differences in regional usage 148–9, Filippo da Lucca, OFM, inq. 193, 254
151 Filippo di Guido Bontalenti, notary 109
salaried 147 Foulcques, bp of Toulouse 29
Famulus Fourth Lateran Council 28 [see Church
meaning of 148–9 Councils]
difference between orders 147–9 Francesco Bartoli of Assisi, OFM
horse holding 153 (Spiritual) 236 n. 21
Federico da Mantova, OFM, vicar, Francesco Buvalelli, 92 n. 3
guardian at Riva 1 Francesco Giovanni Bentivegne, OFM,
Federico di Montebello, officialis 42, 106, notary, socius 95, 96 n. 19, 105, 111,
113, 116, 160–1 n. 54, 170, 259, 262, 116 n. 73, 174, 189, 192
264 Francesco da Figline 84
Feltre 197 Francesco da Pocapaglia, OP, inq. 61, 63
Ferarisio/Ferrarino de Lambrusca, notary n. 15, 68 n. 28, 69, 89, 99, 138, 149,
99, 101, 102, 116, 117, 259 153, 159–60, 165–7, 168, 181, 188,
Ferrara 27, 43, 63, 69, 75 n. 41, 76, 85, 93, 189, 193, 197, 211–12, 216–17, 222–3,
100–1, 102, 116, 117, 126, 137, 155–6, 225, 226, 265
179, 181, 184 n. 35, 187 n. 47, 189 n. Francesco da S. Giorgio, OP, vicar 183,
52, 196, 212, 223, 226 n. 81, 234–5, 184 nn. 33 and 35
238, 242 n. 38, 259, 265 Francesco da Trissino, OFM, inq. 184 n.
Fermo 67 36, 186
Fia, seamstress 168 n. 76 Francesco, OP, socius 189 [see Francesco
Fiesole, bp of 235 n. 15 Giovanni Bentivegne, 190]
291
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Francis, Saint 71 Giacomo da Verona, OP, notary 96 n. 19

Franciscan Order [Order of Friars Minor] Giacomo di Giordano, notary 105
chapter of Lyons 51 Giacomo de Trissanti, OFM, vicar 88, 94,
conflict with papacy 64 105, 181–2 n. 27
convent officials 1 Giacomo Flamenghi, monk 247
early actions against heresy 29, 54 n. Giacomo Saracco of Asti, cleric-notary
82 103
inquisitors’ length of service 62 Giacoppino da Medicina, jurist 109
loss of Padua and Vicenza 55 Gian Gaetano Orsini, cardinal 13, 15, 205
martyrs 65 n. 14, 260
opposition to money penalties 51, Giannino Bonacolsi, podestà, Verona 88
205–6 n. 85
power to sell heretics’ goods 52 Giovanni, famulus and spy 153–4
role in Italy 54 Giovanni di Bonandrea, notary 107
Frederick Barbarossa, emperor 27 Giovanni Bongia, notary 98 n. 26, 100,
Frederick II, emperor 32, 38 102, 103 n. 40, 110 n. 59, 111, 112, 115,
Constitutio contra haereticos Lombardie 116, 117, 147, 149, 152, 220, 259
32 Giovanni d’Andrea, jurist 45 n. 56, 46
Constitutions of Frankfurt 33 n. 49
Constitutions of Melfi [Liber Giovanni da Fontana, OP, inq. 63 n. 15,
Augustalis] 32 68 n. 28, 117, 222 n. 67, 225 n. 79, 226
Statutes of Catania 32 n. 82, 256
Friars, false 68 n. 26 Giovanni da Pisa, OFM, socius 187 n. 49,
Fucino [Celano] 67 189 n. 53, 190, 191
Giovanni da Siena, OFM, inq. 194
Gabriele Roncinello, heretic 237 Giovanni dei Pizigotti, OP, inq. 68 n.
Galvano, OP, socius to Francesco da 28, 87 n. 81, 184 n. 35, 212, 220, 223,
Pocapaglia 189 n. 56, 197, 256 224, 226
Galvano da Budrio, OP, vicar 182, 184 Giovanni de Rochis, OP, notary 96 n. 19,
n. 33 107
Galvano Fiamma, OP, chronicler 29 n. Giovanni di Niccolò, heretic 153
13, 79 n. 53, 207 Giovanni Forzate, bp of Padua 237
Gemma Bonfantini 89 Giovanni Serafini, familiaris and custos
Genoa 69, 78, 100, 145, 158, 166, 167, 205 carceris 148, 151, 153, 165
n. 14, 214, 218, 222, 236 Giovanni Villani, chronicler 13, 146
chapter at 217 Giuliano bursarius, heretic 106, 129, 130
Genoa, March of 70, 78, 217, 249 n. 33, 132 n. 43, 137, 158, 166, 184,
Gerardo di Guido Bontalenti, notary 109 234 n. 13, 235, 250 n. 64
Gerardo Segarelli 175 Giuliano da Mantova, OFM, inq. 89 n. 90
Gerardino da Reggio, OP, inq. 217 Gratia, heretic 111, 165
Giacomo, OFM, socius 189 n. 54, 191 n. Griffolino da Forli 247
63 Grimaldo da Prato, OFM, mp, inq. 86 n.
Giacomo, nuncius 154 79, 94, 112, 155, 185, 193, 220, 232,
Giacomo Alberto Martelli, notary 117 235 n. 17, 236, 240, 243, 256, 261 n.
Giacomo Bonini, famulus fratrum 222 7, 262
Giacomo da Carrara, bp’s vicar, Treviso Grimaldo da Saliceto, OP, vicar, sapiens
237 181, 192
Giacomo da Orvieto, OFM, inq. 184 n. Guardus, viator, Verona 125–6 n. 19
36 Guala da Bergamo, OP, bp, inq. 31
Giacomo da Pavia, spy 159, 160 n. 51 Guglielmo da Allegnano, OP, socius,
Giacomo da San Gimignano, OFM, 189–90 n. 56
auditor 219 Guglielmo da Cremona, OP, inq. 195
292
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Guglielmo da Fossano, OP, socius 189–90 Homobono da Bologna, OP, vicar, lector
n. 56 182–3, 184
Guglielmo da Sorano, OP, socius 189–90 Honorius III 33
n. 56 Hic est modus 68 n. 27
Guglielmo Dulcini da Monte Albano, OP, Hugo Martellinus, OP 188
bp 220 Hungary – Manfredo da Parma in 196–7
Guglielmo Laigonis/Aygonis 110, 117
Guglielmino da Cremona, OFM, socius Ildebrandino, familiaris 84, 152 n. 29
192 n. 64 Inquisition
Guglielmo Ubertini, bp of Arezzo 236 birth of 25–31
Gui Foulcques [Clement IV] 45–6 n. 56, French system 3
177 crusade 8–9, 27
Guicciardino da San Gimignano, OFM, confraternities, support from 8–9, 28,
inq. 120 n. 8 38, 104, 146, 162–3, 232 n. 7
Guido Bontalenti, notary 104, 107–9, 110, inquisitio 12, 43, 156, 158, 170
116, 117, 141 as legal tribunal 12–13
Guido Capello da Vicenza, OP, inq, bp public attitudes towards 10, 76–7, 134,
9 n. 30, 24, 42, 62–3, 69, 76, 79, 93 231, 255 [see also Parma]
n. 7, 106, 107, 114, 121, 129, 130 n. uneven geographical development 58,
33, 132, 134, 136–7, 155, 156, 163, 241–2, 244
181, 182, 183, 184 n. 35, 186 n. 44, local agreements between orders 56,
192, 196, 202, 227 n. 83, 232, 234, 261
235, 246, 248, 250, 252 n. 68, 255, bishops, relations with 40–1, 46, 132,
264, 265 232–5
Guido de Baysio, jurist 45 n. 46 bishops, differences in powers from
Guido da Sesto, OP, inq. 31 n. 20, 202 262
n. 5 bishops, joint action with 23, 234–5,
Gui de Neuville 10, 19, 42, 104, 114, 252, 236
256 bishops, exchange of staff with 238
Guido da Cocconato, OP, inq, pp 78, 205 lead against heresy contested 41, 230,
n. 15, 207, 227, 255 248
Guido da Parma, OP, inq. 81, 96 n. 19, conflict with civil power 97, 113–4,
111 n. 61, 181, 182, 183, 186 n. 45, 118–9, 131–2, 239, 242–3
189, 196, 224, 261 n. 7 conflict with own officiales 42, 104
Guido dei Fabbri Tolosini, banker 15, start-up costs 52
169 financial model, intended 38–44, 85–7
Guido notarius, Florence 94, 97 n. 22 financial model, deformation 250–1
Guido Principino, OFM, inq. 195 confiscations and sales 27, 104, 130–2,
Guido Signoritti, friar, notary 96 n. 19, 250–1
116 division of surplus 104–5, 106
Guido Tarlati, bp of Arezzo 155, 185, other sources of finance 51 n. 72, 54,
236, 240 86–7 n. 80
Guidocino, OP, socius 189, 190 manuals 11, 127, 198 [see also De
Guillaume de Balait 10, 19, 20, 42, 104, officio, Hic est modus]
216 penalties 5 n. 12, 27 n. 7, 32, 76–7, 127,
144, 167–8, 248
Helena da Viqueria, ex-heretic, spy, poss penalties, money 51, 205–6
familiaris 161–2 handling money 155–6, 213–14
Henrigiptus Zacharie, bannitor 131 changing volume of business 118, 155,
Henry VI, emperor 27 164
Henry VII, emperor 69 n. 32 secrecy 121
Hervé de Nédellec, OP, mg 208 structure 38, 124, 145, 148–9, 232
293
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women, treatment of 81, 212–13 Jacobutius de Zapolino, famulus/

Inquisitors familiaris 156 n. 39
appointment procedures 31 n. 20, Jean de Gascoigne, town crier 139–40
59–69, 73 Johamna, ex-heretic, spy 161–2
appointment, form of 66–8 Johanna, suspected heretic 163 n. 63
appointment, consultation on 65–6 Juvenalis, OFM 92 n. 6
appointment, papal intervention in
59–60, 63–5 Lamberto da Cingoli, OP, inq. 80 n. 60,
as bishops’ vicars 237 114, 192, 193 n. 67, 196
as bishops 31, 197 Landino, famulus of Prato 154 n. 35
duration of appointment 61–2, 176 Lando Bicchi da Gubbio, bargello of
instruments and seals 66–7, 67–9 Florence 256, 262
confirmation of privileges 242 n. 40 Lando/Landino, OFM, inq. of Siena 155,
numbers 48, 173 185
geographical responsibility 66–7 Landolfo Bonomei 92
delegation of powers 44 [see also Lanfranco da Bergamo, OP, inq. 20, 22,
vicars] 53, 61, 68 n. 28, 69, 73, 76, 77, 78, 81,
gaps/variation in powers 14, 44–5, 45, 84, 86, 153, 154, 161, 215–16, 225,
47, 178, 261 227
advice and consultation 184–6, 234 n. Lapo Cultri, nuncius, familiaris 132–4,
13, 234–5 137, 150, 259
handling money 155–6, 213–14 Lapo dei Fabbri Tolosini, OFM, vicar,
accounts/accountability, see separate custos of Santa Croce, Florence 15,
heading 185
accommodation 74–7 n. 49, 78 nn. 50 Laundry and tailoring 84 n. 72, 168 n. 70
and 52, 80–2, 84, 132 [see Fia, Nente]
accommodation, personal 75, 80 n. Leonardo, OFM, socius 189
61, 81 Leone da Parma, OP, vicar 183, 184 n. 33
accommodation for staff 152–3 [see Leone da Robegano, husband of heretic
also domus inquisitionis] Almengarda, Treviso 250
family background 88–9, 171 Leone Vannis, famulus 153 n. 33
scholarship 9 n. 30, 97 n. 23, 194, 196 Liber Augustalis see Constitutions of
exemption from orders’ supervision Melfi
16 n. 48, 56, 263 Liber Contractuum 22–3, 51, 252
cooperation between 15, 48, 56, 58, 63, Liber Conum 20–1, 149 n. 16 [see also
159, 180, 230, 260, 263 Accounts]
closeness to papacy 195, 197 Liber Septimus 47 [see also Clementinae]
corruption and excess 5–6, 9–10 n. 32, Liber Sextus 46, 177, 246–7, 262
19, 53, 114, 207–8, 212–13 Lippo Benincase, notary 238 n. 29, 259
reliance on convent support 221, 224, Lodi 51 n. 72, 69, 226
263 Lolo baratore 138 n. 64
payment for convent services 221–3, Lorenzo d’Ancona, OFM, inq. 5 n. 11,
222 n. 66, 223–5 61, 65, 91
provincial contribution 225–9 Lotario degli Ubaldini, OP, inq. 203
pietancie 222–3 Lu 52 n. 75, 158–9, 160
careers 194–7, 198 Lucca 152 n. 26, 156, 236
Ioacchino da Bologna, OP, notary, vicar Ludwig of Bavaria 121, 247
96 n. 19, 174, 182 Lyons, chapter of 206 n. 17, 215, 234
Jacobus de Burgo, OP, inq. 68 n. 28, 69, 70 Magic 51 n. 71, 262

n. 34, 182, 183 n. 30, 226 Manfredo da Parma, OP, inq. 63, 68 n.
Jacobinus de Turri, notary 110 n. 56 28, 70 n. 34, 80, 93, 96 n. 19, 109,
294
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117–18, 124, 129 n. 31, 137, 148–9, progression in career structure 200,

153–4, 156 n. 39, 161–2, 181, 182–3, 206–7, 209–10, 218, 220, 224, 228,
189, 190, 196, 217, 225, 226 n. 81 259, 263
Manfredo dei Mascara, archdeacon 106, financial nexus 201, 205–6, 220–7
184 accountability 205–6, 208, 218, 220,
Mangone, commune of 151, 265 228, 263
Manovello di Giacomo, familiaris and failure to set standard 217–18, 219,
nuncius 94, 98, 139, 141 n. 72, 150, 220, 228, 263
166, 244, 256, 260 approaches OFM, 214, 217, 218–19;
as custos carceris 150–1 OP, 214, 215, 217
Marchesio da Brescia, OP, inq. 68 n. 28, complicit in financial misbehaviour
70 n. 34, 83 n. 71, 158, 160 n. 53, 161, 201, 205–6, 224–5
170, 216–7, 218 role in supplying staff 125, 153–4, 204
Marchionne di Coppo Stefani, chronicler role in appointments to officium
13, 140 inquisitionis 43, 114
Marcia, heretic 159 appointment of socius 172, 204
Marsilio Manteghelli, jurist 101 sanctions on those without socii 175
Marsoppo, notary 148 co-operation between orders 261
Martino, famulus 149 n. 46 use of inquisitors for internal
Martino da Cento, notary 104, 110 discipline 209
Martino Spagnolo, jurist 130–1 Metz, general chapter of 183, 196, 207
Mascara dei Mascara, officialis, notary, Mia, heretic 131 n. 37, 167, 249 n. 60
judge 106, 113, 264 Michael of Cesena, OFM, mp 62, 150 n.
Mastino della Scala 235 19, 228
Matthew of Acquasparta, cardinal 68 Michel LeMoine, OFM, inq. 64 n. 17
n. 26 Michele d’Arezzo, OFM, inq. 71 n. 36,
Matteo Buoferra, OFM, inq. 234 n. 13 84, 124, 151–2, 155, 185, 189, 225, 235
Matteo da Chieti, OFM, inq, mp 63 n. n. 17
14, 195 Michele d’Oria, podestà 82 n. 67, 255
Meglore Bonacorsi, notary 140 Michele of Toulouse, heretic 205 n. 14
Meglore/Meliore Albertini, nuncius 140 Milan 28, 83, 86, 158–9, 160, 204, 207, 235
n. 71 n. 20, 239
Mendicant orders and inquisition boni homines 29, 43, 263
ambivalence towards 4, 180, 183, chapters at 183 n. 30, 188
201–5 Millanino da Milano, familiaris, nuncius
role in pursuing heresy 37–8, 94, 190 120, 130, 132
role of provincial’s socius 73 Milidosio de Corvis, OP, vicar 182–3
role during inquisitorial vacancies 85 Mino Daddi da San Quirico, OFM, inq.
n.75, 185, 186 n. 46 15, 19, 21, 24, 60 n. 5, 79, 81, 83, 85
acting as bishops’ vicars 37–8, 237 n. 75, 92, 95 n. 15, 98 n. 27, 103 n. 39,
differences in style between orders 111, 112, 115 n. 71, 135, 148, 150 n.
124, 139, 154–6, 170, 176, 178, 184–6, 19, 152, 158, 162, 185, 192, 213 n. 41,
265 214, 228, 243 n. 43, 256
combining conventual and Modena 27, 28, 79, 93, 100, 112 n. 64, 156,
inquisitorial office 207 nn. 20, 21 163, 181, 183, 184 n. 35, 196, 224–5,
tensions between conflicting duties 238, 240, 247, 255, 264
210–11, 211–12, 212–13, 218 Monaldo, scholar 227 n. 83
inquisitors’ demands on convents 74, Monda, suspected heretic 1
82–5, 125, 141, 153–4, 200, 220, 259 Money-lenders, clerical use of 26, 213
inquisitors not fully autonomous 201, n. 42
204–5, 206–7, 208, 217–18, 220–22, Monferrato 158
227, 263 Montecchiesi brothers 253–4
295
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Monticelli, convent 213 citing witnesses 121–2, 126–7

Montedomini, convent 213 dangers in employment 134–5
Montefeltro, count of 186 n. 42 decline in status 126, 139–40, 142
Money penalties 205–6 distinctive dress imposed by
Montpellier, general chapter at 206, 215, communes 128–9
219 diverse pay arrangements 125, 133
Mugello 100, 152 duties 120–21, 127, 135
history 122–3
Napoleone Orsini, cardinal 109, 155 literacy 139
Nascimbene, OFM, inq. 249 method of public announcement 123,
Nascimbene Adelardi, nuncius and 131–2
familiaris 126 n. 23, 129–30, 135, 137, numbers 123–4, 154–5
140 n. 72 oath-bound 126
custos carceris 149, 151, 154 officer of the court 120–1
Nente, laundress 168 n. 76 penalties for misbehaviour 128 n. 30
Niccolò da Cremona, OP, inq. 179 public identification 128
Niccolò da Ripa Transone, OP, inq. 60–1, reputation 120
68 n. 28, 69 n. 29, 183, 224 sanctions on performance 128 n. 30
Niccolò da Treviso, [Benedict XI], OP, mg shared employment with civil
46, 227 authorities 122, 128–9, 131, 136
Nicholaus Tascherius, OP, vicar, inq. 181 similarity of civil and inquisition
n. 26, 183, 184 n. 35, 186 n. 45, 196, procedure 135
202 n. 4, 207, 224 witnessing and carrying out
Notary punishment 133–4 n. 46
as officiales 42, 93, 104, 114 Nuto Marmorario da Castiglione 105
careers 103, 104, 107, 110 n. 45
differences between orders 96 n. 20
duties 97–9 Oberto de Brayda, jailer 164
friars as notaries 95–6 n. 19, 116 n. 73 Oberto Pelavicini 28, 38, 61 n. 7, 79
independence of 111 Officium inquisitionis
influence of 118–19 between church and state 121, 264
instead of vicars 174, 178 careers with 103, 259
malpractice 114, 252 composition 41, 104, 137–8
mobility of 99–100 during vacancies 112
needed to authenticate documents 91, duties 39–44, 48, 104, 264
92 nn. 5–6 independence 41, 93, 102–3, 117,
numbers 93–5, 114, 117 263–4
oathbound 126 n. 23 legal personality 76, 125 n. 18
ownership of inquisition records origins 28–9
115–6 own staff 125 n. 18
pay and expenses 114, 156 property holdings 76, 79, 80, 83, 89
qualifications 95–6, 100–1, 114 sale of goods 107
separate pole of authority 92, 102–3, size of 13
114, 117 Officiales [boni homines]
term of office 116 appointment 39 n. 37, 41, 42, 43 n. 50,
top-slicing of costs 50 n. 69 126
violence against 92, 255 carriage of arms 146, 170
witnessing torture 98 n. 24 city defence 28–9, 42–3
working for other bodies 117 community duties towards 39, 241
Nuncii conflict with inquisitors 41 n. 44, 106,
appointment processes 124, 126 n. 23, 113, 114, 117
136–7 in statute 263
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numbers 104, 114, 124 Peter of Verona, OP, inq, saint 9, 31, 55,
pay and expenses 40, 49, 50, 104, 116 134, 195, 201–2 n. 4, 203, 232
re-interpretation of Ad Extirpanda 264 Piacenza 42, 79, 84, 159, 179, 195, 226
status 125–6 n. 82
spies as 157 general chapter at 188
term of office 40–1, 107, 112, 116 Piccolomini see Bartolommeo
two masters 117, 136–7 Pierino/Picchino Bonfantini, familiaris,
use of local staff 99 syndic 81, 152 n. 28
who were they? 104, 137, 169–70, 264 Pietro da Collemezzo, cardinal 68 n. 27
Onebene da Volta Mantovana 81 n. 65 Pietro di Benincasa Martini 141
Opizo da Pontremoli, notary 99, 100, 101 Pietro da l’Aquila, OFM, inq, mp 19 n.
n. 33, 102, 103, 116, 117, 259 57, 60 n. 5, 129, 146, 148, 160, 170,
Orbetano di Nicolà, notary 100 n. 32 231, 256, 261
Order of the Blessed Virgin Mary Pietro da Penna S. Giovanni, OFM, vicar,
[Cavalieri Gaudenti] 28, 65, 251, 264 inq. 184
Ordo processus Narbonensis 121–2 Pietro da Prato, OFM, inq. 21, 85 n. 75,
Orvieto 26, 75 n. 41, 92, 93, 100 n. 32, 103 n. 39, 112, 185
138, 203 n. 7 Pietrobuono Brosemini, OFM, inq. 113 n.
Cathar activists in 26 n. 3 65, 251 n. 67
Osimo, lords of 65 Pietrobono Zamboni, Apostle 163, 184
Ottone da Porta Cumana, OP, prior 217 Pietro Fallo, heretic 165
Pinamonte Bonacolsi da Mantua 88 n.
Pace, serving-woman 162 n. 58 85, 107
Pace da Castelfiorentino, OFM, inq, Pinamonte da Bologna, OP, vicar 111 n.
vicar 81, 84, 85 n. 77, 86, 103, 141, 61, 182–3 n. 30
147, 150 n. 19, 155, 160, 168–9 n. 76, Pisa 156, 219
170, 183, 187 n. 49, 189, 190, 191, Pistoia 26, 104, 156
213, 219, 221, 223, 225, 243 n. 43, Pomaro [di Monferrato] 159
261 n. 7 Pons Étienne, papal legate 115 n. 71, 135,
Pace [da Vedano], OP, inq 68 n. 28, 78 n. 148, 151, 192, 220
52, 164, 202 n. 4, 226, 253 Ponte Rubaconte 169, 186 n. 46, 213
Pace di Saliceto, notary 181–2 n. 27 Popes
Padua 19, 31, 42, 47, 61, 63, 67, 71 n. 35, Alexander IV 38, 43, 44, 51, 52, 95, 173,
82, 84, 104, 107, 113, 118, 129, 152, 174, 178, 234, 246, 261
163, 168 n. 75, 186, 208, 217, 232, 237, Benedict XI [Niccolò da Treviso] 46,
242, 244, 251 52–3, 69, 197, 215, 218, 225, 254
Paganino da Cuneo, OP, socius 188, Benedict XII 64, 65
189–90 n. 56, 193, 225 Boniface VIII 19, 23, 45, 46, 53, 60,
Pagano da Lecco 198, 202 n. 4 130, 177, 186, 234, 246, 252 [see also
Pagano da Pietrasanta 28, 65 n. 19, 70, 261 Benedetto Caetani]
Palencia, general chapter at 183, 207 Clement IV 38, 39, 40, 43, 45, 56, 60,
Palmeria, heretic of Treviso 249 66 n. 21, 69, 77, 126 n. 23, 177–8, 179,
Papacy 234 [see also Gui Foulcques]
fiscal policy 11, 21, 52–4, 216 Clement V 40, 47, 52, 66, 67, 126 n. 23,
intervention in appointments 59–61 234, 236, 238
Paniccia di Giovanni Bongia, notary 111 Gregory IX 28, 31, 49
Paolo di Andrea, priest of Sassetta 248 Gregory X 234
Paolo da Norcia, OFM, notary 95, 174 Honorius III 33
Parma 76, 77 n. 46, 202–3, 231, 232 Honorius IV 63
Pavia 61, 69, 73, 75 n. 42, 76, 77, 81, 86, Innocent III “material sword” 28 n. 8
123–4, 153, 159, 227 Innocent IV 25, 31, 38, 40, 49, 50, 179,
Perpignan, chapter at 209 234
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John XXII 47, 64 n. 18, 65, 114, 135, 109, 137, 148–9, 160, 183, 186 n. 45,
208, 234 187 n. 47, 196, 209 n. 27 [Rogerius de
Lucius III 54 Marcia] 224
Nicholas III see Gian Gaetano Orsini Ruglietto, preco 122 n. 8
Nicholas IV 63 n. 14, 215, 234
Urban IV 44 n. 53, 61 n. 7, 174, 179, S. Domenico, church of, Bologna 163
197, 234, 255 S. Eustorgio, convent of, Milan 207
Porchetto Spinola, archbishop of Genoa S. Fermo, convent, Verona 117
236 S. Francesco di Bologna, convent 195
Porziuncola indulgence 194 n. 71 SS. Gervasio and Protasio, convent 163
Prato 21, 22, 27, 79, 83, 104, 111, 112, 125, S. Liberale, protector of Treviso 71
138, 141, 147, 151, 154, 156, 158, 162, S. Lorenzo, church, Vicenza 49, 106
185, 252–3, 255, 256, 262, 265 S. Martino di Aposa, church of, Bologna
Preco see nuncius 132
Prisons 39, 75 n. 41, 78, 81 n. 65, 82 n. S. Martino in Argine 134, 137, 265
68, 85, 94, 97, 125 n. 18, 150–1, 156, S. Pancrazio, abbot of 115 n. 71
163–5, 191, 253–4 S. Pancrazio, convent of 192 n. 66
equipment 75 n. 41, 164–5 S. Salvatore [di Monferrato] 52 n. 74,
jailbreaks 165 159
tariff for 244–5 S. Salvo, abbey of 129 n. 66
varied responsibilities for 253–4 S. Stefano a Campoli, pieve 191
Puer see famulus S. Tommaso del Mercato, church,
Bologna 130, 132
Raimondo da Villalta, OP, inq. 217 Sta Caterina, Bologna 132
Ranaldo da Cortona, dompnus 164 n. 65 Sta Caterina, Ferrara 186 n44
Raniero Sacconi, OP, inq. 31 n. 20, 39 n. Sta Croce, Florence, convent 18, 23,
37, 51 n. 72, 59 n. 2, 202 n. 4 86 n. 83, 88, 103, 117, 169, 186 n.
Reggio 108 n. 50, 121, 124, 138, 156, 196, 46, 190, 193, 194, 223, 225, 229, 243,
264 263
Rengarda, heretic 182 n. 28, 192 Sta Maria Novella, Florence, convent
Ricca, heretic 162 n. 58, 164 202, 243
Rieti 61 n. 7, 188, 210 Sta Reparata 49, 243
Rimini 27, 28, 34, 90, 95, 104, 126, 179, Salomone da Lucca, OFM, inq. 101 n. 33,
181, 182, 195, 264 193, 248
Riva sul Garda 1, 156, 175, 198, 265 Salerno 175
Robert of Anjou, king 69, 162, 244, 265 Salimbene de Adam, chronicler 76–7,
Robert le Bougre 30 175, 202 n. 5
Roberto [da Prato], OFM, socius 192 Salvetto Ricci, custos carceris and famulus
Rodulfo de Montecalvo, OP 81–2 n. 66 165
Rolandino, notary 99, 101, 117 Salvo da Barga, OP 188
Rome 205 n. 14 [see also Anibaldo] Salvo Vivaldi, puer 145
Rosafiore 131–2, 134, 249 n. 59 [see also Sapientes, use of ex-inquisitors as
Bonigrino da Verona] advisors 186, 186 n. 45, 196, 224,
Rufino, OP, socius 191 n. 63 234, 235 n. 14, 237
Ruggero da Casole, bp 37–9, 55, 237 n. Sardinia 63 n. 13, 236
24 Sarzana 153 n. 33
Ruggiero Aliprandi, iudex at Bologna Sassetta 248
249 n. 59 Savona 145, 166, 181
Ruggiero Calcagni, OP, inq, bp 92, 178, Scriba 103, 117
203, 256 Seals of office 70–74 n. 37
Ruggiero da Petriolo, OP, inq, pp 60, 67, Servitors see familiaris
68 n. 20, 69, 70 n. 34, 87 n. 81, 93, Sicily 32, 38
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Siena 36–8, 71, 85 n. 77, 148, 237, 239, career structure 136–7

245 n. 37, 263 overlapping descriptions 148–9
heresy prohibited in statutes 36–8, quality of 26
263 accommodation for 152–3
role of bp 37–8, 237 prison warders 78, 94, 164–5
role of OP after 1254 55–6 role in punishments 144, 165–6, 166–7
Simone da San Giorgio, OFM, socius 189 Symon di Bonandrea, notary 107,
n. 53 117, 241 n. 37 [see also Bonandrea
Simone da Spoleto, OFM, inq. 59 n. 3, family]
64 n. 18
Sinibaldo Gentili da Cingoli 80 Taddeo Gaddi, artist 81 n. 63, 219
Sirmione 157, 235 Tancredo da Rimini, OFM, notary 95
Sita da Lucca, nuncius 135 Taurino, spy 159, 160 n. 51
Societas cruxatorum 232 Tebaldo Tebaldi da Parma, OP, vicar 183,
Socius 87, 172 184 n. 33
appointment and duties 172, 175, 191 Tedisio dei Fabbri Tolosini, OFM, inq.
age qualification 188 15, 85 n. 75, 88, 151, 185
differences between orders 188 Thomas Bonacursii de Thuscis, notary
elided with role of vicar 180–1 91–2
indulgences 178 Timideo Spongati, OFM, inq, bp 125–6,
information network 198 197, 235
length of service 189–90 Tinghus Bonfantini 89
pay and expenses 190 Tivoli, convent of 195
powers of 180 Tommasino de Tonsis, OP, vicar 183
progression of 192–3 Tommasino Malebranchi, OFM, inq. 61,
qualifications 172–4 n. 3 66–7, 179, 192
reason for 175, 191 Tommasino, nuncius 139 n. 65
selection of 187–8, 204 Tommaso da Como, OP, inq. 65
training role? 176, 188, 198 Tommaso da Gorzano [Thomas of Asti],
Spies 52 n. 75, 153, 157, 170 OP, inq 20, 22, 61 n. 9, 68 n. 28, 70 n.
ex-heretics as 161–2 34, 71 n. 35, 73, 78, 89, 98 n. 27, 99,
payment of 159–62 100, 145, 149, 154, 158, 159–60, 162,
Spinello, nuncius 123 n. 9, 125 n. 17, 147 164, 165–6, 167, 181, 187 n. 47, 191,
n. 9, 155 205 nn. 14–15, 211–12, 214, 216, 217,
Spirituals [fraticelli] 64, 155, 235, 238, 240 225, 227, 249, 253
Spoleto, duchy of 12–13, 64 Tortona 71, 154
Stables 75, 78 n. 50, 79, 81 Toulouse 29, 203, 205 n. 14, 214, 218
Stefano di Spagna OP, pp 31 Tractatus de haereticis 91
Support staff see notaries, nuncii, familia, Trento 89
familiaris, famulus, laundry, banking, Treviso 138, 157, 178, 184, 186, 212, 217,
spies 231, 232, 233, 237, 238, 239, 244, 246,
numbers 13, 93–5, 114, 145, 154–6, 244, 247, 248–9, 251, 253, 254, 257, 262
262 city records 18 n. 55
continuity, 13–14, 107, 136–7, 140–41, compliance with Ad Extirpanda 41
259 complaint against inquisitors 60 n. 5,
appointment of 243 255–6, 265
use of commune’s staff 124 n. 15, numbers of officiales 114, 126
138–9 seal 71–2, 264
use of convent staff 141, 200, 220, 259 share of costs borne by commune 50
away from main base 156–7 Treviso, March of [Marca Trevisana], 10
differences in staffing patterns 156 n. 32, 71, 84, 106, 114, 157, 251, 252,
at time of pressure 94, 97, 154–5 260, 261, 262, 263
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Trumbatores 123 n. 10 differences between orders 183–6,

Turaloglu, gardener 154 n. 35 197–8
Tuscany 60, 66, 68 n. 26 elided with socius 181 n. 24, 174, 186–7
dioceses 60, 63 failure to clarify powers 174, 180–1,
inconsistent inquisitorial approaches 186–7
within 246–8 indulgences to wider group 178
length of service 183
Uberto, bp of Vicenza 26 qualifications/qualities 173–4, 181–3
Ugo di Giacomo Caleffi, notary, iudex notaries act instead of 174
101 n. 33 numbers 181
Ugolino, OP, inq. (of Aquileia) 196 seals 73
Uguccione, draper 109 training role? 176, 184
Umbria 71 types of appointment 174, 181, 186
Usury 51 n. 71, 63, 157, 237 n. 25, 262 unpaid 190
varying delegations 181–3, 186
Vacancies 44–5 Vicenza 19, 42, 43, 46, 47, 61, 84, 104,
notaries during 112 105, 118, 160, 186, 195, 206, 216, 242,
vicars during 180 246, 251–2
inquisitors’ powers during 178–9 Boni homines 43
Vallombrosa, abbot of 192 n. 66 Cacciagazzaro/Cathar hunter 43
Vannis, notary 164 post-mortem condemnations 46
Vannis Puccii, nuncius of syndics 141 poverty of diocese 26
Venetico Michaelis, notary 92 n. 3 role of bishop 239
Venice 34, 35, 61 n. 7, 67, 70, 71 n. 35, 140 statutes at variance with Ad extirpanda
n. 71, 195–6, 216, 233, 242 239, 263
admission of inquisition 67, 245–6 viator 122
continuing civil involvement 245–6, Vincenzo da Bologna, OFM, vicar, inq.
262 179, 184
heresy prohibited in statutes 34, 245 Visconti, lords of Milan 64, 135, 160, 235
local agreement 245 n. 49 Viterbo 27, 77, 233
notaries 95 n. 16
Vercelli 33, 226 Women, treatment of 81 n. 66, 82, 182
Verona 46, 48, 61 n. 7, 88–9, 117, 123, 125, n. 28
140, 216, 232, 238, 242 n. 40, 263 arguments over custody 68, 82, 244–5
Council of 27 contact with 212–3
Cacciagazzaro/Cathar hunter 264
heresy constitutions adopted 241 Zacharias Zanibalbi de S. Agate 130 n.
heresy in statutes 34–5 33
Vicars, role and powers of 172, 177–9, Zanchino Ugolini 54 n. 81, 91, 99, 170 n.
180, 184, 187, 237 80, 259, 264
appointment of 172–3 n. 3 Zanino Adelardi, preco 141
choice of 204 Zanino Paterino, spy 157 n. 43
300
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YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS: PUBLICATIONS
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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HERESY AND INQUISITION IN THE MIDDLE AGES
IN ITALY, 1250 –1350

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION
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.
JILL MOORE
YORK MEDIEVAL PRESS
INQUISITION AND ITS
ORGANISATION IN ITALY
1250 –1350
An imprint of Boydell & Brewer Ltd
PO Box 9, Woodbridge IP12 3DF (GB) and
YORK
668 Mt Hope Ave, Rochester NY 14620–2731 (US) MEDIEVAL
PRESS
JILL MOORE

Inquisition and Its Organisation in Italy 1250-1350

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HERESY AND INQUISITION IN THE MIDDLE AGES

IN ITALY, 1250 –1350

INQUISITION AND ITS ORGANISATION IN

9781903153895_print.indd 1 19/03/2019 10:25

York Medieval Press is published by the University of York’s Centre for

Editorial Board (2019)

Heresy and Inquisition in the Middle Ages

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Y ORK MEDIEVA L PRE S S

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All rights reserved. Except as permitted under current legislation

The right of Jill Moore to be identified as

First published 2019

A York Medieval Press publication

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available

The publisher has no responsibility for the continued existence or accuracy of

This publication is printed on acid-free paper

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List of illustrations viii

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Figure 1: Line drawing of the seal of the inquisition in Treviso 72

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AFH Archivum Franciscanum Historicum

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This incident throws valuable light on the practical organisation of inqui-

an experienced inquisitor, having taken part in the proceedings against Meister

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papally mandated inquisitors, diocesan bishops and secular authorities,

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A balanced understanding of the medieval inquisition, in Italy and

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9 Lea, Inquisition of the Middle Ages, pp. 549–50.

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13 Guiraud, Medieval Inquisition, p. 78. T. de Cauzons, Histoire de l’Inquisition, 2 vols.

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treating the inquisition as only one manifestation of an increasingly less

20 R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (Oxford, 1990); N. Cohn, Europe’s

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31 Levarie Smarr, ‘Tale of the Inquisitor’.

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in Italy placed receipts from heresy confiscations at the centre of relationships

34 G. Biscaro, ‘Inquisitori ed eretici Lombardi (1292–1318)’, Miscellanea di storia italiana

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

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in the tenure of the appointing inquisitor. This aspect is examined in Chapter

47 See n. 2 above for meaning of custos.

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Nevertheless, inquisitors remained friars and, as such, they were subject to

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can be hard to spot.54 As Padovani makes clear, civic or diocesan documen-

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