Mediæval Heresy & the Inquisition

The story of mediæval heresy is but a chapter in a much larger subject, that of the slow and painful development of religious tolerance and freedom of thought. Heresy—essentiall...

The popular fame that the Inquisition has gained is due to the terror which it aroused in the days of its greatness; its terror was the result of the thoroughness and efficiency...

The earlier heresies of the Middle Ages were of importance for their own day and generation only, leaving no permanent imprint on history. The Church was on the whole very succe...

Acquittals being virtually unknown,[415] nearly every case brought before the Holy Office involved the sentence of one penalty or another. The word ‘penalty’ is not technically...

The great intellectual achievement of the Middle Ages was the recovery of the learning of the world that had vanished before the onset of the Hun, the Vandal and the Lombard.[70...

By the willing labours of the two Mendicant orders the Inquisition was introduced into most of the countries of Europe during the course of the thirteenth century. Sometimes the...

In 1196 Pope Celestine III gave his sanction to a new order, of which the mother-house was in Fiore. From this place its founder derived his name, and he is generally known as J...

In the year 1108 there appeared in Antwerp a certain eloquent zealot named Tanchelm. Apparently there existed in Antwerp only one priest, and he was living in concubinage. In th...

If such phenomena as the Flagellant and dancing manias, the acceptance of such persons as Guglielma and Segarelli as divine incarnations is evidence of the depth of credulous su...

Originally jurisdiction over heresy belonged to the ordinary ecclesiastical courts, heresy being classed with such other offences as adultery and breach of contract, which came...

The literal and fundamental meaning of the word Heresy is _choosing_. The heretic is the man who selects certain doctrines, discards others, giving rein to individual preference...

Ages of Faith—the term has often enough been applied to the long era that separates the days of the Carolingian empire from those of the Italian Renaissance. Like most of the ot...