Medieval Heresy & the Inquisition

the contention between the papacy and secular princes regarding rights and jurisdiction, which was a potent encouragement to controversy. Such strife, where in theory there should have been complete harmony, was in itself productive of doubt and unsettlement. The very heinousness of heresy to the medieval mind lay largely in its challenge to the essential social, ecclesiastical, and doctrinal unity of Christendom. Whether the springs of its being were an emotional impulse, a moral revulsion, or an intellectual ferment, heresy was in any case a challenge to the existing order. Its adherents were always a comparatively small and unpopular minority. Society as a whole regarded it as dangerous and was convinced of the necessity of its repression. By far the most important, as it is the most notorious, instrument devised for the repression of heresy in the Middle Ages was the tribunal of the Inquisition.¹

¹ On the subject-matter of this chapter see H. O. Taylor, The Medieval Mind (2 vols., 1911), especially on the influence of the Latin Fathers and the transmission into the Middle Ages of patristic thought, vol. i, pp. 61-109; on the effects of Christianity on the character of medieval emotion, pp. 330-52; and on the scholastic philosophy, vol. ii, pp. 283 et seq. Original: "et sequentes," meaning "and the following pages."