Inquisition and inquisitors in reports of exempla (12th-14th centuries)

Abstract

The compilers of exempla had their attention caught by an old heresy: Arianism, which could be the model of a powerful heresy overcome by the Church long before the Inquisition. The Inquisition appears in collections of exempla in different stages of its development. It is under the responsibility of bishops in reports of exempla citerciens that evoke several characterized cases of heresy and that create a first synthetic report on the Cathars (written by Caesarius of Heisterbach). Then, mendicant collections, especially that by Etienne de Bourbon, the Traité des diverses matières à prêcher [Treaty on several subjects to preach), allow seeing how a Dominican surrenders to his role of inquisitor whose energy no longer covers only heresies but also all ‘superstitions’. Lastly, a late collection in vernacular language, the Ci nous dit, suggests that the inquisition had lost its currentness and somehow been trivialized.