"Violent campaigns, including crusades across territories from Languedoc to Bosnia, stand as the most infamous episodes. The Church's more systematic response to heterodox movements, however, was the introduction of inquisitorial tribunals. Staffed by members of mendicant orders, these tribunals wielded the authority to identify suspects, establish guilt through interrogation, extract confessions, and pronounce sentences-ranging from prescribed prayers and pilgrimages to property confiscation, imprisonment, or execution at the stake."
"Yet the survival of groups like the Waldensians-an ascetic movement founded around 1170 and condemned as heretical in 1215-demonstrates its limits. Conventional history often credits the survival of Waldensians to a retreat into remote locations, placing them beyond the Inquisition's reach. But what if the story isn't just one of escape? What if it was also about these communities adapting to the very system designed to destroy them, and about critical weaknesses in that system itself?"
In the High Middle Ages, new religious movements combined monastic and ecclesiastical reform with popular ideals of ascetic poverty and apostolic life. Their challenge to Church-dominated activities and doctrines provoked persecution, including violent crusades from Languedoc to Bosnia. The Church instituted inquisitorial tribunals staffed by mendicant friars with authority to identify suspects, interrogate, extract confessions, and impose sentences ranging from prayers and pilgrimages to confiscation, imprisonment, or execution. The survival of groups such as the Waldensians demonstrates limits to inquisitorial power, rooted in fragmentation, lack of centralized oversight, and variable inquisitor competence, allowing adaptation and persistence.
Read at Medievalists.net
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