L’Inquisition médiévale chez les historiographes méridionaux de la Renaissance

Abstract

The medieval Inquisition according to the southern historiographers of the Renaissance . Accounts by southern French historiographers of the modem period, in respect of the medieval Inquisition, demonstrate a good example of volte face. Praised during the Renaissance as a unique institution dedicated to a noble mission, the Inquisition is vilified in the Enlightenment as the worst creation of a cruel and obscurantist Church, regimented by popes puffed up with ambition. The historiographical corpus of the Renaissance is characterised firstly by a significant medieval legacy, then by a quasi¬ exclusive monopoly of authors from Toulouse in the service of urban magistrates, and finally by a clear moral dimension in the writing of history. The Inquisition practically never appears, but leaving aside the gaps and errors related to the sources used, it finds itself at the heart of complex historiographical issues. Indeed, the Inquisition highlights both the portrait of religious dissension and the delicate relations between the French monarchy and the Holy See, at a period when Christendom was weakened by the memory of the Great Schism, the taking of Constantinople by the Turks, and the appearance of Marranism and then Protestantism.