Urban Order and Urban Other: Anti-Waldensian Inquisition in Augsburg, 1393

Abstract

This article analyses the new meaning persecutions of heretics acquired in later medieval towns during the 1390s, as German free and imperial cities struggled for a greater political autonomy. During the last decade of the fourteenth century, Waldensian heretical communities throughout the German lands became targeted in a chain of inquisitions; a number of these trials took place in South German cities. The context, course and outcome of the anti-Waldensian inquisition in Augsburg (1393), examined here as a case-study, represents the changing perception of heretical communities during the 1390s. Throughout the decade, urban anti-heretical trials emphasized the inherently violent and anti-social nature of the religiously deviant; heretics were habitually portrayed not only as bad Christians, but also as bad citizens. This understanding of heresy and heretics contrasted sharply with the growing city-centric self-consciousness among the urban elites, which stressed crucial connections between the political and religious aspects of urban life. The inquisition, catalyzed by the arrival of an itinerant inquisitor, became a focal point for the contest of political authorities between the participants. As a result, Augsburg’s Waldensian community was instrumentalized in the contest between the internal (secular) and the external (ecclesiastical) authorities over the right to persecute religious heterodoxy, and ultimately over the definition of an urban other.