Reviewed by: Inquisition and its Organization in Italy 1250–1350 by Jill Moore Thomas A. Fudge Moore, Jill, Inquisition and its Organization in Italy 1250–1350, York, York Medieval Press, 2019; cloth; pp. xi, 300; 2 b/w illustrations; £60.00; ISBN 9781903153895. Henry Charles Lea is the standard by which all studies of the inquisition are measured. His epochal work was brilliant, immense, and frequently definitive. In an important essay, Richard Kieckhefer argued there was no such thing as ‘the Medieval Inquisition’. While acknowledging their acumen and contributions, Jill Moore challenges both scholars. Her revisionist monograph is a significant achievement. Where Lea tackled the subject on a European scale and Kieckhefer sought to correct a misapprehension, Moore limited herself to a century of medieval history in Italy. In this way she succeeds in delving deeply into archival materials where she examines the mechanics of inquisitorial activities. Going beyond most historians of heresy, Moore interrogates the development of the Italian inquisition by investigating the lives of individuals who made inquisition possible, Building on the provisions of the thirteenth-century papal bull Ad extirpanda, Moore explores the relationship between inquisitors, local bishops, and immediate civil authorities. She argues the traditional image of the feared and autonomous medieval inquisitor requires nuance. The supporting cast of notaries, messengers, spies, familia, vicars, informers, companions, bankers, jailers, and ‘those who served the sacred office’ in a variety of ways, enabled the inquisitor to function effectively. Moore does not obfuscate the challenges facing the historian of the inquisition. Records are sometimes sloppy, marked by an absence of coherence, exacerbated by uneven local foundations, lacking uniform structures, exhibiting information gaps, frustratingly scanty, aggravatingly jumbled, occasionally presented in scrappy outline, and all in all are far from providing a clear picture. These challenges noted, Moore achieves a readable and convincing narrative that augments and corrects Lea and Kieckhefer and produces an important new and original chapter in the history of the inquisition. Against Lea, she adds enormous and useful specificity and suggests, against Kieckhefer, there was a formal institutionalized inquisitorial office. She achieves these objectives by carefully surveying a broad range of sources: statutes, chronicles, financial accounts, civil records, court dossiers, inquisition handbooks and manuals, matriculation rolls of notarial colleges, records of provincial chapters of the Franciscan and Dominican orders, convent necrologies, tax records, diaries, among other sources. What emerges? The inquisition relied upon cooperation with ecclesiastical and secular authorities. Heresy was not exclusively church business. Inquisitors possessed great power but were also subject to enormous insecurity. Requirements imposed upon the inquisition in terms of accountability were monitored and secret spies kept tabs on the holy office. Inquisitors embedded spies in suspected communities of heresy, placed stool pigeons in prison to secure usable intelligence, and paid informants. Symbiotic relations developed between the inquisition and convents. Existing statutes are not necessarily reliable about what happened in practice. [End Page 233] Inquisitorial staff were not ad hoc appointments. Chapter 4 on notaries is worth the price of the book. The involvement of Dominicans and Franciscans indicate that inquisitorial activity was mainstream for the mendicant life. Importantly, Moore demonstrates the orders had different methods of conducting the work of the inquisition and also shows it was not a hermetic system. Inquisitorial messengers had to wear ‘bright-red ribboned headbands’ or ‘tall caps with four red lilies’. Violators of the dress code might be whipped naked in public. There was opposition. Inquisitors were kidnapped, beaten, stabbed, murdered. Others were simply ignored. Notaries were coerced and sometimes falsified records. Efforts were made to intercept heretics at city gates and heresy hunters were not necessarily of one class or another: distinctions were yet to emerge between episcopal and papal inquisitions. The persecuting society can be detected in inquisitorial operations, though Moore argues a culture of impunity cannot be assigned to its work in this period. Tongues were amputated, hamstringing and blinding occurred, cartloads of heretics were sometimes destroyed, and pranksters who entertained in pubs suggesting bowls of lasagne were the Host attracted inquisitorial scrutiny. Questions remain: what is still buried in Italian archives? How were inquisitorial activities financed after Ad extirpanda? The model suggested by Innocent IV (confiscation of heretics’ property) is a flawed...
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Apr 26, 2021
Alessandro Gori 
Open Access
