Europe's inner demons

Conrad also had plenty of experience in defending the faith against inner enemies. By insisting that bishops were obliged, on pain of dismissal, to pursue and punish heretics in their dioceses, the Lateran Council of 1215 encouraged informers. Those consumed with an urge to exterminate all heretics rushed in with denunciations. Amongst these people Conrad distinguished himself, and his zeal did not pass unnoticed. In 1227 the Pope gave him the task of preparing dossiers on the basis of which formal denunciations could be lodged with the bishops. In 1229 Conrad preached against heretics at Strasbourg, and so effectively that two persons were burned. His appointment in 1231 as Germany’s first official inquisitor was an appropriate culmination for such a career.

A couple of unofficial and, it would seem, self-appointed inquisitors were already at work. One was a lay brother in the Dominican Order called Conrad Torso, the other a one-eyed, one-armed rogue called Johannes; both were said to be former heretics. They must somehow have acquired the prestige which in those days was always enjoyed by holy men; for they had the support of the populace, which enabled them to intimidate the magistrates into burning whomever they designated. The friars, Dominicans and Franciscans alike, also took orders from them and assisted with the burnings.

Conrad Torso and Johannes began by discovering a few genuine heretics — people who not only admitted their beliefs but impenitently persisted in them; these were duly tried, condemned and handed over to the secular arm for execution. But soon the two men showed themselves less discriminating. They claimed to be able to detect a heretic by his or her appearance; and as they proceeded from town to town and village to village they denounced people on these purely intuitive grounds. Those burned now included perfectly orthodox Catholics, who from the midst of the flames still called on Jesus, Mary and the saints. “We would gladly burn a hundred,” said the amateur inquisitors, “if just one among them were guilty.”⁽¹⁵⁾

At first they found their victims amongst_the poor: but that did not satisfy them, and they soon hit on a device which put the rich also at their mercy. The German king, Henry VII, had just issued a decree governing the disposal of the property of anyone condemned for heresy: part of the property was to go to the person’s overlords, but part was to pass to his or her heirs. The inquisitors proposed a new arrangement: when a wealthy person was burned on their indication, the whole of the property should be confiscated and divided amongst the various overlords, including the king; the heirs were to receive nothing at all. It seems that for a while the proposal achieved its object; the inquisitors did receive support from the highest strata in society.

The shady characters Conrad Torso and Johannes attached themselves to the genuine fanatic Conrad of Marburg, and the resulting combination proved astonishingly powerful. Vast areas were subject to its arbitrary and despotic will. These judges feared no man, and their judgements struck indiscriminately at peasants and burghers, clerics and knights. Whoever they chose to accuse was given no time to think or to prepare a defence but was judged at once. If he was condemned he was not allowed even to see his confessor but was executed as soon as possible, often on the very day of his arrest. And there was only one way to escape condemnation and execution: the accused must confess to heresy. But then proof of repentance was required: the accused had to have his scalp shaved, as an outward sign of shame; more importantly, he had to name fellow heretics and specify the “heretics’ school” where he had been instructed. If he was unable to provide satisfactory information on his own, Conrad of Marburg and his companions were ready to help. They would offer the names of leading nobles — whereupon the accused would commonly hasten to agree: “Those people are as guilty as I, we were in the same school together.” Some did this in order to save their dependants from expropriation and poverty, but most did it simply from fear of being burned alive. Terror reached such a pitch that brother would denounce brother, a wife her husband, a lord his peasant and a peasant his lord.