Executioners

by Phil Clarke

  The unerring brutality Conrad of Marburg inflicted upon the German people during the first half of the thirteenth century ensured his name was to live on through the centuries as a dark symbol of the Catholic religion and would be forever associated with extreme cruelty. Tales of the macabre surround him to this day. The exact spot where Conrad met his end, marked by a stone on private farmland in the village of Hof Kapelle near Marburg, is thought to be haunted by his ghost and there are reports that tell of Satan worshippers performing black rituals there. How ironic that the very people Conrad wished to exterminate come to carry out their Luciferan rites at the scene of his death.

  Robert Le Bougre

  By the time Conrad of Marburg was attacked on the road to his hometown in July 1233, another inquisitor was making a name for himself across the border in medieval France. He went by the name of Robert Le Bougre which came from bulgarus, the Latin for Bulgarian, a reference to his being a converted Cathar. It is also from this that we obtained the Modern English word ‘bugger’. His actions as papal inquisitor would prove this a fitting moniker. If one nickname was not enough, Robert would soon receive an even more sinister soubriquet through his extermination of non-Catholic followers – that of Malleus Haereticorum or the Hammer of the Heretics.

  In the year 1233, despite seeing his beloved Conrad assassinated, Pope Gregory IX had not lost any of his enthusiasm for ridding the world of followers of inferior religions. Turning his attention to northern France, where Catharism was known to be rife among its domains and principalities, the Pope called together a mass of Dominican priests hailing from Besançon in the east to ‘make inquisition’ in La Charité-sur-Loire; a small priory town which had become particularly stubborn in its resistance against the Catholic faith. The leader of these papally empowered priests was one Robert Le Bougre. The details of this trip are not known but by the following year, Le Bougre’s zealous deeds and general conduct as an inquisitor were gaining ill favour with the bishops in whose dioceses he put ‘the question’. In 1234, the bishops collectively made known their grievances towards this Cathar-turned-converso putting pressure on Gregory to remove him from office. The Pope reluctantly withdrew his licence – the French clergy had got their way. However, Robert’s suspension was as temporary as the smug grins on the faces of fault-finding bishops, for the following year Gregory IX renewed the debarred Dominican’s commission. Worse still for Robert’s detractors, the Pope was to make it incontrovertibly clear exactly where his loyalty lay by making Le Bougre the Inquisitor General for the entire French kingdom. This appointment came with a further twist of the knife. Gregory IX ordered all bishops to extend all their support and assistance to Robert in his quest to exterminate the heretics from communes of France.

  With full backing of the Pope, Robert Le Bougre was able to return to his ferocious ways, displaying his own special brand of persecution throughout such towns as Péronne, Cambrai and Lille. Rather than follow the surreptitious interrogation style and perform his duties in secret – as was the modus operandi of the Inquisition – Robert Le Bougre preferred a more public approach to obtaining a supposed heretic’s confession. His technique involved humiliation before a crowd as opposed to solitary confined suffering. For example, on 2 March 1236, Le Bougre assembled ten convicted heretics in the centre of Douai, a river town near Lille. Along with the con­demned, the Inquisitor General had invited promi­nent figures from the surrounding area including the bishops of Arras, Cambrai and Tournai, Countess Joan of Flanders and a select assembly of Flemish noblemen. These high society spectators watched as the unlucky ten bore the torture directed by Le Bougre and ultimately perished upon the pyre.

  Bankrolled by Louis IX, King of France, who also granted Robert safe passage throughout his realm, the trail of terror and burnt corpses persisted and, with it, a growing reputation for Robert Le Bougre, who quickly became the subject of fantastical fiction. As his success rate climbed, so the rumour mill churned with the fearful French believing he achieved his high number of confessions through hypnotism. Maybe mind control was the manner in which he managed to achieve an outstanding result in May 1239, in what would be his most renowned victory over the heretics. In the town of Montwimer in the region of Champagne, a large Cathar community had devel­oped under the guidance of their clergyman, Bishop Moranis, and when Robert received word of this heretical locale, he vouched to put an end to their religious deviation. What followed was a whistle-stop one-week crusade against the heretics. In only seven days, Robert Le Bougre investigated the town of Montwimer and brought charges of heresy against 183 inhabitants. As was his wont, Robert gathered another topnotch set of dignataries to watch the interrogation and execution. Fifteen bishops, the Archbishop of Rheims and even Theobald I, King of Navarre, were among the guests at the mass burning.

  This swift and severe operation was too conspicu­ous an event to go unpunished. Robert was, again, suspended from his duties but this time there would be no quick return for the Hammer of the Heretics. He was brought before a trial of his own and found guilty of overindulgence during his sadistic attack in Champagne and sentenced to life imprisonment. There ended a short yet productive career of one of the most prominent inquisitors in France.

  Peter of Verona

  The jurisdictional power of the Papal Inquisition stretched right across Western Europe throughout the first half of the thirteenth century. As we have seen, Conrad of Marburg was its standard bearer in Germany and Robert Le Bougre was his equivalent throughout France. But what of Italy, the long-established homeland of the Papacy? The Medieval Inquisition’s grip on these once Roman lands owed much of its initial success to one man: Peter of Verona.

  Like Robert Le Bougre, Peter was a converso, reformed to Catholicism as a child. His parents had been members of that dualist sect, which had become the scourge of the Catholic Church: the Cathars, of which there were many believers in Northern Italy at this time. Peter was born about 1205 in the northern commune of Verona and studied at a Catholic school before attending the University of Bologna, where he befriended Dominic of Osma, later to be canonised as St Dominic, the founder of the Friars Preachers

  (or as they were more commonly known) the Dominicans. This association with the head of this most Catholic of denominations surely had some bearing on Peter’s next move when, in about 1221, he joined the Dominican Order. Peter became a renowned preacher, spreading the faith in stirring sermons throughout northern and central Italy. He attempted to emulate St Dominic, who was well known for his thorough asceticism, wearing a hair shirt and cilice even during sleep. Peter became a radically austere Catholic, pulling no punches in his fanatical lectures within the cities of Rome, Florence, Bologna, Genoa and Como, where he called for a comprehen­sive persecution of the sacrilegious faiths. Crowds flocked to hear him speak of his hatred towards those Catholics who were all talk and no action, unlike himself, who ceaselessly demonstrated his devotion. Such a glowing example of Catholicism was Peter, that he managed to convert many of those in the crowds from their ‘inferior’ creeds.

  This ardent fervour caught the attention of Pope Gregory IX who, in 1233, made Peter the inquisitor of Lombardy, which effectively meant he would be head of all inquisitorial matters throughout the whole of Northern Italy.

  With the acquisition of the priorships of Asti and Piacenza – one of the richest cities in Europe at this time – by 1241, Peter’s position was one of all-powerful oppressor of whom heretics should be fearful. The new Pope, Innocent IV, knew this and so despatched the Inquisitor General to Florence, where a considerable cluster of Cathar heretics existed thanks to the numerous counts – themselves supported by Emperor Frederick II – who allowed the Florentine heresy to flourish. Peter’s arrival had an instant effect. After stirring up support from the Catholics in the area, Peter formed a religious society called La Compagnia della Fede, or The Company of the Faith, a glorified gang that sought out and regularly administered beatings to the rival Cathars. These bouts of religious s
treet fighting were prevalent throughout August 1245 and La Compagnia became a hit with the Catholic Church as new societies, or crocesegnati as they eventually became known, sprang up in other areas of Italy to defend the inquisitors and attack the enemies of their faith.

  After his innovative actions in Florence, Peter was sent to hunt the heretic in Cremona and, then, to Milan. During his almost twenty-year career as a papal inquisitor, Peter had amassed a good number of enemies, particularly among the Cathars, and it was a plot by a gang of Cathars that brought Peter of Verona’s life to an end. Roughly halfway between Como and Milan in a forest near Barlassina, Peter and his friend, Dominic, were attacked by two assassins, Carino and Porro, who had been paid forty lire to execute the inquisitor. Striking the Dominican in the head with an axe, they turned their attention to Dominic. Legend has it that while they stabbed his travel companion to death, Peter mustered the strength to write on the ground in his own blood the words Credo In Unum Deum – ‘I believe in one God’ – before receiving Carino’s blade to the heart.

  His remains made the rest of the trip to Milan, where they were placed in the Church of Saint Eustorgio by his Dominican brotherhood. His passing was mourned by many who saw him as a pure specimen of the Catholic faith. Even death could not diminish his ability to convert a heretic, for Carino, his killer, was eventually overcome with the horror of his actions and soon repented his heresy entering the Dominican Order at Forli. Less than a year later, on 9 March 1253, Peter of Verona was canonised by Pope Innocent IV becoming Saint Peter Martyr – the quickest papally appointed saint in history and patron saint of inquisitors.

  The Spanish Inquisition

  Never has a religious organisation managed to terrorise a single nation quite like the Spanish Inquisition. Born during the late fifteenth century in an atmosphere of religious suspicion, the infamous Inquisition created a breeding ground for mistrust and betrayal within every district it visited, pitting neighbour against neighbour all in the name of religious conformity. This led to the persecution of thousands of non-Catholics and many found themselves condemned to death by fire. The Spanish Inquisition shrouded itself in secrecy and instilled a paranoiac fear into the people, spreading across the towns and cities of Spain for over 350 years.

  A United Spain

  The marriage of Ferdinand and Isabella in the palace of John de Vivero in Valladolid on 19 October 1469 set the wheels in motion, leading Spain down a path of governmental and religious unity. Ten years later, the royal couple sat upon the thrones of two dominant territories which had previously remained distinctly separate. Isabella became queen of Castile in 1474 and her husband took the crown of Aragon in 1479, uniting Spain like never before. This new-found sense of unanimity saw the two sovereigns forge ahead with their desire to bring harmony to all areas of Spanish life; not just to law, order and the affairs of State, but to the core of Spanish society – religion. The belief was that a single, united faith would make for a stronger nation and so, with the desire to ensure all Spanish citizens followed the national religion of Catholicism, the Spanish Inquisition was created for the enforcement of this mono-doctrinal ideal.

  On 1 November 1478, Pope Sixtus IV gave the Spanish potentates the authority to set up the Inquisition for the first time in Castile. Ferdinand’s Aragon received permission a few years later, yet this was not the first instance of the dreaded Holy Office here. There had been an Aragonese Inquisition since 1232, when Pope Gregory IX sent the bull declinante to the Arch­bishop of Tarragona, which later allowed Nicholas Eymerich to persecute heretics throughout this kingdom. Yet, as the old-style Inquisition’s tribunal in Aragon fell dormant, Eymerich’s actions would soon be overshadowed by the deeds of the newly revived office of Catholic defenders. Particu­larly when the Inquisitions of both territories suc­cumbed to the unifying wave created by Ferdinand and Isabella and merged under the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion.

  This ‘Supreme Council’ was made up of five inquisitors with an accompanying staff of secretaries and consultants and at its head was the Grand Inquisitor or Inquisitor General, who was appointed by the Spanish monarchy and verified by Rome. This was a major difference from the Medieval Inquisition which was managed by the Pope. Pope Sixtus had granted Ferdinand and Isabella permission to appoint their own inquisitors, ensuring that the Inquisition was under monarchical rather than papal control. A further contrast with the old Inquisition concerned the archives of the office which were exhaustive, recording suspects’ details from family background and financial status to listing their crimes and misdemeanours against the Church.

  The Conversos

  The Spanish Inquisition, then, was created to keep the Spanish people in religious check and to ensure spiritual harmony prevailed in Ferdinand and Isabella’s newly unified Spain. But from what abominable and abhorrent evil was the Inquisition responsible for protecting the Catholic faith? The focus of the Inquisitors’ zealous attention were the conversos. These were resident Jews and Moors whose ancestors had converted to Catholicism about 100 years before, follow­ing a wave of persecution and maltreatment.

  Judaism had been present in Spain as far back as Biblical times, it is thought, when Tubal, the grandson of Noah, had settled on the Iberian peninsula. However, it was the arrival of King Nebuchadnezzar II during the sixth century bc who was responsible for the spread of the Jewish faith throughout the country with the building of many synagogues, guaranteeing a constant influx of Jews into Spain from that moment on. Despite such a lengthy period of residence, the followers of this faith were always considered a secondary race, inferior to the Catholics and indeed the Muslims who also had a period of religious rule in ancient Spain. The Jews were seen merely as visitors to the country rather than a permanent residents and, while they were tolerated, this tolerance was both reluctant and fragile. The faiths lived together in a state of perpetual instability and dislike for this minor religion was present as early as the seventh century.

  Over the pro­ceeding centuries, cracks in the brittle accord began to expose more and more suppressed hatred towards the Jews and by the thirteenth century, religious acceptance had become just an idea. In 1235, the Council of Arles made the perse­cution of this religious minority very real, ordering the Jews to wear yellow circles upon their person for all to see; their beliefs made conspicuous as if they were diseased outcasts. The following century saw unrest surge to greater heights with focused attacks on the Jews.

  During the Pastoureaux, or ‘Shepherd Crusade’, which began in France and entered Navarre in 1321, second-class citizens were seen as symbols of the sovereigns’ wealth and supremacy and were openly attacked. Assassinations took place in Pamplona, then in nearby Estella in 1328, after Franciscan monks preached against the Jewish worshippers and what they saw as their insidious acquisitions of high-profile and finance-based roles throughout the country. The continual displays of antipathy and frustration which – year by year – grew more violent, ensured the establishment of anti-Semitism in Spain. The Jews became scapegoats for rebels and dissenters vexed by a poor economy. They blamed the monetary-minded Jews for cheating them through heavy taxation. Caballeros – Spanish noblemen – used this common concern to challenge the rule of King Peter the Cruel and violence broke out in Toledo in 1355.

  This escalating antagonism peaked with the pogrom of Seville in 1391, which would ultimately see approximately 4,000 Jews massacred throughout Spain. The attacks were instigated by a Dominican archdeacon called Fernando Martinez at the start of the year and by the summer unbridled assaults on Jews were taking place in both Castile and Aragon, specifically in the cities of Zaragoza, Barcelona, Valencia and Gerona leaving the kingdom of Navarre in the north west the sole refuge for the persecuted Jews. And so began the Jewish defence and the creation of the conversos. In order to avoid incurring the wrath of Spanish anti-Semites, tens of thousands of Jews converted to Christianity, and it is believed that between 1391 and 1415 more than half of Jewish citizens switched faith
s and were baptised.

  This conversion under duress acted only as a temporary stay of execution. Orthodox Catholics were not fooled by what was seen as a clear act of self-preservation with Jews swapping religions purely to save their skins. Despite this stubborn contempt the conversos were able to climb the political and social ladders of Spain, integrating themselves into important positions of Church and State and mixing with Catholics, guaranteeing Jewish lineage per­vaded the blood of true orthodox families. The Jews had dealt with such resolute enmity throughout the centuries that they had developed an ability to assimilate even under such hostile conditions, quickly adapting to whichever was the dominant faith.

  This well-practised compliance, however, only exacerbated the situation, fuelling the fires of hatred and ensuring bad blood existed between the disparate doctrines.

  Throughout the fifteenth century, the converted Jews steadily improved their status, occupying positions of prominence that had been closed off to those who practised Judaism. As the years went by, more and more conversos were becoming members of the judiciary, rising to prestigious posts and acquiring titles. Once more rioting broke out among bitter Christians in cities worst hit by an ever-failing economy, such as Toledo in 1467 and Cordoba in 1473. Over the next six years, Ferdinand and Isabella took their respective thrones and in the spring of 1480 the Cortes, or Spanish Parliament met in testy Toledo with the Jewish problem high on the political agenda. The sovereigns saw the Jews as a direct threat to Christianity, much as the Cathars and Waldensians were in the twelfth century, bringing about the creation of the Papal Inquisition. The Crown and Cortes concurred that the Jews had become a danger to religious stability, and so several social restrictions were imposed. They were removed from the popular areas of towns and cities and forced to live in ghetto-style quarters, called juderias, and the compulsory identification of Jews made a comeback calling for coloured discs to be worn once again. In return for their acquiescence, the new monarchs offered to protect the Jews from further anti-Semitic attacks but this provoked an indignant response from those Jews who had acquired for themselves prestige and status, and who had no intention of relinquishing the associated social and financial benefits. In September 1480, these incensed bureaucrats issued a pamphlet opposing the decrees of the Cortes which forced the monarchy’s hand. They reacted strongly, calling for two inquisitors to be appointed in Seville to stifle the unco-operative voices and begin a war on heresy that would last for hundreds of years.