#bernard gui

Who were the inquisitors leading the Inquisition that struck terror into heretics? TV historian Tony McMahon reveals the personalities.

Why Did The Inquisition Make Reading Buridan A Capital Crime More Than A Century After His Death? Just Because Buridan Discovered Newton’s Laws Three Centuries Before Newton Was Born?

Jewish Attempts at Rejudaizing Converts

There were two other types of heresy against which [Bernard Gui] warned his fellow inquisitors. One of these he called “the perfidy of the Jews”. Now, in fairness to the Holy Office, it must be noticed that never, in its entire history, did it proceed against the Jews, either on racial grounds as Jews, or on religious grounds as members of the synagogue. Far from attacking the Law of Moses, it defended that revelation against certain sects of heretics, as an essential part of Catholic truth. Over the Jew as Jew it claimed no jurisdiction. It was a Christian tribunal, which concerned itself with Jews only when they were Christians, or when they went out of their way to commit offenses against Christians, either by deriding Christian beliefs or ceremonies, or by persuading Christian to give up the Faith.   That the Jews, scattered throughout Christendom, carried on a continuous and effective propaganda which, while it persisted, was bound to make impossible the complete Christianizing of society, is freely admitted by Jewish scholars, as I have taken note elsewhere.

There, for seventeen years, Friar Bernard [Gui] directed the hunt for heretics, and their reconciliation of punishment. During the whole period he tried 930 cases, an average of about 54 a year, or slightly more than one a week. This conveys an impression of ceaseless activity that is perhaps far from accurate. He presided at only 18 sermones generales during the whole period. This suggests that he dealt with his heretics in batches, about once a year on the average…[Of the 930 sentences he passed, the] 42 whom he found to be obstinate and incurable heretics, with no hope of reformation, he turned over to the secular officials for the usual penalty. These constitute about eight percent, by the highest possible reckoning, of the total number of the condemned...Of the forty-two burned at the stake, seventeen were condemned at one sermon generalis on April 5, 1310; this suggests that the Inquisition had discovered some unusually large and dangerous conspiracy, and had dealt rigorously with it.   Bernard failed in eight of every hundred cases that he prosecuted - for the Inquisitor deemed it a failure when he could not win a man back to a sane Christian life, and had to turn him over to the State. The general average for the Medieval Inquisition may have been higher. It has been estimated that ten out of every hundred convictions ended at the stake.