James B. Given analyzes the inquisition in one French region in order to develop a sociology of medieval politics. Established in the early thirteenth century to combat widespread popular heresy, inquisitorial tribunals identified, prosecuted, and punished heretics and their supporters. The inquisition in Languedoc was the best documented of these tribunals because the inquisitors aggressively used the developing techniques of writing and record keeping to build cases and extract confessions.
Using a Marxist and Foucauldian approach, Given focuses on three inquiries: what techniques of investigation, interrogation, and punishment the inquisitors worked out in the course of their struggle against heresy; how the people of Languedoc responded to the activities of the inquisitors; and what aspects of social organization in Languedoc either facilitated or constrained the work of the inquisitors. Punishments not only inflicted suffering and humiliation on those condemned, he argues, but also served as theatrical instruction for the rest of society about the terrible price of transgression. Through a careful pursuit of these inquires, Given elucidates medieval society's contribution to the modern apparatus of power.
James B. Given is Professor of History at the University of California at Irvine. He is the author of State and Society in Medieval Europe, also from Cornell, and Society and Homicide in Thirteenth-Century England.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
ix
Abbreviations
xi
A Note on Citations from Unpublished Manuscripts
xiii
Introduction
1
Section I
The Inquisitors and Their Techniques
23
Chapter 1
The Technology of Documentation
25
Chapter 2
The Technology of Coercive Imprisonment
52
Chapter 3
The Technology of Punishment
66
Section II
Responses to the Inquisitors
91
Chapter 4
Forms of Individual Resistance
93
Chapter 5
Forms of Collective Resistance
111
Chapter 6
Manipulation
141
Section III
The Social and Political Context
167
Chapter 7
The Role of Social Stress and Social Strain
169
Chapter 8
Structural Constraints
191
Conclusion: The Inquisitors and the Exercise of Political Power in Medieval Europe
