Power, authority and the constitution of the medieval inquisition: an analysis of the inquisitor's manual of Bernard Gui (1261?-1331)

• Grant number: 14/01128-3
• Support Opportunities: Scholarships in Brazil - Master
• Start date: July 01, 2014
• End date: April 30, 2016
• Field of knowledge: Humanities - History - Ancient and Medieval History
• Agreement: Coordination of Improvement of Higher Education Personnel (CAPES)
• Principal Investigator: Fabiano Fernandes
• Grantee: André Pereira Rocha
• Host Institution: Escola de Filosofia, Letras e Ciências Humanas (EFLCH). Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP). Campus Guarulhos. Guarulhos , SP, Brazil

Abstract

This research intends to analyze the medieval inquisition and its role in reinforcing the authority of the roman christian church, reconstructing and reconfiguring, to its shape the sphere of religious power. The current historiography still debate about the complexity of the interrelations of the concepts of politics and religion in the medieval period. However, in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries there were already great theoretical discussions in order to delimit the spheres of temporal and spiritual power personified in the figures of the emperor and the pope. Thus, this research starts at the work Practica inquisitionis haereticae pravitatis, produced in the early fourteenth century by the dominican inquisitor Bernard Gui. From there, will be analysed the preambles by which medieval the theological-political theory has developed and by which paths the inquisition was established, being also displayed, its expression in consolidation the hierocratic's power of the roman church in the early fourteenth century. This analysis will be developed through three specific points: the forum, the place where was the range of the inquisitorial court, the authority of which the church legitimized their power over society, and the inquisition one of his most forceful representations, and of heresy, the target of the action of the inquisition that went beyond the strict legal context. (AU)