Pope Gregory IX (19 mars 1227 – 22 août 1241)

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So that same year, at the Synod of Toulouse in southern France, Pope Gregory IX gave a new stimulus to the Inquisition. He arranged for permanent inquisitors, including one priest, in every parish. In 1231 he enacted a law whereby unrepentant heretics would be sentenced to death by fire and repentant ones to life imprisonment.

Two years later, in 1233, Gregory IX relieved the bishops of their responsibility to seek out heretics. He set up the Monastic Inquisition, so called because he appointed monks as official inquisitors.

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In 1233 C.E., Pope Gregory IX issued several bulls against heretics, including one against Luciferians, supposed Devil worshipers.

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The Inquisition Strikes the Deathblow

In 1231, Pope Gregory IX instituted the papal Inquisition to lend support to the armed struggle.* The inquisitorial system was at first based on denouncements and duress and, later, on systematic torture. Its aim was to eradicate what the sword had been unable to destroy. Inquisition judges​—mostly Dominican and Franciscan friars—​were answerable only to the pope. Death by burning was the official punishment for heresy. Such was the fanaticism and brutality of the inquisitors that revolts broke forth in, among other places, Albi and Toulouse. In Avignonet, all the members of the Inquisitorial tribunal were massacred.

In 1244 the surrender of the mountain fortress of Montségur, the last refuge of numerous perfects, sounded the death knell for Catharism. About 200 men and women perished in a mass burning at the stake. Over the years, the Inquisition ferreted out the remaining Cathari. The last Cathar was reportedly burned at the stake in Languedoc in 1330. The book Medieval Heresy notes: “The fall of Catharism was the prime battle-honour of the Inquisition.”

The Cathari were far from being true Christians. But did their criticism of the Catholic Church justify their cruel extermination by so-called Christians? Their Catholic persecutors and murderers dishonored God and Christ and misrepresented true Christianity as they tortured and slaughtered those tens of thousands of dissenters.

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