Inquisition
Inquisition in Italy

Only fragmentary data is available for the period before the Roman Inquisition of 1542. In 1276, some 170 Cathars were captured in Sirmione, who were then imprisoned in Verona, and there, after a two-year trial, on February 13 from 1278, more than a hundred of them were burned. In Orvieto, at the end of 1268/1269, 85 heretics were sentenced, none of whom were executed, but in 18 cases the sentence concerned people who had already died. In Tuscany, the inquisitor Ruggiero burned at least 11 people in about a year (1244/1245). Excluding the executions of the heretics at Sirmione in 1278, 36 Inquisition executions are documented in the March of Treviso between 1260 and 1308. Ten people were executed in Bologna between 1291 and 1310. In Piedmont, 22 heretics (mainly Waldensians) were burned in the years 1312-1395 out of 213 convicted. 22 Waldensians were burned in Cuneo around 1440 and another five in the Marquisate of Saluzzo in 1510. There are also fragmentary records of a good number of executions of people suspected of witchcraft in northern Italy in the 15th and early 16th centuries. Wolfgang Behringer estimates that there could have been as many as two thousand executions. This large number of witches executed was probably because some inquisitors took the view that the crime of witchcraft was exceptional, which meant that the usual rules for heresy trials did not apply to its perpetrators. Many alleged witches were executed even though they were first tried and pleaded guilty, which under normal rules would have meant only canonical sanctions, not death sentences. The episcopal inquisition was also active in suppressing alleged witches: in 1518, judges delegated by the Bishop of Brescia, Paolo Zane, sent some 70 witches from Val Camonica to the stake.
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