Heresy

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of their own power" (Nickerson 11) . At that time, the Bishops were in charge of such things as finding heretics and ruling over their trials because they didn’t want any activities occur against their wish and power. It is clear that all aspects of life revolved around the Church and its rulers and they did not want to lose their power to rule. Pope Gregory IX used the Franciscans and Dominicans as official investigators of heretics, and this created the Inquisition. People accused of heresy were sentenced at an auto de fe, Act of Faith. Clergyman would sit at the proceedings and would deliver the punishments. Punishments included confinement to dungeons, physical abuse and torture. These inquisitors took secret testimony, tried the accused without them being able to neither know the names of their accusers nor defend themselves, and usually burned the “guilty” ones.
The Cathars and Waldensians emerged during the middle ages. Each of them had different beliefs than the ...

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physical body was evil and it’s impossible that an evil body could borne an angel because what they thought, Christ happens to be an angel. The Cathars beliefs were obviously against the Catholic teachings and the Old Testament. These two heretic groups were also a big factor in leading up to the establishment of the Inquisition.
Witches might be the group of heretics that probably got the most focus on over the Inquisition era. These witches were most commonly women, and because women were less moral and intellectual than men; they were more vulnerable to the Devil. That’s the reason why witches emerged during the middle ages. They were more vulnerable than men, and they had tendency ...

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