Proving Woman (26 page)

At the conclusion of their testimony, defendants were required to abjure heresy. Those found innocent of any taint of heresy
were released, while the guilty were returned to prison to await sentencing.With the interrogations complete, the inquisitor
deliberated with the bishop and the assembly of the learned in order to arrive at appropriate sentences. The sentencing, also
referred to as the “general sermon” as at the opening of the inquisition, was dramatically staged in a public forum.
³²

The presumed urgency of the prosecution of heresy justified the use of summary justice. The efforts of Clement V (d. 1314)
to expedite trials were typical: “We order that cases proceed without the noise and shape of a trial. . . . [The judge] should
curtail the causes of delay, the litigation, as much as he is able. He should make [the process] very brief by repelling exceptions,
appeals, and vain delays; by restraining the contentions and altercations of the parties, of advocates and procurators, and
the superfluous throng of witnesses.” This decree, and others like it, were frequently cited with approval by the authors
of the various inquisitional manuals.
³³
One of the more egregious irregularities fostered by this policy was the dual role of the inquisitor, who functioned as both
prosecutor and chief justice—a conflation that was extremely prejudicial to the defendants.

In contrast with the summary justice that characterized heretical trials, the process of canonization was exquisitely slow,
justifying the claim of canon lawyer Hostiensis (d. 1261) that it differed from other ecclesiastical legal cases only in its
intrinsic eminence and degree of rigor.
³⁴
But the unhurried, processual nature of canonization corresponded to a more subtle distinction between the two procedures:
the degree of clerical confidence. Canonists and theologians were not nearly so sanguine about their abilities to identify
a saint as they were about their powers to detect a heretic. Goffred of Trani, writing between 1241 and 1243, was one of the
more forthcoming scholars in his description of the requirements for canonized sanctity, yet his criteria were exceedingly
vague: much hardship (
pro laboris
), chaste ways, and strenuous acts.
³⁵
The only two canons in the
Decretals
that concern the veneration of saints are further indicative: the first is from a letter of Alexander III (d. 1181) regarding
a deluded congregation that “through diabolical fraud” was venerating a dead drunkard as a saint; the second is Lateran IV’s
denunciation of the traffic in relics, many of which were deemed fakes.
³⁶

The papacy’s intrinsic pessimism not only cast suspicion on efforts to create newsaints; it may even help to explain ecclesiastical
reticence in articulating howto conduct a canonization. Of course, questions of exigency enter into it: compared to its heretical
counterpart, canonization was an extremely rare procedure, even as the number of saints presumably pales in comparison to
the number of heretics. Yet even the deliberately prescriptive texts are permeated with defeatism. In Hostiensis’s commentary
on the
Decretals
, for example, one of the fullest accounts of the procedure for canonization for the High and later Middle Ages, ecclesiastical
reluctance is adumbrated. Thus he opens with warnings that evil men and sinners are sometimes able to perform miracles; certain
miraculous effects can be achieved through human artifice; and there is always the danger that the church will unwittingly
mislead the faithful.
³⁷
Indeed, at the very moment of the public and solemn canonization, the pope is required to acknowledge directly the possibility
of failure, asking the people to pray “that God does not permit him to err in this business.”
³⁸
Both Innocent IV (d. 1254) and Hostiensis were prepared for such a contingency, arguing that the prayers of the faithful would
still be credited for their good intentions. The same principle permits people to venerate whomever they like in private,
because God will attend to the integrity of their faith.
³⁹
Nevertheless, the prospect of an error in canonization still had the power to make theologians of the caliber of Aquinas flinch.
⁴⁰
Whatever the reasons behind this refusal to articulate adequately formal expectations for sanctity and saint making, it functioned
as a tacit, though perhaps unconscious, strategy for inhibiting a growing plethora of saints—a multiplication through which,
as Hostiensis argues in a much cited phrase, “charity and devotion growcold.”
⁴¹

The ensuing summary of procedure basically follows the contours of Hostiensis’s directives, as supplemented by the contemporary
prescriptive account of Cardinal James Gaetani (d. 1343). The latter also provides essential testimony as an eyewitness. He
was present for John XXII’s canonization of Thomas of Cantilupe (d. 1282) and actually assisted at Clement V’s canonization
of Peter of Morrone (d. 1296, better known as Pope Celestine V). He gives an exceptionally detailed account of the proceedings
surrounding the latter event. There is also a brief account of the canonization of Bridget of Sweden (d. 1373) by a clerical
observer. The process necessarily began at a local level. A person with a reputation for sanctity dies. The sponsors of the
cult appeal to Rome, not once but, according to Hostiensis, “many times pressingly without desisting or waning.”
⁴²
Once alerted, the pope must then wait, attending to the saint’s reputation and ensuring that the miracles do not cease. Hostiensis
reports that it was widely believed that if the miracles were illusory, they would not continue beyond forty days.
⁴³
After consultation with the cardinals, if the pope is satisfied that there is a possible case, he appoints several individuals,
among whom there is usually a bishop or two, or other individuals who have the reputation for being “honest, discreet, and
incorruptible.” These men, recruited from the candidate’s homeland or nearby, will make inquiries into the case and then report
back to the pope.
⁴⁴
The pope, in turn, after again consulting with his cardinals, will determine whether or not an investigation is warranted.
If he chooses to proceed, he will issue a bull instructing an appointed group of investigators (who are usually the same individuals
involved in the preliminary inquiry) to initiate an inquest into the life and miracles of the putative saint.

These lengthy preliminaries essentially correspond to the circumstances that would attract the inquisitor of heretical depravity
to a given area. The saintly counterpart to the heretical inquest likewise begins with rumor and public declaration. This
is especially apparent in Gaetani’s choice of wording when he describes how the ex officio action is initiated “when the reputation
[
fama
] of some holy person is heard by our pope and the business announced [
negotio denunciato
] by some honest and authentic persons to our same lord pope.”
⁴⁵
But the pope’s extreme caution, evident in the preliminary inquest undertaken to assess the need for the real inquest, demonstrates
the interaction between
fama
and
inquisitio
in slow motion.

Of course, in exceptional cases this preliminary investigation was omitted, bringing the procedure even more closely in line
with heretical trials. From Gaetani’s account, this would seem to have been the case in the canonization of Peter of Morrone.
Upon the petition of Philip the Fair (d. 1314), Clement V immediately commissioned the archbishop of Naples and the bishop
of Valencia to begin the inquiry proper.
⁴⁶
Yet excessive haste could mean courting humiliation. We have seen that various popes had misstepped in launching inquests
for martyred inquisitors, only to be foiled by the total absence of local enthusiasm for such a cult. But whether the preliminary
investigation was undertaken or dispensed with, these proceedings led to the same kind of appointments: as with the inquisitors
into heretical depravity, inquisitors into sanctity are empowered as an arm of the papacy. The chief difference is that, in
contrast to the often permanent appointments of inquisitors for heresy, the inquisitors for sanctity occupy only temporary
posts.

The actual inquiry conducted at the local level is below the purviewof Hostiensis or the other prescriptive accounts of a
canonization proper. But, as with heretical trials, this stage of the canonization relied on a combination of external and
local talent. The combination of the two is apparent in the associations of the inquisitors themselves: on the one hand, they
had an external function as papal commissioners; on the other hand, they simultaneously represented the local episcopal authority,
which, if not actually corresponding to the precise diocese, was at least from the region where the holy person had resided.
A formal representative (postulator or, later, procurator) was appointed by the real sponsors of the cult to oversee the case,
including the final deliberations in Rome. His position could be regarded as the legal counsel to the dead holy person and
his or her sponsors—counsel that the defendant in the heretical trial was theoretically allowed but usually denied. (And it
should be remembered that the defendant in a heretical trial could be either living or dead. If the latter, counsel might
still be retained by the family, since a heretical ancestor would imperil the property of his or her descendants.) The counsel’s
implicitly litigious role becomes ever more apparent over the course of the thirteenth century as this position was increasingly
filled by a lawyer or at least someone with legal training, a change indicated in the shift in designation from postulator
to procurator.
⁴⁷
The procurator would ask the individuals most intimate with the candidate to summarize his or her life and miracles. This
summary would, in turn, be transformed into a set of rubrics or articles that would form the basis for the
articuli interrogatorii
, the guidelines for investigation.
⁴⁸
Occasionally, the papacy would provide its commissioners with the actual articles to which the witnesses were expected to
testify,
⁴⁹
but generally, these were prepared under the direction of the procurator. (By comparison, these articles represent something
of a cross between the various questions posed in an inquisitional manual and the condemned articles extracted from an individual’s
work that the accused is supposed to abjure.)

At this stage, someone, frequently the confessor to the deceased holy person, would preach a sermon concerning the merits
of the deceased, inviting individuals to come forward to testify—a process that is comparable to the inquisitor’s initial
general sermon and invitation either to confess or to testify during the period of grace. The procurator was generally responsible
for assembling the witnesses in preparation for the arrival of the papally appointed inquisitors, who would, in turn, interrogate
these witnesses on their knowledge of the candidate’s sanctity, the miracles performed during his or her lifetime, and (better
still) those performed after death. It was not uncommon to find the various sponsors of a given individual’s cult playing
multiple roles. John of Marienwerder, confessor to Dorothea of Montau, was particularly handson.
⁵⁰
Not only did he write her various vitae, but it was John who preached the sermon at Dorothea’s funeral celebrating her virtues.
⁵¹
John also managed to complete his works and disseminate them widely before the majority of the witnesses had testified at
the inquest concerning the grounds for her canonization, as is evident from the ubiquitous references to the Dorothean corpus
throughout the entire proceedings. He additionally was procurator for Dorothea’s cult, and hence responsible for the articles
of interrogation.
⁵²
At Dorothea’s tomb in the cathedral of Marienwerder, a scribe was set up to record and publicize daily the miracles that were
performed.
⁵³
As a member of the cathedral chapter of Marienwerder who knew the various scribes, John was in an excellent position to oversee
the burgeoning cult and to keep abreast of the various beneficiaries of the miracles, perhaps also engaging in some benign
indoctrination on the saint’s life and virtues.
⁵⁴
John was also seemingly of the persuasion that the seal of confession could be waived for the excellent motive of revealing
the sanctity of a deceased penitent—an opinion that would be increasingly frowned upon by later authorities and would ultimately
rule out the testimony of the confessor in processes of canonization altogether. Undeterred by such scruples, John even circulated
some of Dorothea’s exemplary confessions as a freestanding text.
⁵⁵

In the early thirteenth century, the witnesses would merely testify to the various articles pertaining to the prospective
saint’s life and miracles. But from the time of Gregory IX, witnesses were cross-examined according to the
forma interrogatorii
developed for Saint Elisabeth of Hungary’s process, bringing the examination of witnesses more closely in line with heretical
trials.
⁵⁶
Compared with the skeleton team with which inquisitors into heretical depravity traveled, their sanctification-minded counterparts
were usually accompanied by a substantial retinue, in keeping with their more exalted rank. But both groups were composed
primarily of members of the mendicant orders, and both also recruited personnel on a local level. In cases of canonization,
members of the inquisitors’ retinue or local scribes would assist in translating and recasting witnesses’ testimonies in a
fashion similar to the procedure discussed above. Notaries, who were introduced into the process from around 1220, would then
put these testimonies into the requisite public form and legally attest to them.
⁵⁷