The Hammer of the Inquisitors

The early fourteenth century saw the resistance of the Franciscans to the conduct of the ecclesiastical Inquisition in the wake of the Cathar heresy, the crisis and destruction of the Spiritual Franciscan movement and the struggle to maintain the unity of France under Philip the Fair. The movement to suppress the Inquisition - unique in the Middle Ages - was conceived of and directed by Bernard Delicieux, one of the last leaders of the Spiritual Franciscans, whose rise to fame and involvement in these controversies forms the focus of this first monographic treatment in 70 years.