ABSTRACT

Another valuable line of research has been pursued by Agostino Borromeo, who has studied the variety of relationships between the Inquisition and episcopal courts in the Spanish possessions of Italy: Sicily, Naples, Milan, and Sardinia. Borromeo points out that while the Spanish Inquisition was established in Sicily and Sardinia, it was the Roman Inquisition, reorganized in 1542, which penetrated Naples and Milan, and even here in varying degrees.7 At Naples, jurisdiction over cases of the faith was solely in the hands of the bishops and their tribunals until the second half of the sixteenth century, when the Roman Congregation of the Inquisition began to appoint "commissioners" or "ministers" who had powers to hear specific cases assigned to them by Rome, but lacked ability to take the initiative and the freedom of action enjoyed by inquisitors in other areas of Italy. At Milan, a more traditional model of the Roman Inquisition prevailed. The Holy See appointed or delegated a network of inquisitors, usually priests of the Dominican order, who could take the initiative in gathering evidence and beginning processes. 8, The delegates of the Roman Inquisition did not, however, enjoy a free hand in the prosecution of heretics in the Duchy of Milan, but had to share power with the bishops and their vicars general. According to Borromeo, the inquisitorial tribunals operating in Milanese territory observed in full the requirements of the papal constitution Multorum querela, issued early in the fourteenth century by Clement V. Multorum querela allowed bishops and inquisitors to proceed independently of one another when they cited suspects before their tribunals, when they imprisoned them, and when they prepared cases. However, the two were to act together in three important phases of a trial: increasing the severity of imprisonment so that it ceased to be simple custody and became a form of punishment, subjecting the accused to torture, and pronouncing sentence.9