provided a source of information, advice, and procedural guidance for his colleagues. In a sense, the Church had itself created the heresies of the later Middle Ages--not only by providing what was viewed as a scandal against which men might react, but by drawing up articles of accusation of a formalized kind and declaring those who subscribed to the beliefs contained in those articles to be heretics. The uniformity of belief and practice which inquisitorial records tend to reveal among the victims of prosecution might suggest that the Church was formulating propositions which gave a spurious consistency and coherence to disordered and inchoate beliefs. When interrogation under duress and the material inducements to inform upon suspected heretics offered to their associates and neighbours are also taken into account, the possibilities for abuse of inquisitorial procedure were obvious. Political, material, and other motives might colour the operations of the Inquisition--Joan of Arc was not the only victim of such distortions of the Holy Office's purpose.

The Papacy, the Hussites, and Lay Piety

A further object of criticism of the Church was its territorial location for most of the fourteenth century. The feuds among the Italian cardinals and their allies among the Roman nobility, with the Orsini and Colonna at their head, led to Pope Clement V ( 1305-114) seeking refuge at Avignon. Here the papacy hoped to render itself independent of the faction fights which had rent the conclave of cardinals and had led to the impasse from which the hapless Celestine V had emerged. Avignon was geographically remote from Rome, part of a papal fief in the Comtat Venaissin, but it was independent of any secular ruler and was well fitted to act as an entrepĂ´t between Italy and northern Europe. The pope had left the seat of St Peter; he was now a Frenchman and the College of Cardinals was filled with his French kinsmen. Clement V and his two successors have been characterized as essentially subservient to French interests. His part in the affair of the Templars ( 1307-12) was not entirely creditable, but he did at least ensure that the pos-

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