Ad extirpanda

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Ad Extirpanda ( Latin : for extermination ) is a papal decretal . It was published on May 15, 1252 by Pope Innocent IV . It deals with measures to combat heretics . Is known ad extirpanda than the adoption, in which the side of the pope for the first time torture was permitted as an instrument for finding the truth in processes. These decretals are therefore an important document in the history of the Inquisition .

The addressees of the decretals are the city governments in Romagna , Lombardy and the Treviso region . The document is divided into 38 paragraphs. In terms of content, the decretals are mainly a summary of the hitherto valid measures to combat heretics, but also contain some additions, such as the fact that every new government after taking office should set up a commission to track down heretics (§3), whose confirmed or elected members should To seize the property of the heretics captured by them and to hand them over to ecclesiastical jurisdiction (§4). Sections 23 and 24 regulate the course of the procedure. Within 15 days the secular authority was supposed to hand over arrested heretics to the spiritual court, which was led by appointed inquisitors or by bishops acting as inquisitors. After a condemnation by the Inquisition Court, the secular authority should take over the condemned again at the latest after five days in order to enforce the sentence on them. Through this definition of the process, the competence of the clergy working for the Inquisition for the heretic jurisdiction is laid down in Ad Extirpanda.

The section in §25 that legitimizes the use of torture reads:

"Teneatur praeterea potestas, seu rector, omnes haereticos quos captos habuerit, cogere, citra membri diminutionem et mortis periculum, [...] errores suos expresse fateri, et accusare alios haereticos quos sciunt [...]"

“In addition, the Podestà (city lord) or city officials should force all heretics he has caught without causing them permanent physical harm or dying to expressly admit their errors and to accuse other heretics they know. "

This equates heretics with robbers, murderers and thieves.

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