Letters and Statutes

Two documents are cited. The first is a set of statutes headed in the papal register “chapters issued against the Patarenes”, beginning Excommunicamus et anathematizamus. It names the heretical groups, lays down what is to be done with those condemned, with those who repent after arrest and with their supporters, and ends with rules binding all the faithful. A shortened form of it entered the church’s law book as chapter 15 of the title on heretics in Decretals of Gregory IX (Liber Extra).

The second is a letter dated at Rieti on 22 November in the pope’s fifth year, 1231, to Burchard, prior of the Dominicans of Regensburg, and his fellow friar Theodoric. It orders them to preach, to inquire after heretics and to proceed against them according to his statutes against heretics “lately published”. These are the pope’s own instructions and the best evidence of what he meant to set up. They do not show how the instructions were carried out; for that see Chronicle.

On one clause the witnesses differ. The edition followed here reads that those who, once arrested, wish to return and do penance are to be imprisoned for life; the text in the Decretals reads “do not wish”. The editor marks the word as corrected.