Definire nell’emergenza. La costruzione della procedura per l’Inquisizione italiana tra i pontificati di Innocenzo IV e Alessandro IV

This study examines the decisive decade for the procedural and institutional developments of the Italian Inquisition (1251–1261), a period coinciding with the final years of the pontificate of Innocent IV and the entire papacy of Alexander IV. In highlighting the experimental and not always consistent nature of procedural development, it is shown how this dynamic was influenced by the developments in the struggle between papal authority and pro-imperial forces in the central-northern part of the Peninsula. Upon the death of Alexander IV, the Italian negotium fidei was left with a legacy of a period of rich procedural innovation, which had developed mainly as a response to emergencies, and by virtue of which the powers of the judges of the faith were expanded: thus, the model of a highly centralised Inquisition began to disintegrate, gradually giving way to the formation of local Inquisitions that were increasingly self-determined with respect to papal authority.