Essays considering how information could be used and abused in the service of heresy and inquisition.The collection, curation, and manipulation of knowledge were fundamental to the operation of inquisition. Its coercive power rested on its ability to control information and to produce authoritative discourses from it - a fact not lost on contemporaries, or on later commentators. Understanding that relationship between inquisition and knowledge has been one of the principal drivers of its long historiography. Inquisitors and their historians have always been preoccupied with the process by which information was gathered and recirculated as knowledge. The tenor of that question has changed over time, but we are still asking how knowledge was made and handed down - to them and to us - and how their sense of what was interesting or useful affected their selection.This volume approaches the theme by looking at heresy and inquisition in the Middle Ages, and also at how they were seen in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The contributors consider a wide range of medieval texts, including papal bulls, sermons, polemical treatises and records of interrogations, both increasing our knowledge of medieval heresy and inquisition, and at the same time delineating the twisting of knowledge. This polarity continues in the early modern period, when scholars appeared to advance learning by hunting for medieval manuscripts and publishing them, or ensuring their preservation through copying them; but at the same time, as some of the chapters here show, these were proof texts in the service of Catholic or Protestant polemic. As a whole, the collection provides a clear view of - and invites readers' reflection on - the shading of truth and untruth in medieval and early modern "knowledge" of heresy and inquisition.Contributors: Jessalynn Lea Bird, Harald Bollbuck, Irene Bueno, Jörg Feuchter, Richard Kieckhefer, Pawel Kras, Adam Poznanski, Luc Racaut, Alessandro Sala, Shelagh Sneddon, Michaela Valente, Reima Välimäki

List of IllustrationsList of ContributorsAcknowledgementsIntroductionPeter Biller and L. J. Sackville Part I: Medieval1. Inquisitorial identity and authority in thirteenth-century exegesis and sermons; Jean Halgrin d'Abbeville, Jacques de Vitry and Humbert of Romans Jessalynn Lea Bird2. Shaping the image of the heretics: The narratio in Gregory IX's lettersAlessandro Sala3. Nepos of Montauban, assistant to inquisition and defender of the accusedJörg Feuchter4. The hunt for the Heresy of the Free Spirit: the 1332 enquiry into the 'Cowled Nuns' of SwidnicaPawel Kras5. Late medieval heresiography and the categorisation of Eastern Christianity Irene Bueno 6. The portrayal of the Waldensian Brethren in the De vita et conversacione (c. 1391-3)Appendix: De vita et conversacione: edition and translation of theWeimar MsReima Välimäki7. Means of persuasion in medieval anti-heretical texts: the case of Petrus Zwicker's Cum dormirent homines Adam Poznanski8. Constructing narratives of witchcraft Richard Kieckhefer Part II: Early Modern9. 'Ut ex vetustis membranis cognosco': Matthias Flacius Illyricus and his use of inquisition registers and manualsHarald Bollbuck10. The 'Cathars as Protestant' myth and the formation of heterodox identity in the French Wars of ReligionLuc Racaut11. The seventeenth-century introductions to medieval inquisition records in Bibliothèque nationale de France, Collection Doat Mss 21-26 Shelagh Sneddon12. History in the Dominican Convent in Toulouse in 1666 and 1668: Antonin Réginald and Jean de Doat Appendix: Antonin Réginald, Chronicon inquisitorum, edition and translation of excerpts, 1240-1340 Peter Biller13. The Roman Inquisition: between reality and mythMichaela Valente