Pope Gregory IX

Ugolino di Conti reigned as Gregory IX from 1227 to 1241, and he institutionalised the Inquisition. He was born at Anagni, a nephew or cousin of Innocent III, and was already old when elected. His pontificate was a long duel with the emperor Frederick II, whom he excommunicated three times. The first was in 1227 for delaying a promised crusade; Frederick then went on crusade while excommunicate, negotiated Jerusalem back from the sultan al-Kamil without a battle, and crowned himself king there, which Gregory regarded as an outrage rather than an achievement. He commissioned Raymond of Penyafort to compile the Decretales, which became the core of canon law for the next seven centuries. In 1231 he issued Excommunicamus, establishing permanent papal inquisitors, generally Dominicans, answerable to Rome rather than to local bishops, and a procedure in which the accused was not told who had denounced them. He authorised the use of secular authorities to execute the condemned. He also ordered the confiscation and burning of the Talmud after hearing denunciations from a convert, which was carried out in Paris in 1242, the year after his death. He canonised Francis of Assisi, whom he had known personally, two years after his death, and Dominic and Anthony of Padua as well. He died at ninety-six with Frederick's army outside Rome. He also issued a bull describing a supposed satanic cult, Vox in Rama, which associated black cats with heresy and is sometimes blamed for later persecution of them. He founded the papal Inquisition as an institution rather than an occasional measure, and it outlasted him by six centuries.

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