Episode 1: Root out Heretics
Episode 2: Tears of Spain
Episode 3: The War of Ideas
Episode 4: The End Of Inquisition
Root out Heretics
At the dawn of the second millennium Europe was slowly emerging from the blackness and ignorance of the Dark Ages. There were no nations and the people were loyal only to their immediate community and to God. The keeper of God’s word was the Catholic Church, the only religion in all of Christendom.
The supreme religious leader, the Pope in Rome, crowned the Kings who became rulers of the Holy Roman Empire stretching from Sicily north to Poland. The Emperor was ruler of the temporal world while the Pope and his Bishops reigned supreme over the Spiritual world.
By the 12th and 13th century, cracks began appearing in this ordered world. Emperors no longer submitted to being crowned by the Pope and across Europe Kings demanded the right to select their own Bishops. But for the Pope the most terrifying threat came from upstart Christian sects who challenged church doctrine and the absolute power of the Roman Pope.
To preserve the purity of the faith and the unquestioned authority of the Pope, the Church began to crack down on all dissenting with a new weapon: the Inquisition. For over half a millennium a system of mass terror reigned. Thousands were subject to secret courts, torture and punishment.
This first episode details France in 1308 – The Church of Rome proclaims it?s self the one true religion, but heresy takes hold and the pope declares a holy war against other Christian followers.
Inquisitors are sent to exterminate the heresies by hunting down the condemning believers to burn at the stake. 1308 the entire village of Montaillou is taken prisoner of the Inquisition. No one is safe – not even the village priest and the chatelaine of its castle.
From the secret files – the extraordinary revelations of village life under the Inquisition are revealed.
