I Go to All My Orgies Just This Way . . .
Steven K. Robison
title of 'Inquisitor haereticae Pravitatis' (inquisitor into heretical
depravity) . . ." . . . He was an enthusiastic inquisitor who, with a
couple of vile cohorts, pursued heretics with such a vengeance "that the
archbishop of Mainz complained to the pope about the false confessions that
were being extracted from innocent men and women under the threat of the
stake."
"We would gladly burn a hundred," boasted an unapologetic Conrad,"if just
one among them were guilty."
***
"Conrad sought victims among the gentry as well as among the common folk,
perhaps because of his zeal in the pursuit of heresy or perhaps because the
wealth of a convicted heretic was subject to confiscation. In 1233 his eye
fell upon Count Henry II of Seyn, a wealthy nobleman who had demonstrated
his own Christian piety by endowing churches and monasteries and even going
on crusade. Conrad produced a witness who claimed to have seen Henry riding
on a monstrous crab on his way to a sex orgy. But Henry, unlike Conrad's
humbler victims, was not cowed into confession. Rather, the count insisted
on confronting the inquisitor and putting him to his proof."
--Jonathan Kirsch, The Grand Inquisitor's Manual: A History of Terror in
the Name of God (2008). Harper-One, pp. 58-59
[The count was acquitted by a "blue-ribbon" tribunal after Conrad's
witnesses revealed that they had given evidence only to spare themselves
from the stake. Conrad hurriedly left Mainz, but not quickly enough -- he
was tracked down by a hit squad ordered to put an end to Conrad and his
crew, and slain five days after the acquittal. This was a rare case of an
acquittal in an inquisitorial proceeding and a rarer case of an inquisitor
being meted justice by or on behalf of someone at one point within the
inquisitor's grasp. -- SKR]
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