As a student with a keen interest in medieval history, I have always been intrigued by the concept of heresy and how the Roman Catholic Church attempted to rid Christendom of heretics. To be frank all of us, in some form or quantity, have come across heresy in books, popular media, and music. It is a defining term of medieval Europe and the twelfth and thirteenth century see crusades against heretics and the power and means by which the Roman Church aimed to repress the many heretical ideologies that existed. This is both an interesting and extensive topic and throughout this essay I will be focusing on the term ‘Heresy’ itself, why the church sought to repress heretics and lastly how they managed to do the same.

In a very general term, heresy can be termed as a disagreement with the Church or the teachings and doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church, and a heretic someone who’s faith, beliefs and practices are in contradiction with that of the Church. Not all heretics believed in the same principle concepts and not all heretical concepts were popular. The Cathars, a heretic group in Languedoc, south of France believed that the world was a creation of the devil and that the sacraments of the Church were not true, but were devilish frauds of an evil church. It is worth noting though that heresy existed in every age, as it is but natural that popular beliefs and ideologies had contradicting and opposing ones, but it was only between the late eleventh and thirteenth century that the Catholic Church took strong action against it.
‘As the power of the Catholic Church increased in Europe, dissenting voices of other Christian groups became more troublesome. Pope Alexander III (1162–63) encouraged informers, so the church could discover evidence of heresy. In 1184 Pope Lucius III issued a decree that a convicted heretic was to be handed over to secular authorities for