Gender, kinship, and other social predictors of incrimination in the inquisition register of Bologna (1291–1310) : Results from an exponential random graph model

Result code in IS VaVaI

<a href="https://www.isvavai.cz/riv?ss=detail&h=RIV%2F00216224%3A14210%2F25%3A00140641" target="_blank" >RIV/00216224:14210/25:00140641 - isvavai.cz</a>

Result on the web

<a href="https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0315467" target="_blank" >https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0315467</a>

DOI - Digital Object Identifier

<a href="http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0315467" target="_blank" >10.1371/journal.pone.0315467</a>

Result language

angličtina

Original language name

Gender, kinship, and other social predictors of incrimination in the inquisition register of Bologna (1291–1310) : Results from an exponential random graph model

Original language description

The medieval inquisition of heresy strongly relied on depositions, where witnesses were expected to report on the crimes of others and oneself. The resulting patterns of incrimination could be influenced by various factors, including the characteristics of the underlying dissident social network; the investigators’ choices and biases; the trial circumstances, some of which must have exerted considerable pressure upon deponents; and the deponents’ decisions to protect some suspects more than others. This case study aimed at disentangling selected social factors of incrimination in the register of the inquisition in Bologna, 1291–1310. We used social network analysis and, more specifically, an Exponential Random Graph Model (ERGM) to assess the influence of four social predictors: gender, churchperson status, membership of the urban “middle class”, and kinship ties between incriminators and the incriminated. To increase the validity of our results, we controlled for various trial circumstances and structural parameters of the incrimination network. Our model corroborated a tendency towards female-to-female incrimination, while we did not find any positive or negative tendency towards male-to-male incrimination. We identified no effect of churchperson status on incriminating, while we found that among Cathars, members of the middle class were more likely to be incriminated than people without this status. Our model also corroborated the tendency to incriminate one’s kinship group. Overall, our study underlines the relevance, but also the non-trivial operation, of social and demographic predictors in medieval heresy trials. The study is outstanding and innovative in several respects, including: 1) the application of statistical models for networks (ERGM) in Historical Network Research, which usually remains limited to visual analysis and descriptive statistics; 2) the search for intersections between history and social scientific questions of trial procedures; and 3) the extensive manual collection of structured data from Latin sources.

Czech name

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Czech description

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Type

J_imp - Article in a specialist periodical, which is included in the Web of Science database

CEP classification

—

OECD FORD branch

60304 - Religious studies

Project

—

Continuities

R - Projekt Ramcoveho programu EK

Publication year

2025

Confidentiality

S - Úplné a pravdivé údaje o projektu nepodléhají ochraně podle zvláštních právních předpisů

Name of the periodical

PLOS One

ISSN

1932-6203

e-ISSN

1932-6203

Volume of the periodical

20

Issue of the periodical within the volume

2

Country of publishing house

US - UNITED STATES

Number of pages

23

Pages from-to

1-23

UT code for WoS article

001418839600065

EID of the result in the Scopus database

2-s2.0-85217776889