In a study published in PLOS One, we 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 most important findings include:
- Women tended to incriminate other women, while no such tendency was observed among men.
- Middle-class members among Cathars tended to be incriminated more than non-members of the middle class. A similar tendency was not confirmed for Apostles.
- Deponents tended to incriminate kinship group members more than people from outside their kinship group, which probably simply means that they were not able to successfully hide the co-participation of their family members.
- Among trial circumstances, summonses and repeated interrogations tended to increase the overall number of names given by deponents ever subjected to those conditions. Pledges did not display a similar effect.
The full open-access text of the article in the journal (with the possibility of pdf download).
