"La chiesa nella casa di lei". Eretiche ed eretici a Firenze nel Duecento

«A Church in her home»: female and male heretics in 13th century Florence
This article is based on records of the inquisitorial proceedings carried out by Ruggero Calcagni against the Cathar heresy in Florence in the mid-thirteenth- century. From these trials emerge active heretics, their roles and functions in daily life as well as the important positions occupied by women. The women heretics belonged to a variety of social classes and, regardless of their marital status, assumed irreplaceable roles and functions within the heretical movement. Their age and family ties (widowed mothers and children, especially sons) gave many women a recognised status as auctoritas, accepted both by their family and by the heretical group. Others seem to have chosen heresy as a means of constructing a position of power within the family.