Montaillou to ICE: The Medieval Roots of Snitching

A whispered accusation could ruin a life in the Middle Ages, and it often began with an ordinary neighbour. Joëlle Rollo-Koster traces how denunciation fuelled the medieval Inquisition, and why modern systems of surveillance and reporting still depend on the same willingness to turn someone else in.

By Joëlle Rollo-Koster

Sometime in the early fourteenth century, a certain Béatrice de Planissoles spoke to the inquisitor Jacques Fournier. She told the story of two women, Cathar heretics, who were traveling in disguise. They found shelter at an inn. The innkeeper, who became suspicious of “strangers,” asked them right away if they were heretics and tested them by ordering them to butcher chickens for dinner while she busied herself preparing other things. Practicing Cathars were vegans. When the hostess returned and found the chicken alive, she asked her guests why they had not killed them. According to Planissoles, “they responded that if the hostess would kill them, they would prepare them but that they would not kill them. The hostess heard that and went to tell the inquisitors that two heretics were in her establishment. They were arrested and burned.” Here is a simple example of snitching, including its grave consequences.

Today, the means are different but the methods are similar. If, let’s say, you want to snitch against a neighbor, all you need to do is sign in and click “submit tip” on a U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) form or use an app to photograph someone suspected of “wrongdoing” according to you. Similar gesture, similar intent to “snitch,” but different contexts, scales, and power relations.

As a medieval historian, telling the Planissoles’ story to my students initiated a long discussion on “snitch” culture. One student of Polish origin told the class a story from her mother about her grandmother being denounced by a neighbor to the NKVD (People’s Commissariat for Internal Affairs) for embroidering with golden thread. How so? A little girl playing at her house saw her doing it and told her mom who told the secret police. Stories like this would fill the pages of thousands of books.

One of the greatest French medieval historians, Marc Bloch, was arrested by the Vichy milice and Gestapo in Lyon in March 1944. He was executed by firing squad. Bloch had joined the resistant group Franc-Tireur, which belonged to the resistance network organized by Jean Moulin. Moulin was betrayed by a snitch in June 1943, tortured by the “Butcher of Lyon” Klaus Barbie (the same who later tortured Bloch). Czech paratroopers Jan Kubiš and Jozef Gabčík, along with other resistance fighters, were responsible for the 1942 assassination of the Nazi Reinhard Heydrich, “the Butcher of Prague.” They were betrayed and died fighting bravely. We all know that thousands of informants sent Jews to the death camps. We all know the story of Anne Frank.

Nearer to our own time, people snitched during COVID lockdown when their neighbors were gathering and having parties. And we now live in the US under the constant threat of snitching with the Trump administration’s so-called crackdown on illegal immigration.

While snitching has a history as long as humankind, and its instances have never remained the same, something needs to be underscored about the institutional use of snitches and informants: snitching is used by authoritarian, coercive governments that often try to but do not have the means to, control the daily lives of their constituents. Case in point: the medieval Catholic Church.

The Medieval Machinery of Denunciation

If we take cases from the medieval inquisition issued from the Avignon Papacy, which I know (pretty) well, we can see how the Catholic Church operated on denunciations: first against heretics.

In the early fourteenth-century French Languedoc, a sect survived that had a long history: the Cathars. Also labeled Albigensians, from the southern French town of Albi, the Cathars were well established in the south since the early Middle Ages. Their expansion was stopped by the Albigensian Crusade (1209–1229), which annihilated the majority of followers. Cathars did something not tolerated by the dominant Catholic Church: they questioned Catholic dogma and rituals. They questioned Christ’s incarnation, certain sacraments like the Eucharist, and Purgatory, the antechamber of heaven where the prayers and alms of the living eased the passage of the not-so-perfect dead.

This line of questioning led, of course, to discarding priests, who lost their purpose without belief in the sacramental system. In response to why God would create so many humans if not to save them all, a certain Raimond Roussel of Montaillou stated, “Because… just as it is impossible for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle, it is impossible for those who are rich to be saved. This is why the kings and princes, prelates and religious, and all those who have wealth, cannot be saved, but only the good Christians [that is, the Cathars].”

Here we can note the distrust of wealth, an old point of contention for Christians wanting to follow the Apostolic Life and others who gave themselves more leeway. Cathars were dualists who put utmost faith in the spiritual world and distrusted materiality. Their world was divided between good and evil. They were eventually eradicated during the Albigensian Crusade that made my Provençal ancestors lose their identity and autonomy to the northern French. Still, a few survived. Regardless of the onslaught of the canes dei, the “hounds of God”—that is, the Order of Preachers (the Dominicans), and the inquisition, and their military loss, we encounter them decades later in the Vatican registers of the inquisition.

Fournier’s Register

Jacques Fournier, later elevated to Pope Benedict XII, investigated the area searching for heretics. Between 1317 and 1325, Bishop Jacques Fournier conducted 370 days of interrogation in the tiny Pyrenean village of Montaillou, drawing out confessions of neighbors’ betrayals and hidden heresy. His aim was to find as many heretics as he could to purge the land.

Lacking the modern methods of spying that we now have, Fournier counted on one of the oldest methods in the world: snitching. He knew that with some encouragement and incentive, people would talk and “spill” on their neighbors. The Catholic Church used the inquisition as its institutional means to deal with the information coming from snitches. Inquisitional records were not “backward” but modern administrative documents. Under the guise of due process, they gave the entire affair a flair of legitimacy: formal depositions, interrogations, cross-questionings, and sometimes torture showed that there was a hierarchical authority (the Church) with judicial powers and some sort of due process.

Snitches did it for many reasons: fear of excommunication, eternal damnation, social ostracism; hatred and jealousy of neighbors; confession sometimes to avoid worse punishments; pressure; or simply financial gain. In sum, self-preservation, rivalries, greed, and spiritual manipulation.

The Fourteenth-Century Inquisition: Two Cases of Systemic Abuse

Between 1335 and 1337, the inquisition in Tours (France) dealt with an “affair” of witchcraft initiated by hatred between two families, the Trévaloet and Guergolle, both of noble stock. In the initial proceedings, Hervé de Trévaloet was accused by his rivals, the Guergolle family, of using witchcraft to kill Pierre de Guergolle. The case was brought before the Bishop of Quimper (Alain Gontier) and the Inquisitor of Tours (Jean Aufroid), who were allegedly biased due to their connections to the Guergolle family. The judges acted harshly: they confiscated the properties of Hervé, his wife Catherine du Pont, and his brothers before any formal judgment, based on the secret testimonies (snitches) of three of Hervé’s servants. When Hervé appealed to the Pope and went to Avignon, the inquisitors excommunicated him and arrested those who appeared on his behalf.

Hervé appealed to Pope John XXII, claiming the charges were motivated by hatred and the procedures were illegal. The inquisitors and the Guergolle’s prosecutor fled Avignon to avoid justifying their actions. After the death of John XXII, the new Pope, Benedict XII, took up the case. The summary highlights the inquisitorial abuses: the use of torture to extract contradictory confessions from Hervé’s servants, who were then executed, and the unlawful confiscation of property. Benedict XII ordered a thorough review. He mandated the restitution of the confiscated properties to Hervé’s family and that Hervé himself receive enough of his wealth back to live and fund his legal defense. However, the local bishops in charge of executing these orders were slow and ineffective. The Duke of Brittany, Jean III, who had seized the properties, refused to give them up. Hervé and his family remained in poverty and were unable to prove their innocence. The outcome of the trial is unknown.

The Trévaloet case is an example of the potential for corruption, procedural abuse, and the role of local rivalries within the medieval Inquisition, as well as the often difficult and slow process of seeking justice from the Papacy. It also shows the consequences of snitching.

In a somewhat similar case from the same period, in 1331, John XXII addressed the bishop of Paris and the Dominican inquisitor Aubert of Châlons regarding a complaint from Master John Anselm of Genoa, a lay surgeon formerly living in Paris. In the letter, John Anselm reports that he was falsely accused of sorcery and heresy without any prior suspicion, legal process, or opportunity for defense. He was imprisoned for a long time in harsh conditions. Despite the advice of theologians and jurists from the University of Paris, the inquisitor condemned him. The sentence declared him perjured, banished him from France, ordered him to go on pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, imposed fasting on bread and water every Friday for seven years, and fined him one hundred Parisian livres.

In addition, while in prison he was forced under oath, through fear and coercion, not to appeal, complain, or contest the judgment, and to agree to other conditions imposed on him. He was eventually released but then appealed to the Apostolic See. He petitioned the Pope to annul the sentence, release him from the unjustly extorted oaths, and have his case heard in the papal court at Avignon.

In these cases, men were snitched on and accused of sorcery and heresy without prior suspicion or proper legal procedure, denied any opportunity for defense, and confined in harsh prisons. The records emphasize how their sentences were pronounced despite the contrary advice of theologians and jurists of the University of Paris, and how inquisitors relied on coercion, whether by the seizure of goods, the denial of legal defense, or the imposition of oaths under fear, to enforce compliance.

From Medieval Registers to Modern Databases

So how do these medieval cases enlighten us on today’s witch hunts? Let us not delude ourselves: there are correspondences to be made between the medieval inquisition and contemporary authoritarian practices. The mechanisms remain remarkably consistent across seven centuries.

Consider the case of Federal Reserve Governor Lisa Cook, who faced a coordinated campaign of anonymous accusations and public attacks after her nomination in 2022. Critics questioned her qualifications and circulated allegations about her research, often through channels that allowed accusers to remain unnamed while their claims gained amplification through partisan media networks. The parallels to medieval denunciation are clear: accusations made without the accuser facing direct accountability, amplified through institutional channels (then the Church, now social media and partisan outlets), and designed to destroy a career and reputation through the veneer of legitimate concern.

In a NPR article focused on immigration Adrian Florido discusses ICE in Puerto Rico. ICE is increasingly relying on tips from the public as part of its intensified deportation efforts. According to Special Agent in Charge Rebecca González-Ramos, the agency now receives 10–12 calls per day, with about five related to immigration, many of which come from people reporting neighbors, coworkers, or ex-partners out of personal conflict or revenge.  ICE agents treat all immigration-related tips as priorities. The intelligence division evaluates each lead, and if they find it “valid,” they pursue it. Tips frequently come from individuals motivated by competition (such as business rivals) or personal grievances, and González-Ramos acknowledges that “revenge tips” have become common. Community tips—whether malicious, opportunistic, or well-intentioned—now fuel a significant portion of ICE’s targeting and arrests in Puerto Rico.

These modern cases reveal what sociologist Robert Gellately defines as the essence of denunciation: “spontaneous communications from individual citizens to the state (or to another authority such as the church) containing accusations of wrongdoing by other citizens or officials and implicitly or explicitly calling for punishment.” The key word is spontaneous. These systems depend not on massive state surveillance apparatus but on ordinary people choosing to participate in enforcement.

The Architecture of Informant Systems

What makes snitching effective across such vastly different historical periods? Several elements persist:

• The outsourcing of surveillance. Whether it’s fourteenth-century France or twenty-first-century America, authorities lack the resources to monitor everyone constantly. Well maybe technology allows it now. Fournier could not station guards in every home in Montaillou; ICE cannot surveil every single neighborhood in America. Both depend on citizens to extend the state’s reach into private spaces, transforming neighbors into enforcers.
• The exploitation of existing tensions. The Trévaloet-Guergolle rivalry predated the witchcraft accusation; the inquisition simply provided a weapon for an ongoing feud. Similarly, contemporary immigration enforcement often exploits workplace disputes, landlord-tenant conflicts, or personal vendettas. The state provides the mechanism; personal animosity supplies the motivation.
• The veneer of legitimacy through bureaucracy. Fournier’s meticulous records, 370 days of interrogations, formal depositions, cross-examinations created an appearance of due process while systematically denying defendants real protections. Modern deportation proceedings follow a similar pattern: forms, hearings, administrative reviews that create an illusion of fairness while operating within a system where the accused often lacks legal representation, where evidence standards are minimal, and where the burden of proof is effectively reversed.
• The anonymity of accusers. In medieval courts, witnesses could testify secretly. In contemporary America, ICE tip forms require no verification of identity. The accused must defend themselves publicly while accusers remain hidden. This asymmetry fundamentally corrupts any claim to justice.
• The extraction of value. Medieval inquisitors confiscated property, imposed fines, and extracted payments from the accused. Modern deportation proceedings may not seize assets directly, but they destroy livelihoods, separate families who then face financial ruin, and feed a private detention industry that profits from human confinement. The machinery of denunciation has always served economic as well as political ends.

Resistance Then and Now

Understanding this history reveals something crucial: such systems depend not merely on state power but on civic participation. The inquisition could not function without informants. ICE cannot deport millions without tips from the public. Fournier’s power in Montaillou rested on his ability to turn neighbors against one another.

This dependence is also the system’s vulnerability. When communities refuse to participate, when people choose not to denounce their neighbors, when they warn the vulnerable, when they collectively resist the machinery of informant culture, the system loses its reach. There are no records of the people who sheltered Cathars and said nothing, who saw their neighbor’s forbidden books and turned away, who chose silence over denunciation. But their refusal to participate limited the inquisition’s power as surely as any papal decree.

In our own time, America’s sanctuary cities represent a collective refusal to extend federal immigration enforcement into every local interaction. Community defense networks that warn vulnerable people of ICE activity mirror the warning systems that helped some medieval heretics escape. The choice not to submit that tip, to not make that call, to not provide that information, these small acts of non-participation constrain authoritarian reach.

The medieval cases teach us that snitch culture is not an accident or an excess of zealous enforcement. It is the design. It is how regimes with expansive ambitions but limited resources exercise control. And it is how they implicate ordinary people in maintaining systems of persecution, turning citizens into accomplices and communities into surveillance networks.

Joëlle Rollo-Koster is professor of medieval history at the University of Rhode Island and a Fellow of the Medieval Academy of America. She recently co-edited the three-volume The Cambridge History of the Papacy.

Further Readings

Duvernoy, Jean. Le registre d’inquisition de Jacques Fournier. Paris: Mouton, 1978. Partial translation in “Jacques Fournier, Inquisition records,” in Readings in Medieval History, ed. Patrick Geary (North York, Ontario, Canada: University of Toronto Press), 500–519.

LeRoy Ladurie, Emmanuel. Montaillou, Village Occitan de 1294 à 1324. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.

Vidal, J. M. Bullaire de l’inquisition franc̜aise au XIVe siècle et jusqu’à la fin du grand schisme. Paris: Librairie Letouzey et Ané, 1913.

Top Image: Inquisition by Édouard Moyse (1827–1908)