Abstract

Starting from the important acquisitions of the most recent historiography, the article, also using new sources, aims to highlight how the innovative rule on the division of heretics’ assets sanctioned by the Ad extirpanda of Innocent IV (1252) determined the overbearing introduction of the Italian officia into the center of a complex network of dialectics within local societies, affecting the economic and political sphere. Through a brief analysis of the beneficiaries of the tripartite division and of the methods of recovery and management of the heretics’ assets, a considerable variety of situations is highlighted, depending on local specificities: the constant, on the other hand, is the leading role of the tribunal of faith on levels other than the exclusively religious one.