| Summary: | The preservation of heretical confessions in inquisitorial records needs to be regarded as the product of tension, conflict, and cultural clash between inquisitor and accused. Focusing on the inquisitorial register of Jacques Fournier (1318-1325), this article highlights strains and pressures affecting the construction of confessions during the inquisitorial trial, determining how certain assertions surfaced instead of other ones, under the duplex and opposed mechanisms set in motion by the judge and the defendant. The transformation of oral confessions into written records in Latin and the cultural distance between the individuals involved in the trial had a direct influence on the outcome of confessions. On the other hand, multiple strategies of dissimulation and lies recurrently employed by the accused played a relevant role in the concealment of their subjectivity. The significance of simulative attempts needs to be read in close relation to inquisitorial procedure, placing particular emphasis on the late medieval system of proof in trials against heretics. A close discussion of the interwoven categories of proof, confession, and memory shows how the features of inquisitorial procedure affected the shaping of remembrances: In particular, memoryand its counterpart, forgetfulness, were used as a deliberate strategy of dissimulation and concealment recurrently used by the accused. Diverse attempts to avoid answering and deceive the inquisitorial expectations occur in the depositions released to Jacques Fournier.
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