Petrus Zwicker (died 1403) was an East Prussian Inquisitor and cleric of the

Roman Catholic The Catholic Church (), also known as the Roman Catholic Church, is the largest Christian church, with 1.27 to 1.41 billion baptized Catholics worldwide as of 2025. It is among the world's oldest and largest international institut ...

Order Order, ORDER or Orders may refer to: * A socio-political or established or existing order, e.g. World order, Ancien Regime, Pax Britannica * Categorization, the process in which ideas and objects are recognized, differentiated, and understood ...

of the Celestines. Between 1391 and 1403, he led one of the largest inquisitorial operations in the German-speaking world. The victims of this persecution of heretics, in

Austria Austria, formally the Republic of Austria, is a landlocked country in Central Europe, lying in the Eastern Alps. It is a federation of nine Federal states of Austria, states, of which the capital Vienna is the List of largest cities in Aust ...

Pomerania Pomerania ( ; ; ; ) is a historical region on the southern shore of the Baltic Sea in Central Europe, split between Poland and Germany. The central and eastern part belongs to the West Pomeranian Voivodeship, West Pomeranian, Pomeranian Voivod ...

Brandenburg Brandenburg, officially the State of Brandenburg, is a States of Germany, state in northeastern Germany. Brandenburg borders Poland and the states of Berlin, Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, Lower Saxony, Saxony-Anhalt, and Saxony. It is the List of Ger ...

and

Hungary Hungary is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning much of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the south, Croatia and ...

, were almost exclusively

Waldensians The Waldensians, also known as Waldenses (), Vallenses, Valdesi, or Vaudois, are adherents of a church tradition that began as an ascetic movement within Western Christianity before the Reformation. Originally known as the Poor of Lyon in the l ...

. The Inquisition records of this period are today only represented by a few fragments.

Life

Petrus Zwicker came from Wormditt in East Prussia and worked in the North Bohemian town of

Zittau Zittau (; ; ; ; ; Lusatian dialects, Upper Lusatian dialect: ''Sitte''; ) is the southeasternmost city in the Germany, German state of Saxony, and belongs to the Görlitz (district), district of Görlitz, Germany's easternmost Districts of Germ ...

till 1381 as school principal. In the same year he entered the nearby Celestine

monastery A monastery is a building or complex of buildings comprising the domestic quarters and workplaces of Monasticism, monastics, monks or nuns, whether living in Cenobitic monasticism, communities or alone (hermits). A monastery generally includes a ...

at Oybin. By 1395 he was both

Prior The term prior may refer to: * Prior (ecclesiastical), the head of a priory (monastery) * Prior convictions, the life history and previous convictions of a suspect or defendant in a criminal case * Prior probability, in Bayesian statistics * Prio ...

of the monastery and

Provincial superior A provincial superior is an officer of a religious institute (including religious orders) acting under the institute's Superior General. A provincial superior exercises general supervision over all the members of that institute in a territorial ...

of the Celestines in Germany. As early as 1390 he was in charge of the persecution of

heretics Heresy is any belief or theory that is strongly at variance with established beliefs or customs, particularly the accepted beliefs or religious law of a religious organization. A heretic is a proponent of heresy. Heresy in Christianity, Judai ...

and from 1391 until his death in 1403 in Vienna presided over inquisitorial investigations that often took him on long journeys.Haupt: ''Petrus Zwicker.''

References

Bibliography

* Herman Haupt: Zwicker, Petrus. In:

Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB; ) is one of the most important and comprehensive biographical reference works in the German language. It was published by the Historical Commission of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences between 1875 and 1912 in 56 volumes, printed in Lei ...

(ADB). Band 45, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1900, p. 535. Inquisitors Persecution of the Waldensians 1403 deaths Year of birth unknown People from the State of the Teutonic Order Celestine Order People from Lidzbark County {{Germany-RC-clergy-stub