Rinaldo da Concorezzo

Rinaldo da Concorezzo was born in the thirteenth century at Concorezzo in Lombardy, in the Brianza district near Milan, and was known from that place of origin. He belonged to a family of local standing and received a legal education that culminated in the doctorate in civil and canon law, a formation that later shaped both his government of dioceses and his handling of judicial cases. He entered the secular clergy rather than a religious order, became a canon of the collegiate church of Monza, and rose to the archdeaconry, placing him among the leading ecclesiastics of the Milanese church in the later thirteenth century.

In 1296 Pope Boniface VIII appointed him bishop of Vicenza. After several years in that see he was translated, in the early fourteenth century, to the metropolitan archbishopric of Ravenna, one of the most ancient and prestigious churches of northern Italy. As archbishop he exercised authority over a wide province and was drawn into the political struggles of the Romagna, where papal, imperial, and communal claims continually collided. He worked to defend the rights of his church and to maintain ecclesiastical discipline in a period of factional violence.

His most distinctive historical reputation rests on his conduct during the proceedings against the Knights Templar. After Pope Clement V, under pressure from the French crown, ordered inquiries into the order, Rinaldo convened a provincial council at Ravenna around 1310–1311. Unlike many contemporary judges, he refused to authorize torture and declined to treat confessions extracted by violence as valid proof. The council acquitted the Templars of heresy, asking of them only a formal abjuration of any errors they might have committed. This relatively equitable procedure, grounded in canonical norms of proof, set the Ravenna inquiry apart from harsher trials elsewhere and is the episode for which he is best known to later historians.

He died on 18 August 1321 after a long tenure as archbishop of Ravenna. In subsequent centuries a local cult grew up around his memory, honoring him for pastoral integrity and for the fairness he showed toward the Templars. The Catholic Church confirmed that cult in the nineteenth century under Pope Pius IX, and he is venerated as blessed, with liturgical commemoration on the anniversary of his death. Many particulars of his family background, burial, and day-to-day administration remain only sparsely documented, as is often the case even for prominent prelates of the late medieval Italian church.