The History of the Inquisition

Dromo's Den

INQUISITION (Lat. inquisitio, inquiry, from inquirere, to investigate, from in, in + quærere, to seek), THE (Inquisitio hæreticæ pravitatis), called also the Holy Office. A tribunal in the Roman Catholic church for the discovery, repression, and punishment of heresy, unbelief, and other offenses against religion. The punishment of heresy by force arose after the Roman Empire became officially Christian. Soon after the Council of Nieæa (325) had formulated its creed Constantine attempted to repress all dissent, but it was not until 385 that any one was executed for heresy. (See HERESY.) From this time, in the East, persistence in heresy was legally punishable with death. In the West, however, among the more tolerant Teutonic tribes there was no tendency for several centuries to inflict the capital sentence for heresy. In the twelfth century there were some executions, but the Western church in general preferred milder measures. The ecclesiastical cognizance of heresy, and its punishment by spiritual censures, belonged to the bishop or episcopal synod; but the bishops seldom fulfilled this duty, because they were too fully occupied. No special machinery for the purpose was devised, however, until the spread, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, of certain sects reputed dangerous alike to the state and to the church-the Cathari, Waldenses, and Albigenses-excited the alarm of the civil as well as of the ecclesiastical authorities. At that time heresy was regarded as a crime against the state no less than against the church. An extraordinary commission was sent by Pope Innocent III into the south of France to aid the local authorities in checking the spread of the Albigensian heresy, and a council held at Avignon in 1209 directed that in each parish the priest and two or three laymen in good repute should be appointed to examine and report to the bishop all such offenses discovered within the district. The fourth Lateran Council (1215) earnestly impressed, both on bishops and magistrates, the necessity of increased vigilance against heresy.

So far, however, there was no permanent court distinct from those of the bishops; but by successive edicts, from 1227 on, a special tribunal for the purpose was instituted, the direction of which was confided chiefly to members of the Dominican Order (1232). The Inquisition thus constituted became a general instead of, as previously, a local tribunal; and it was introduced into Italy, Spain, and the southern provinces of France.

The procedure of the Inquisition deserves a brief notice. A person suspected of heresy or denounced as guilty was liable to be arrested and detained in prison, to be brought to trial only when it might seem fitting to his judges. The proceedings were conducted secretly. He was not confronted with his accusers, nor were their names even then revealed to him, but the suspect could make known his enemies, whose evidence would thereupon be excluded. The evidence of an accomplice was admissible, and the accused himself was liable to be put to the torture in order to extort a confession of guilt. Any such confession, however, bad to be repeated afterward without torture in order to be accepted; but if the accused refused to repeat his confession he might be tortured again. As a punishment, the condemned were sentenced to make pilgrimages, to wear signs of infamy such as the yellow cross, or to imprisonment, and in extreme cases were condemned to death. This extreme penalty, however, could be inflicted only by the state, and out of 636 persons condemned between 1308 and 1322 only 40 were turned over to the state for this purpose. The state was required to enforce the laws of the church as a part of the ruler's duty as a Christian. If the ruler refused, he might be excommunicated or in extreme instances deposed. The Papal Inquisition had no standing in England and the northern countries, where all such matters were attended to either by the Bishops' Inquisition or, as in England, by the royal power. In Languedoc the Inquisition was very active for about a century, but by the end of the first quarter of the fourteenth century it had practically spent its force. In northern France the history of the Inquisition is more obscure, but by the end of the fourteenth century it is certain that it was decadent. Philip the Fair, however, made use of the Inquisition against the Templars and in 1312 made it a state tribunal. In most of the Italian cities except Venice it was very powerful. In Germany it had very slight influence.

It was in Spain, Portugal, and their dependencies that the Inquisition attained its fullest development. As an ordinary tribunal similar to those of other countries, it had existed in Spain from an early period. In 1237 the duties of the Inquisition were given to the Dominicans and Franciscans. Early in the reign of Ferdinand and Isabella, in consequence, it is said, of the alarms created by the alleged discovery of a plot among the Jews and the Jewish converts --who had been required either to emigrate or to conform to Christianity--to overthrow the government, an application was made to Pope Sixtus IV to permit its reorganization (1478); but in reviving the tribunal the crown assumed to itself the right of appointing the inquisitors and, in fact, of controlling the entire action of the tribunal. The establishment of the tribunal of the Inquisition was sanctioned by the Cortes at Toledo in 1480, and from this date the Spanish Inquisition became a state tribunal. In order to prove that the church generally, and the Roman see itself, was dissociated from that state tribunal, the bulls of Pope Sixtus IV, which protest against it, are cited. Notwithstanding this protest, however, the Spanish crown maintained its control of the Inquisition. The work of the Inquisition began in 1481, when Miguel Morello and Juan Martin, members of the Dominican Order, were appointed inquisitors for Seville. In 1483 the Inquisition was extended over Aragon and León, and the Dominican Tomás de Torquemada (q.v.) became the first Grand Inquisitor. The Inquisition asserted an independence not pleasing to Rome and when Spain sought to introduce it into Naples also, Pope Paul III, in 1546, exhorted the Neapolitans to resist its introduction. However severe the weight of the Inquisition may have been on heretics and unbelievers, the number of its victims as given by Llorente, the antipapal historian of the Inquisition, is enormously exaggerated. His statements deserve no credence whatever, although he had excellent opportunities of learning the truth, as he was for a time the secretary of the Inquisition. He was a violent partisan, and his errors and exaggerations have been exposed, especially by Hefele in his Life of Cardinal Ximenes (Eng. trans., 2d ed., London, 1885); Ranke does not hesitate, in his Fürsten and Völker des südlichen Europas (4th ed., Leipzig), to impeach his honesty. While Llorente gives the number of executions as 341,042, the Catholic authority Gams states 4000 to have been the total. Protestant writers have usually given figures varying between the lowest and the highest. Charles V (1516-56) and Philip II (1556-98) made attempts to transfer the Inquisition also to the Netherlands, but there is no question that here its object was political, intended to suppress a revolt rather than a heresy.

The Spanish Inquisition is condemned by Protestants and non-Spanish Catholics alike. Spanish Catholics, however, are inclined to defend it and hold that its form of proceeding was not as usually stated, but was fair and equitable, considering what a fearful crime heresy was and is in the eyes of the Catholic church. There is no doubt, moreover, that many of the crimes tried by the inquisitors in Spain were such as would now be brought into our ordinary civil courts.

The rigor of the Spanish Inquisition abated in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In the reign of Charles III it was forbidden to punish capitally without the royal warrant, and in 1770 the royal authority was required as a condition even for an arrest. In 1808, under King Joseph Bonaparte, the Inquisition was suppressed. It was revived under the Restoration, was again suppressed on the establishment of the constitution in 1820, but was partially restored in 1825, nor was it till 1834 that it was finally abolished in Spain, its property being applied two years later to the liquidation of the national debt.

From Spain the Inquisition was transplanted into all the Spanish-American countries, and it continued to exist in these countries until they became independent. From Portugal the Inquisition was extended to the Portuguese colonies in India. The rigor of its process, however, was much mitigated in the eighteenth century, and under John VI it fell entirely into disuse.

The Inquisition in Rome and the Papal States never ceased, from the time of its establishment, to exercise a severe and watchful control over heresy, or the suspicion of heresy, which offense was punished by imprisonment and civil disabilities; but of capital sentences for heresy the history of the Roman Inquisition presents few instances, and according to Balmes, On Civilization (6th ed., Madrid, 1875), that tribunal "has never been known to order the execution of a capital sentence" for the crime of heresy. The tribunal still exists under the direction of a congregation (congregatio sancti offcii), originally founded by Paul III in 1542 and reorganized by Sixtus V, but as by its very constitution it must call upon the state aid to enforce its decrees, and as such state aid can nowhere be obtained at the present day, its action is limited to the imposition of spiritual punishments, such as excommunication.

The New International Encyclopaedia, Vol. XII (New York: Dodd, Mead & Co., 1920) 199-200.