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During the Middle Ages inquisition meant an enquiry, undertaken ad hoc by papally appointed inquisitors. While at the time the Latin term inquisitio could be applied to enquiries of any kind, historians have come reserve the term to describe the task of detecting, prosecuting, and punishing heretics and their sympathizers by papally appointed judges. This procedure flourished mostly in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries; in the fifteenth century many aspects of inquisitorial procedure were adopted by bishops to deal with heresy in their dioceses, especially in England and Bohemia.

During the early modern period this office became the basis for the creation of several national institutions, generally dedicated to the prosecution of religious dissent but whose main interests and concerns varied according to local demands. While the medieval and early modern inquisitions share many characteristics, notably of procedure, they should not be confused and shall be discussed here separately.

Inquisition in the Middle Ages

The Christian Church was marked by religious dissent from its very beginning. In the patristic period St. Paul and St. Augustine repeatedly warned about the dangers of heresy. Between the sixth and eleventh centuries the Western Church's concern for heresy waned as it devoted itself to the conversion of Europe. In the eleventh century, however, a spirit of religious reform led to the articulation of a concept of Christian society in which the prospect of salvation was believed to be greatly improved if all Christians reformed their ways. Sometimes called the second wave of conversion, this reform led to a greater concern with individual Christians' beliefs and behavior.

While the origins of medieval heresies remain a complex issue, this climate of religious reform contributed to the creation of heretical movements by those who thought the Church had not gone far enough in its reforms. The spread of popular heresies in Europe during the eleventh and twelfth centuries spurred church officials and lay authorities to action. During the twelfth century, ecclesiastical and lay authorities took steps toward prosecution, the former by making it the duty of bishops to locate and prosecute heresy in their dioceses, and the latter through legislation applying the death penalty or exile to those convicted of heresy. These attempts proved largely ineffective and by the thirteenth century heresy had spread through many parts of southern France, northern Italy, and the Rhineland.

Pope Gregory IX (1227–1241) found a solution to the bishops' ineffectiveness with the appointment, in 1231, of full-time investigators empowered to locate and prosecute heretics. The new inquisitors of heretical depravity followed a Roman law procedure in which the judge was allowed to initiate proceedings ex officio, that is, by virtue of his office, without waiting for an accuser to bring formal charges against a suspect. The judge was also made responsible for every step of the process, from investigation to trial and sentencing. This procedure proved highly effective in dealing with crimes of a public nature and it was not unique to heresy prosecution. In fact, it was adopted by criminal courts through much of Europe at the time.

Inquisitorial tribunals were set up in many areas of present-day France, Germany, Italy, Sicily, and northern Spain. The area most visited by medieval inquisitors was southern France, where they focused especially on the prosecution of Cathars and Waldensians. Different from what is widely assumed, however, there was no single Inquisition coordinated from Rome during the Middle Ages. What is commonly referred to as the medieval Inquisition was in fact not an institution but rather a series of tribunals, following inquisitorial procedure, scattered across Europe and staffed by clergymen and advised by legal experts. Local bishops often had some influence in the workings of a tribunal. Cooperation between the different tribunals depended largely on the initiative of individual inquisitors; there was no official effort in ensuring this cooperation took place.

An inquisition started with the appointment of the inquisitor by the pope to investigate the existence of heresy in a certain locality. The inquisitor was usually drafted from the Dominican or Franciscan order and the area under his jurisdiction varied. Often, as was the case of the tribunals of Carcassone and Toulouse, jurisdiction could extend over the area of several dioceses. Inquisitors' jurisdiction was a priori limited to Christians, but Jews were sometimes prosecuted for returning to Judaism after having converted to Christianity or for protecting those hiding from the inquisitors.

After the area of jurisdiction was determined, the inquisitor then chose a centrally located seat from which to summon suspects from all areas under his purview. At the outset of the investigation, the inquisitor gave a public speech in which he affirmed his authority and established a period of grace (tempus gratiae), usually lasting between two weeks and one month, during which anybody who volunteered a full and truthful confession would be spared the harsher punishments allowed by law. From the evidence gathered from confessions, the inquisitor then summoned suspects for interrogation. The many manuals written for inquisitors during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries warned about the need to distinguish between truthful and false abjuration, and inquisitors seem to have paid great attention to accusations based on personal enmity. While the names of witnesses testifying against a suspect were kept secret to avoid retaliation, the accused was allowed to list all of his or her enemies and if any of these were among those who testified against him or her, the name was removed from the roll of witnesses.

If the accused admitted guilt and showed themselves willing to repent, they were usually given a light penance, warning, and absolution. If there was no admission of guilt and sufficient evidence against the accused accumulated, inquisitors were allowed to use torture. The use of torture to exact confessions was not unique to the inquisition—indeed, it was common practice in all ecclesiastical and lay courts of Europe, with the exception of England. Evidence from inquisitorial registers and inquisitors' manuals suggests that the most widely used technique for eliciting confessions was incarceration rather than torture. Separation from family and friends, the mounting cost of imprisonment (for which the accused was held responsible), and the general dreariness of prison life proved more effective than torture in bringing about confessions.

As the aim of the inquisition was to reconcile the accused to the Catholic Church, punishments for heretical crimes were both spiritual and corporal. In theory, a first offender was not supposed to be burned and punishments were calculated to bring about repentance. The harshest penalty for first time offenders was life imprisonment and loss of property. This imprisonment could be either under normal or strict regime; while normal regime was not considered very harsh, strict could mean solitary confinement, little food, and shackles.

Inquisitors were the first judges to use imprisonment as a punishment for crimes. Something akin a parole system was also devised and those who showed contrition and good behavior had their sentences commuted. Life imprisonment, therefore, could mean only a few years of incarceration and the rest of the sentence could be served in freedom pending good behavior or it could be commuted to a lighter punishment. Other forms of punishment included pilgrimages, fasting, wearing penitential garments bearing yellow crosses, and lighter spiritual penances. Burnings were supposed to be a last resort and only unrepentant and relapsed heretics faced relaxation, that is, being handed over to secular authorities for execution.

The ad hoc nature of the process and the lack of centralized control, however, meant that considerable variation existed both regionally and from inquisitor to inquisitor. Conrad of Marburg, a papally appointed inquisitor, created a reign of terror in Germany during his two-year career in the early 1230s. Most inquisitors, however, proved to be conscientious judges and, contrary to popular belief, relatively few heretics were executed. Estimates from thirteenth-century southern France indicate that 1 percent of those convicted by the inquisition received the death penalty and approximately 10 percent were imprisoned. The vast majority received lighter penances.

By the mid-fourteenth century the great heretical movements that constituted the inquisitors' main target, Catharism and Waldensianism, had mostly disappeared. Consequently, the appointment of inquisitors by the papacy waned until the creation of the early modern institutions in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.

The Spanish Inquisition

In 1391 a series of pogroms against Jewish communities swept across Castile and the Crown of Aragon, leading to the forced conversion of thousands of Jews. These violent actions created a new group in the Iberian Peninsula, new Christians known as conversos. While some truthfully converted, many conversos remained practicing Jews. Ferdinand and Isabella, in an effort to ensure their kingdoms were truly Catholic, applied for a license to confront what became known as the converso problem.

The creation of the Spanish Inquisition to deal with the converso problem took place in stages, beginning with a bull issued by Pope Sixtus IV on November 1, 1478. This bull granted the Spanish monarchs the right to appoint two inquisitors to oversee the eradication of the Judaizing heresy. Four years later, seven more inquisitors were appointed. Initially established only in Castile, the Spanish Inquisition was extended into the Crown of Aragon in 1483 to 1484. For Castile, the imposition of an inquisitorial court was entirely new, as the medieval inquisition had previously existed only in the Crown of Aragon. One crucial difference distinguished the Spanish Inquisition from its predecessor: the former was entirely under the control of the Crown. In 1488, with the creation of the Consejo de la Suprema y General Inquisicion (or the Suprema), the Inquisition became an organ of the Spanish government.

During the course of its three-hundred year history, the Spanish Inquisition prosecuted many different groups for crimes against Catholic orthodoxy. These included Protestants, alumbrados (illuminist mystics), and unruly clergy, as well as the general population for sexual offenses (such as adultery and homosexuality), blasphemy, and anticlericalism. Their greatest targets, however, were the conversos (1478–1530; 1650–1720) and converted Muslims, the moriscos (1520–1609, especially in Granada, Valencia, and Aragon). By the end of the seventeenth century, the Spanish Inquisition was largely concerned with enforcing Counter-Reformation ideals of Catholic orthodoxy. The reach of the Inquisition extended throughout the Spanish colonies where indigenous populations also came under its purview.

The Spanish Inquisition was at first itinerant and then established in sixteen urban centers. Structurally, the tribunals consisted of legally and theologically trained inquisitors, prosecutors, and familiars (lay officials who acted within local communities as investigators). All were under the control of the Suprema to prevent the abuse of authority by local inquisitors. Centralizing efforts had all sentences submitted to the Suprema for review by the mid-seventeenth century, and all prosecutions were initiated by this council in the eighteenth century.

Procedurally, the Spanish Inquisition did not differ from its medieval predecessor. Denunciations by neighbors and voluntary confessions, made after the reading of the Edict of Faith in a community, were thoroughly investigated. Once arrested, suspects had their property confiscated and inventoried. They were then imprisoned until their hearings. Trials consisted of interrogating suspects and witnesses in a series of audiences. One vital difference from the medieval inquisition was the granting of defense counsel to the accused. Judicial torture was licit and, contrary to popular belief, was used by inquisitorial authorities less frequently than in secular courts. Cases were judged by a council of inquisitors and representatives of the local bishop.

In addition to the punishments borrowed from the medieval inquisition, the Spanish inquisitors also imposed flogging and service on the galleys to punish those convicted of heresy. After its initial harsh prosecution of conversos, the Spanish Inquisition dealt with those who came before its court with much greater leniency and few of those convicted faced the stake. All sentences were handed out at an auto de fé, the public "Act of Faith" designed to act as a deterrent to bad behavior by the rest of the community. By the eighteenth century few prosecutions were initiated, and on July 15, 1834, the Spanish Inquisition was abolished by the acting regent, Queen Maria Cristina.

The Portuguese and Roman Inquisitions

Elsewhere in Catholic Europe, Inquisitions were established on the foundations laid by medieval inquisitors. In Italy, Pope Paul III created the Roman Inquisition in 1542, which centralized the existing office under the authority of Rome. The Italian city-states, however, retained a great degree of influence over its activities. The Roman Inquisition aimed at eradicating Protestantism throughout Italy, although by the end of the sixteenth century, it primarily dealt with crimes of witchcraft, magic, clerical discipline and Judaizing.

Between 1534–1540, King João II of Portugal worked with Rome to bring the Inquisition to his realm. Modeled on the Spanish institution, the Portuguese Inquisition aimed its prosecutions at conversos, many of whom had been forcibly converted with the expulsion of the Jews in 1496, but also investigated cases of witchcraft, blasphemy, bigamy, and sodomy. The Portuguese Inquisition had tribunals in Lisbon, Évora, Coimbra, Lamego, and Tomar in Portugal, and in Goa in Portuguese India. It was abolished in 1821.

The Inquisition as Myth

From their creation, the Early Modern Inquisitions were seen as perpetrators of great crimes against humanity, a view that has persisted into the twenty-first century. Associated with indiscriminate arrests, overzealous use of torture, and reliance on false witnesses, all surrounded in a veil of secrecy and leading to certain death, the Inquisition was seen as a great miscarriage of justice. This view is particularly linked with the Spanish Inquisition, which popular legend described as an institution built on fear, terror and violence.

In fact, historical evidence demonstrates that after the initial harsh prosecutions of conversos in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the Spanish Inquisition was much less vicious than imagined. This is particularly true if it is examined in comparison to other courts of its time. By the beginning of the seventeenth century, when secular courts in areas such as the Holy Roman Empire were burning thousands of suspected witches, the Spanish Inquisition rarely produced a sentence of death and instead handed out relatively mild punishments. Much of the myth surrounding the Spanish Inquisition was created in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries by European Protestants who used it as an example to demonstrate the evils of Catholicism. Although often accused of horrific crimes, the centralized nature of the early modern Inquisitions worked rather to keep abuses in check, something severely lacking in localized secular courts.

SEE ALSO Cathars

Alexandra Guerson de Oliveira
Dana Wessell