Inquisition

Although there were many violent controversies over Christian doctrine, until the Middle Ages, the church had no organized courts to try religious crimes, such as impiety, blasphemy, and heresy. In the thirteenth century, however, the rise of the new sect of Cathars seemed to pose a mortal danger to the organized church. The Cathars defied the authority of the pope and the entire Catholic church hierarchy, and were gaining followers throughout southern France. The church responded by establishing its first courts of Inquisition to try and then punish its opponents and those who strayed by preaching false doctrine. Most of these medieval Inquisitions were operated by members of the religious orders, particularly the Dominicans.

The first Inquisition of Renaissance times was established by Ferdinand and Isabella, the king and queen of Spain, in 1478 on the authorization of Pope Sixtus IV. These courts were created to find and punish conversos, or Jews that had falsely professed to have converted to Christianity. In the years that followed, many Jews fled Spain to the neighboring kingdom of Portugal; the Spanish monarchs then ordered all Jews to convert sincerely or leave Spain. The Spanish Inquisition would eventually found new courts in Mexico, Peru, and the Philippines. In 1536, King John III would establish the Inquisition in Portugal. Six years later, Pope Paul III decreed the founding of the Holy Office of the Inquisition in lands controlled by the Papacy in Italy. The papal Inquisition was established to seek out and eradicate Protestantism, the new branch of Christianity that was spreading across northern Europe and dividing the Christian church. A supreme court of appeals, known as the Congregation of the Holy Office, was organized by the Papacy in 1588.

The Inquisitions had a strict hierarchy and rules of procedure. The inquisitors were experts in canon law, or the law of the church, and presided over large staffs of theological experts, bailiffs, clerks, lawyers for the defendants, and jailers. Inquisitors made regular visits to the cities in their districts. They issued an Edict of Grace that listed the heresies they were seeking out, and invited those with any information to come forward. They offered a short grace period, in which those accused could repent of their crimes and be rewarded with light sentences. The Edict of Faith, that followed, threatened more severe punishment for those who would not confess. The tribunal then made arrests, jailing their prisoners and offering them no chance to defend themselves or face their accusers. Secret trials then examined the confessions and any evidence, decreed torture if necessary to gain more information, and then passed sentence in public in an elaborate ceremony known as the auto-da-fé (act of faith). Those found guilty had to publicly repent and humiliate themselves by wearing a distinctive garment that marked them as penitents. The most serious offenses were punished by execution; the Inquisition would hand over the prisoners to the public authorities, who would ceremoniously burn them at the stake. All property of condemned prisoners was forfeited to the church.

The Inquisition arrested and tried a great range of people, from commoners to nobles to church leaders with suspect opinions, including Saint Ignatius of Loyola and Saint Theresa of Avila. Its most famous defendant was the Italian scientist Galileo Galilei, who was condemned to renounce his ideas on astronomy and cease publishing his writings.

The institution gradually died out in the eighteenth century, an age of rising skepticism toward religious doctrine and greater tolerance of competing religious ideologies. The Spanish Inquisition was officially abolished in 1834. The Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, however, survives to this day as one of the largest departments of the Vatican, with its mission the rooting out of incorrect doctrine and religious heresy among members of the church.

See Also: Index; Reformation, Catholic; Reformation, Protestant; Torquemada, Tomás de