Inquisition

Pedro Berruguete, Saint Dominic Presides over an Auto da Fe (c. 1495) (Portuguese for "Act of Faith").

The Inquisition was the legal agent of the Catholic Church against heresy in the Middle Ages.

Overview

The Inquisition involved two main things. First, it issued a list, the Index, of published books banned because they were deemed to consist of heresy. The faithful were forbidden to read such books. Second, it prosecuted individuals thought guilty of heresy.

Later versions of the Inquisitions had the power to use torture or the threat of torture to get confessions and religious conversions. It had the power to order executions. The standard method was to burn heretics alive, or to strangle them in public. The actual deed was done by the civil authorities.

Background

Origin

The word Inquisition comes from Latin quaerere. That means to turn, to ask a question. Meanwhile, the full name of the Inquisition was the Sacred Congregation for the Propagation of the Faith (Latin: Sacra Congregatio de Propaganda Fide) of the Catholic Church. It developed in stages. The first permanent Inquisition was established in 1229. It was run by the Dominicans in Rome. In 1478 Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile set up the Spanish Inquisition.

Operation

The burning of heretics at stakes (auto-da-fé) in a marketplace during the Spanish Inquisition.

In 1542 Pope Paul III established the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition as a tribunal staffed with cardinals and other officials. This version supervised the local Inquisitions in other countries, and also investigated important cases from Italy. The most famous case it tried was that of Galileo Galilei in 1633.

Denial

The Vatican

In 2004, the Roman Catholic Church published so-called findings that the judges of the Inquisition were "not as brutal as previously believed." The Roman Catholic Church also, based on questionable evidence, denied that most trials were carried out by Catholic courts, while whitewashing them by alleging that the victims put on trial were often "tortured for only 15 minutes in the presence of doctors" as if it was justified.

Spain

For the past decade, movements within Spain have emerged to rewrite the history of the Spanish Inquisition. Members of the movements released a series of books, films, TV programs and mobile exhibitions to beautify the Inquisition-associated Spanish history.

Related pages

• Ustaše
• Antisemitism
• Supersessionism
• Spanish Inquisition
• Index Librorum Prohibitorum
• Independent State of Croatia
• The Protocols of the Elders of Zion

Other websites

• The Catholic Church
• The Secret of the Inquisition
• Antisemitism in History: From the Early Church to 1400
• Foundations of Holocaust: From Inquisition to “Purity of Blood”
• The Roman Catholic Church, the Holocaust, and the demonization of the Jews. Response to “Benjamin and us: Christanity, its Jews, and history” by Jeanne Favret-Saada