The Inquisition: Medieval, Spanish and Roman Tribunals Explained

The Inquisition was not a single institution but a series of church tribunals that investigated and judged heresy and other offences against the Catholic faith. The medieval inquisition began in the 1230s with papally appointed friars sent against the Cathars and other dissenters; the Spanish Inquisition (1478–1834) was a royal-ecclesiastical court aimed first at converts from Judaism; and the Roman Inquisition, or Holy Office (from 1542), defended doctrine against Protestantism and is the ancestor of today's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

Origins: Heresy and the Medieval Inquisition§

In the early Church heresy was dealt with by bishops and councils, and coercion was rare. The situation changed in the twelfth century, when dissenting movements such as the Cathars, described in Cathars and Bogomils, and the Waldensians gained followers in Languedoc and northern Italy. In 1184 Pope Lucius III's decree Ad abolendam required bishops to seek out heretics in their dioceses, and the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215 set penalties for those who would not recant.

Bishops often lacked the will or skill to pursue this task. From around 1231 Pope Gregory IX began commissioning friars, especially the new Dominican order, as judges delegate with authority to investigate heresy directly. These men were the first inquisitors (inquisitores haereticae pravitatis, "inquirers into heretical depravity"). They worked in regions rather than as a central office, and their authority came from the pope. The great inquiry of 1245–1246 in the Lauragais, in which hundreds of villagers were questioned, and the register of Bishop Jacques Fournier (1318–1325), the source behind Montaillou and the Fournier Register, show the system at work.

Inquisitors, Manuals and Procedure§

Inquisitorial procedure took its name from the Roman-canonical inquisitio, in which a judge opened an investigation on his own initiative rather than waiting for an accuser. An inquisitor arriving in a district would preach and announce a "time of grace," during which those who confessed voluntarily received lighter penances. Then witnesses were summoned and suspects interrogated under oath. Names of witnesses were usually kept from the accused to protect them from reprisal, a practice critics have always considered one of the system's chief injustices. In 1252 Innocent IV's bull Ad extirpanda permitted torture under conditions, adopting a practice already used in secular courts.

Penalties ranged from prayers, fasting and pilgrimage to wearing yellow crosses sewn on clothing, confiscation of property and imprisonment. Those who refused to recant or relapsed after abjuring were "relaxed to the secular arm," meaning handed to civil authorities for execution, usually by burning. Inquisitors produced manuals to guide their colleagues: Bernard Gui's Practica inquisitionis (c. 1324) and Nicholas Eymerich's Directorium inquisitorum (1376) describe beliefs of various sects, set out questions and give model sentences. The suppression of the Templars from 1307, discussed in Jacques de Molay, and the trial of Joan of Arc in 1431 both involved inquisitors alongside royal and episcopal authorities.

The Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions§

The Spanish Inquisition was different in kind. In 1478 Pope Sixtus IV authorised Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile to appoint inquisitors in their kingdoms, and the Crown controlled the institution through a council, the Suprema. Its first target was the conversos, Jews who had converted to Christianity, often under pressure after the violence of 1391, and their descendants, suspected of secretly keeping Jewish practices. The first public sentencing ceremony, the auto de fe ("act of faith"), was held at Seville in 1481. Under the inquisitor general Tomás de Torquemada (from 1483) the tribunals were at their most severe, and the expulsion of unconverted Jews in 1492 was closely connected with their work.

Over the following centuries the Spanish Inquisition turned to moriscos (converts from Islam), Lutherans and other Protestants, the mystical alumbrados, bigamy, blasphemy, sexual offences, and censorship of books. Tribunals were founded in the Americas at Lima (1570), Mexico City (1571) and Cartagena de Indias (1610); Indigenous peoples were excluded from their jurisdiction. Portugal established its own Inquisition in 1536, with a tribunal at Goa in India from 1560. The auto de fe, a grand public ritual of procession, sermon and reading of sentences, became the institution's best-known image. The Spanish Inquisition was suspended under Napoleon, restored, and finally abolished in 1834; Portugal's ended in 1821.

The Roman Inquisition and the Index§

In 1542, alarmed by the spread of Protestant ideas in Italy, Pope Paul III created the Congregation of the Roman and Universal Inquisition with the bull Licet ab initio. It was a committee of cardinals in Rome supervising tribunals across the Italian peninsula, and it became one of the main instruments of the Catholic Reformation described in Roman Catholicism. The first papal Index of Forbidden Books followed in 1559, and a separate Congregation of the Index was set up in 1571.

The Roman Inquisition's most famous defendants were the philosopher Giordano Bruno, burned in Rome in February 1600 after an eight-year trial for heresy, and Galileo Galilei, condemned in 1633 for teaching that the earth moves around the sun and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. Most of its everyday work, however, concerned lesser matters: Protestant books, suspect propositions, the conduct of priests, and the many forms of popular "superstition." The congregation was renamed the Holy Office in 1908 and the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith in 1965; the Index was abolished in 1966, and in 2022 the congregation became the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

The Inquisitions, Magic and Witchcraft§

Inquisitors were drawn into the history of magic early. Learned demonic magic was increasingly classed as heresy in the fourteenth century, a change traced in How Theologians and Inquisitors Judged Demonic Magic, and Eymerich's manual discussed invokers of demons at length. The notorious Malleus Maleficarum (1486) was written chiefly by Heinrich Kramer, a Dominican inquisitor, though its demand for fierce prosecution of witches was not adopted by the Inquisition as an institution; see Malleus Maleficarum.

In fact, the great witch-hunts described in The European Witch Trials were mostly conducted by secular and local courts north of the Alps. In Spain, after the Basque witch panic of 1609–1614, the inquisitor Alonso de Salazar Frías investigated the confessions and concluded that he had found no proof that any act of witchcraft had really occurred; the Suprema then issued instructions in 1614 that effectively ended executions for witchcraft in Spanish tribunals. The Roman Inquisition likewise developed cautious procedures demanding hard evidence. Both continued to prosecute love magic, healing charms, treasure-hunting, magical books and amulets, as shown by cases involving Afro-Atlantic charms in Bolsas de Mandinga. Their trial records are now among the richest sources for the history of popular magic and belief.

The Black Legend and Modern Scholarship§

From the sixteenth century, Protestant polemic and Spain's political rivals portrayed the Inquisition as a byword for cruelty, part of what Spanish historians called the "Black Legend." Juan Antonio Llorente, a former official of the tribunal, published a critical history in 1817 with very high casualty estimates, and nineteenth-century writers such as the American historian Henry Charles Lea produced massive documented studies.

Since the 1970s, historians using the tribunals' own archives have revised the picture. Statistical work on the Spanish trial summaries for 1540–1700 found that only a small proportion of the accused, around two per cent, were executed in person; most modern estimates for the Spanish Inquisition's whole history run to a few thousand executions, concentrated in its first decades. Historians stress that this does not diminish the fear, secrecy, confiscations and social stigma the tribunals produced, or the persecution of conversos and moriscos. In 1998 the Vatican opened the archives of the Holy Office to scholars, and in 2000 Pope John Paul II asked forgiveness for the use of violence in the service of truth.

Frequently asked questions§

When did the Inquisition begin and end?§

Medieval inquisitors were first commissioned by Pope Gregory IX around 1231. The Spanish Inquisition lasted from 1478 to 1834 and the Portuguese from 1536 to 1821. The Roman Inquisition, founded in 1542, still exists in transformed form as the Vatican's Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.

How many people did the Inquisition kill?§

There is no single figure, because there were many tribunals over six centuries. Modern archival research suggests the Spanish Inquisition executed a few thousand people over its history, most before 1530, and that most of those tried received penances rather than death sentences.

Did the Inquisition burn witches?§

Some inquisitors did prosecute witches, especially in the fifteenth century, but most witch executions in Europe were carried out by secular courts. From 1614 the Spanish Inquisition effectively stopped executing for witchcraft, and the Roman Inquisition required strict proof.

What was an auto de fe?§

An auto de fe was the public ceremony at which the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions announced their sentences, with a procession, a sermon and the reading of the verdicts. Executions of those handed to the civil authorities took place afterwards, outside the ceremony itself.

Sources and further reading§

• Practica inquisitionis heretice pravitatis — Bernard Gui, 1324
• A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages — Henry Charles Lea, 1888
• Inquisition — Edward Peters, 1988
• The Spanish Inquisition: A Historical Revision — Henry Kamen, 1997
• The Witches' Advocate: Basque Witchcraft and the Spanish Inquisition, 1609–1614 — Gustav Henningsen, 1980
• The Italian Inquisition — Christopher F. Black, 2009
• The Corruption of Angels: The Great Inquisition of 1245–1246 — Mark Gregory Pegg, 2001