Dear George,

Thank you for your question, the subject of which, is often confusing and vulnerable to revisionist historical interpretation.

Fortunately, vast archives are filled with very accurate records of this historical period, which will help us to examine the origins and facts related to the common misconceptions about this subject.

Let us first define the time line of this investigation. Most often, the term "Inquisition" brings to mind the "Spanish Inquisition", however we must back up about 500 years to the events that instigated the use of ecclesial-judicial inquiries into  the actions of individuals suspected of heretical activity.

With the reign of emperor Constantine (d. 337), the Church moved from being persecuted to being protected, and political and theological concerns began to overlap. The good of the Church likewise began to be seen as integral to the good of the State. Consequently, from the fourth century on, not only did emperors convene councils against heresies, but they also established a wide range of civil penalties for heresy. These penalties ranged from fines to capital punishment, as the famous Corpus Iuris Civilis (534) of the Emperor Justinian (d. 565) attests. Inquisition was one means by which both secular and Catholic courts addressed heresy.

By the end of Christianity’s first millennium, most of western Europe had been converted to Christianity. By this time, there was little separation of Church and State. That is, secular and ecclesial offices and legal systems overlapped. The effects of one system were recognized within the other. Because of this, the secular powers and the Church, even with all their disagreements and failures, had developed a common foundation and aim in protecting the common good. One general effect of all this was that secular politics were not entirely severed from the Church. Instead, political and religious questions were inextricably intertwined, and religious heresies were considered a kind of political treason.

In ancient times, obstinate heresy was usually dealt with by simple excommunication and avoidance of the heretic. As the Church became larger and Christianity received protection from persecution, heretical groups became more numerous and organized. They also became more dangerous. Obstinate heresy endangered the individual soul, purity of the faith, and the security of the community. In these times - late ancient and early medieval eras - people would literally go to war over subtle theological differences, so heresy was not merely a theoretical problem.

To make matters more complex, by the medieval era most European countries were predominantly Catholic and governed by Catholics. Catholicism was the state religion of most countries by decree of the king, and obstinate heresy was considered to be a crime against the state (treason). This was a state decision in which the Church unfortunately played little or no part.

Catharism (from the Greek katharos, which means “pure”) was a heresy which threatened nearly every line of the Creed. Although there were many other heresies addressed by inquisitorial courts (including the Waldenses, Beguines, Fraticelli, and the Spirituals), Catharism was the most prevalent, and therefore the heresy which gave rise to the use of inquisition by the Catholic Church.

During the next century, secular rulers, Church councils, and popes called for the investigation and prosecution of heresy as well as for the punishment of unrepentant heretics. Yet such efforts to address the spread of heresies such as Catharism remained disorganized and ineffective.

To remedy the disorganized response to heresy, Pope Gregory IX (1227-41) took on the task of bringing the investigation of heresy under the discipline of the Holy See. What we term the “Inquisition” is simply the ecclesiastical tribunal with specially appointed judges (inquisitors) answerable to both the local bishop and the pope, whose task it was to investigate charges of heresy in a systematic and fair way. The origin of this form of judicial inquiry, the inquisitio, was not Church law, but Roman law as incorporated into the procedures of civil and canon law alike. Pope Gregory wisely relied on the new mendicant orders, the Franciscans and the Dominicans, to handle most of the inquisitorial work.

This first phase of the Inquisition began to die out in the 1300s as the heresies themselves faded. The next phase began in 1478 when, at the request of the Spanish sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella, Pope Sixtus IV (1471-84) issued a papal bull allowing for the creation of the Spanish Inquisition. It lasted until it was formally abolished in 1834, although its most fervent activity was during the 15th and 16th centuries.

The Spanish Inquisition is the most notorious of the inquisitions for three reasons. First, it was more cruel precisely because it was administered by the secular government. Second, it was concerned, in large part, with the conversos. These were Jews who had converted either under duress or out of social convenience, and were suspected of secretly practicing the Jewish faith. And third, it has been the main target of Protestant and secular opponents of Catholicism who have fabricated — through pamphlets, “histories,” plays, and even paintings — cruelties and excesses far beyond what actually occurred.

With the advent of the Reformation in the 16th century, another phase of the Inquisition began. Alarmed at the spread of Protestantism, Pope Paul III (1534-49) established the Roman Inquisition in 1542. Perhaps its most famous act was the conviction of Galileo for violating its injunction of 1616 that he neither teach nor defend the thesis that the sun is the immovable center of the universe. The Roman Inquisition has undergone several name changes since its creation. At the time of Galileo, it was know as the Congregation of the Holy Office. Pope John Paul II gave it the name it bears today, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

One of the most enduring myths of the Inquisition is that it was a tool of oppression imposed on unwilling Europeans by a power-hungry Church. Nothing could be more wrong.

From the perspective of secular authorities, heretics were traitors to God and king and therefore deserved death. From the perspective of the Church, however, heretics were lost sheep that had strayed from the flock. As shepherds, the pope and bishops had a duty to bring those sheep back into the fold, just as the Good Shepherd had commanded them. So, while medieval secular leaders were trying to safeguard their kingdoms, the Church was trying to save souls. The Inquisition provided a means for heretics to escape death and return to the community.

Most people accused of heresy by the medieval Inquisition were either acquitted or their sentence suspended. Those found guilty of grave error were allowed to confess their sin, do penance, and be restored to the Body of Christ. The underlying assumption of the Inquisition was that, like lost sheep, heretics had simply strayed. If, however, an inquisitor determined that a particular sheep had purposely departed out of hostility to the flock, there was nothing more that could be done. Unrepentant or obstinate heretics were excommunicated and given over to the secular authorities. Despite popular myth, the Church did not burn heretics. It was the secular authorities that held heresy to be a capital offense. The simple fact is that the medieval Inquisition saved uncounted thousands of innocent (and even not-so-innocent) people who would otherwise have been roasted by secular lords or mob rule.

As the power of medieval popes grew, so too did the extent and sophistication of the Inquisition. The introduction of the Franciscans and Dominicans in the early 13th century provided the papacy with a corps of dedicated religious willing to devote their lives to the salvation of the world. Because their order had been created to debate with heretics and preach the Catholic faith, the Dominicans became especially active in the Inquisition. Following the most progressive law codes of the day, the Church in the 13th century formed inquisitorial tribunals answerable to Rome rather than local bishops. By the 14th century, the Inquisition represented the best legal practices available. Inquisition officials were university-trained specialists in law and theology. The procedures were similar to those used in secular inquisitions (we call them "inquests" today, but it's the same word).

The power of kings rose dramatically in the late Middle Ages. Secular rulers strongly supported the Inquisition because they saw it as an efficient way to ensure the religious health of their kingdoms. If anything, kings faulted the Inquisition for being too lenient on heretics. As in other areas of ecclesiastical control, secular authorities in the late Middle Ages began to take over the Inquisition, removing it from papal oversight. In France, for example, royal officials assisted by legal scholars at the University of Paris assumed control of the French Inquisition. Kings justified this on the belief that they knew better than the faraway pope how best to deal with heresy in their own kingdoms.

The Inquisition Myth, which Spaniards call “The Black Legend,” did not arise in 1480. It began almost 100 years later, and exactly one year after the Protestant defeat at the Battle of Muhlberg at the hands of Ferdinand's grandson, the Holy Roman Emperor Charles V. In 1567 a fierce propaganda campaign began with the publication of a Protestant leaflet penned by a supposed Inquisition victim named Montanus. This character Protestant of course) painted Spaniards as barbarians who ravished women and sodomized young boys. The propagandists soon created “hooded fiends” who tortured their victims in horrible devices like the knife-filled Iron Maiden which never was used in Spain).

The Inquisition had a secular character, although the crime was heresy. Inquisitors did not have to be clerics, but they did have to be lawyers. The investigation was rule-based and carefully kept in check. And most significantly, historians have declared fraudulent a supposed Inquisition document claiming the genocide of millions of heretics.

What is documented is that 3000 to 5000 people died during the Inquisition's 350 year history. Executions of the Inquisition pale in comparison to the 150,000 documented witch burnings elsewhere in Europe over the same centuries.

With all that said, we must distinguish between the facts of the Inquisition and the fiction. As recent scholarship has shown, both Protestants and secularists, from the 16th century to the present, have wildly exaggerated the evils of the Inquisition in order to further their own ends, creating straw demons of inquisitors and popes alike. Sadly, these errors have been repeated so often that they have become “facts.”

Although such exaggerations have made “facts” from fiction, there is some truth about abuses that Catholics must admit. Unrepentant men found guilty of heresy were handed over to the State for punishment, even though Church authorities did not always agree with the State’s punishments. We must realize that in handing over the condemned heretic to the secular power, the Church knowingly was handing over the condemned for punishments ranging from imprisonment to burning at the stake. Furthermore, even with all the procedural precautions, there were inquisitors who did not follow the laws of the Church and all too readily handed over a significant number of “heretics” to be burned alive. However, anti-Catholic pamphleteers and historians have grossly exaggerated the numbers, asserting that millions died at the stake. Though the actual numbers are far less (3,000-5,000), these fiery deaths were quite real and regrettable.

It is also true, sadly enough, that the Church, following the judicial customs of the day, allowed for torture as a part of the judicial procedure. The approval of torture went all the way to the top, as Pope Innocent IV’s bull Ad exstirpanda (1252) attests. However, the use of torture during judicial inquiry was not, contrary to her many detractors, the invention of the Church.

Just prior to the time of the Inquisition, Roman law had begun to displace the local judicial customs of western Europe. Roman law had allowed judicial torture in some circumstances. Under the medieval understanding of law, the accused in a capital crime could only be convicted if there were full proof of his guilt. This entailed either the testimony of two witnesses, being caught in the act, or personal confession. If the first two were lacking, and everything else pointed to the guilt of the accused, torture was used to extract his confession. To be considered a valid confession, the accused had to confess freely the next day.

In regard to the use of torture as well as capital punishment, the Church did not invent the practice, but regulated and codified these existing civil, judicial practices. In addition, it is important that the overwhelming effect and goal of the Church was to soften the punitive harshness of the secular powers, and correct the abuses of individual inquisitors who were arbitrary and cruel.

It is important to see these times in the appropriate historical context. Right or wrong, the inqusitor was trying to conduct his campaign against law breakers, using the legal tools available to him.

As to the question of the burning years, if memory serves, this term is more commonly applied to the witch hunts of the puritan pilgrims in the new world.

Despite these facts, Pope John Paul II warns us: 

Yet the consideration of mitigating factors does not exonerate the Church from the obligation to express profound regret for the weaknesses of so many of her sons and daughters who sullied her face, preventing her from fully mirroring the image of her crucified Lord, the supreme witness of patient love and of humble meekness. From these painful moments of the past a lesson can be drawn for the future, leading all Christians to adhere fully to the sublime principle stated by the Council: “The truth cannot impose itself except by virtue of its own truth, as it wins over the mind with both gentleness and power.”

Once again, the Church, made up of sinners has shown its human failings right along with its divine face.

Hope this gives more clarity than confusion,

God bless,
Brian.