At root the word Inquisition signifies as little of evil as the primitive “inquire”, or the adjective “inquisitive”; but as words, like persons, lose their characters by bad associations, so “Inquisition” has become infamous and hideous as the name of an executive department of the Roman Catholic church. It calls up visions of torture, pictures of instruments that strain and break the joints and limbs; of forms racked and writhing with pain; of visages distorted with agony; of cowled tormenters, unctuous spies, intriguing ecclesiastics, sneaking familiars, and perjured witnesses. In the unseemly word Inquisition, so expressive in its nerve-twisting formation, is heard the sound of all the dread machinery of the sacerdotal tribunal it denotes. Speak it and there is heard the knock at the door, the footsteps of the nocturnal visitant; the word of arrest, the tramp through deserted streets to the prison, the sliding of bolts, the sound of shuffling feet dying away in dark passages, the audible silence of the dungeon, the summons to the chamber of torment, the question that is an accusation, the denial, the order for the application of torture, the gasp, the groan, the shriek, and then the “confession”, the lie extorted from the lips of suffering, that while bringing no relief to the victim, sentences to the same fate the members of his household, his relatives and friends. All crimes and all vices are contained in that one word Inquisition - murder, robbery, arson, outrage, torture, treachery, deceit, hypocrisy, cupidity, holiness. No other word in all languages is so hateful as this one that owes its abhorrent preeminence to is association with the Roman Catholic church. Beside it the word abomination is graceful and comely.
        1. The Imperial Inquisition was not a tribunal, but a process. Christianity was part of the law of the empire, and the civil officers used inquisitors to detect heretics. Persecuting priests could act only by inciting the officials to “enforce the laws,” as is the case to-day with our Sunday statutes.
        2. The Diocesan inquisition gradually developed out of the Imperial, and this is a warning to us of this age. This Inquisition was an ecclesiastical process or function. “As the penalties visited upon offenders under the codes of Theodosius and Justinian were largely of an ecclesiastical nature, and the bishops were more and more recognized as governmental aids, the civil powers committed the jurisdiction in inquisitorial cases to the bishops in their several dioceses (about 800). The bishops used for this purpose their synodal courts. There the accused were examined. If found guilty, they were instructed and admonished. If they remained obdurate, they were left in the hands of the secular court to be punished under the common law” (Johnson’s Cyclopedia, Art. Inquisition). This was substantially the method of procedure in the later inquisitions - the ecclesiastical courts tried and the civil authorities punished the heretics. They worked in conjunction, and it is ridiculous to claim that the church was guiltless of persecution unto death. In the United States in our day some of the inferior judges are harking back to he old methods by suspending the civil sentences of offenders on condition that they attend religious services for certain lengths of time. Pope Lucius III (1181-1185) at the Synod of Verona (1184) prepared a decree against the heretics of that time. He puts them under perpetual anathema. Laymen are to be delivered into the hands of the secular judges to be punished unless they abjure at once... All the secular authorities are to render every possible aid in the work under pain of excommunication and forfeiture of dignities” (ibid.).
        3. “The Papal Inquisition, for which the way was preparing, became independent of the Diocesan, though coexistent in part with it. It was created by special commission, was not permanent, was not an institution (ibid.). Heresy was spreading rapidly in Southern France at the close of the twelfth century. Innocent III (1198-1216) sent as papal legates the Cistercians Raineri and Guido into the disaffected district to increase the severity of repressive measures against the Waldenses (1198). In 1200 Peter of Castelnau was made associate inquisitor for Southern France. The powers of the papal legates were increases so as to bring non-compliant bishops within the net. Diego, bishop of Osma, and Dominec, appear on the scene. In 1206 Peter and Raoul went as spies among the Albigenses. Count Raymond of Toulouse abased himself in 1207 before Peter of Castelnau and promised to extirpate the heretics he had defended. Dominec advised a crusade against the Albigenses (1208). The pope’s inquisitors tried, condemned, and punished offenders, inflicting the death penalty itself with the concurrence of the civil powers. How the crusade urged by Dominec was conducted will appear further along.
        4. The Inquisition was destined to become a permanent institution. The vigor and success of the Papal Legatine Inquisition assured this. The Fourth Lateran Council took the initial steps (1215). Innocent III presided. The synodal courts were given something of the character of inquisitorial tribunals. Synods were to be held in each province annually, and violations of the Lateran canons rigorously punished. “The condemned were to be left in the hands of the secular power, and their goods were to be confiscated. The secular powers were to be admonished and induced, and, should it prove necessary, were to be compelled to the utmost of their power to exterminate all who were pointed out as heretics by the church. Any prince declining thus to purge his land of heresy was to be excommunicated. If he persisted, complaint was to be made to the pope, who was then to absolve his vassals from allegiance and allow the country to be seized by Catholics who should exterminate the heretics. Those who joined in the crusade for the extermination of heretics were to have the same indulgence as the crusaders who went to the Holy Land” (ibid.). In the face of this inexpunable record how futile it is fro modern church apologists to pretend that Rome did not shed blood, was not responsible for the atrocities of the Inquisition! “The Council of Toulouse (1229) adopted a number of canons tending to give permanent character to the Inquisition as an institution” (ibid.). It made or indicated the machinery for questioning, convicting, and punishing. Heretics were to be excluded from medical practice; the houses in which they were found were to be razed to the ground; they were to be delivered to the archbishop, bishop, or local authorities; forfeiture of public rights could be removed only by a papal dispensation; any one who allowed a heretic to remain in his country, or who shielded him in the slightest degree, would forfeit his land, personal property, and official position; the local magistracy must join in the search for heretics; “men from the age of fourteen, and women from twelve, were to make oath and renew it every two years, that they would inform on heretics” (ibid.). This made every person above those ages a bloodhound to track to torture and death his or her dearest friends and relatives. Local councils added to these regulations, always in the direction of severity and injustice.
        5. The organic development of the Papal Inquisition proceeded rapidly. It was found that bishops, for various reasons, would not always enforce the cruel canons of the councils. So Gregory IX (1227-41) in August, 1231, put the Inquisition under the control of the Dominicans, an order especially created for the defense of the church against heresy. Dominican inquisitors were appointed for Aragon, Germany, and Austria (1232) and for Lombardy and Southern France (1233). They were independent of the bishops. The accused were not confronted with the witnesses against them. “Confession was wrung from them by torture. The torture of those suspected of heresy was sanctioned by Innocent IV (1252). The torture was at the beginning applied by the civil authorities, but as the requisite secrecy was impossible with this arrangement, the Inquisition subsequently took the matter into its own hands, under direction of Urban IV (1261-64) (ibid.). this form of Inquisition what is sometimes called the “ecclesiastico-political,” was established in a number of European states.
        6. The ecclisiastico-political Inquisition was established in Aragon in the fourteenth century. But this Inquisition was, in Spain, overshadowed by the later one originating in Castile. They differed somewhat, but the victims of both were heretics, not primarily political offenders in the case of the Inquisition of Castile, as is falsely asserted by church apologists. Nicholas Eymerich was the central inquisitor of the Aragon institution, and to him “we owe the ‘Directorium Inquisitorum,’ which is a voucher for the substantial unity of the spirit and method of the Inquisition under its two forms” (ibid.). Cardinal Mendoza, archbishop first of Seville, and later of Toledo, was the first to move for a permanent ecclesiastical tribunal for the extirpation of heresy. He incited Ferdinand and Isabella to ask the pope for an authorization for such a court. Sixtus IV issued a bull (Nov. 1, 1478) giving them authority “to appoint and dispose inquisitors, and the possess themselves of the property of the condemned for the royal treasury” (ibid.).