Inquisition

Inquisition (pronounced in-kwuh-zish-uhn)

(1) An official investigation, especially one of a political or religious nature, historically characterized by lack of regard for individual rights, prejudice on the part of the examiners, and recklessly cruel punishments.

(2) In informal use, harsh, difficult, or prolonged questioning.

(3) The act of inquiring; inquiry; research; an inquest; questioning.

(4) An investigation or process of inquiry, especially a judicial or official inquiry.

(5) In technical use, the finding of a jury, especially such a finding under a writ of inquiry.

(6) Historically, a judicial institution (1232–1820) of the Roman Catholic Church, founded to discover and suppress heresy.

1350–1400: From the Middle English inquisicioun & inquisicion, from the twelfth century Old French inquisicion (inquiry, investigation (inquisition in modern French)), from the Latin inquisitionem (the nominative form in Legal Latin was inquīsītiō) (a seeking of grounds for accusation; a searching into, legal examination) the noun of action from past participle stem of inquirere.  The construct was inquīsīt(us) (past participle of inquīrere (to inquire)) + iōn.  The –ion suffix was from the Middle English -ioun, from the Old French -ion, from the Latin -iō (genitive -iōnis).  It was appended to a perfect passive participle to form a noun of action or process, or the result of an action or process.  The word is now most often used, sometime critically, to describe bodies such as royal commissions which are by nature inquisitorial.  Inquisition, inquisitionist & inquisitor are nouns and inquisitorial & inquisitional are adjectives; the noun plural is inquisitions.

The noun inquisitor dates from the early fifteenth century and was the title of the inspector (one who makes inquiries), from the Anglo-French inquisitour, from either the Old French inquisiteur or directly from the Latin inquisitor (searcher, examiner; a legal investigator, collector of evidence), the agent noun from the Latin inquirere.  In the Church, it was the formal title of an officer of the Inquisition from the 1540s.  The feminine forms were inquisitress (1727) & inquisitrix (1825).  In the Church, the role (though not the title) of inquisitor dates from 382, but the ecclesiastical court charged with finding, suppressing and punishing heretics wasn’t formed as an institutionalized standing body until appointments were made by Pope Innocent III (1161–1216; pope 1198-1216) early in the thirteenth century to what was first called the Congregation of the Holy Office.  The English word inquisition began to be used in this sense (and with a capital initial letter) during the 1490s and in the popular imagination has long most been associated with office's reorganization (1478-1483) in Spain, where it fell under the control of the state as what is commonly called the Spanish Inquisition, noted especially for its obsessional secrecy, the severity of its methods of torture and the numbers burned at the stake.

Principle tortures of the Inquisition, woodcut by unknown artist, printed in History of the Inquisition (1850) by Charles H Davie.

Technically, the Inquisition was a group of institutions within the system of the Catholic Church which interacted to varying degrees with the judicial and investigatory offices of secular authorities and it began significantly to grow in response to the Protestant Reformation and the Catholic Counter-Reformation.  It expanded from its French origins to other European countries, most famously in the form of the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions, both of which operated as inquisitorial courts throughout their empires in Africa, Asia, and the Americas.  In 1808, Napoleon conquered Spain and ordered the Inquisition there to be abolished although after Napoleon Bonaparte’s (1769–1821; leader of the French Republic 1799-1804 & Emperor of the French from 1804-1814 & 1815) defeat in 1814, Ferdinand VII (1784–1833; King of Spain 1808 & 1813-1833) attempted a revival but was prevented by the French government upon which his tenuous hold on the throne depended.  With the exception of the Papal States, the institution of the Inquisition was defunct by 1834, surviving only in the Roman Curia, renamed in 1908 the Supreme Sacred Congregation of the Holy Office and known since 1965 as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith (CDF).

The Inquisitor and a recalcitrant.

Except among historians and Church scholars, all of who have their own favourites, the best known Inquisitor is doubtlessly Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger (1927-2022; the future Pope Benedict XVI, pope 2005-2013, pope emeritus 2013-2022), appointed by Pope Saint John Paul II (1920–2005; pope 1978-2005) to the office of Prefect (the new (touchy-feely) brand-name for the Inquisitor) of the CDF.  The quarter-century Benedict spent as Inquisitor was both an interesting prelude to his still under-estimated pontificate and the just reward for his abandonment of the youthful indiscretion that was his enthusiasm for reform and change in the Church.  He’d been hopeful, optimistic even, about the possibilities for modernization offered by the Second Vatican Council (Vatican II 1962-1965) but having witnessed the social convulsions and the riots across Europe in 1968, which at some moments seemed to verge on revolution, he became disturbed at the effect on youth and the challenge to Church teachings.  He was then the ideal Inquisitor with which the Church could enter the third millennium and updated the philosophical doctrine under which he’d been trained, realizing the great enemies of the Church were no longer communism, homosexuality & Freemasonry but were now Islam, homosexuality & Freemasonry.  Unfortunately, his time as Inquisitor coincided with the need to deal with distasteful, worldly matters rather than the heresy and fine theological points in which he’d more happily have allowed himself to become immersed.  Regrettably too, the powers of the CDF were more limited than in medieval times and a defrocking (laicization) was the most extreme punishment he was able to recommend, the last hanging by the Inquisition being a Spanish schoolmaster in 1826, the last burning at the stake seventy years earlier.