38. What was the Inquisition, and how did it function?

³⁸ The next step that the church took was to establish the Inquisition, a tribunal set up to suppress heresy. Already a spirit of intolerance possessed the people, who were superstitious and all too willing to lynch and murder “heretics.” The conditions in the 13th century lent themselves to the abuse of power by the church. However, “heretics condemned by the Church were to be delivered to the ‘secular arm’​—the local authorities—​and burned to death.” (The Age of Faith) By leaving the actual executions to the secular authorities, the church would ostensibly be free of bloodguilt. The Inquisition started an era of religious persecution that resulted in abuses, false and anonymous denunciations, murder, robbery, torture, and the slow death of thousands who dared to believe differently from the church. Freedom of religious expression was stifled.

[Pictures on page 283]

Tomás de Torquemada, Dominican monk, led the cruel Spanish Inquisition, which used implements of torture to extract confessions