INQUISITION, THE. The name given to the ecclesiasti cal jurisdiction dealing both in the middle ages and in later times with the detection and punishment of heretics and all per sons guilty of any offence against Catholic orthodoxy. (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry.) It is incorrect to say that the Inquisition made its appearance in the 13th century complete in all its prin ciples and organs. It was the result of, or rather one step in, a process of evolution, the beginnings of which are to be traced back to the fourth century at least.
During the first three centuries of the Church there is no trace of any official persecution, and the earlier Fathers, especially Origen and Lactantius, reject the idea of it. Constantine, by the edict of Milan (313), inaugurated an era of official tolerance, but from the time of Valentinian I. and Theodosius I. onwards, laws against heretics began to appear, and increased with astonishing regularity and rapidity. Heretics are subjected to exile or confiscation, disqualified from inheriting property, and even, in the case of a few groups of Manichaeans and Donatists, condemned to death; but it should be noticed that these penalties apply only to the outward manifestations of heresy, and not, as in the middle ages, to crimes of conscience. Within the Church, St. Optatus alone (De schismate Donatistarum, lib. iii. cap. iii.) approved of this violent repression of the Donatist heresy; St. Augustine only admitted a temperata severitas, such as scourging, fines or exile, and at the end of the 4th century the condemnation of the Spanish heretic Priscillian, who was put to death in 385 by order of the emperor Maximus, gave rise to a keen controversy. St. Martin of Tours, St. Ambrose and St. Leo vigorously attacked the Spanish bishops who had obtained the condemnation of Priscillian. St. John Chrysostom considered that a heretic should be deprived of the liberty of speech and that assemblies organized by heretics should be dissolved, but declared that "to put a heretic to death would be to introduce upon earth an inexpiable crime." The Middle Ages.—From the 6th to the 9th century the heterodox, with the exception of the Manichaean sects in cer tain places, were hardly subjected to persecution. They were, moreover, rare and generally isolated, for groups of sectaries only began to appear to any extent at the time of the earliest appear ances of Catharism. But from the latter part of the loth century until the beginnings of the 12th there were numerous executions of heretics, either by burning or strangling, in France, Italy, the Empire and England; and during this period it is not easy to determine what part was taken by the Church and its bishops and doctors in this series of executions. In many cases the people, supported by the crown, were responsible for the death of the heretics; the historians give only the faintest indications of any direct intervention of the clergy, except perhaps for the examina tion of doctrine. The theory in these matters was at first as uncertain as the practice; in the 11th century one bishop only, Theodwin of Liege (d. 1075), affirms the necessity for the punish ment of heretics by the secular arm (1050). His predecessor, Wazo, bishop of Liege (1041-44), had expressly condemned any capital punishment and advised the bishop of Chalons to resort to peaceful conversion. In the I2th century Peter the Can tor' protested against the death penalty, admitting at the most imprisonment; and in dealing with the heretics of Cologne, St. Bernard, who cannot be accused of leniency where heterodoxy was concerned, recommended pacific refutation, followed by excommunication or prison, but never the death penalty (see
