The Inquisition and Intolerance

Abstract: The early Church also felt obliged to guard and preserve the faith but was content to proscribe heterodox doctrines or practices through condemnations of bishops and councils, and, on occasion, excommunicate persons or communities till they retracted their heresies. The period of the Inquisition generally represents that portion of history during which the Church’s use of coercive methods to extract confessions from heretics reached intolerable limits. Torture and even death became part of the weaponry to which the Inquisition had recourse, at least indirectly.