All Historic Inquisitions of the Catholic Church

The historic inquisitions of the Catholic Church were a series of formal ecclesiastical tribunals established in different kingdoms and periods to investigate and prosecute heresy and other offenses against orthodox belief. Distinct national and colonial bodies grew out of this medieval papal model: the Spanish Inquisition, administered by the Spanish crown rather than directly by Rome; the Portuguese Inquisition, built on a similar royal model; the Roman Inquisition, the Holy See own central tribunal, best known for the trial of Galileo; the Mexican Inquisition, which extended Spanish inquisitorial authority into New Spain; and the Goa Inquisition, which extended Portuguese inquisitorial authority into Portuguese India. Each body used imprisonment, interrogation, and in a minority of cases execution to enforce religious conformity within its own jurisdiction, a pattern documented across contemporary and modern historical accounts of all five tribunals.