Ebook: The Inquisition

"Good popular history in a fast-paced narrative."
--Ian Thomson, 'Financial Times'.

Torture in custody, faking evidence, enforced betrayal of family and neighbours, and mass execution -- such things are the tools of murderous dictators and police states. But for hundreds of years they were also the tools of the Inquisitors of the Roman Catholic Church, used by them against heretics, Protestants and witches -- indeed, any group that appeared to threaten the papacy.

Here, from bestselling authors Michael Baigent and Richard Leigh, is the truth about one of the most horrifying and sinister organizations ever. Covering the entire history of the lnquisition -- from its beginnings in thirteenth-century France to its present-day incarnation as the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith -- it details both the Roman and Spanish inquisitions, covering, among other subjects, the career of the notorious Tomas de Torquemada, the mania of witch finding, the Inquisition as censor, and the shift in the Inquisition's role from 'purifying' the faith to protecting papal power.

"An incisive, challenging and often harrowing account of the subject, and a grim reminder of the adjacency of church and torture-chamber in so many periods of history."
--Charles Nicholl, 'Sunday Telegraph'.

Front Cover: St. Dominic and the Albigenses
by Pedro Berruguete in the Museo del Prado, Madrid.

First published by Viking 1999.
Published in Penguin Books 2000.