's judgment, despite evident signs of intellectual
honesty, is not to be trusted. Honest he may be, but impartial never.
His pen too often gives way to his prejudices and his hatred of the
Catholic Church. His critical judgment is sometimes gravely at
fault.[1]

[1] The reader may gather our estimate of this work from the various
criticisms we will pass upon it in the course of this study.

Tanon, the president of the Court of Cassation, has proved far more
impartial in his _Histoire des Tribunaux de l'Inquisition en
France._[1] This is evidently the work of a scholar, who possesses a
very wide and accurate grasp of ecclesiastical legislation. He is
deeply versed in the secrets of both the canon and the civil law.
However, we must remember that his scope is limited. He has of set
purpose omitted everything that happened outside of France. Besides
he is more concerned with the legal than with the theological aspect
of the Inquisition.

[1] Paris, 1893.

On the whole, the history of the Inquisition is still to be written.
It is not our purpose to attempt it; our ambition is more modest. But
we wish to picture this institution in its historical setting, to
show how it originated, and especially to indicate its relation to
the Church's notion of the coercive power prevalent in the Middle
Ages. For, as Lea himself says: "The Inquisition was not an
organization arbitrarily devised and imposed upon the judicial system
of Christendom by the ambition or fanaticism of the Church. It was
rather a natural--one may almost say an inevitable--evolution of the
forces at work in the thirteenth century, and no one can rightly
appreciate the process of its development and the results of its
activity, without a somewhat minute consideration of the factors
controlling the minds and souls of men during the ages which laid the
foundation of modern civilization."[1]

[1] Preface, p. iii.

We must also go back further than the thirteenth century and
ascertain how the coercive power which the Church finally confided to
the Inquisition developed from the beginning. Such is the purpose of
the present work. It is both a critical and an historical study. We
intend to record first everything that relates to the suppression of
heresy, from the origin of Christianity up to the Renaissance; then
we will see whether the attitude of the Church toward heretics can
not only be explained, but defended.

We undertake this study in a spirit of absolu