INNOCENTS, THE HOLY, FEAST OF, a festival celebrated in the Western Church on the 28th December and in the Eastern on the 29th, to commemorate the slaughter by Herod of the children at Bethlehem from two years old and under, and who have from the earliest times been included among the holy martyrs of the Church.

INNS OF COURT, are four voluntary societies—­Lincoln’s Inn, the Inner and the Middle Temple, and Gray’s Inn—­with whom rests the exclusive right to call men to the English bar; they provide lectures and hold examinations in law, and they have discretionary powers to refuse admission to the bar or to expel and disqualify persons of unsuitable character from it; each Inn possesses considerable property, a dining hall, library, and chapel, and is subject to the jurisdiction of an irresponsible, self-elective body of Benchers, who are usually judges or senior counsel; these societies originated in the 13th century, when the practice of law passed out of the hands of the clergy.

INNSBRUCK (23), on the Inn, at the head of the Brenner Pass, 100 m.  S. of Muenich; is the capital of the Austrian Tyrol, an ancient and beautiful town, rich in art treasures, with a university and manufactures of woollen cloth, glass ware, and stained glass.

INO, the daughter of Cadmus and Harmonia, the wife of Athamas, king of Thebes, who was changed into a sea-deity as she fled for refuge from her husband, who had gone raving mad and sought her life.

INOCULATION is the introduction of disease germs into the system, usually by puncture of the skin or hypodermic injection; many diseases so introduced assume a mild form, and render the subject not liable to the severe form.  Inoculation for smallpox, the virus being taken from actual smallpox pustules, was practised by the ancient Brahmans and by the Chinese 600 years before Christ, and its practice continued in the East.  It was introduced to this country from Turkey in 1717, and extensively practised until superseded by Jenner’s discovery of vaccination at the end of the century, and finally prohibited by law in 1840.  Inoculation has been found successful in the prevention of other diseases, notably anthrax, hydrophobia, and recently malaria.

INQUISITION, an ecclesiastical tribunal established in 1248 under Pope Innocent IV., and set up successively in Italy, Spain, Germany, and the S. of France, for the trial and punishment of heretics, of which that established in Spain achieved the greatest notoriety from the number of victims it sacrificed, and the remorseless tortures to which they were subjected, both when under examination to extort confession and after conviction.  The rigour of its action began to abate in the 17th century, but it was not till 1835, after frequent attempts to limit its power and suppress it, that it was abolished in Spain.  Napoleon suppressed it in France in 1808, and after an attempted revival from 1814 to 1820, its operations there came to an end.  ST. DOMINIC (q. v.) has the credit of having invented the institution by the zeal which animated him for the orthodoxy of the Church.