The long history of the Inquisition divides easily into two major parts: its creation by the medieval papacy in the early thirteenth century, and its transformation between 1478 and 1542 into permanent governmental bureaucracies—the Spanish, Portuguese, and Roman Inquisitions, all of which endured into the nineteenth century. What unites both phases is the struggle of the Roman church to suppress various forms of heresy, which ecclesiastical authorities believed posed serious threats to proper worship in Christian communities. It is worth stressing that, for more than five centuries, the average European Christian approved of the activities of the Inquisitions. Inquisitions had no coercive powers and depended upon the cooperation of local people to denounce heretics and upon local secular authorities to punish them. Interestingly, the inquisitors never composed written justifications for their activities because their basic purpose seemed self-evidently beneficial...