Dr. Thomas Madden

There's nothing more we can do for you.

And in fact, the term that the Inquisition would use was called relaxing to the secular arm.

And so they would just, okay, we're what's preserving you.

If you don't want our help, we get out of the way.

You go over there.

There's the judge waiting for you.

He's stoking the flames and ready to burn you at the stake.

So yeah, that was the purpose of the Inquisition.

Later on, when the Dominicans became part of the Inquisition, it became a little bit more organized.

Then frequently, it was often seen as a kind of way of creating a kind of spiritual hygiene.

In fact, frequently people in towns, if the Dominicans arrived in their town, now we're talking about the medieval Inquisition, not the Spanish Inquisition.

That's later and different.

But the medieval Inquisition, if the Dominican Inquisitors came to town, they would go through a whole process.

And it was kind of, it was conceived as hygienic.

It was a way of getting everyone together, praying together, telling everyone, if you know somebody who is confused about something or even real heretics, come and talk to us.

And then they would investigate all of that.

And then once they had found out if anyone was a heretic and if they wanted to come back to the church and all the rest of it, then there'd be big celebrations in which they would celebrate the health of the community.

The only time that we have any evidence of communities rising up against inquisitors is when they didn't do their job.

When they came and they were just lazy.

They came into town and they just went through the motions and never really did anything.