In early modern Europe, the Holy Office – inquisitio haereticae pravitatis (inquisition into heretical wickedness) – stood for a myth in which, as Dostoevsky points out in the Grand Inquisitor episode of The Brothers Karamazov, freedom and fear were two sides of the same coin. In his 1880 novel the great Russian writer describes an encounter between Jesus and the inquisitor in which he draws attention to the great dilemma of liberty and authority. According to the inquisitor, human beings, frightened by the prospect of freedom, prefer to seek refuge in a world in which duties and responsibilities are clearly defined. The kind of freedom Christianity had offered the world is rejected. In this narrative Dostoevsky, with great refinement, lays bare one of the most vital ethical and political questions facing modern culture, the relationship between freedom and power.

The inquisition thus stands for a myth: a mask that can only be lifted away from it with a great deal of care. For it had been crafted and constructed over the course of centuries during which fear, threats and efforts to defend the Holy Office were continuously being deployed by both its critics and supporters. Hostile polemical tracts and apologetic vindications influence our analysis and risk misleading us.

Already at the time of the inquisition's foundation a debate arose over its legitimacy. The existence of heresies had been a constant feature of Christianity but it was not until 1184, with the bull Ad abolendam, that pope Lucius III adopted a policy of eliminating heretics outright and summoning the faithful to fight against heresy. But before the birth of the inquisition there had been a long gestation period during which the institution's spiritual and political premises were gradually hammered out. The very idea of an inquisition raises the question of whether faith should be defended and propagated only by means of persuasion or whether coercion is permissible; both positions have a basis in Scripture. Gradually the tribunal came to be presented as ‘protection of the faith’, though in some circles the suspicion circulated that it had been devised for political purposes, especially in the Italian peninsula. This essay examines some important works published in the sixteenth century, and uses them as the basis for a general interpretative approach that will help us to look beyond both the propaganda put out against the Catholic Church and the responses of its apologists.