in the church of Rome, a tribunal in several Roman Catholic countries, erected by the popes for the examination and punishment of heretics.

This court was founded in the 12th century by father Dominic and his followers, who were sent by Pope Innocent III. with orders to excite the Catholic princes and people to extirpate heretics, to search into their number and quality, and to transmit a faithful account thereof to Rome. Hence they were called inquisitors; and this gave birth to the formidable tribunal of the inquisition, which was received in all Italy and the dominions of Spain, except the kingdom of Naples and the Low Countries.

This diabolical tribunal takes cognizance of herey, Judaism, Mahometanism, Sodomy, and polygamy; and the people stand in so much fear of it, that parents deliver up their children, husbands their wives, and masters their servants, to its officers, without daring in the least to murmur. The prisoners are kept for a long time, till they themselves turn their own accusers, and declare the cause of their imprisonment; for they are neither told their crime nor confronted with witnesses. As soon as they are imprisoned, their friends go into mourning, and speak of them as dead, not daring to solicit their pardon, lest they should be brought in as accomplices. When there is no shadow of proof against the pretended criminal, he is discharged, after suffering the most cruel tortures, a tedious and dreadful imprisonment, and the loss of the greatest part of his effects. The sentence against the prisoners is pronounced publicly, and with extraordinary solemnity. In Portugal, they erect a theatre capable of holding 3000 persons; in which they place a rich altar, and raise seats on each side in the form of an amphitheatre. There the prisoners are placed; and over-against them is a high chair, whither they are called, one by one, to hear their doom, from one of the inquisitors.

These unhappy people know what they are to suffer by the clothes they wear that day. Those who appear in their own clothes are discharged upon payment of a fine: those who have a Santo Benito, or strict yellow coat without sleeves, charged with St Andrew's cross, have their lives, but forfeit all their effects: those who have the resemblance of flames, made of red serge, sewed upon their Santo Benito, without any cross, are pardoned, but threatened to be burnt if ever they relapse: but those who, besides these flames, have on their Santo Benito their own picture, surrounded with figures of devils, are condemned to expire in the flames. The inquisitors, who are ecclesiastics, do not pronounce the sentence of death; but form and read an act, in which they say, that the criminal being convicted of such a crime, by his own confession, is with much reluctance delivered to the secular power to be punished according to his demerits: and this writing they give to the seven judges who attend at the right side of the altar, who immediately pass sentence. For the conclusion of this horrid scene, see Act of Faith.