In this penetrating study of the Inquisition, Elphège Vacandard delves into the Catholic Church's dark past. "The history of the Inquisition is still to be written. It is not our purpose to attempt it; our ambition is more modest. But we wish to picture this institution in its historical setting, to show how it originated, and especially to indicate its relation to the Church's notion of the coercive power prevalent in the Middle Ages. For as [Henry Charles] Lea [author of three large volumes entitled "A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages" published in 1888] himself says: "The Inquisition was not an organization arbitrarily devised and imposed upon the judicial system of Christendom by the ambition or fanaticism of the Church. It was rather a natural-one may almost say an inevitable-evolution of the forces at work in the thirteenth century, and no one can rightly appreciate the process of its development and the results of its activity, without a somewhat minute consideration of the factors controlling the minds and souls of men during the ages which laid the foundation of modern civilization." We undertake this study in a spirit of absolute honesty and sincerity. The subject is undoubtedly a most delicate one. But no consideration whatever should prevent our studying it from every possible viewpoint."
