Inquisition

According to history.com, the Inquisition was a powerful office set up within the Catholic Church to root out and punish heresy throughout Europe and the Americas. Beginning in the 12th century and continuing for hundreds of years, the Inquisition is infamous for the severity of its tortures and its persecution of Jews and Muslims.

The Inquisition was essentially a theological court. There were three main inquisitions: the Medieval Inquisition (against the Albigensian heresy), the Spanish Inquisition (formed in the late 1400s) and the Roman Inquisition (later the Congregation of the Doctrine of the Faith).

During the height of the Spanish Inquisition, our Holy Mother St. Teresa of Avila joined the Carmelites at the Convent of the Incarnation in Ávila in 1536. Later in August 1562 she founded a new style of Carmelite community in Ávila as the native language had been banned by the Inquisition.

In 1563, at age 21, our Holy Father St. John of the Cross entered the Carmelite novitiate and later, because of his ideas, was sent to prison for a time by the Inquisition.