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Inquisition

Inquisition

42 9.1
A church court that looks into and punishes people for their religious beliefs
  • noun
  • /ˌɪnkwɪˈzɪʃən/
  • Literature
translation icon : Inquisición
  • The Inquisition was notorious for punishing those accused of heresy during the Middle Ages.
  • Spanish Inquisition
  • confessions of the Inquisition
  • heretics of the Inquisition

And in the story he comes in the time of the Inquisition in Spain.

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Examples

  • Even under the Inquisition, confessions came to an end.

  • And then when the Inquisition took hold, they, their descendants who are still very small, they left Spain, they went to the New World.

  • And in the story he comes in the time of the Inquisition in Spain.

  • Behind lay the Inquisition, of course, only for Jews so far, but who could indeed tell?

    Fiction book (1992)
  • the Inquisition considers it a vital piece of evidence!

  • Their cases are no proof that the Inquisition crushed Spanish literature.

    Academic text (1996)
  • Those who remained became the Inquisition's next targets.

  • Copernicus was arrested as a heretic by the Inquisition and forced to recant.

    Academic text (2000)
  • The Spanish Inquisition had made belief in pre-Columbian contact a heresy punishable by burning.

    Fiction book (1999)
  • Eighty to ninety percent of the victims of the Inquisition were women (Walker, 1985).

    Academic text (1990)

Compounds

A court set up by the Spanish kings to find and punish people for not following Catholic beliefs

A court set up by the Catholic Church in Italy in 1542 to punish people for new religious ideas

A Roman Catholic church group that judged people for wrong religious beliefs in Italy from 1542

Surface Forms

Inquisition singular
Inquisitions plural

Morphology

Inquisition = inquiry (semi-transparent) = inquisit + ion

Formally built from the same root as 'inquiry'/'inquire' by suffixation, but the historical, institutional sense 'a tribunal for heresy' is specialized and not fully predictable from the base.

Etymology

The word Inquisition comes from Latin parts in- ('in') and quaerere ('to seek' or 'to ask'), so it originally meant a formal search or 'questioning'. That's why the historical Inquisition was a church-run, often harsh investigation into people's beliefs.