WORK IN PROGRESS - if anyone wants to collaborate or take this off my hands then by all means post at my Personal Space or at the bottom of the entry.

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!

- Michael Palin in the famous Monty Python sketch.

The Inquisition has been around in some form or other since Roman times. In Roman law, the process of 'inquiry' was at the heart of searching for evidence. This took on a religious bent when Emperor Constantine made Christianity the state religion of the Roman Empire. The method was similar, but new, brutal methods were employed to deal with the heretics who went against the word of the suddenly very powerful religion. In the Middle Ages the Cathars of southern France rose to prominence, and their belief in dualism (the coexistence of two mutually opposed principles, one good and one evil) spread across that part of Europe. As a consequence an Office of Inquisition was set up by the Papal authorities. In the end Pope Innocent III declared a Crusade which destroyed the foundations of Cathar power.

Introducing: Spain

Of course, what we now known as Spain didn't exist then. The Iberian peninsula was divided between