The Inquisitor’s Handbook (Copilacion Instructiones Sancta Inquisicion)

The Inquisitor’s Handbook , a translation of a 1537 compilation of rules for inquisitorial personnel, introduces today’s reader to the Spanish Inquisition in the same way a sixteenth-century inquisitor would have been introduced to his duties. Its wide-ranging directives include protocol for interrogations, procedures for dealing with runaway heretics, and policies for the treatment of the slaves and orphans of those condemned. A thorough introduction sets the work in its historical context and charts the development of the
handbook ‘s regulations throughout the formative decades that followed the Inquisition’s founding in Spain. Rather than a well-oiled machine, the Inquisition revealed in these procedural documents is one in which the monarchs, Fernando and Isabel, struggle repeatedly to curb graft and bribes, while the Inquisitor General Torquemada endeavours to keep the abuse of torture in check. Throughout the translation, helpful footnotes explain the rationale behind various rules, citing particular cases in order to illustrate how certain mandates were applied or contravened in practice.