Inquisition - An investigation or inquiry of an official or judicial nature; in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, the Catholic church conducted rigorous tribunals of Inquisition to identify and suppress heresy and punish heretics. These were especially severe in Spain.

A former tribunal of the Roman Catholic Church (1232-1820) created to discover and suppress heresy.

The official persecution of heresy by special ecclesiastical courts; formally constituted by the papacy in the 13th century.