5 Questions for Nicole Reinhardt

By Manfred Sing

Fresh from the press is the edited volume “Inquisitions, Iconography, and Memory (13^th–19^th century).” Published in the series “Inquire – International Centre for Research on Inquisitions” by the Rome-based publisher Viella, it contains eleven essays and an introduction. The editors are Irene Bueno, Professor of Medieval History at the University of Bologna, Vincenzo Lavenia, Professor of Modern History at the University of Bologna, José Pedro Paiva, Professor at the University of Coimbra with a focus on the early modern Portuguese world, and Nicole Reinhardt, Director of the Leibniz Institute of European History (IEG) in Mainz. We asked Nicole Reinhardt five questions about the new book.

1. What was the initial impulse to explore this particular topic? Was there a moment while preparing or working on the publication that particularly moved you?

This is a collective volume, co-edited with the eminent Italian and Portuguese inquisition scholars Irene Bueno, Vincenzo Lavenia and José Pedro Paiva. It is part of a series initiated by the Inquire-Centre for Research on Inquisitions at the University of Bologna, who, since 2020, have organised thematic conferences on Inquisition history to bring together international experts and to explore innovative approaches in the field. Inquire conferences are organized with different partners. For instance, in 2024, the conference took place in the tiny Italian mountain village Triora, the so-called ‘Salem of Italy’, where a heritage centre Museo Triora commemorates the major witch-craze that unfolded there in 1588/89. Appropriately, the conference there focused on questions of witchcraft and magic.

The current volume, however, is linked to the third conference held in Coimbra in 2023 and dedicated to inquisitorial images and imaginaries, a fascinating, yet under-researched problem. For this conference, Inquire cooperated with the IEG and the Center for the History of Society and Culture at the University of Coimbra in Portugal. Although linked to the thematic focus of this encounter in Coimbra, the current volume is not a mere tome of conference proceedings. On the one hand, not all conference papers were included in the volume; on the other, scholars, who were not part of the conference, upon the request of the editorial team, have contributed original essays that speak to the problem we wanted to explore. All contributions, no matter whether they had earlier incarnations as conference presentations or not, have been thoroughly re-worked. The strong spirit of co-operation between the members of the editorial team and the authors was very inspiring. It was also fantastic to bring together and work with such an international group of authors from France, Italy, Spain, Portugal, the Czech Republic, Israel, and the US. All have been very generous and patient in responding to our queries and suggestions to create a coherent volume. I am also very happy that we as the IEG were able to co-operate in and support such a truly European and cross-period endeavour.

2. How are “Inquisitions”, “Iconography”, and “Memory” in the title of the book related to each other? Can you explain why you use the term “inquisitions” in the plural and what this is meant to indicate?

I’ll start with the end: We speak of “inquisitions” in the plural because institutionally speaking there was never, neither in terms of chronology nor in terms of geography, one single “Inquisition”. Originally, the word “inquisitio” refers to an innovative method of judicial investigation based on evidence and written proceedings to uncover and persecute heresy which emerged in the thirteenth century. Although delegated by the pope, throughout the Middle Ages, no one single centralized institution existed but only especially delegated inquisitors who operated within the territorially fragmented episcopal jurisdictions.

“Throughout the early modern period and until the abolition of the last tribunals in the 19^th century, we can speak of at least three different Inquisitions.”

In the early modern period, things changed: there was a stronger centralization, but even so, it is impossible to speak of one single Inquisition. The first centralized institution was introduced in Castile and Aragon in 1478, when the Catholic Kings Ferdinand of Aragon and Isabella of Castile requested a papal bull to create a special tribunal to investigate what may be considered a moral panic about the existence of large-scale heresy and apostasy among the so-called New Christians (converted Jews) and, to a lesser extent, the Moriscos (converted Muslims). This extraordinary new tribunal operated across the realm under supreme royal authority, largely disregarding ancient privileges or local powers, which was thoroughly shocking. The Portuguese Inquisition followed this model, but was introduced only in 1540. The centralized Papal Inquisition, finally, was only established in 1542. It covered the territories of the Papal States and, under certain conditions, other Italian territorial states such as Tuscany or Venice, but not Southern Italy, which was under the dominion of the Spanish crown with complex co-operative arrangements in Naples, while Sicily and Sardinia were subject to the Spanish branch.

Throughout the early modern period and until the abolition of the last tribunals in the 19^th century, we can therefore speak of at least three different Inquisitions: the Spanish and the Portuguese, whose power extended into the respective empires and across the globe from South America to Goa in India, and the Papal Inquisition in most parts of Italy. These three major branches at times pursued different agendas, and the Iberian powers rejected the idea that the Papal Inquisition was supreme or could act as a court of appeal. It is therefore obvious, that the images and the visual languages that emerged over the centuries in relation to these tribunals and their activities are quite varied. Yet when it comes to how the Inquisition is remembered, the Iberian Auto da Fé, which essentially consists in the public burning of the image – if not as well the body – of the condemned, still looms large in everybody’s minds. Yet such public displays did not exist for the Papal Inquisition!

There is also a different visibility in terms of the location of the Holy Office in urban centres: in Portugal and Spain the tribunals mostly resided in purpose-built palaces; by contrast in Italy, except for the headquarters of the Holy Office in Rome, in prolongation of the medieval tradition, local tribunals remained within the walls of the Dominican and Franciscan convents and hence are nowadays far less immediately recognizable as such for modern onlookers.

3. What surprised you? Did your view of the subject change while you were working on the publication of the book?

Basically, how much and how little we know at the same time. Our volume explores a wide range of sources from the Middle Ages to the 19^th century: book illustrations, portraits, tombs, frescoes of inquisitorial palaces, prison graffiti as well as literary tropes, the interaction between text and image, or how travel writing perpetuated and shaped the memory and image of “the Inquisition” across Europe and beyond. One essay also examines the inquisitorial concern with possible heretical offences towards images, not so much through obvious iconoclasm, but the troublesome lack of veneration or potential hazard of the heretical gaze.

One big take-away point for me as an early modernist was that I become more aware of the continued use of inquisitorial images to wage the culture wars of the nineteenth century. There are many ways in which the question of images intersects in these essays with the history and historiography of the Inquisition, and the authors have unearthed so many overlooked sources. And yet it seems that we have barely scratched the surface. So much is still to be more systematically explored and mapped, such as the architecture and iconographies of the court buildings; the inquisitors’ portraits and tombs, their art collections, but also to what extent images could be censored or object of investigation. The visual strategies of the tribunals and inquisitors across the former Iberian empires, which we could not cover in this volume, undoubtedly also deserve more attention.

The volume charts some avenues for further research, not only for Europe, and it also offers an extraordinarily rich apparatus of colour illustrations of hitherto unknown or unexplored visual sources, which can be useful also to sharpen our eye, to look for more, and to compare!

4. What kind of story does the book tell? Is there a happy ending?

As is the nature of a collective volume, it does not tell one story, but brings together a range of perspectives on a problem. In this case, it is a problem of very longue durée, in which there are many time-loops, i.e. recurring images that were re-adapted and deployed in new contexts and often to a new purpose since the Middle Ages. Images can be treacherous and misleading, too, and yet they remain valuable, albeit challenging historical sources.

It is not straightforward to identify or reconstruct the perspectives of the victims of the Holy Office, or, importantly, of the bystanders and onlookers of the highly dramatic displays of inquisitorial power. Some of the contributions in the volume try to go there and to suggest how we might detect signs of subversion or empathy with the victims.

There is another ambivalence: The abolition of the Inquisitions since the end of the eighteenth century was obviously a positive development. If you want that’s your “happy ending”, although the institution and some of its iconic moments continue to be “mis-remembered” to this day. Yet with abolition also often came the destruction of inquisitorial archives, buildings, and especially of imagery that projected the power of the institution, which is why a lot has been lost and effaced. Part of what this volume does is to suggest how and where to look to recover visual sources that were removed or destroyed or forgotten and how to complement written evidence by paying attention to the question of images.

“I hope that the volume stimulates reflection on the relationship between images of power and the power of images.”

5. What do you hope readers will take away from reading the book? Do you have a favourite anecdote?

I hope that the volume stimulates reflection on the relationship between images of power and the power of images, and how historians use and read visual sources. I hope it raises questions as to how we tell the history of an institution which has been understandably controversial.

Images may tell stories that are not necessarily supported by the facts; and yet images can become so iconic that they linger on in historical memory all the same, even if there is little factual evidence. They become part of what people expect to see and find when they come to the topic.

We might also ask how to tell the many stories and histories of the people caught up in the history of the inquisitorial tribunals beyond a “Disneyland of torture”-version that tends to grab people’s attention and the news headlines. Instead of anecdotes, I would like people to explore not only the other volumes in the series, such as the first one on current research trends in the field published in 2023, or the second on money and finances which came out earlier in 2025, but also the fantastic website Inquire | INTERNATIONAL CENTRE FOR RESEARCH ON INQUISITIONS set up by the team at the University of Bologna.

It is a model of its kind when it comes to making the results of publicly funded research available to a wider audience. It offers a host of links to resources for further research for students and advanced scholars such as databases of primary sources, secondary literature, and images. New rubrics on heritage sites and cinema are in the planning and will undoubtedly be fascinating. I believe that websites as these are invaluable in the current circumstances to provide reliable tools for scholars and the interested public to resist and counter “fake news” and many other sources of “bad history”.

Dear Nicole, thank you very much for your answers.

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The questions were posed by Manfred Sing, research coordinator at the IEG.

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Header image: Nicole Reinhardt. © IEG Mainz, photographer: Barbara Mainz.

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