How did the Inquisition, in its several, institutionally and geographically very diverse instantiations, finance its corporate existence and its activities over the course of seven centuries? How did it acquire and administer the necessary financial resources, and how did it deal with cognate ideological issues such as usury, crypto-Judaism and slavery? What were the societal impacts of the financial operations of both the Inquisition and its associates ? What can be concluded in an unbiased manner as to the not-infrequent allegations of pecuniary mismanagement and, worse, of excessive profiteering and even unbridled venality when it came to the confiscation of the possessions of those accused of heresy? On a day-to-day basis, how did individual inquisitors, who were mostly Dominican or Franciscan friars, relate economically to the mendicant houses in which they resided and of whose communities they were members, and how did they relate to the diocesan and civic authorities in whose jurisdictions they operated and who often considered themselves entitled to a share of the inquisitors’ appropriations?

A very significant, initial response to this almost overwhelming, wide-ranging set of questions is provided by this volume, the second in the series Inquire proposed by the research centre Inquire (International Centre for Research on Inquisitions), sited in Bologna, and published in Rome by Viella. The work assembles twelve papers delivered at the Centre’s second annual conference, held in Bologna on 27–28 October 2022 and dedicated to ‘Inquisitions and money’. These papers (in Italian, English, Spanish and French) present up-to-date research by specialist scholars of the Inquisition, and it is worth noting that each one would certainly deserve to be the subject of a separate discussion.

Preceded by a lengthy introduction by Irene Bueno and Vincenzo Lavenia, the volume is divided into three parts. The first part, entitled ‘The finance of the tribunals’, assembles five contributions that investigate inquisitorial financial structures and consequent societal tensions in five areas of Europe from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth. Riccardo Parmeggiani deals with the legal implications and repercussions of the financial turmoil that affected the Inquisition in central and northern Italy in the fourteenth century. Martine Ostorero focuses on the varied aspects concerning the Inquisition disclosed by the ducal accounts in the northern part of the duchy of Savoy, such as the financial benefits accruing from the prosecution of alleged witches. Dennj Solera looks closely at both the clerical and, especially, the lay personnel of the Inquisition in Bologna. Jerònia Pons Pons and Juan Carpio Elias examine the economic impact of the repression of the conversos of the island of Mallorca during the second half of the seventeenth century. Daniel Norte Giebels turns to the Portuguese Inquisition, highlighting the role of confiscations as well as the continuing dependence of its budget on royal assistance during the opening years of the tribunal of Lisbon (1537–9).

The volume’s second part, entitled ‘Usury and wealth’, presents three essays that focus principally on the Inquisition’s preoccupation with the vexed issue of usury. John Arnold argues, on the basis of the examination of extant documentary sources concerning twelfth- to early fourteenth-century northern Italy and France, that inquisitors first identified usurious practices as falling within the scope of the prosecution of heresy at the time of the Albigensian crusade. Thereafter, however, usury was never the subject of more than occasional inquisitorial concern, which, rather than equating usury with heresy without further ado, tended to temper its attitude to it in line with the social expectations of the time. Riccardo Rosolino turns his attention to Spanish-dominated Sicily in the sixteenth century and discloses the controversies concerning the financial activities indulged in by some of the lay personnel of the Holy Office, such as the extension of credit and the purchase and collection of debt for the sake of profit – operations made legally possible by the privileges granted to the Inquisition’s associates (‘familiars’). David Armando moves forward to the nineteenth century and traces the evolving response of the Holy Office to perplexities, experienced well beyond the confines of Europe, concerning the moral status of conscience-challenging economic transactions at a time of nascent capitalism.

The final part of the volume, entitled ‘Inquisitions and the circulation of goods and money’, offers four thematically very diverse investigations that reveal the Inquisition’s geographically far-reaching presence from the early sixteenth century to the early nineteenth. Germano Maifreda examines the Inquisition’s protection of the customary burial rights of the Jewish community of Ancona in the early seventeenth century from the financial overreach of local diocesan authorities, while imposing its own financial demands upon that community. Rafael Benitez discusses the Inquisition’s economic entanglements with and dependence upon the Morisco community in the Iberian peninsula from the early sixteenth century until that community’s expulsion from Spain a hundred years later. Matteo Lazzari provides an initial foray into the vexed issue of the Inquisition’s attitude to slavery. He does so by considering the Inquisition’s employment and ownership, by confiscation or purchase, of African and Asian slaves in Mexico in the late sixteenth century. Maria Teresa Fattori’s contribution concludes the volume by furthering the discussion of the Holy Office and slavery. It traces the slowly evolving, ambiguous stance of the Holy Office until the final papal condemnation of slavery in 1834. Fattori shows that the Holy Office’s reluctance to oppose slavery outright, even after Pope Benedict XIV’s initial condemnation of the enslavement of Native Americans in 1741, was at least in part a response to doubts concerning the status of converted slaves and the possible utility of the practice of slavery in facilitating the Church’s missionary vocation.

It should be stressed that this very brief overview does not do justice to the wealth of new research, documented information and numerous well-argued insights proposed by this volume. It is an impressive collection that augurs well for the continuing series Inquire, which promises to be an invaluable contribution to Inquisition scholarship.