If one were inclined to doubt the importance of this book, any such doubt should be dispelled by the conclusions stated concisely in the epilogue: that after 1474 the inquisitorial office in northern Italy came increasingly into the hands of the Observant Congregation of Lombardy; that this meant a gradual shift from the “often lackadaisical conventual inquisitor” (209) to a more professional and zealous office-holder; that the formation of the Roman Inquisition or Holy Office in the mid-sixteenth century meant an extension through Italy of patterns already established by Observant inquisitors; and that continuity from those Observant inquisitors of the Renaissance and those of the Roman Inquisition is greater than has been recognized—indeed, the first commissary of the Holy Office, Michele Ghislieri da Alessandria, had distinguished himself brilliantly as a representative of the inquisitorial type that had emerged from the Congregation of Lombardy.

The book can be placed in more than one context, but in his preface Tavuzzi mentions the work of Edward Peters (Inquisition [New York: Free Press, 1988]) and an article of mine (“The office of inquisition and medieval heresy: the transition from personal to institutional jurisdiction,” Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 [1995], 36–61). In that article I argued that the term officium inquisitionis referred to a function rather than an institutional office, that medieval inquisition was not highly organized (even in many cases at the regional and local level), and that we need careful examination that distinguishes carefully between exceptional and typical cases so that “we can begin to trace the transition from personal to institutional jurisdiction” (39). Whatever else inspired Tavuzzi to undertake his research, he was aware of the challenge I had laid down, and what he has delivered is a thorough and definitive response to my question, focusing on the region of Europe that is most important for this analysis. The answer he gives, however, shifts the terms of the discussion: it is not so much institutional structure that emerges as important, but motivation. Inquisitorial action prior to the mid-sixteenth century remained largely in the hands of individual inquisitors, who kept careful records, hired notaries and often appointed vicars, sometimes were supported by secular rulers, generally had domus inquisitionis within their friaries at their disposal, and carried out their responsibilities with greater or lesser regularity, with no constant oversight to keep them focused on their job. But all that was as true of the “often lackadaisical conventual inquisitor” as of the newly professionalized Observant. The change was not fundamentally one in institutional structure but rather one in level of zeal and discipline.

Tavuzzi's conclusions are supported by detailed examination of procedures for appointment and regulation of inquisitors and especially by painstaking reconstruction of the inquisitors' careers, including their education and their administrative work within the Dominican order. The book is rich in prosopography, which is needed to make the argument.

The structure of the book makes clear what Tavuzzi finds important. Chapter 1 deals with the nuts and bolts of appointment, tenure, dismissal, territory, and so forth, concluding with a general profile and an argument that Renaissance inquisitors were (or could be) men of Renaissance culture. Chapter 2 details the distinction between Conventuals and Observants. Chapter 3 examines the inquisitors as administrators, courtiers, and academics; the first and third of these roles were routine, while the second was less frequent but could be important and interesting in the particular case. Chapter 4 deals with inquisitorial action against particular minorities, the Waldensians and the Jews or Judaizers; what a more conventional history of inquisition might have taken as its main focus is here relegated to a chapter. And chapter 5 deals with inquisitors as witch-hunters.

Problems arise in chapter 5. At the end of that chapter, the author who has been painstakingly cautious through most of the book addresses the question whether there was a sect of witches, and here his prose is a tissue of conjectures: “It is possible,” “It is also possible to speculate,” “It is possible to hypothesize,” “It is possible to conjecture,” and “there is nothing intrinsically impossible” (204–7). All this in support of a supposition that some people imagined they were witches, shared their subjective experience, used children's bodies for bewitchment, and desecrated the host. The serious counterarguments are not taken seriously. It remains the case that when we have basis for distinguishing the voice of the accuser from the voice of the inquisitor those voices say very different things. To recognize that distinction is not to posit an impenetrable divide between popular and elite culture; it is merely to recognize that interrogatories and torture changed the nature of the testimony. That confessions of diabolical witchcraft came from judicial coercion is not conjecture. For this there is evidence, and the evidence cannot be ignored. To be sure, the documentary foundation for chapter 5 is impressively ample; building in part on recent publication, Tavuzzi has found far more trials than I was aware of in my own early work on witchcraft. But he assumes too lightly that the trials in question are all for diabolical witchcraft, he takes fragmentary reports in the Malleus maleficarum as seriously as judicial documents, and even when the evidence points to difference between Vaudois patterns of confession and Italian patterns, he elides these differences.

Still, apart from chapter 5 the evidence is meticulously weighed and the conclusions are solid. Even chapter 5, apart from its dubious interpretations, presents a wealth of material that can only be helpful for further work in the field.