Rating: 
Summary: lots of information but poorly presented
Review: This book's single best aspect is that it doesn't deal with just the Spanish Inquisition, as so many others do. Peters shows us that the Spanish Inquisition didn't spring into existence fully formed. Towards that end Peters starts with an overview of the evolution of Roman and Latin law theory and then discusses the medieval inquisitions that formed the basis of the more infamous Spanish Inquisition. Peters also discusses the Italian Inquisitions, a welcome addition.Peters attemps to show the inquisitions in the context of religious and secular realities of the time. Peters contention is that the inquisitions were not especially notable in either the kinds of crimes they prosecuted, the ways they prosecuted them, and the severity of punishments meted out. He is not wholly successful in this. Part of the problem is that the book is rather poorly structured. While each individual sentence and paragraph is written well enough, there often seem to be little in the way of guiding purpose forming everything into a coherent whole. This often makes it difficult to understand what, if any, point the author is trying to make. There are several instances where the author clearly expects the reader to understand a reference -- Languedoc stands out in my memory -- without adequately explaining the relevance. At other points Peters will eventually explain the relevance, but dozens of pages after he has originally made the reference. This can make for frustrating reading. Another problem is that the author's main contention is that the inquisitions need to be examined in relation to the efforts of other judicial bodies of the time. Unfortunately, Peters rarely offers much other than saying essentially "others were even worse". After reading both this and Henry Kamen's The Spanish Inquisition I found some discrepancies that make me question Peters' bias. For instance on p.94 Peters says that "...the Spanish Inquisition was not permitted to sentence anyone to death." Kamen on p.202-3 offers a slightly different take, "[The secular authorities] were obliged to carry out the sentence of blood which the Holy Office was forbidden by law to carry out. In all this there was no pretence that the Inquisition was not the body directly and fully responsible for the deaths that occurred." Peters' statement comes across as a whitewashing of responsibility. There are several other points on which Kamen contradicts Peters. As Kamen was a much better book I would recommend reading it before Peters', especially given my concerns about Peters' bias.
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