L’Inquisition a-t-elle été perçue comme un abus au Moyen Âge ?

Our contemporaries’ moral sense makes it a principle to condemn the inquisition as a crime. But in the Middle Ages only a few isolated thinkers, inspired by the sole Gospel, had the same conviction. They were not so much opposed to the stake penalty as to its management by the Church. Being sentenced to the stake for heresy fitted into an atmosphere of increasing penalization of all offence, a principle the Roman law, among other factors, had introduced into rules and customs. As time passed (13th-15th centuries), penalties became more severe, with the support of everyone: States, humanists, prelates, down to Calvin himself, thought it in conformity with justice to punish heresy by a suitable afflictive penalty as any other crime. Such is the first result the author is submitting to critical appraisal