Imperial Inquisition
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The Tribunal of the Holy Office of the Inquisition, commonly known as the Imperial Inquisition, was established in 1480 in the Holy Levantine Empire. It was intended to maintain Catholic orthodoxy in the Empire and to replace the Medieval Inquisition, which was under Papal control, with a state-controlled institution. It became the most substantive of the manifestations of the wider Catholic Inquisition. Later in its history, it began to take on increasing secular law enforcement responsibilities throughout the Empire, enforcing morality laws. It began to lose influence beginning in 1815 but was not formally dissolved until the end of the Empire in 1935.
History
The state-run inquisition began as a series of informal tribunals of priests and bishops gathered under the auspices of the Emperor of the Levantines to try cases related to the Ænglish Utraquist War, initially having a high standard of justice, evidence, and presumption of innocence, at least compared to courts of its day. As the Utraquist wars wound down, the institutions which grew up around the tribunals became increasingly formalized and made permanent by various acts of the Imperial Diet, supplanting the centralized authority of the Catholic Church in judicial matters relating to religion.
The Inquisition was dramatically expanded and came to prominence during and after the Great Confessional War which resulted from the Protestant Reformation. While most Protestants, especially the poor and large numbers of farmers, were driven away by impromptu and sometimes extrajudicial Dragonnades, members of the nobility, academics, merchants, and other prominent members of society faced the Inquisition. In part due to the enmity born by Levantines for Protestants and in part due to the dramatically increased number of those being tried, the tribunals of the Imperial Inquisition lost most of their quality as institutions of justice, with the vast majority of cases being determined before they were heard. In most cases, the clerics advocated leniency but those accused were executed or exiled by the state.
By the 17th century, the religious upheaval of The Anarchy and Reformation had passed, and the now enlarged Inquisition was given additional responsibilities by the Imperial Diet extending beyond its traditional roles. Before attempted reforms to the Empire to create an administrative state, the Inquisition was by far the largest part of the Empire's governmental apparatus by 1700. In addition to its underlying role of rooting out heretics, it came to enforce various morality codes and laws, which came to mean functionally any crime by 1750. The Inquisition served both as the primary law enforcement and judicial system of the Empire in the 18th century, leading to significant abuses. Reform efforts in the 1770s and 1780s restored many of the rights and powers of the Empire's princes to enforce and try laws. The Inquisition was reformed to deal primarily with vice crimes in addition to its traditional anti-heresy mission.
The Recess of the Julii significantly weakened the Inquisition by its removal from Urcea in 1815, which made up a large portion of the Empire's population, as well as a source of manpower, clerics, and funding. In Urcea, its mission was replaced by the civil office of the Censor, an office which remains within the Government of Urcea.
In Yonderre
Although it was not part of the Holy Levantine Empire, the Imperial Inquisition was granted authority in Yonderre in 1523 as the Protestant Reformation began to spread, replacing the Papal Inquisition in that country. The Imperial Inquisition continued to function in Yonderre for the remainder of its existence, bringing Yonderre's law enforcement and criminal code in most of the country into conformity with that of the Empire, although the Inquisition's authority lessened in the latter half of the seventeenth century with the creation of the Custodes Yonderre with which the Inquisition would sometimes butt heads. It has been suggested by scholars that the closeness of legal codes which resulted were one of the key similarities between Yonderre and the Empire that made it join the Levantine Union, the only country which had not been part of the Empire to do so.