"The new science of interrogation is not, in fact, so new at all: “extraordinary rendition” and “enhanced interrogation” and “waterboarding” all spring directly from the practices of the medieval Roman Catholic Church. The distance, in both technique and ideology, between the Inquisition’s interrogation regime and 21st-century America’s is uncomfortably short—and provides a chilling harbinger of what can happen when moral certainty gets yoked to the machinery of torture." - × × ×

“Bernard Gui’s most productive day was April 5, 1310, when he condemned 17 people to death.” - × × ×

“The correspondence tucked into Gui’s manuscript offers a reminder of what Locke understood. The Inquisition is not a closed chapter. It is an open book.” - × × ×