Definition: Inquisitor
From LanceaSanctum
21 August 2006
An inquisitor is one who is engaged in an inquisition. An inquisition (Lat. *inquirere*, to look to) is usually meant a special ecclesiastical institutional for combating or suppressing heresy. Its characteristic mark is the bestowal on special judges (inquisitors) of judicial powers in matters of faith, and this by supreme ecclesiastical authority. Modern vampires have difficulty in understanding this institution, because they have, to no small extent, lost sight of two facts.
On the one hand they have ceased to grasp religious belief as something objective, as the gift of God, and therefore outside the realm of free private judgment; on the other they no longer see in the Lancea Sanctum a society perfect and sovereign, based substantially on the pure and authentic Testament, whose first most important duty must naturally be to retain this original deposit of faith.
However, while the positive suppression of heresy by ecclesiastical authority in vampiric society is as old as our covenant, Inquisitors forming a distinct ecclesiastical tribunal is of much later origin.
Bishops do not establish the Inquisition in their diocese as a distinct and separate tribunal; they appoint special but permanent judges (who serve at the pleasure of the Bishop) who execute doctrinal functions in the name of the Bishop. Therefore, the authority of an Inquisitor is limited in scope to the same limits as possessed by the Bishop who appointed him.
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