Short answers, pulled from the story.
The Inquisition was a Catholic judicial procedure in which ecclesiastical judges could initiate, investigate, and try cases in their jurisdiction. It became the popular name for various medieval and Reformation-era state-organized tribunals that combated heresy, apostasy, blasphemy, witchcraft, and customs considered deviant.
The first Inquisition was temporarily established in Languedoc, in the south of France, in 1184. Inquisitions aimed at combatting religious sedition had their start in the 12th-century Kingdom of France, particularly among the Cathars and the Waldensians, and the Inquisition was permanently established in 1229 at the Council of Toulouse.
Beginning in the 1250s, inquisitors were generally chosen from the Dominican Order, replacing the earlier practice of using local clergy as judges. Pope Gregory IX, who reigned from 1227 to 1241, assigned the duty of carrying out inquisitions to the Dominican and Franciscan Orders, and each regional Inquisition was headed by a Grand Inquisitor.
King Ferdinand II of Aragon and Queen Isabella I of Castile established the Spanish Inquisition in 1478, overseen by 14 local tribunals. It operated under royal Christian authority and independently of the Holy See, with Tomas de Torquemada chosen as the first Grand Inquisitor.
Many torture instruments displayed in inquisition museums were never used by the Inquisition. Devices such as the head crusher, the thumbscrew, the Spanish donkey, and the pear of anguish were used by civil courts or invented later by 18th and 19th century pranksters and entertainers, and some, like the Spanish tickle created in 2005, were outright hoaxes.
Gustav Henningsen and Jaime Contreras found the Spanish Inquisition recorded 44,674 cases, of which 826 ended in executions in person and 778 in effigy. According to Henry Charles Lea, Portuguese tribunals in Lisbon, Porto, Coimbra, and Evora burned 1,175 persons between 1540 and 1794, burned another 633 in effigy, and penanced 29,590.
The papal institution survives as part of the Roman Curia. The Congregation of the Holy Office that Pope Paul III established in 1542 underwent a series of name and focus changes and is now part of the Dicastery for the Doctrine of the Faith.