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Inquisitorial

adjective
1.
Especially indicating a form of prosecution in which proceedings are secret and the accused is questioned by a prosecutor who acts also as the judge.
2.
Marked by inquisitive interest; especially suggestive of an ecclesiastical inquisitor.  "A practical police force with true inquisitorial talents"
3.
Having the authority to conduct official investigations.






WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








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"Inquisitorial" Quotes from Famous Books



... land of ours, if ever Rome gets the ascendancy here! Her creed is the same here and now, in this respect, that it has everywhere been, and must always be. It is her boast that she is always right, and knows no change. She practices her unholy inquisitorial and Jesuitical doctrines in this country, as far as she can and dare act them out. Her whole system is adverse to our republican institutions and she hesitates not to declare it. She has publicly burned our Bible in different States in this Union, and recently, in New York and Pennsylvania. ...
— Americanism Contrasted with Foreignism, Romanism, and Bogus Democracy in the Light of Reason, History, and Scripture; • William Gannaway Brownlow

... of inquisitorial ingenuity were employed to ensnare the old man, and to draw from him evidence that might be brought against himself, and might corroborate certain secret information that had been given against him. He had been accused of practising necromancy and judicial astrology, and ...
— Bracebridge Hall, or The Humorists • Washington Irving

... her habit, had eaten sparingly, while she alternately listened to the details of the girl's farm life, the manner of the gold camp, the history of her arrival there and the many vicissitudes which had followed, and voiced the questions of her inquisitorial mind. Now she leant back in her chair and slowly sipped a cup of strong, milkless tea, while her eyes watched ...
— The Golden Woman - A Story of the Montana Hills • Ridgwell Cullum

... of the Netherlands, to proceed against heretics. So Philip's duplicity was revealed and the die cast. One thing was fortunate: the worst was known. Protests poured in, a veritable flood—protests against all Inquisitorial methods in a land accustomed to liberty—the prince, meantime, remaining moderate, to the exasperation of the Protestants, whose blood boiled at the prospect of an Inquisition in their midst and for their extermination. From Breda, William watched evils take shape, his very calm giving ...
— A Hero and Some Other Folks • William A. Quayle

... were not unreasonably numerous, nor were they inquisitorial; nevertheless, it proved that not one-half of those who were addressed cared to answer them. It was, of course, desirable to know a great deal more than could have been asked for or published with propriety, such as the proneness of particular families to grave constitutional ...
— Noteworthy Families (Modern Science) • Francis Galton and Edgar Schuster

... the present ministry;" The minority in the lords, in a protest, branded the bill as a measure ineffectual in its provisions, unconstitutional in its partial abolition of the trial by jury, and unjust in its inquisitorial spirit. But though Pitt's scheme was not perfect, yet in many points of view it was preferable to that of Fox; and even its errors were magnified by ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. - From George III. to Victoria • E. Farr and E. H. Nolan

... that guards the growth of individuality, interposed, and her dealings with things unseen ceased to attract the attention of her elders. It was John, her senior by two years, who preserved an interest, of an inquisitorial sort, in what he had decided to call the Troops of Midian. There was a sacerdotal turn about John. He had early decided upon the Church as his vocation, and only hesitated between the roles of Primate of Ireland and Pope of Rome. He had something of ...
— Mount Music • E. Oe. Somerville and Martin Ross

... canting expressions of brotherly love—the irreverent familiarity with which Scripture was quoted, garbled, and tortured to justify dissent, and render disobedience holy—the daring assumption of inquisitorial privileges, and the scorn, the illiberality and self-righteousness, with which my angry, bigoted, and vulgar questioners decided on the merits of every institution that eschewed their fanciful vagaries and most audacious claims. I do not wonder that, overtaken in a career of misery, ...
— Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, No. 327 - Vol. 53, January, 1843 • Various

... captured and marched off, probably some miles, to the nearest magistrates, and, after some detention, were either fined L5, or imprisoned for a month. Such a system naturally led to great discontent and irritation. At some of the goldfields a curious plan was hit upon for evading these inquisitorial visits. No sooner was a party of police seen approaching than the diggers raised the cry of "Joe! Joe!" The cry was taken up, and presently the whole length of the gully rang with the shouts "Joe! Joe! Joe!" and of course all defaulters ...
— A Source Book Of Australian History • Compiled by Gwendolen H. Swinburne

... wealth; and now, since he had ceased to desire these, the question was—what for? But the genius of that Maryan with his questions! He had gone down so deeply into his father's being that those questions remained there and continued their inquisitorial labor. A beautiful and genial fellow! A young prince; almost a sage. But what does that signify if—he lacks something? What is it that he lacks, and so lacks that he is as if he had nothing? What ...
— The Argonauts • Eliza Orzeszko (AKA Orzeszkowa)

... mendicant orders of monks, particularly the Franciscans and Dominicans, whom the pope employed to destroy the heretics, and inquire into the conduct of bishops. Pope Gregory IX., in 1233, completed the design of his predecessors, and, as they had succeeded in giving these inquisitorial monks, who were wholly dependent on the pope, an unlimited power, and in rendering the interference {80} of the temporal magistrates only nominal, the inquisition was successively introduced into several parts of Italy, and into some provinces of France; its power in the latter country ...
— Mysticism and its Results - Being an Inquiry into the Uses and Abuses of Secrecy • John Delafield

... prefect should prevent slaves from being prostituted[209]. Aurelian gave his slaves who had transgressed to be heard according to the laws by public judges[210]. Tacitus procured a decree that slaves were not to be put to inquisitorial torture in a case affecting a master's life, not even if the charge was high treason[211]. So much for the laws that mitigated slavery under the Empire. They were not ideal; but they would in more respects than one compare favourably with the similar legislation ...
— A Short History of Women's Rights • Eugene A. Hecker

... that obedient flock which at one simple motion of my hand will rush to add burning coals to Thy stake, on which I will burn Thee for having dared to come and trouble us in our work. For, if there ever was one who deserved more than any of the others our inquisitorial fires—it is Thee! To-morrow I will ...
— "The Grand Inquisitor" by Feodor Dostoevsky • Feodor Dostoevsky

... fomented between him and the Turks, was arrested and sent in chains to Constantinople. New victories followed the imperial army, and Leopold succeeded in making the crown of Hungary, hitherto elective, hereditary in his family. He instituted in the conquered country a horrible inquisitorial tribunal, and perpetrated cruelties which scarcely find a parallel in the proscriptions of Marius and Sylla. His son Joseph, at the age of ten, was crowned king of Hungary with great magnificence, ...
— A Modern History, From the Time of Luther to the Fall of Napoleon - For the Use of Schools and Colleges • John Lord

... lights" of the day. This, so far, had been sufficient information for all with whom she had come in contact—but as time went on, would not people ask more about her?—who were her father and mother?—where she was born?—how she had been educated? These inquisitorial demands were surely among the penalties of fame! And, if she told the truth, would she not, despite the renown she had won, be lightly, even scornfully esteemed by conventional society as a "bastard" and interloper, though the manner of her birth was no fault of her own, and ...
— Innocent - Her Fancy and His Fact • Marie Corelli

... Middle Age, once noble and mighty, now a foul image of decay and death. Kindled with new life, the nations teemed with a progeny of heroes, and the stormy glories of the sixteenth century rose on awakened Europe. But Spain was the citadel of darkness,—a monastic cell, an inquisitorial dungeon, where no ray could pierce. She was the bulwark of the Church, against whose adamantine front the wrath of innovation beat in vain. In every country of Europe the party of freedom and reform was the national party, the party of reaction and absolutism was the Spanish party, ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 12, No. 73, November, 1863 • Various

... in having an outsider like Murray display to me these hidden evils; for I owe no inquisitorial duty to my books. There are people who will not admit a volume to their shelves until they have thrown it open and laid its contents bare. This is the unmannerly conduct of the customs wharf. Indeed, it is such scrutiny, doubtless, that induces some authors to pack their ideas obscurely, thereby ...
— Journeys to Bagdad • Charles S. Brooks

... Inquisition, we must regard it also as an event indicative of a new and favourable feeling towards the friends of science. The opinions of Urban, indeed, had suffered no change. He was one of the few Cardinals who had opposed the inquisitorial decree of 1616, and his subsequent demeanour was in every respect conformable to the liberality of his early views. The sincerity of his conduct was still further evinced by the grant of a pension of one hundred crowns to Galileo, a few years after ...
— The Martyrs of Science, or, The lives of Galileo, Tycho Brahe, and Kepler • David Brewster

... other place, was secure from the inquisitorial interference of the high church functionaries. The spy and the informer were abroad. No place of meeting could long remain a secret—whether manorial halls, shopkeepers' storerooms, barns, hay-lofts, or the broad shadows ...
— The International Monthly, Volume 5, No. 3, March, 1852 • Various

... appointment of a Commission to enforce obedience to the law in matters ecclesiastical had been authorised. This Court was fully constituted in December 1583, and proceeded by methods which Burghley himself held to be too inquisitorial. A good deal of indignation was aroused, and the Puritans were in effect made more aggressive, their attacks on the existing system culminating in 1589 in the distinctly scurrilous "Martin Mar-prelate" tracts, which ...
— England Under the Tudors • Arthur D. Innes

... disturbed by a peace-officer, who came to summon him to attend the magistrate. So he set forth in awful procession between two poor creatures, neither of them so stout as he was himself, to be conducted into the presence of inquisitorial justice. The people, as the aged prisoner was led along by his decrepit guards, exclaimed to each other, "Eh! see sic a grey-haired man as that is, to have committed a highway robbery, wi' ae fit in the grave!"And the children congratulated the officers, objects of their alternate ...
— The Antiquary, Complete • Sir Walter Scott

... inquisitorial tribunal takes cognizance of crimes and delinquencies, more especially witchcraft and murder; and also operates as a mediator in wars, and dissentions among powerful tribes and chiefs. Its interference is generally attended with effect, more particularly if accompanied by a threat of ...
— Observations Upon The Windward Coast Of Africa • Joseph Corry

... the pegs!" What unknown, inquisitorial terrors lay behind those dread, laconic words, ...
— Americans All - Stories of American Life of To-Day • Various

... rapidly turning it with a peculiar movement of her own, causes a small bell to ring in the Temple, which signifies to her informers that she has understood all their communications, and knows everything. Her inquisitorial system is searching and elaborate, . . there is no secret so carefully guarded that the Black Disc will ...
— Ardath - The Story of a Dead Self • Marie Corelli

... de justice," she repeated, gaily. "Here I preside, possessing inquisitorial power and prerogative, and exercising here to-night the high justice, the middle, and the low. Now hale before me those skulking knaves, Doubt, Suspicion, and Distrust, and you and I will make short work of them. Pull 'em along by their ...
— The Common Law • Robert W. Chambers

... reformers in that country. Some of their leading principles, indeed, are probably of an earlier date, and seem to have been borrowed from the great apostle of Geneva. As Mr. Southey is the first author, of this persuasion, that has yet been brought before us for judgment, we cannot discharge our inquisitorial office conscientiously, without premising a few words upon the nature and tendency of the tenets he has helped ...
— Famous Reviews • Editor: R. Brimley Johnson

... discussions were permitted on the floor of Synod, but only with the express proviso "that the fundamental principle of Protestantism, the right of free research, be not infringed upon, and that no endeavor be made to elevate the Ministerium to an inquisitorial tribunal." (679.) Thus the entire heritage of the Reformation, together with its Scriptural principle and cardinal doctrine of justification by faith, had gone by the board, the unionism and indifferentism of the Halle pastors having served as the first entering ...
— American Lutheranism - Volume 1: Early History of American Lutheranism and The Tennessee Synod • Friedrich Bente

... cut the Marquise short by giving her an inquisitorial look, examining the sanitary ...
— The Commission in Lunacy • Honore de Balzac

... child could be ruled (or approximately ruled, for inquisitorial government could hardly be so much as attempted) by some small means adapted to his size and to his physical aspect, it would be well for his health, but that seems at times impossible. By no effort can his elders altogether succeed in keeping ...
— Essays • Alice Meynell

... For months past the European press has been full of sensational stories of the expedients adopted. But if we put the value of securities which have already left Germany or have been safely secreted within Germany itself beyond discovery by the most inquisitorial and powerful methods at $500,000,000, we are not ...
— The Economic Consequences of the Peace • John Maynard Keynes

... family render searching inquiry difficult and often undesirable. But the mercifulness of a thorough investigation is that, once well done, it need not be repeated, and by saving endless blundering it also saves a family from much charitable meddling. Its seemingly inquisitorial features are justified by the fact that it is not made with any purpose of finding people out, but with the sole purpose of finding ...
— Friendly Visiting among the Poor - A Handbook for Charity Workers • Mary Ellen Richmond

... vessel would be placed in chains and questioned as to the cargo and treasures of his ship. A cutlass held menacingly over him indicated the danger of untruth, and frequently a savage gash brought a stubborn and silent captain to submission. Inquisitorial tortures, unrelieved by any mock civility, were continued to extract further confessions from the pain-racked prisoners. Devices born only of a devilish instinct and fiendish delight suggested all forms of suffering, and so the captain was frequently tied to the ship's pump and surrounded ...
— Pirates and Piracy • Oscar Herrmann

... last hundred years more than one officer has believed that infanticide had been suppressed by his efforts, and yet the practice is by no means extinct. In the Agra Province the severely inquisitorial measures adopted in 1870, and rigorously enforced, have no doubt done much to break the custom, but, in the neighbouring province of Oudh, the practice continued to be common for many years later. A clear case ...
— Rambles and Recollections of an Indian Official • William Sleeman

... complaint, there were derivative grievances. Under the influence of the clergy justice was administered in somewhat inquisitorial fashion, there was an uncertainty as to just what the law was, a strong disposition to confuse questions of law with questions of ethics, and great laxity in the admission and estimation of evidence. As early as 1639 people had begun to complain that too much power was rested in ...
— The Beginnings of New England - Or the Puritan Theocracy in its Relations to Civil and Religious Liberty • John Fiske

... right," said the abbe, with a severe and inquisitorial look, under which Derues remained quite untroubled; "it is an attribute of God to reward and to punish, and the Almighty is not deceived by him who deceives men. The Psalmist has said, 'Righteous art Thou, O Lord, ...
— CELEBRATED CRIMES, COMPLETE - DERUES • ALEXANDRE DUMAS, PERE

... theater. She was as intolerent to the Jews as her father had been, banishing them all from the country. She lived in constant fear of conspiracies and revolutions, and, as a desperate safeguard, established a secret inquisitorial court to punish all who should express any displeasure with the measures of government. Spies and informers of the most worthless character filled the land, and multitudes of the most virtuous inhabitants of the empire, falsely accused, or denounced for a look, ...
— The Empire of Russia • John S. C. Abbott

... possible that two powers in the State can be coordinate and independent of each other if the one claims and exercises the power to reprove and to censure all the official acts and all the private conversations of the other, and this upon ex parte testimony before a secret inquisitorial committee in short, to assume a general censorship over the other? The idea is as absurd in public as it would be in private life. Should the President attempt to assert and maintain his own independence, future Covode committees may dragoon him into submission by collecting ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 4 (of 4) of Volume 5: James Buchanan • James D. Richardson

... left no incident, circumstance, or experience of the life of an individual, personal, domestic, social, or civil, still less anything that concerned religion, free from the direct or indirect interposition of public authority." [29] Such inquisitorial supervision was due to the close alliance of Church and State within the narrow limits of a theocracy. In more liberal Plymouth and Connecticut, the "watch and ward" over one's fellows, which the early colonial church insisted upon, was extended ...
— The Development of Religious Liberty in Connecticut • M. Louise Greene, Ph. D.

... insatiable thirst. The only liquids given me were hot saline solutions. Though there was good reason for administering these, I believed they were designed for no other purpose than to increase my sufferings, as part of the same inquisitorial process. But had a confession been due, I could hardly have made it, for that part of my brain which controls the power of speech was seriously affected, and was soon to be further disabled by my ungovernable thoughts. Only an occasional word did ...
— A Mind That Found Itself - An Autobiography • Clifford Whittingham Beers

... Marshal, if he heard hell's delight going on in a tavern, would naturally make an inquisitorial appearance. The combatants were separated. McPhail threw a shilling on the bar counter and demanded another whisky. He was about to lift the glass to his lips when Doggie, terrified as to what might happen, knocked the glass out of ...
— The Rough Road • William John Locke

... solemnity of these last moments of his gave him inquisitorial power, and the too cold wife could not conceal from him the flight which had taken ...
— A Group of Noble Dames • Thomas Hardy

... Press Room, a dark close chamber, near Waterman's Hall, obtained its name from an immense wooden machine kept in it, with which such prisoners as refused to plead to their indictments were pressed to death—a species of inquisitorial torture not discontinued until so lately as the early part of the reign of George the Third, when it was abolished by an express statute. Into the second, denominated the Bilbowes,—also a dismal place,—refractory ...
— Jack Sheppard - A Romance • William Harrison Ainsworth

... Socialists, I have never cared to have anything to do with them. One of the most offensive things about Socialists, which is more offensive than their pedantry, than their charlatanry, than their hypocrisy, is their inquisitorial instinct for prying into other people's lives. Whether Pablo Iglesias travels first or third class, has been for years one of the principal topics of dispute ...
— Youth and Egolatry • Pio Baroja

... these poems gave additional violence to the angry and inquisitorial feeling now abroad against him; and the title under which both pieces were immediately announced by various publishers, as "Poems by Lord Byron on his domestic Circumstances," carried with it a sufficient exposure of the ...
— Life of Lord Byron, Vol. III - With His Letters and Journals • Thomas Moore

... advances fearfully, and suddenly, at the slightest noise, rushes back to the point of departure. The transformation has been more exterior than interior. The minds of the people are still in the seventeenth century; they still feel the fear and cowardice engendered by the inquisitorial bonfires. The Spaniards are slaves to their very marrow; their pride and their energies are all on the surface; they have not lived through three centuries of ecclesiastical servitude for nothing. They have made revolutions, they are capable of rebelling, but they will always ...
— The Shadow of the Cathedral • Vicente Blasco Ibanez

... witness against himself." The source of this clause was the maxim that "no man is bound to accuse himself (nemo tenetur prodere—or accusare seipsum)," which was brought forward in England late in the sixteenth century in protest against the inquisitorial methods of the ecclesiastical courts. At that time the common law itself permitted accused defendants to be questioned. What the advocates of the maxim meant was merely that a person ought not to be put on trial and compelled ...
— The Constitution of the United States of America: Analysis and Interpretation • Edward Corwin

... bright, genuine smile. She placed a chair for him near a window, and poised herself gracefully upon the edge of one of those Jekyll-and-Hyde pieces of furniture that are masked and mysteriously hooded, unguessable bulks by day and inquisitorial racks of torture ...
— Whirligigs • O. Henry

... authority of the state must decline, government itself withdrawing more and more from interference with the operation of life, and liberty find its way back to the individual and to the social and economic groups. We live now under a more tyrannical and inquisitorial regime, in spite of (partly perhaps because of) its democratic forms and dogmas, than is common in historical records. Nationalization or state socialism would mean so great a magnifying of this condition that existence would soon ...
— Towards the Great Peace • Ralph Adams Cram

... lonely room does he sit making up his accounts? but, not wishing to seem inquisitorial, I ...
— The Untilled Field • George Moore

... latent jealousy he had entertained of the minister tended to disappear under the fire of these inquisitorial interviews, and Ringfield might always be credited with having fine command over ...
— Ringfield - A Novel • Susie Frances Harrison

... people who inquired so impertinently as the Romans into the domestic conduct of each private citizen. No rank escaped this jealous vigilance; and private liberty, even in the most indifferent circumstances of taste or expense, was sacrificed to this inquisitorial rigor of surveillance exercised on behalf of the State, sometimes by erroneous patriotism, too often by malice in disguise. To this spirit the highest public officers were obliged to bow; the consuls, not less than others. And even the occasional dictator, ...
— The Caesars • Thomas de Quincey

... American bottoms. According to the British interpretation of the "right to search," every American vessel which had taken in a cargo in a British, or any other port, was liable to be searched, from the truck to the keelson, by any British cruiser when met with on the high seas. And this inquisitorial process was submitted to as a matter of course, though not without murmurs loud and deep, from those who were immediately exposed to the inconveniences attending this arbitrary exercise ...
— Jack in the Forecastle • John Sherburne Sleeper

... well enforce forgiveness of enemies, especially if their hatred springs from misapprehension. "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do:" many a true story of religious persecution, as of Inquisitorial torture, exacted by sincere bigotry, and endured by equally sincere conviction, would illustrate the prayer, and the scene might be laid among Waldensian saints and the friars of Madrid. The second tale might enlarge upon a promised Paradise, the assurance of pardon, ...
— The Complete Prose Works of Martin Farquhar Tupper • Martin Farquhar Tupper

... that adorns these walls, the immortal ancestor of this noble lord, frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than popish cruelties and inquisitorial practices are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal thirsting for blood!—against whom?—Your protestant brethren—to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these ...
— The Life of George Washington, Vol. 2 (of 5) • John Marshall

... what she always was. Her own claim and motto is: Semper idem (Always the same). But for this age of enlightenment her inquisitorial fires would still burn. "Rome's contention is, not that she does not persecute, but only that she does not persecute saints. She punishes heretics—a very different thing. In the Rhemish New Testament there is a note on the words, 'drunken with the blood of saints,' ...
— Through Five Republics on Horseback • G. Whitfield Ray

... promoted out of my proper turn by the Rath, Herr von Brauchitsch, under whom I worked, because in those days I wrote a more than usually quick and legible hand. On the examinations, as criminal proceedings in the inquisitorial method of that day were called, the one that has made the most lasting impression upon me related to a widely ramifying association in Berlin for the purpose of unnatural vice. The club arrangements of the accomplices, the agenda books, ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Vol. X. • Kuno Francke

... domestic inquisitions, in the corruption of the friends, relations, and servants of the man marked out for destruction might be much better employed. The espionage of opinion, created, as I have said, by the revolutionary troubles, is suspicious, restless, officious, inquisitorial, vexatious, and tyrannical. Indifferent to crimes and real offences, it is totally absorbed in the inquisition of thoughts. Who has not heard it said in company, to some one speaking warmly, "Be moderate, M——— is supposed to belong to the police." This police enthralled ...
— Memoirs of Napoleon Bonaparte, Complete • Louis Antoine Fauvelet de Bourrienne

... angered the pope that he called together an inquisitorial board and had Galileo tried by this Romish tribunal, and Galileo was sentenced to imprisonment for what ...
— Thirty Years In Hell - Or, From Darkness to Light • Bernard Fresenborg

... The Jacobins were content when they saw the regicide Cambaceres become Second Consul; and friends of constitutional monarchy remembered that the Third Consul, Lebrun, had leanings towards the Feuillants of 1791. Fouche at the inquisitorial Ministry of Police, and Merlin, Berlier, Real, and Boulay de la Meurthe in the Council of State seemed a barrier to all monarchical schemes; and the Jacobins therefore remained quiet, even while Catholic worship was again publicly celebrated, while Vendean rebels were pardoned, and plotting ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... the bigotry of his moslem neighbours. He neither persecutes nor brands as impious those whose religious views differ from his own. There is only one point, on which his faith assumes a savage character, and displays darker than inquisitorial horrors. The despot, the object of boundless homage on earth, seeks to transport all his pomp and the crowd of his attendants to his place in the future world. His death must be celebrated by the corresponding sacrifice of a numerous ...
— Lander's Travels - The Travels of Richard Lander into the Interior of Africa • Robert Huish

... he counts on that of Mademoiselle Hortense Hulot?" said the Baron ironically, with an inquisitorial look into his ...
— Cousin Betty • Honore de Balzac

... &c adj.; take an interest in, stare, gape; prick up the ears, see sights, lionize; pry; nose; rubberneck [U.S.]. Adj. curious, inquisitive, burning with curiosity, overcurious; inquiring &c 461; prying, snoopy, nosy, peering; prurient; inquisitorial, inquisitory^; curious as a cat; agape &c (expectant) 507. Phr. what's the matter? what next? consumed with curiosity; curiosity killed the cat, satisfaction brought it back. curiouser and ...
— Roget's Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases: Body • Roget

... unwarrantable mode of offering assertion for proof, so unauthorized and even unprecedented except in the condemnation of a Galileo, the persecution of a Copernicus, and a few other acts of inquisitorial authority, in the times of ignorance and superstition, affords but a lamentable instance of one of his remarks, that this is far from ...
— The Autocrat of the Breakfast-Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr. (The Physician and Poet not the Jurist)

... to this day for the look she cast upon me ere she departed on her mission, the sour, suspicious, inquisitorial look that plainly demanded, 'What are you here for, I wonder?' Her mistress did not fail to notice it, and a shade of uneasiness darkened ...
— The Tenant of Wildfell Hall • Anne Bronte

... they could see nothing, no more than if they had been immured in the darkest cell of an Inquisitorial dungeon. Only by their ears might they make any guess at what was going on. These admonished them that more of the burning brush was being heaved into the hole. Every now and then they could hear it as it went swishing past the door of their curtained ...
— The Lone Ranche • Captain Mayne Reid

... much for Lara to pass by Such questions, so repeated fierce and high;[jw] With look collected, but with accent cold, More mildly firm than petulantly bold, 430 He turned, and met the inquisitorial tone— "My name is Lara—when thine own is known, Doubt not my fitting answer to requite The unlooked for courtesy of such a knight. 'Tis Lara!—further wouldst thou mark or ask? I shun no question, ...
— The Works Of Lord Byron, Vol. 3 (of 7) • Lord Byron

... confined to Spinola's own household. But the republican authorities deciding, not without wisdom, that the spectacle ought to serve rather as a wholesome warning than as a contaminating example, declined any inquisitorial interference with the housekeeping of the ...
— The Rise of the Dutch Republic, 1555-1566 • John Lothrop Motley

... his contemporaries, and a genius that compelled the attention of those who were most zealous to combat its evidences, Bruno, casting off the shackles of the cloister, that 'prigione angusta e nera,' boldly advanced a system of Philosophy, startling, in those Inquisitorial times, from its independence, and horrible from its antagonism to Aristotle, the Atlas of the church. This was no less than pure Pantheism,—God in and through all, the infinite Intelligence. Deus est monadum monas—nempe entium entitas. This creed, by an incomprehensible ...
— Continental Monthly , Vol I, Issue I, January 1862 - Devoted to Literature and National Policy • Various

... Deventer, to be elected burgomaster of Utrecht, although as a foreigner he was disqualified from holding that office. An even more arbitrary act was his creation of a Chamber of Finance armed with inquisitorial powers, thus invading the rights of the Provincial Estates and depriving the Council of State of one of its most important functions. To make matters worse, he appointed Nieuwenaar to preside over the new Chamber, ...
— History of Holland • George Edmundson

... "Demonology, or Natural Magic or demoniacal, lawful and unlawful, also open or secret, by the intervention and invocation of a Demon," published in 1612. It consists of four books, treating of the crime of witchcraft, and its punishment in the ordinary tribunals and the Inquisitorial office. Its author was Don Francisco Torreblanca Villalpando, of Cordova, Advocate Royal in the courts of Grenada. It was republished in 1623, by command of Philip III. of Spain, on the recommendation of the Fiscal General, and with the sanction of the Royal Council and the Holy ...
— Salem Witchcraft, Volumes I and II • Charles Upham

... swear she's only thirty-three, And rather fancies she was born at sea (Where I am now) my "knowledge and belief" Are not worth much to the official chief, BRIDGES P. HENNIKER, if he only knew it. A True Return? Well, if it is not true, it Is not my fault. Inquisitorial band, I've done my level best—Witness my Hand! The bothering business makes me feel quite bilious, Peace now—for ...
— Punch, Or The London Charivari, Vol. 100, April 11, 1891 • Various

... watchfulness and patriotism of the whole French people, and of each individual Frenchman," after having just before, in another paragraph entrusted the "watchful" and the "patriotic" themselves to the tender, inquisitorial attention of the ...
— The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte • Karl Marx

... to Waiting on the Ladies; The Death of the Property Tax, or Thirty-seven Mortal Wounds for Ministers and the Inquisitorial Commissioners; or to The Court at Brighton, a la Chinese, one of the most admirable of the whole series. In this last, the fat prince habited as a mandarin, is seated on a sofa between the Princess Charlotte and an enormously fat woman, probably intended for the ...
— English Caricaturists and Graphic Humourists of the Nineteenth Century. - How they Illustrated and Interpreted their Times. • Graham Everitt

... strong? Among the attendants at the Leipzig Debate was Hoogstraten. This gentleman followed the elevating profession of torturing and burning heretics in Germany,—the territory especially assigned to him. It looked as if he had come to Leipzig to follow up Eck's verbal thunder with the inquisitorial lightning, and make of Luther actually another Hus. When he found that he would not have an opportunity for plying his hideous trade this time, he ventured into territory where he was a stranger: he attempted a theological argument with Luther. He asserted that by denying the primacy ...
— Luther Examined and Reexamined - A Review of Catholic Criticism and a Plea for Revaluation • W. H. T. Dau

... the Parson, who had always his eye and heart on his flock, and who had seen with great grief the realization of his fears at the revival of the stocks; seen that a spirit of discontent was already at work among the peasants, and that magisterial and inquisitorial designs were darkening the natural benevolence of the Squire; seen, in short, the signs of a breach between classes, and the precursors of the ever inflammable feud between the rich and the poor, meditated nothing less than a great Political ...
— Harper's New Monthly Magazine, Vol. 2, No. 8, January, 1851 • Various

... memory—of the further persecution which disfigured the "spacious days of great Elizabeth," not to mention the long and shameful history of the Penal Laws, he fixed his mind upon lurid legends of the reign of unhappy Mary Tudor, illustrated by prints in Fox's Book of Martyrs; upon inquisitorial tortures, the very thought of which—even out of doors in the pleasant spring sunshine—made him break into a heavy sweat, and which, by some grotesque perversion of ideas, he believed to be not only the necessary outcome ...
— The Far Horizon • Lucas Malet

... domicile or are carrying on business or traffic within the States at war with the Confederacy." It was a scheme of wholesale, cruel confiscation of the property of innocent persons, and the most ingenious lawyer of the Confederacy was selected to enforce it by inquisitorial processes which disregarded the confidence of friendship, the ties of blood, and ...
— Twenty Years of Congress, Vol. 1 (of 2) • James Gillespie Blaine

... night, and all the way there and back he was fishing for my reasons, with the plain purpose of dissuading me. Then Alcott and he arranged matters so that they cornered me in a sort of interview, and Alcott frankly developed the subject. I finally said, 'Mr. Alcott, I deny your inquisitorial right in this matter,' and so they let it drop. One day, however, I was walking along the road and Emerson joined me. Presently he said, 'Mr. Hecker, I suppose it was the art, the architecture, and so on in the Catholic Church which led you to her?' 'No,' ...
— Life of Father Hecker • Walter Elliott

... Stuarts, levelled the father of the race; we read with delight pages which warm and hurry us on, mingling truths with rumours, and known with suggested events, with all the spirit of secret history. But the character of James I. was to pass through the lengthened inquisitorial tortures of the sullen sectarianism of Harris.[A] It was branded by the fierce, remorseless republican Catharine Macaulay, and flouted by the light, sparkling Whig, Horace Walpole.[B] A senseless cry of pedantry had ...
— Literary Character of Men of Genius - Drawn from Their Own Feelings and Confessions • Isaac D'Israeli

... an inquisitorial visit, such as we have described, to the prison, and was returning homewards over Fleet Bridge, when he encountered Sir Francis Mitchell, who was coming in quest of him, and they proceeded to his habitation ...
— The Star-Chamber, Volume 2 - An Historical Romance • W. Harrison Ainsworth

... he said to me: I had shewn him a printed paper, signed Junius; said he, "If you wrote this, you may be, for aught I know, really JUNIUS." I assured him that I was not; for being in Spain, and out of the reach of the inquisitorial court of Westminster-Hall, I would instantly avow it, for fear I should die suddenly, and carry that secret, like Mrs. Faulkner, ...
— A Year's Journey through France and Part of Spain, 1777 - Volume 1 (of 2) • Philip Thicknesse

... inquisitorial committees in the United States Senate, and had not been oppressed by the ponderous gravity of the investigation. He had faced the Senators without a tremor of awe. He had even regarded them with a confidence, equal if not superior to their own. But now he faced ...
— The Prince of Graustark • George Barr McCutcheon

... days—and thus you perceive how nicely Angelo Duras had weighed all the intricacies of the case, and how accurately he had calculated the length of the term to be gained by the exercise of the subtleties of the inquisitorial law. Therefore, as no advocate will appear to demand delay, Flora is certain to be condemned to-morrow night, and the release of Francisco may take place simultaneously—for when once the grand inquisitor ...
— Wagner, the Wehr-Wolf • George W. M. Reynolds

... that might come to me in literary life were infinitely more his) and the two Mr. Richmonds held themselves responsible to him for my at least moderately decent orthodoxy in art, taking in that matter a tenderly inquisitorial function, and warning my father solemnly of two dangerous heresies in the bud, and of things really passing the possibilities of the indulgence of the Church, said against Claude or Michael Angelo. The death of Turner and other things, far more ...
— On the Old Road Vol. 1 (of 2) - A Collection of Miscellaneous Essays and Articles on Art and Literature • John Ruskin

... first heretic of eminence, who should venture within the precincts of the Halidome. A heart, naturally kind and noble, was, in this instance, as it has been in many more, deceived by its own generosity. Father Eustace would have been a bad administrator of the inquisitorial power of Spain, where that power was omnipotent, and where judgment was exercised without danger to those who inflicted it. In such a situation his rigour might have relented in favour of the criminal, whom it was at his pleasure to crush or to ...
— The Monastery • Sir Walter Scott

... suffered and died noiselessly, in the gloom of the guard-houses, barracks, and military hospitals. They strewed with their tiny bodies the roads that led into the outlying regions of the Empire, and those that managed to get there were fading away slowly in the barracks which had been turned into inquisitorial dungeons. This martyrdom of children, set in a military environment, represents a singular phenomenon even in the extensive annals ...
— History of the Jews in Russia and Poland. Volume II • S.M. Dubnow

... Anticipating the glory of extirpating heresy, he is feeling the sharp edge of an axe, to be employed in the decollation of the enemies to the true faith. A sledge is laden with whips, wheels, ropes, chains, gibbets, and other inquisitorial engines of torture, which are admirably calculated for the propagation of a religion that was established in meekness and mercy, and inculcates universal charity and forbearance. On the same sledge is an image of St. Anthony, ...
— The Works of William Hogarth: In a Series of Engravings - With Descriptions, and a Comment on Their Moral Tendency • John Trusler

... fact, however, that in the fragmentary documents of inquisitorial proceedings which have reached us, the references to torture are singularly few.... In the six hundred and thirty-six sentences borne upon the register of Toulouse from 1309 to 1323, the only allusion ...
— The Inquisition - A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church • E. Vacandard

... The Protestant Reformation was a part of it. That revolt against Rome produced a counter Renaissance in the bosom of the ancient Church herself. In presence of that peril she woke from sloth and corruption, and girded herself to beat back the invading heresies, by force or by craft, by inquisitorial fires, by the arms of princely and imperial allies, and by the self-sacrificing enthusiasm of her saints and martyrs. That time of danger produced the exalted zeal of Xavier and the intense, thoughtful, ...
— A Half Century of Conflict - Volume I - France and England in North America • Francis Parkman

... her far more than the direct injury to Harold), and strong disclaimers of belief in them, still my mother's old friend must inquire into the character of these young men and my position with regard to them. If she had been tender instead of inquisitorial, I should have answered far more freely, and most likely the air of defiance and defence into which she nettled me had a partisan look; but it was impossible not to remember that Miss Woolmer had always ...
— My Young Alcides - A Faded Photograph • Charlotte M. Yonge

... have been the punishment of his recantation,—not Inquisitorial torture, but the consciousness that he had lost his honor. Poor Galileo! thine illustrious visitor, when his affliction came, could cast his sightless eyeballs inward, and see and tell "things unattempted yet in ...
— Beacon Lights of History, Volume VI • John Lord

... least, savors not a little of blasphemy. According to him, God was the first inquisitor, and his condemnation of Adam and Eve furnished the model of the judicial forms observed in the trials of the Holy Office. The sentence of Adam was the type of the inquisitorial reconciliation; his subsequent raiment of the skins of animals was the model of the san-benito, and his expulsion from Paradise the precedent for the confiscation of the goods of heretics. This ...
— History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella V1 • William H. Prescott

... respecting the English Independents and Sectaries in and shortly after the year of Marston Moor. The impression which they leave of Mr. Edwards personally is that he was a fluent, rancorous, indefatigable, inquisitorial, and, on the whole, nasty, kind of Christian. [Footnote: Wood's Fasti, I. 413; Baillie's Letters, II. 180, 193, 201, 215, 251: and Gangraena itself—the copy of which before me consists of the third edition of Parts I. and II. (1646) and the first edition of Part III, ...
— The Life of John Milton Vol. 3 1643-1649 • David Masson

... his having gone off on a trip. I haven't told Mildred. She'd go into hysterics and tell the town Harrie had disappeared. Mrs. Swink, however, had to be told something. Madeleine, I imagine, has given notice and her mother is sitting up." Selwyn's hands made gesture of disgust. "Her letter is inquisitorial and hysterical. My answer will give ...
— People Like That • Kate Langley Bosher

... at the futility of her inquisitorial fishing. Not knowing Elizabeth's reason for saving the rebel captain, she had once or twice thought that the girl, in some inscrutable whim, intended to deliver him up, after all. She had tried frequently to fathom her niece's purposes, but had ...
— The Continental Dragoon - A Love Story of Philipse Manor-House in 1778 • Robert Neilson Stephens

... knocking at the door. The beggar frowned, but Cumner's Son turned eagerly. He had only been in this room ten hours, but it seemed like years in which he had lived alone-alone. But he met firmly the passive, inquisitorial eyes of the healer of the plague, and he turned, dropped another bar across the door, and bade ...
— The Judgment House • Gilbert Parker

... control of her own property; the barbarity of admitting an action for restitution of conjugal rights was impossible, divorce was a private transaction to which the wife was as fully entitled as the husband, and it required no inquisitorial intervention of magistrate or court; Augustus ordained, indeed, that a public declaration was necessary, but the divorce itself was a private legal act of the two persons concerned.[316] It is interesting to note this enlightened ...
— Studies in the Psychology of Sex, Volume 6 (of 6) • Havelock Ellis

... were seeking for sources of accusation to gratify herself even by the overthrow of an absurdity, when that overthrow might incur the stigma of innovation. The Court of Versailles was jealous of its Spanish inquisitorial etiquette. It had been strictly wedded to its pageantries since the time of the great Anne of Austria. The sagacious and prudent provisions of this illustrious contriver were deemed the ne plus ultra of royal female policy. A cargo of whalebone was yearly ...
— The Memoirs of Louis XV. and XVI., Volume 3 • Madame du Hausset, and of an Unknown English Girl and the Princess Lamballe

... blind instrument of his father-in-law, would naturally ratify everything that had been done. The Sanhedrim was assembled at his house.[1] The inquiry commenced; and several witnesses, prepared beforehand according to the inquisitorial process described in the Talmud, appeared before the tribunal. The fatal sentence which Jesus had really uttered: "I am able to destroy the temple of God and to build it in three days," was cited by two witnesses. To ...
— The Life of Jesus • Ernest Renan

... Piero's schemes, bringing him so frequently into requisition for official intrigues that he had less opportunity for counterplotting, while his knowledge of State secrets which he might not compromise, of the far-reaching vision of Inquisitorial eyes, and of the swift and relentless execution of those unknown osservatori who had been unfaithful to their primal duty as spies, made him dare less where others were concerned than he would have foretold before he had been admitted to these unexpected official confidences; while ...
— A Golden Book of Venice • Mrs. Lawrence Turnbull

... made no history, but continued on the even tenour of its path. Some years it was effective as a school of instruction, some years it was not, but never did it meet with the inquisitorial landlord, never but once did it suffer from the Crown. With the nineteenth century came its first crisis for three hundred years and it passed through unhurt. A new school with the old endowments, a better education with a wider horizon, a new power with which to meet the coming needs ...
— A History of Giggleswick School - From its Foundation 1499 to 1912 • Edward Allen Bell

... a pause,—during which he stood quietly, submitting himself to the fire of a hundred wondering, questioning, and inquisitorial ...
— Temporal Power • Marie Corelli

... means of the pope's commission and the king's favor, invested with all power, both ecclesiastical and civil, no man knew what bounds were to be set to the authority of his new tribunal. He conferred on it a kind of inquisitorial and censorial powers even over the laity, and directed it to inquire into all matters of conscience; into all conduct which had given scandal; into all actions which, though they escaped the law, might appear contrary to good morals. ...
— The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.I., Part C. - From Henry VII. to Mary • David Hume

... the upheaval was caused by the agitation of demagogues. The President, they asserted, had destroyed confidence by his attack on the commercial class. Federal prosecutions, new laws, and the enforcement of inquisitorial pure-food regulations had made it impossible for business to live. ...
— The New Nation • Frederic L. Paxson

... and Tennessee. It would be difficult to find a precedent in history for so sudden and sweeping a change of sentiment on a leading doctrine of moral theology. Dissent from the novel dogma was suppressed with more than inquisitorial rigor. It was less perilous to hold Protestant opinions in Spain or Austria than to hold, in Carolina or Alabama, the opinions which had but lately been commended to universal acceptance by the unanimous voice of great religious bodies, and proclaimed as undisputed principles by leading statesmen. ...
— A History of American Christianity • Leonard Woolsey Bacon

... eye. Here alone, west of the Dvina, rich men are ipso facto scoundrels and ferae naturae, with no rights that any slanderer is bound to respect. Here alone, the possession of a fortune puts a man automatically upon the defensive, and exposes him to special legislation of a rough and inquisitorial character and to the special animosity of judges, district attorneys and juries. It would be a literal impossibility for an Englishman worth $100,000,000 to avoid public office and public honour; it would be equally impossible for an American ...
— The American Credo - A Contribution Toward the Interpretation of the National Mind • George Jean Nathan

... ancestor of this noble lord frowns with indignation at the disgrace of his country. In vain did he defend the liberty, and establish the religion of Britain, against the tyranny of Rome, if these worse than popish cruelties, and inquisitorial practices, are endured among us. To send forth the merciless cannibal, thirsting for blood!—against whom?—your Protestant brethren! to lay waste their country, to desolate their dwellings, and extirpate their race and name, by the aid and instrumentality of these horrible hounds of war! Spain ...
— The American Union Speaker • John D. Philbrick

... blight of Spain was destined to descend on Italy, paralyzing the fair movements of her manifold existence to a rigid uniformity, shrouding the light and color of her art and letters in the blackness of inquisitorial gloom. ...
— Renaissance in Italy, Volume 1 (of 7) • John Addington Symonds

... had the sacerdotal system more completely swayed a nation, and never had a nation been reduced to a more abject state of degradation. The Inquisition was its government,—the auto-da-fes its triumphs,—bull-fights and processions its only diversions. Had the inquisitorial reign lasted a few years more, this people would have been no longer reckoned amongst the ...
— History of the Girondists, Volume I - Personal Memoirs of the Patriots of the French Revolution • Alphonse de Lamartine

... quick obedience to the existing government in all lawful cases, but stated his extreme penury and the utter destitution of his family. The rigid frugality of their habits was known; and Morgan, now assuming an inquisitorial air, demanded what became of the moiety of the fifth allowed to the expelled ministers, which he had last received. Dr. Beaumont was taken by surprize, and before he could parry the impertinence of the question, was charged by Morgan with sending ...
— The Loyalists, Vol. 1-3 - An Historical Novel • Jane West

... blackmailing. And when we consider that anybody, for any reason of jealousy, or personal spite, or party hatred, might be thus "hunted," "followed," "threatened," and financially squeezed or ruined, without a particle of legal investigation, at the will of a man whom the familiar charged with the inquisitorial business dare not hesitate to obey, surely it is not unreasonable to ask how far does the Salvation Army, in its "tribune of the people" aspect, differ from a Sicilian Mafia? I am no apologist of men guilty of the acts charged against the person who yet, I think, might be as fairly called ...
— Evolution and Ethics and Other Essays • Thomas H. Huxley

... is expected at Mrs. Wharton's every hour. I fear that her inquisitorial eye will soon detect our intrigue and obstruct its continuation. Now, there's a girl, Charles, I should never attempt to seduce; yet she is a most alluring object, I assure you. But the dignity of her manners forbids all assaults upon her virtue. Why, the very expression of her eye blasts ...
— The Coquette - The History of Eliza Wharton • Hannah Webster Foster

... others, relapsed very soon into a strained and anxious silence. Pamela and Lutchester, on the other hand, divided their attention between a very excellent luncheon and an even flow of personal, almost inquisitorial conversation. ...
— The Pawns Count • E. Phillips Oppenheim

... Directory of Eymeric, into which they were incorporated by his commentator. It is only important to mention here that on the present occasion an agent was appointed to represent this Inquisition at Rome, and there to defend the inquisitors on occasion of appeals from the subjects of inquisitorial violence or from their friends or their survivors. And this was in spite of a bull sent into Spain two years before, appointing the Archbishop of Seville sole judge of such appeals. But that bull was a mere feint for conciliation and never acted ...
— The Great Events by Famous Historians, Vol. 8 - The Later Renaissance: From Gutenberg To The Reformation • Editor-in-Chief: Rossiter Johnson

... (and I believe in all the slave States,) every coloured person's complexion is prima facie evidence of his being a slave; and the lowest villain in the country, should he be a white man, has the legal power to arrest, and question, in the most inquisitorial and insulting manner, any coloured person, male or female, that he may find at large, particularly at night and on Sundays, without a written pass, signed by the master or some one in authority; or stamped free papers, certifying that the person is ...
— Running a Thousand Miles for Freedom • William and Ellen Craft

... the Commission, but would carry them to their legitimate results,—the repeal of the inquisitorial tax on incomes. ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 17, No. 103, May, 1866 • Various

... of seven years was sitting up in a cot placed by the side of his dear Aunt Annie's bed. He had an extremely intelligent, inquisitorial, and agnostical face, and a fair, curled head of hair, which he scratched with one hand as Aunt Annie entered the room and held the candle on high in ...
— A Great Man - A Frolic • Arnold Bennett

... eyes glowed; the case already whetted his remarkably keen inquisitorial instinct which had gained him place and certain fame in the Washington police force. "Are the Misses McIntyre still ...
— The Red Seal • Natalie Sumner Lincoln

... could alone come into his possession, he consoled his still protesting conscience with the claim that it was, after all, only a battle of wit against disinterested wit. For, self-delusively, he was beginning once more to regard all organized society and its ways as a mere inquisitorial process which the adventurous could ignore and the keen-witted could circumvent. Warfare, such as his, must be a law ...
— Phantom Wires - A Novel • Arthur Stringer

... and in 1723 this elaborate history saw the light. From that moment the historian never enjoyed a day of quiet! Rome attempted at first to extinguish the author with his work; all the books were seized on; and copies of the first edition are of extreme rarity. To escape the fangs of inquisitorial power, the historian of Naples flew from Naples on the publication of his immortal work. The fugitive and excommunicated author sought an asylum at Vienna, where, though he found no friend in the emperor, Prince ...
— Curiosities of Literature, Vol. 3 (of 3) • Isaac D'Israeli

... in her hand with an inquisitorial air, balanced them, knocked them with her small knuckles—they rang as clear as a bell—examined the glass—there was not a flaw in it. Chloe went through the same process; they looked significantly at each ...
— The Wit and Humor of America, Volume II. (of X.) • Various

... "writs of assistance," to empower them to summon help in forcible entries in search of smuggled goods. Now there can be no doubt that there was smuggling in the colony, even in Boston itself. On the other hand, the officials were inquisitorial and rapacious. Once they were armed with writs of assistance, no dwelling would be safe from entry by them. The struggle was at once begun, and in the council chamber of the old Town House was fought out before the ...
— The Siege of Boston • Allen French

... name, however, it was exactly imitated when Francis van der Hulst was appointed chief inquisitor by the state, [Sidenote: April 23, 1522] and was confirmed by a bull of Adrian VI. [Sidenote: June 1, 1523] The original inquisitorial powers of the bishops remained, and a supreme tribunal of three ...
— The Age of the Reformation • Preserved Smith

... man, evidently, and a friend of yours, of course. But, well, there it is, a mere fancy, of course, but unhappily my old friend doesn't take to him. He, he thinks that he's rather inquisitorial. A doctor's duty, ...
— The Secret of the Tower • Hope, Anthony

... express disavowal of any intention to be impertinently inquisitorial, and for the sole purpose of arriving at the truth, so as to correct misapprehensions and allay all causeless irritation, a committee be appointed of one from each of the synods of Kentucky, Tennessee, Missouri, and Virginia, who shall be requested to report to the next ...
— Slavery Ordained of God • Rev. Fred. A. Ross, D.D.

... the other secrets of the Esoteric philosophy, the knowledge of it was lost during the Middle Ages; and when rediscovered, the hierarchy of the Church of Rome, upon the plea that it was contrary to the teachings of Scripture, resorted to inquisitorial tortures to suppress its promulgation; but, in spite of all their efforts, it has been universally accepted; and, in this otherwise enlightened age, we have presented to us the anomaly of a religion based upon a false system of Astronomy, ...
— Astral Worship • J. H. Hill

... a bale or a parcel as though they were signing a treaty, or granting an amnesty. The meanest employe seems to think himself invested with certain occult powers. His civility savours of government patronage; and his frown is inquisitorial. To his fellows, his address is abrupt and diplomatic. He seems to speak in cipher, and to gesticulate by some rule of freemasonry. But to the uninitiated he is explanatory to a scruple, as though ...
— The Mirror of Literature, Amusement, and Instruction - Vol. 10, Issue 273, September 15, 1827 • Various

... for a far longer period than I myself was aware of. There was nothing for me now but to wait with faith and patience for the next step forward—a step which I felt would not be taken alone. And I listened with interest while Mr. Harland put his former college friend through a kind of inquisitorial examination as to what he had been doing and where he had been journeying since they last met. Santoris seemed not at all unwilling ...
— The Life Everlasting: A Reality of Romance • Marie Corelli

... best, all the time, to keep my inquisitorial eye from fastening itself on Dunkie's face, for I knew that he was playing up to me, that he was acting a part which wasn't coming any too easy. But he stuck to his role. When I put down my sewing, because my eyes ...
— The Prairie Mother • Arthur Stringer

... It desires to say to the possessors: Show us by what title you possess; and it proposes to pass its judgments upon the axiom that whoever renders service to society should be able to have some appropriate share in the national wealth."[297] In other words, an inquisitorial tribunal with arbitrary powers would be empowered to confiscate at will. "Socialism is not a plan to despoil the rich: it is a plan to stop the rich from despoiling the poor. Socialism is not a thief; it is a policeman."[298] "Do any say we ...
— British Socialism - An Examination of Its Doctrines, Policy, Aims and Practical Proposals • J. Ellis Barker

... probity suggesting at the same moment a doubt as to the source of these documents, he looked the dwarf steadily in the face, and after examining, as he would have examined an original, the long pallid visage and the reddened, blinking eye-lids, said, with an inquisitorial snap of the jaw, 'Are these ...
— The Immortal - Or, One Of The "Forty." (L'immortel) - 1877 • Alphonse Daudet

... but full of dignity, inflicting scathing punishment of various kinds, and piling blazing coals of fire upon Mabel's pretty head. I thought, too, of merely disappearing, and leaving conscience to make martyrdom of my fair lady's life. But perhaps I doubted the inquisitorial capacity of her conscience. At all events, in the end, I rattled the drawing-room door-handle vigorously, and re-entered with a portentous clearing of the throat. There was a flutter and patter in the conservatory, and then the hitherto adored one came in to me, an open book ...
— The Record of Nicholas Freydon - An Autobiography • A. J. (Alec John) Dawson

... these we elected a guardian or councillor (Kreisrath). These were our most important officers,—their province embracing the social life and moral deportment of each member of the Kreis. This, one might imagine, would degenerate into an inquisitorial or intermeddling surveillance; but in practice it never did. Each Kreis was a band of friends, and its chief was the friend most valued and esteemed among them. It had its weekly meetings; and I remember, in all my life, no pleasanter ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 15, No. 91, May, 1865 • Various

... not help a slight tremor; which was increased as the Catalan Lieutenant bent upon him an inquisitorial look of his grey eyes, that glanced keenly under eyebrows long and grizzled ...
— The Tiger Hunter • Mayne Reid

... the whistle of the three o'clock steamboat as it neared the landing just beyond the hotel gates. Three o'clock! Then Gannett would soon be back—he had told her to expect him before four. She rose hurriedly, her face averted from the inquisitorial facade of the hotel. She could not see him just yet; she could not go indoors. She slipped through one of the overgrown garden-alleys and climbed a steep ...
— The Greater Inclination • Edith Wharton

... of that impotent rage which sought to purchase life and safety for the Romish Church by the murder of Huss and of Jerome of Prague is instructive, if it is not pleasing. The truth was too true to be spoken. Never has the Church of Rome, in its inquisitorial madness, been so blinded with fury and passion as then. Weakened by internal feuds, with two Popes struggling and hurling anathemas at each other, and with a priesthood at its lowest point, not of ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... that morality is not discussed, and that personalities are tabooed save between intimates. Hilda was a personage as well as a Tartar. Laws, conventions, usages—to all these she would conform when it pleased her. She would have made an admirable inquisitorial judge, and quite as admirable a sick nurse. A rare criminal lawyer, likewise, was wasted in her. She was one of those individuals, I perceived, whose loyalties dominate them; and who, in behalf of those loyalties, ...
— The Crossing • Winston Churchill

... principle of Walpole's finance was undoubtedly good. The question, however, was not argued out by Pulteney or any other speaker on his side upon such a ground as the hardship to the poor man. The tyranny of an excise system, of any excise system, its unconstitutional, despotic, and inquisitorial nature—this was the chief ground of attack. Sir {314} William Wyndham sounded the alarm which was soon to be followed by a tremendous echo. He declared the proposed tax "not only destructive to the trade, but inconsistent with the liberties of ...
— A History of the Four Georges, Volume I (of 4) • Justin McCarthy

... then felt uneasy. When he next met Carmen, she found his grey eyes fixed on hers with a curious, half-inquisitorial look she had never noticed before. This only added fuel to the fire. Forgetting their relations of host and guest, she was absolutely rude. Thatcher was quiet but watchful; got the Plodgitt to bed early, and, under cover of showing a moonlight view of the ...
— The Story of a Mine • Bret Harte

... the incidents of my landing in Liverpool, except perhaps to comment upon the extraordinary behaviour of the English customs officials. Without wishing in any way to disturb international relations, one cannot help noticing the rough and inquisitorial methods of the English customs men as compared with the gentle and affectionate ways of the American officials at New York. The two trunks that I brought with me were dragged brutally into an open shed, the strap of one of them was ...
— My Discovery of England • Stephen Leacock

... the proud and sombre bearing peculiar at that time to Puritans. Bernouin cast an inquisitorial glance at the person of the young man and entered the cabinet of the cardinal, to whom he transmitted ...
— Twenty Years After • Alexandre Dumas, Pere

... saw the inquisitorial pencil of the official in uniform. He had shut off his light with ...
— Mlle. Fouchette - A Novel of French Life • Charles Theodore Murray

... the inherent Puritanism of the people; it could not survive a year if they were opposed to the principle visible in it. That deep-seated and uncorrupted Puritanism, that conviction of the pervasiveness of sin, of the supreme importance of moral correctness, of the need of savage and inquisitorial laws, has been a dominating force in American life since the very beginning. There has never been any question before the nation, whether political or economic, religious or military, diplomatic or sociological, which did not resolve itself, soon or late, into a purely moral question. ...
— A Book of Prefaces • H. L. Mencken

... of the law less expensive and more certain, remove obstructions to industry, lessen the temptations to evade the law, diminish the violations and frauds perpetrated upon its provisions, make its operations less inquisitorial, and greatly reduce in numbers the army of taxgatherers created by the system, who "take from the mouth of honest labor the bread it has earned." Retrenchment, reform, and economy should be carried into every ...
— A Compilation of the Messages and Papers of the Presidents - Section 2 (of 2) of Volume 6: Andrew Johnson • James D. Richardson



Words linked to "Inquisitorial" :   accusatorial, inquisitor, inquiring



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