For centuries before Luther the Holy Office had cauterized the heretical growths on the body of Mother Church.

The old form was utilized but was given a new lease of life by the work it was called upon to perform against the Protestants.

Outside of the Netherlands the two forms of the Inquisition which played the largest part in the battles of the sixteenth century were the Spanish and the Roman.
[Sidenote: Spanish Inquisition] The Inquisition was licensed in Spain by a bull of Sixtus IV of 1478, and actually established by Ferdinand and Isabella in Castile in 1480, and soon afterwards in their other dominions.

It has sometimes been said that the Spanish Inquisition was really a political rather than an ecclesiastical instrument, but the latest historian of the subject, whose deep study makes his verdict final, has disposed of this theory.
Though occasionally called upon to interfere in political matters, this was exceptional.

Far more often it asserted an authority and an independence that embarrassed not a little the royal government.