The authorities took such extreme action for the same reason they always have: fear of losing their authority. (Think about it: why have trials for people you believe are doomed to eternal damnation?) This fear led the Inquisitors to abuse their power. Accusations could be made secretly, so people lied to make trouble for enemies. Trials were also secret. The accused person did not have the right to a lawyer. Most shocking but very common was torture. Many confessions were forced.

The first Inquisition began in the early 1200s in France, Germany, and Spain. Pope Gregory IX named an Inquisitor-General to put an end to doubts about the church’s control of how people could worship. The practice lasted centuries. Its intensity changed with the mood of the times—for example, it got new life when the Church tried to stop the spread of Protestantism in the mid-1500s.

A separate Inquisition began in Spain in 1478 and lasted in various forms until the 1820s. It was especially fierce. The first Grand Inquisitor was the famous Tomás de Torquemada (1420-1498). His stated goal was no different than Voldemort’s: he wanted only people with sangre limpia—“pure blood,” defined by him as white and Christian—to live in Spain. He executed somewhere between 2,000 and 10,000 people in just twenty years, with perhaps another 10,000 punished in other ways. He hounded thousands of Jews, Muslims, and others until they left Spain, and had Jews expelled by law in 1492.

Ignoring or laughing at this nonsense only made things worse. One French monk and judge, Jean Bodin (1529-1596), came up with the rule that anyone who denied the existence of witches must also be a witch.

Bodin was a fan of torture and harsh punishment. “The country which shall tolerate this [witchcraft],” he wrote, “will be scourged with pestilences, famines and wars.” But people who “take vengeance on the witches will be blessed by God.”

A witch known for kind acts such as healing was no safer than someone accused of using magic for evil. Bodin wrote: “Even if the witch has never killed or done evil to a man, or beasts, or fruits, and even if he has always cured bewitched people, or driven away tempests, it is because he has renounced God and treated with [made a deal with] Satan that he deserves to be burned alive. Even no more than an obligation to the Devil, which means denying God, deserves the most cruel death imaginable.”

Thanks to bloodthirsty inquisitors like Bodin, the times when witch hunts were at their worst were known as “burning times.” Perhaps 200,000 people accused of being witches were killed in Europe and America from the time of the first Inquisition until the nineteenth century, when religion became more moderate.

Most of the victims did not practice magic at all. They were simply victims of angry neighbors and relatives, or greedy prosecutors who wanted to take their property. Sometimes they were picked just because they seemed odd. For example, a woman who did not marry or take part in the social activities was more likely to be called a witch than one who had family ties or a high place in society.

This sad fact is something that scholars see in all cultures, especially when the economy is bad or a natural disaster has occurred: humans seek someone weak to sacrifice, as if that will win the goodwill of the gods or God and restore a natural order to the world. The 1692 witch trials in Salem, Massachusetts, began after the colonists had suffered in wars with Native Americans, which made them wonder if their religious settlement still enjoyed God’s favor. This pattern continues today, sometimes with violence and other times with more subtlety.

This is exactly what happens to Harry at the Wizengamot in Phoenix. Having said in Goblet that Voldemort has returned, and that some Dementors are under Voldemort’s control, he has challenged the official position of the Ministry of Magic; so in Phoenix Cornelius Fudge and Dolores Umbridge make him stand trial to silence him. They even attempt to keep him from having the help of Dumbledore’s counsel just as in the old days of the Inquisition, and as sometimes happens today when governments go too far. The connection to today is what Rowling wants us to see. When Dolores Umbridge waves the list of students in Dumbledore’s Army she’s doing exactly what one of the most famous witch-hunters of the twentieth century did to attack his enemies. U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy is remembered for waving a piece of paper that supposedly showed top government officials were traitors. The list was phony; but he was discredited only after he had ruined many lives by forcing people to face a U.S. government inquisition that lasted years.

Dolores Umbridge uses another common trick against Griselda Marchbanks. When Marchbanks protests the Hogwarts inquisition, Umbridge spreads lies that Marchbanks is working with goblins who want to overthrow the wizards. She is trying to assassinate Marchbank’s character by appealing to the other wizards’ fear of goblins. That’s a trick used all the time, from medieval inquisitions to modern politics.