Joaquim Marques de Araujo ardently defended the Portuguese Inquisition for fifty years, only to find himself sidelined and forgotten. In Defence of the Faith offers an insightful examination of one man's career as a comissario of the Portuguese Inquisition in Pernambuco, Brazil, from 1770 to 1820. James Wadsworth argues that as legal extensions of the inquisitors in Lisbon, the comissarios played a role far superior to what their small numbers might suggest. They were not the psychopaths, fanatics, or secret network of spies so common in the popular imagination. Rather, they were the...