In the Millennium year, as the Pope starts to apologise for Catholic excesses and failings, Baigent presents his history of teh In quisition, beginning with St. Dominic crossing the Pyrenees into Spain through to the holy index of forbidden books in the twentieth century. He gives a full account of how the church has tried to ring-fence its beliefs over the centuries-from full-scale violent persecution to the more subtle censorship of recent years.