 An inquisition was a process that developed to investigate alleged instances of crimes.Its use in ecclesiastical courts was not at first directed to matters of heresy, but a broad assortment of offenses such as clandestine marriage and bigamy.French historian Jean-Baptiste Guiraud (1866–1953) defined Medieval Inquisition as "... a system of repressive means, some of temporal and some others of spiritual kind, concurrently issued by ecclesiastical and civil authorities in order to protect religious orthodoxy and social order, both threatened by theological and social doctrines of heresy".