ABSTRACT
Let us first try to understand how the Roman Inquisition was organized in the early modern era and what its functions in the Italian peninsula were; then we shall outline its general income at the height of its economic power: the mid-eighteenth century. In contrast with a view which presents the activities of the Holy Office as “in decline” in the 1700s, it was precisely in those years that the property of its courts and of the Roman Congregation itself reached their maximum development. The numerous historic-patrimonial résumés forwarded to Rome during the papacy of Benedict XIV as part of the contemporary renewed interest in the central and local administrative efficiency of the Papal State are revealing.
