This is a panel of the Altar piece of Saint Dominic, brought -with three other paintings in the Prado (P610, P615, P616)- from the Convent of Santo Tomás in Ávila, the headquarters of the Inquisition. For the creation of the cycles of images in the altarpieces for the monastery of Santo Tomás in Ávila, Tomás de Torquemada probably gave Pedro de Berruguete access to an illuminated manuscript of legends of the Dominican saints of the type owned by many of the Order’s communities. It would have provided the starting point for altarpieces in which the painter, following the authoritarian monk’s instructions, introduced various iconographic modifications intended to give these hagiographic cycles an inquisitorial significance.

In the Middle Ages, the “trial by fire” was used as a means of establishing the truth; miracles thus prevailed over rational arguments. Here, one of Saint Dominic’s books is placed in the fire together with a book by the Albigensian doctors, in order to demonstrate the errors of their doctrine. His book is miraculously cast out by the flames, which devour that of the heretics.