E. Vacandard

“ Theodore of Beza, who had seen several of his co-religionists burned in France for their faith, likewise wrote in 1554, in Calvinistic Geneva: "What crime can be greater or more heinous than heresy, which sets at nought the word of God and all ecclesiastic discipline? Christian magistrates, do your duty to God, Who has put the sword into your hands for the honor of His majesty; strike valiantly these monsters in the guise of men." ”

“ For religion is to be defended, not by putting to death, but by dying; not by cruelty but by patient endurance; not by crime but by faith.... If you wish to defend religion by bloodshed, by tortures and by crime, you no longer defend it, but pollute and profane it. For nothing is so much a matter of free will as religion." [2]
[1] Cf. Pascal, Lettre provinciale, xii.
[2] Divin. Institut., lib. v, cap. xx.
An era of official toleration began a few years later, when Constantine published the Edict of Milan (313) , which placed Christianity and Paganism on practically the same footing. ”

“ The death penalty inflicted later on placed the judges in a false position. On the one hand, by granting absolution and giving communion to the prisoner, they professed to believe in the sincerity of his repentance and conversion, and yet by sending him to the stake for fear of a relapse, they acted contrary to their convictions. To condemn a man to death who was considered worthy of receiving the Holy Eucharist, on the plea that he might one day commit the sin of heresy again, appears to us a crying injustice.
But should even unrepentant heretics be put to death? ”

“ The sacraments of the Church were a mere figment of the imagination. The Cathari made one sacrament out of Baptism, Confirmation, Penance and Eucharist, which they called the consolamentum; they denied the real presence of Jesus Christ in the Eucharist, and they repudiated marriage.
Baptism of water was to them an empty ceremony, as valueless as the baptism of John. Christ had undoubtedly said: "Unless a man be born again of water and the Holy Ghost, he cannot enter into the Kingdom of God." ”

“ Advocates of the death penalty, like Frederic II and St. Thomas, tried to defend their view by arguments from reason. Criminals guilty of treason, and counterfeiters are condemned to death. Therefore, heretics who are traitors and falsifiers merit the same penalty. But a comparison of this kind is not necessarily a valid argument. The criminals in question were a grave menace to the social order. But we cannot say as much for each and every heresy in itself. It was unjust to place a crime against society and a sin against God on an equal footing. ”

“ Let us observe, first of all, that the majority of the heretics abandoned to the secular arm merited the most severe punishment for their crimes. It would surely have been unjust for criminals against the common law to escape punishment under cover of their religious belief. Crimes committed in the name of religion are always crimes, and the man who has his property stolen or is assaulted cares little whether he has to deal with a religious fanatic or an ordinary criminal. In such instances, the State is not defending a particular dogmatic teaching, but her own most vital interests. ”

“ Such a defence of the Inquisition is not borne out by the facts. It is true, of course, that in the Middle Ages there was hardly a heresy which had not some connection with an anti-social sect. For this reason any one who denied a dogma of the faith was at once suspected, rightly or wrongly, or being an anarchist. But, as a matter of fact, the Inquisition did not condemn merely those heresies which caused social upheaval, but all heresies as such: "We decree," says Frederic II, "that the crime of heresy, no matter what the name of the sect, be classed as a public crime.... ”

“ Critics who are ignorant of the Middle Ages may feel at liberty to shower insult and contempt upon a judicial system whose severity is naturally repugnant to them. But contempt does not always imply a reasonable judgment, and to abuse an institution is not necessarily a proof of intelligence. If we would judge an epoch intelligently, we must be able to grasp the viewpoint of other men, even if they lived in an age long past. ”

“ Augustine was of the same mind. He thus addressed the Manicheans, the most hated sect of his time: "Let those who have never known the troubles of a mind in search for the truth, proceed against you with rigor. It is impossible for me to do so, for I for years was cruelly tossed about by your false doctrines, which I advocated and defended to the best of my ability. I ought to bear with you now, as men bore with me, when I blindly accepted your doctrines." [2] Wazo, Bishop of Liège, wrote in a similar strain in the eleventh century. ”

“ It is altogether a modern perversion of history to assume, as apologists do, that the request for mercy was sincere, and that the secular magistrate and not the Inquisition was responsible for the death of the heretic. We can imagine the smile of amused surprise with which Gregory IX and Gregory XI would have listened to the dialectics with which Count Joseph de Maistre proves that it is an error to suppose, and much more to assert, that a Catholic priest can in any manner be instrumental in compassing the death of a fellow creature. ”

“ The only legitimate marriage in their eyes was the union of the Bishop with the Church, or the union of the soul with the Holy Spirit by the ceremony of the consolamentum.
They condemned absolutely all marital relations. That was the sin of Adam and Eve. Pierre Garsias taught at Toulouse that the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden was simply carnal pleasure.
One of the purposes of marriage is the begetting of children. But the propagation of the human species is plainly the work of the Evil Spirit. A woman with child is a woman possessed of the devil. ”

“ The laws and letters of Innocent III never once mention the death penalty for heresy. He merely decrees against them banishment, and the confiscation of their property. When he speaks of having recourse to the secular arm, he means simply the force required to carry out the laws of banishment enacted by his penal code. This code, which seems so pitiless to us, was in reality at that time a great improvement in the treatment of heretics. For its special laws prevented the frequent outbreaks of popular vengeance, which punished not only confessed heretics, but also mere suspects. ”