[1] De investigatione Antichristi, lib. i, cap. xlii, 1oc. cit., pp. 88, 89.
[2] Verbum abbreviatum, cap. lxxviii, Migne, P.L., vol. ccv, col. 231.
Was excommunication to be the only penalty for heresy? Yes, answered Wazo, Leo IX, and the Council of Reims in the middle of the eleventh century. But later on the growth of the evil induced the churchmen of the time to call upon the aid of the civil power. They thought that the Church's excommunication required a temporal sanction. They therefore called upon the princes to banish heretics from their dominions, and to imprison those who refused to be converted. Such was the theory of the twelfth century.
We must not forget, however, that the penalty of imprisonment, which was at first a monastic punishment, had two objects in view: to prevent heretics from spreading their doctrines, and to give them an opportunity of atoning for their sins. In the minds of the ecclesiastical judges, it possessed a penitential, almost a sacramental character. In a period when all Europe was Catholic, it could well supplant exile and banishment, which were the severest civil penalties after the death penalty.
CHAPTER IV FOURTH PERIOD FROM GRATIAN TO INNOCENT III THE INFLUENCE OF THE CANON LAW, AND THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN LAW
THE development of the Canon law and the revival of the Roman law could not but exercise a great influence upon the minds of princes and churchmen with regard to the suppression of heresy; in fact, they were the cause of a legislation of persecution, which was adopted by every country of Christendom.
In the beginning of this period, which we date from Gratian,[1] the prosecution of heresy was still carried on, in a more or less irregular and arbitrary fashion, according to the caprice of the reigning sovereign, or the hasty violence of the populace. But from this time forward we shall see it carried on in the name of both the canon and the civil law: secundum canonicas et legitimas sanctiones, as a Council of Avignon puts it.[2]
[1] The Decree of Gratian was written about 1140.
[2] This council was held in 1209, d'Achery, Spicilegium, in-fol., vol. i, p. 704, col. 1.
In Germany and France, especially in northern France, the usual punishment was the stake. We need not say much of England, for heresy seems to have made but one visit there in 1166. In 1160, a German prince, whose name is unknown, had several Cathari beheaded. Others were burned at Cologne in 1163. The execution of the heretics condemned at Vezelai by the Abbot of Vezelai and several bishops, forms quite a dramatic picture.