The Inquisition / A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church

by E. Vacandard

If we are not mistaken, St. Thomas is here trying to prove, on the authority of St. Augustine, that it is sometimes lawful to put heretics to death.

But it is only by garbling and distorting the context that St. Thomas makes the Bishop of Hippo advocate the very penalty which, as a matter of fact, he always denounced most strongly. In the passage quoted, St. Augustine was speaking of the benefit that ensues to the Church from the suicide of heretics, but he had no idea whatever of maintaining that the Church had the right to put to death her rebellious children.[1] St. Thomas misses the point entirely, and gives his readers a false idea of the teaching of St. Augustine.

[1] Ep. clxxxv, ad Bonifacium, no. 32.

Thinking, however, that he has satisfactorily answered all the objections against his thesis, he states it as follows: "Heretics who persist in their error after a second admonition ought not only to be excommunicated, but also abandoned to the secular arm to be put to death. For, he argues, it is much more wicked to corrupt the faith on which depends the life of the soul, than to debase the coinage which provides merely for temporal life; wherefore, if coiners and other malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly slain once they are convicted. If, therefore, they persist in their error after two admonitions, the Church despairs of their conversion, and excommunicates them to ensure the salvation of others whom they might corrupt; she then abandons them to the secular arm that they may be put to death."[1]

[1] Summa, IIa IIae, quæst. xi, art. 3.

St. Thomas in this passage makes a mere comparison serve as an argument. He does not seem to realize that if his reasoning were valid, the Church could go a great deal further, and have the death penalty inflicted in many other cases.

The fate of the relapsed heretic had varied from Lucius III to Alexander IV. The bull Ad Abolendam decreed that converted heretics who relapsed into heresy were to be abandoned to the secular arm without trial.[1] But at the time this Decretal was published, the Animadversio debita of the State entailed no severer penalty than banishment and confiscation. When this term, already fearful enough, came to mean the death penalty, the Inquisitors did not know whether to follow the ancient custom or to adopt the new interpretation. For a long time they followed the traditional custom. Bernard of Caux, who was undoubtedly a zealous Inquisitor, is a case in point. In his register of sentences from 1244 to 1248, we meet with sixty cases of relapse, not one of whom was punished by a penalty severer than imprisonment. But a little later on the strict interpretation of the Animadversio debita began to prevail. In St. Thomas's time it meant the death penalty; and we find him citing the bull Ad Abolendam[2] as his authority for the infliction of the death penalty upon the relapsed, penitent or impenitent, in ignorance of the fact that this document originally had a totally different interpretation.

[1] Decretals, in cap. ix, De hæreticis, lib. v, tit. vii.

[2] Summa, IIa IIae, quæst. ix, art. 4: Sed contra.

His reasoning therefore rests on a false supposition. He advocates the death penalty for the relapsed in the name of Christian charity. For, he argues, charity has for its object the spiritual and temporal welfare of one's neighbor. His spiritual welfare is the salvation of his soul; his temporal welfare is life, and temporal advantages, such as riches, dignities, and the like. These temporal advantages are subordinate to the spiritual, and charity must prevent their endangering the eternal salvation of their possessor. Charity, therefore, to himself and to others, prompts us to deprive him of these temporal goods, if he makes a bad use of them. For if we allowed the relapsed heretic to live, we would undoubtedly endanger the salvation of others, either because he would corrupt the faithful whom he met, or because his escape from punishment would lead others to believe they could deny the faith with impunity. The inconstancy of the relapsed is, therefore, a sufficient reason why the Church, although she receives him to penance for his soul's salvation, refuses to free him from the death penalty.