CHAPTER X A CRITICISM OF THE THEORY AND PRACTICE OF THE INQUISITION
SUCH was the development for over one thousand years (200-1300) of the theory of Catholic writers on the coercive power of the Church in the treatment of heresy. It began with the principle of absolute toleration; it ended with the stake.
During the era of the persecutions, the Church, who was suffering herself from pagan intolerance, merely excommunicated heretics, and tried to win them back to the orthodox faith by the kindness and the force of argument. But when the emperors became Christians, they, in memory of the days when they were "Pontifices maximi," at once endeavored to regulate worship and doctrine, at least externally. Unfortunately, certain sects, hated like the Manicheans, or revolutionary in character like the Donatists, prompted the enactment of cruel laws for their suppression. St. Optatus approved these measures, and Pope St. Leo had not the courage to disavow them. Still, most of the early Fathers, St. John Chrysostom, St. Martin, St. Ambrose, St. Augustine, and many others,[1] protested strongly in the name of Christian charity against the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics. St. Augustine, who formed the mind of his age, at first favored the theory of absolute toleration. But afterwards, perceiving that certain good results followed from what he called "a salutary fear," he modified his views. He then maintained that the State could and ought to punish by fine, confiscation, or even exile, her rebellious children, in order to make them repent. This may be called his theory of moderate persecution.
[1] Lea (op. cit., vol. i, pp. 214, 215) says that St. Jerome was an advocate of force. "Rigor in fact," argues St. Jerome, "is the most genuine mercy, since temporal punishment may avert eternal perdition." Here St. Jerome merely says that God punishes in time that he may no punish in eternity. But he by no means "argues" that this punishment should be in the hands of either Church or State. Commentar., in Naum, i, 9, P. L., vol. xxv, col. 1238.
The revival of the Manichean heresy in the eleventh century took the Christian princes and people by surprise, unaccustomed as they were to the legislation of the first Christian emperors. Still the heretics did not fare any better on that account. For the people rose up against them, and burned them at the stake. The Bishops and the Fathers of the Church at once protested against this lynching of heretics. Some, like Wazo of Liège, represented the party of absolute toleration, while others, under the leadership of St. Bernard, advocated the theory of St. Augustine. Soon after, churchmen began to decree the penalty of imprisonment for heresy—a penalty unknown to the Roman law, and regarded in the beginning more as a penance than a legal punishment. It originated in the cloister, gradually made its way into the tribunals of the Bishop, and finally into the tribunals of the State.
Canon law, helped greatly by the revival of the imperial code, introduced in the twelfth century definite laws for the suppression, of heresy. This régime lasted from 1150 till 1215, from Gratian to Innocent III. Heresy, the greatest sin against God, was classed with treason, and visited with the same penalty. The penalty was banishment with all its consequences; i.e., the destruction of the houses of heretics, and the confiscation of their property. Still, because of the horror which the Church had always professed for the effusion of blood, she did not as yet inflict the death penalty which the State decreed for treason. Innocent III did not wish to go beyond the limits set by St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and St. Bernard.
But later Popes and princes went further. They began by decreeing death as a secondary penalty, in case heretics rebelled against the law of banishment. But when the Emperor Frederic had revived the legislation of his Christian predecessors of the fourth, fifth, and sixth centuries,[1] and had made the popular custom of burning heretics a law of the empire, the Papacy could not resist the current of his example. The Popes at once ordered the new legislation vigorously enforced everywhere, especially in Lombardy. This was simply the logical carrying out of the comparison made by Innocent III between heresy and treason, and was due chiefly to two Popes: Gregory IX who established the Inquisition under the Dominicans and the Franciscans, and Innocent IV who authorized the Inquisitors to use torture.
[1] Cf. the law of Arcadius of 395 (Cod. Theodos., xvi, v. 28).
The theologians and casuists soon began to defend the procedure of the Inquisition. They seemed absolutely unaffected, in theory at least, by the most cruel torments. With them the preservation of the orthodox faith was paramount, and superior to all sentiment. In the name of Christian charity, St. Thomas, the great light of the thirteenth century, taught that relapsed heretics, even when repentant, ought to be put to death without mercy.
How are we to explain this development of the doctrine of the Church on the suppression of heresy, and granting that a plausible explanation may be given, how are we to justify it?