[2] St. Optatus (De Schismate Donatistarum, lib. iii, cap. vi and vii) was one of the first of the Fathers to quote the Old Testament as his authority for the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics. But in this he was not followed either by his contemporaries or his immediate successors. Before him, Origen and St. Cyprian had protested against this appeal to the Mosaic law.
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. Such reasoning would prove that all sins were crimes of treason against God, and therefore merited death.[1] Is not a sacrilegious communion the worst possible insult to the divine majesty? Must we argue, therefore, that every unworthy communicant, if unrepentant, must be sent to the stake?
[1] Mgr. Bonomelli, Bishop of Cremona, writes: "In the Middle Ages, they reasoned thus: If rebellion against the prince deserves death, a fortiori does rebellion against God. Singular logic! It is not very hard to put one's finger upon the utter absurdity of such reasoning. For every sinner is a rebel against God's law. It follows then that we ought to condemn all men to death, beginning with the kings and the legislators;" quoted by Morlais in the Revue du Clergé Français, August 1, 1905, p. 457.
It is evident, therefore, that neither reason, Christian tradition nor the New Testament call for the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics. The interpretation of St. John xv. 6: Si quis in me non manserit, in ignem mittent et ardet, made by the medieval canonists, is not worth discussing. It was an abuse of the accommodated sense which bordered upon the ridiculous, although its consequences were terrible.
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Modern apologists have clearly recognized this. For that reason they have tried their best to show that the execution of heretics was solely the work of the civil power, and that the Church was in no way responsible. "When we argue about the Inquisition," says Joseph de Maistre, "let us separate and distinguish very carefully the rôle of the Church and the rôle of the State. All that is terrible and cruel about this tribunal, especially its death penalty, is due to the State; that was its business, and it alone must be held to an accounting. All the clemency, on the contrary, which plays so large a part in the tribunal of the Inquisition must be ascribed to the Church, which interfered in its punishments only to suppress and mitigate them."[1] "The Church," says another grave historian, "took no part in the corporal punishment of heretics. Those executed were simply punished for their crimes, and were condemned by judges acting under the royal seal."[2] "This," says Lea, "is a typical instance in which history is written to order…. 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."[3]
[1] Lettres à un gentilhomme russe sur l'Inquisition espagnole, ed. 1864, pp. 17, 18, 28, 34.
[2] Rodrigo, Historia verdadera de la Inquisición, 1876, vol. i, p. 170.
[3] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, pp. 540, 227.
The real share of the Inquisition in a condemnation involving the death penalty is indeed a very difficult question to determine. According to the letter of the papal and imperial Constitutions of 1231 and 1232, the civil and not the ecclesiastical tribunals assumed all responsibility for the death sentence;[1] the Inquisition merely decided upon the question of doctrine, leaving the rest to the secular Court. It is this legislation that the above-named apologists have in mind, and the text of these laws is on their side.