A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume ILea, Henry Charles
History
A History of the Inquisition of the Middle Ages; volume I
Lea, Henry Charles
Inquisition -- History
The early teachings of Leo and Pelagius were revived as soon as heresy
became alarming. Early in the twelfth century Honorius of Autun
proclaimed that the rebels against God who were obdurate to the voice of
the Church must be coerced with the material sword. In the compilations
of canon law by Ivo and Gratian the allusions to the treatment of
heretics by the Church are singularly few, but there are abundant
citations to show the duty of the sovereign to extirpate heresy and to
obey the mandates of the Church to that end. Frederic Barbarossa gave
the imperial sanction to the theory that the sword had been intrusted to
him for the purpose of smiting the enemies of Christ, when he alleged
this in 1159 as a reason for persecuting Alexander III. and supporting
his antipope, Victor IV. The second Lateran Council, in 1139, orders all
potentates to coerce heretics into obedience; the third, in 1179,
sanctimoniously says that the Church does not seek blood, but it is
helped by the secular laws, for men will seek the salutary remedy to
escape bodily punishment. We have seen how inefficacious all this
proved; and in despair of voluntary assistance from the temporal princes
the Church took a further step by which it assumed for itself the
responsibility for the material as well as the spiritual punishment of
heretics. The decree of Lucius III. at the so-called Council of Verona,
in 1184, commanded that all potentates should take an oath before their
bishops to enforce the ecclesiastical and secular laws against heresy
fully and efficaciously. Any refusal or neglect was to be punished by
excommunication, deprivation of rank, and incapacity to hold other
station, while in the case of cities they were to be segregated and
debarred from all commerce with other places.[198]
The Church thus undertook to coerce the sovereign to persecution. It
would not listen to mercy, it would not hear of expediency. The monarch
held his crown by the tenure of extirpating heresy, of seeing that the
laws were sharp and were pitilessly enforced. Any hesitation was visited
with excommunication, and if this proved inefficacious, his dominions
were thrown open to the first hardy adventurer whom the Church would
supply with an army for his overthrow. Whether this new feature in the
public law of Europe could establish itself was the question at issue in
the Albigensian crusades. Raymond's lands were forfeited simply because
he would not punish heretics, and those which his son retained were
treated as a fresh gift from the crown. The triumph of the new principle
was complete, and it never was subsequently questioned.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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