The war waged against religious liberty has been for many centuries the great crime of Christian society, and the cause not only of most grievous wrongs, but of all the most formidable reactions to which Christianity has been exposed. We see the culminating point of this most dangerous theory in the thirteenth century, when it was enforced by legislation as well as upheld by the Church. {143} The confused code which bears the name of 'Etablissements' or Statutes of St. Louis, and which contains many ordinances belonging to periods both preceding and subsequent to his reign, explicitly condemns to death all heretics, and commands the civil governors to carry out the sentence of the bishops on this point. St. Louis himself asked Pope Alexander IV., in 1255, to extend the Inquisition (which was already established in the ancient domains of the Counts of Toulouse on account of the Albigenses) to the whole kingdom and to place the power which it gave in the hands of the Franciscans and Dominicans. It is true that the bishops were to be consulted before the inquisitors could condemn a heretic to death, but this was more an act of courtesy to the episcopacy than an effectual guarantee for the liberty of the subject; indeed, with the feelings entertained by St. Louis on this subject, liberty, or to speak more correctly, the merest shadow of justice, had reason to hope for more from the church than from the throne. The extreme rigour of St. Louis against what he called 'that vile oath,' blasphemy (a crime which is indefinite enough except in name), gives perhaps the most striking indication of the state of people's minds, and especially of the King's mind on this subject. Every blasphemer was branded on the lips with a red hot iron. 'One day the King caused a burgess of Paris to be branded in this manner. Violent murmurs arose in the city, and reached the King's ears. He answered by declaring that he would consent to be branded on his own lips and to keep the disgrace of the mark all his life, if only the vice of blasphemy could be banished from his kingdom.' {144} Some time afterwards, when he was executing a work of great public utility, he received numerous expressions of gratitude from the owners of property in Paris. 'I expect a greater recompense from the Lord,' he said, 'for the maledictions which I received after branding that blasphemer, than for the benedictions which I now receive on account of this act of public utility.'