The Inquisition: A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the ChurchVacandard, E. (Elphège)
History
The Inquisition: A Critical and Historical Study of the Coercive Power of the Church
Vacandard, E. (Elphège)
Inquisition -- History
It would leave been very surprising if the Church, menaced as she was
by an ever-increasing flood of heresy, had not accepted the State's
eager offer of protection. She had always professed a horror for
bloodshed. But as long as she was not acting directly, and the State
undertook to shed in its own name the blood of wicked men, she began
to consider solely the benefits that would accrue to her from the
enforcement of the civil laws. Besides, by classing heresy with
treason, she herself had laid down the premises of the State's
logical conclusion, the death penalty. The Church, therefore, could
hardly call in question the justice of the imperial laws, without in
a measure going against the principles she herself had advocated.
Church and State, therefore, continually influenced one the other.
The theology upheld by the Church reacted on the State and caused it
to adopt violent measures, while the State in turn compelled the
Church to approve its use of force, although such an attitude was
opposed to the spirit of early Christianity.
The theologians and the canonists put the finishing touches to the
situation. Influenced by what was happening around them, their one
aim was to defend the laws of their day. This is clearly seen, if we
compare the _Summa_ of St. Raymond of Pennafort with the _Summa_ of
St. Thomas Aquinas. When St. Raymond wrote his work, the Church still
followed the criminal code of Popes Lucius III and Innocent III; she
had as yet no notion of inflicting the death penalty for heresy. But
in St. Thomas's time, the Inquisition had been enforcing for some
years the draconian laws of Frederic II. The Angelic Doctor,
therefore, made no attempt to defend the obsolete code of Innocent
III, but endeavored to show that the imperial laws, then authorized
by the Church, were conformable to the strictest justice. His one
argument was to make comparisons, more or less happy, between heresy
and crimes against the common law.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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