The Inquisition : $b a political and military study of its establishmentNickerson, Hoffman
History
The Inquisition : $b a political and military study of its establishment
Nickerson, Hoffman
Albigenses; Christian heresies -- History -- Middle Ages, 600-1500; Inquisition; Prohibition
This comparative mildness was never universal in fact and gradually
disappeared even from theory. We have noted, in the second chapter,
the curious spectacle presented by the eleventh and twelfth century,
on the one hand many of the higher clergy mindful of the Christian
tradition of mercy, and on the other the laity and lower clergy
insisting upon death for the impenitent heretic, and generally death
by fire. We have now to note the slow progress by which lynch law
became written law. Even before the Albigensian Crusade there had
been at least two instances of burning alive formally set down as
the penalty for heresy. One was the law enacted in 1194 by Count
Raymond V, of Toulouse, at the very storm centre of the trouble. The
other was the law of Pedro II, in nearby Aragon in 1197, against
the Waldenses. Under Raymond V’s law, the Toulousains later claimed
that they had “burnt many.” But even if their claim be accepted
as true (whereas it seems doubtful) at any rate the practice was
not continued. Pedro of Aragon decreed burning alive only for
those Waldensians and other heretics who should fail to leave his
dominions by a certain day, so that his reference to the stake was
hardly more than a threat intended to enforce the real penalty, that
of banishment. De Montfort himself, at the parliament he held in
Pamiers in 1212 to consolidate his position in the south, decreed
no more than banishment and confiscation as penalties for heresy.
More important than any previous law is one enacted for Lombardy in
1224 by the Emperor Frederick II, by which heretics were either to
be burnt or to have their tongues cut out, in the discretion of the
judge.
It is quite in keeping with what we know of the subject in general
that the first ecclesiastical recognition of death as the normal
legal penalty for heresy should be an indirect one. A council sitting
in Toulouse in 1229, the year of Raymond VII’s final surrender, after
remarking as usual that “due punishment” is to be inflicted upon
heretics, casually goes on to say that “... heretics, _who, through
fear of death_ or any other cause except their own free will, return
to the faith, are to be imprisoned by the bishop of the city to do
penance, that they may not corrupt others” (Vancandard). After this,
examples multiply, under the influence of Frederick II and Pope
Gregory IX. It so happens, however, that not until 1252 did any Pope
formally insist upon the death penalty for heresy throughout Latin
Christendom. This was the act of Innocent IV in the same bull “Ad
Extirpanda” which authorized torture. Thenceforward the Inquisition
was virtually complete.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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