This note is sounded again and again in the grim formulas establishing torture and the stake. Since human justice fiercely punished the lesser crimes against men, how much the more it ought to punish the greater crimes against God. Given the savage criminal law of the time, given also the Athanasian creed tracing back to our Lord saying: “He that believeth and is baptized shall be saved; and he that believeth not shall be condemned” (St. Mark xvi), and the logical sequence is complete. Nevertheless, even in times of clear, logical thinking such as the Middle Ages, men seldom act from logic alone. To act so is the mark of the fanatic, and although the fanatic often is powerful, still most men are not fanatics, and no society can long be ruled by fanaticism pure and simple. After some years of study and reflection upon the point, my own conclusion is that the Church and the Governments of the thirteenth century were determined in their action not only by the formal logic of the situation but also by the peculiarly repulsive nature of the Albigensian (“Catharan,” or Manichean) heresy, the leading heresy of the age. Whatever might have happened, it did happen that the laws repressing heresy were codified by the acute legal minds of the new time under the stress of a particular heresy of a most hateful sort. Symonds has recorded two Milanese epitaphs, dating from the mid-thirteenth century. In one an archbishop is praised for having “... cut the throats of the heretics (... jugulavit haereses).” In the other a Podesta (chief executive magistrate) of the city is also praised because “He did his duty and burned the Catharans (Catharos ut debuit ussit).”[34] Historians seem to have failed to notice the connection of the two sentiments. Whether or not heresy in general would have been as rigorously stamped out had the particular Manichean, Albigensian, or Catharan heresy never existed is mere speculation. The striking fact is that the time that could praise an archbishop for having cut heretical throats thought of heresy as typified by this particular sect. Another illustration is a well-known story of St. Thomas Aquinas. It seems that the greatest of Christian philosophers, one day seated at dinner with St. Louis and his court, suddenly rolled out (no doubt in a deep voice corresponding to his massive frame), “I have a conclusive argument against the Manicheans (Conclusum est contra Manicheos).”[35] Many students have smiled over the feeling of the courtiers; for our purposes the point is that no such contemporary anecdote has come down to us concerning Waldenses, Arnaldists, or any other of the numerous heresies of the time. Theologians taught that all heresy was sin, hence anti-heretical legislation, and the corresponding task of enforcing it. The enormous force of the attack upon the Albigenses came because the average Christian, once face to face with them, decided that duty was pleasure.