The Inquisition

ON this Bellarmine disputes at greater length Tom. 1. Lib. 3. de Laicis, cap. 21. et 22. Valencia disp. 1. q. 11. puncto 3. Suarez disp. 20. sect. 3.

HERETICS — certain very ancient lovers of liberty, and of a bad peace, cried out that all should be left in their own religion, and cherished and kept in fraternal peace. So a certain Apelles, in Eusebius lib. 5. hist. cap. 13. Nicephorus lib. 4. cap. 29. provided, however (they say), that they confess Christ the Redeemer. Much the same did George Cassander teach in our own time, in Bellarm. cap. 19. But let these men hear the Apostle Paul: What concord hath Christ with Belial?

HERETICS, sectarians, enemies of Catholics, and lovers of a most foul liberty, have said that such men are not to be punished in any way. So thought of old the Donatists, and recently John Hus, and Luther, in Bellarmine, cap. 21. and it is the universal complaint of heretics against us. It is truly marvelous that they, execrating the just punishments of the most holy Inquisition, found in England so many unusual kinds of torments for putting Catholics to death, that they far surpassed the tyrannies of the Barbarians.

The unshaken truth of the holy Church asserts that heretics are justly punished, and can be compelled to profess the faith.

THIS was defined in the Council of Constance sess. 15. and by Leo X. in the Bull against the articles of Luther, and in cap. ad abolendam, and cap. excommunicamus, and other de haeret. cap. super eo, of the same title, Lib. 6. from Leo Pope epist. 2. to the Bishops of Italy, and other letters, cited by Suarez num. 11. and by Lucius P. epist. to the Bishops of France. The Fourth Council of Toledo, cap. 57. and 59. from the Nicene, where it was requested of Constantine that he punish the Arian heretics.

The same is evident from the Laws of the best Princes, who established the gravest penalties against heretics: Leg. Manichaeos. Leg. Arrianis. Leg. quicunque Cod. de haeret. which laws St. Augustine praises, Lib. 1. contra epist. Parmen. c. 7. and epist. 166. ad Donatistas, where he adds that only the Emperor Julian the Apostate left heretics unpunished. Wherefore in Lib. 2. Retract. cap. 5. and epist. 48. and 50. he retracts what he had said before, that heretics were not to be punished with bodily punishment; and in Lib. 1. contra epist. Parmeniani, cap. 7. and tract. 11. in Ioan. and epist. 50. ad Bonifacium, he asserts that the punishment of death is owed to them. D. Gregory also may seem [to hold this], Lib. 1. epist. 72. Bernard serm. 66. in Cant. and Lib. 4. de consider. Leo epist. 91. et 923.

IT IS PROVED by D. Bonaventure on 2. Ioan. on these words: Having made a whip of cords, he cast out those selling doves, sheep, and oxen. Where he exercised the power of the forum, showing that sellers of doves, that is, of the gifts of the Holy Spirit, were to be punished for simony: the oxen, who undergo Ecclesiastical labors for merely temporal reward: and the sheep, who call away the sheep of Christ from his pastures, and sell the truths of the faith to the devil, perverting them and dragging them into heresies, as the Fathers expound.

The holy Doctor observes, moreover, that he had twice reproved their acts, saying: But you have made the house of my Father, a den of thieves.

IT IS PROVED secondly by the holy Doctor in 4. dist. 18. p. 2. quaest. 1. from 1 Corinthians 5. where he delivered the incestuous man to satan for the destruction of the flesh; and 1. ad Timot. 1. He delivered Hymenaeus and Alexander to satan, to torture even of the body, as he observes on the last.

IT IS PROVED thirdly by D. Bonaventure on 22. Lucas and 19. Ioannis, where Peter drawing a sword struck the servant of the Pontiff, whose name was Malchus. There he shows the Pontifical power of Peter, in that he struck the servant of the Pontiff, Malchus, which means King, understanding the people of the Jews, which was made a servant by its unbelief, whose right ear he cut off, that it might no longer hear error. And if he was corrected, it was not because he was to use the sword; but because not for the occasion, as D. Bernard notes, Lib. 4. de consideratione ad Eugenium. That the sword, even the temporal and material one, was understood to be given to the Church, Sanderus proves learnedly de clave David, lib. 2. cap. 11. from D. Augustine contra Faustum.

IT IS PROVED fourthly by D. Bonaventure in 4. dist. 18. p. 2. quaest. 1. for since the Church is a well-ordered Monarchy, it ought to have a power proportioned to amending the fallen and coercing rebels and the contumacious; for so it is done in every rightly ordered Republic; and no crime is more pernicious than heresy. As therefore the Physician, when a soothing remedy does not help, uses the knife and fire; so in our matter the Lord, the best founder and institutor of the Church, gave arms for governance, and remedies apt for preserving the body of the Church unharmed, that when soothing remedies do not avail, they may be cut with the sword of excommunication and burned with a punishment worthy of their most pestilent disease.

THIS power is FOUNDED on Matth. 16. where it is said to Peter: Whatsoever thou shalt bind upon earth, it shall be bound also in heaven, etc. And Matth. 18. If he will not hear the Church, let him be to thee as the heathen and publican, as D. Bonaventure teaches, eadem dist. p. 2. quaest. 5.

THAT THIS power was prefigured by Phinees, son of the Pontiff, Numer. 25. when he pierced the fornicating sacrilegious Idolaters, and that work was by God rewarded to him with the supreme priesthood, D. Bonaventure notes on the place secondly cited, Lucas 22. from the Interlinear Gloss. Nor can this power be denied without error, as Suarez admonishes num. 21. Cast. Lugo num. 10. disp. 21. sect. 1. and it is evident from the definition of Innocent IV. in the Council of Lyons, and cited in cap. Ad Apostolicae, de sentent. et re iudicata, in 6.

With these means of D. Bonaventure all the more recent authors make use.

YOU OBJECT first. In Scripture we are only commanded to avoid heretics, not to kill them: Ad Titum 3. secunda Timoth. 2. prima Thessal. 3. and prima Ioan. Hence Christ did not punish the disciples withdrawing from him, but said to the others: Will you also go away? Ioan. 6. as Cyprian also noted, epist. 55. Matth. 18. however commands only separation from the heretic: Let him be to thee as the Ethnic.

The holy Doctor RESPONDS to that place of John, that Christ said this lest he seem to flatter the disciples, and he was unwilling to hold them by force and necessity in the following of him of such great perfection, of which the others had shown themselves unworthy and incapable. He did not dismiss them, therefore, to the world, or to errors; but he was unwilling to use coercive power.

To that of Matth., the holy Doctor observes in 4. dist. 18. p. 2. quaest. 1. fundamento primo, that Christ immediately added: Amen I say to you: Whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven, giving them the power of punishing those whom he had said were to be cast out with anathema. Wherefore even the Apostles indeed applied separation, but also coercive punishments. The holy Doctor observes further, in Hexaëmer. serm. 16. that the Church could not always coerce rebels, because she lay under Pagan Princes; but in the time of Constantine she raised her head, and began to use her power against heretics, decreeing in the Council of Nicaea that the Arians be punished.

YOU OBJECT secondly, Lucas 11. to James and John, wishing to call down fire from heaven against the Samaritans, Christ objected.

The holy Doctor RESPONDS that at that place those Disciples were led by a bitter, not a reasonable, zeal, against those who were still infidels and not yet instructed. Then he adds that Christ wished to admonish them, that he willed in that first coming of his to show humility and patience toward blind infidels, as Jerome interprets, ad Algasiam.

YOU OBJECT thirdly, Matth. 13. the Lord reproved the servants wishing to pluck up the Zizania: but heretics are understood, as Cyprian expounds, Lib. 3. epist. 3. Chrysost. and Ambr. in Maldonatus.

IT IS ANSWERED from D. Bonaventure, de sex alis Seraph. cap. 7. and sermone Dominica prima in Quadragesima, that by the Zizania are understood all the impious whatever, and not heretics: whence also D. Augustine, who had understood heretics by it, afterwards retracted it, Lib. 2. Retract. cap. 18. where from Cyprian he understands all the wicked. The same think Gregory, Ambrose, Theophylactus, in Cornelius there; and as he does not command thieves, adulterers, etc. to be killed, so neither heretics; and yet he does not prohibit all these from being rooted up: he only prohibits that they be taken away rashly, lest with the wicked the good also. Lest gathering the zizania, you root up also the wheat together with it, as D. August. warns, Lib. 3. cont. epist. Parmen. cap. 2.

From what has been said they infer that this power of the Church extends even to those who were baptized in infancy and fall away from the faith. Nay, the Fourth Council of Toledo, can. 55. includes even those baptized out of fear.

THEY INFER secondly, that the sons of heretics can be led to baptism per se. See Suarez 3. part. Tom. 3. disp. 25. sect. 3. I said per se, because per accidens say the opposite, if it be certain that those boys are to be brought up by their parents in heresy; for then it would redound to the injury of Baptism. See Suarez here disp. 25. sect. 5. and Card. Lugo disp. 21. sectione 1.

II. The Church and the Right of the Sword.

1. The Argument from Authority.

Summary : Opinions of authors from the sixteenth to the eighteenth century, especially Bellarmine and Suarez. —They are but little supported by St. Thomas.— Different opinion of Bianchi de Lucca.—Contemporary opinions : Cardinal Tarquini, Mazella, Father Lépicier ; and on the other side, Cardinal Cavagnis, Vicchiotti, Cardinal Soglia, Cardinal Satolli, Soliera, Lega (afterwards Dean of the Rota), Lombardi, Father Biederlack, Mgr. Douais.—The book of Father de Luca.—Causes of error in the great authors of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.—Conflict of opinion between Bellarmine and older authors.

We freely admit that from the sixteenth to the eighteenth centuries theologians and canonists claimed for the Church the right to inflict capital punishment for certain offences in case of necessity. Thus the theory which attributes this power to the Church counts famous and even classical writers among its supporters. Heirs of St. Thomas, they sprang up in an age in which the new social order was taking shape, the development of which has continued to the present day, and they seem to have transmitted to us for our own times the true formula of religious society and civil society. They were the first to state propositions as to the public law of the Church, which are still taught, and which are, to many persons, almost indisputable. Far be it from us to object entirely to the acceptance which they have deserved by their learning and virtue.

We may, however, remark that, while giving the sword to the Church, they hesitate as to the manner in which the Church is to wear it and use it. They instinctively perceive the real contradiction between the maternal spirit of the Church and excessive severity, and are inclined to represent the secular power as a mandatary, bound to obey orders, who will in extreme cases inflict capital punishment on behalf of the Sovereign Pontiff. In the scholastic precision of their formulæ they say that for ecclesiastical criminal cases the right of the sword exists in the Pope, as in one who has the power of ordering punishment, tanquam in imperante et movente, and in the Sovereign, as in one who carries out the order of another, tanquam in exsequente et moto ab alio. Without making this opinion, even in its modified form, an article of faith,¹ Bellarmine and Suarez give it as that of the schools.² Certain authors of repute,³ such as the late Cardinals Tarquini¹ and Mazella,² and Father Lépicier, C.S.M.,³ share this opinion. The contradiction which it meets with in our own days in the most different countries and in the most Catholic circles seems to us so much the more significant.

¹ Certain expressions may easily be misunderstood. Thus Suarez (De Fide, d. 20), after having stated (s. 3, n. 10) that in his opinion the existence in the Church of the power of punishing heretics was an article of faith, subsequently (n. 18) raises this question only, in whom this power resides : for, he observes, there are in the Church temporal princes and ecclesiastical prelates ; and although (n. 21) he severely condemns the opinion of those who recognize in the spiritual authority the power only to inflict punishments of the same spiritual order, he does not go so far as to declare that opinion heretical.

² Does this include the Angelic Doctor ? It may be doubted. Observe the expressions which St. Thomas seems designedly to have chosen ; he does not say that the Church condemns heretics to death, but that she leaves them to the secular tribunal (see 2, 2, Q. 11, Art. 3 c ; Art 4 c and ad 1).

³ Father de Luca was violently attacked by the Catholic Germania for having, in a Latin treatise of two volumes on Public Law, devoted four lines to the law and opinions of former times. The book was written in 1901, and the author has been dead several years. Nevertheless, the anti-Catholic Press does not cease to exploit this passage. After Germany, where the work was even brought up before Parliament, the liberal papers of Belgium had their turn. This year it is the turn of Holland. Under the bombastic heading, “ Abominable Doctrines,” one of these articles begins thus : " This is how a Jesuit Father, a certain De Luca, Professor of the University of the Vatican (!), wishes to treat heretics : ‘ The civil power may condemn the heretic to death at the order, and on behalf of, the Church.’ ” The whole is a gross calumny. Speaking of the jurisdiction of the Church over those who have gone astray, Father de Luca divides his answer into two parts. In the first, he makes heretics subject in theory to the Church ; in the second, he declares them in certain cases exempt, by the express will of the Church. With reference to the first part, he quotes the legislation of the earlier Middle Ages, which he sums up according to Tanner, an author of the sixteenth century ; as, later on, when speaking of the exceptions of the present day, he quotes two contemporary authors, Aichner and Ballerini-Palmieri, who declare that in the present day the Church takes no punitive action against heretics. Father de Luca expresses no personal wish ; he simply borrows from an old author the interpretation of a law which is expressly declared to be obsolete. The journal in question has therefore in a few words succeeded (a) in raising a dead author to life ; (b) in inventing a Vatican University which does not exist; (c) in imputing to one author as his own opinion what is simply a quotation from another ; and (d) in falsifying the meaning of the quotation itself. In this connection it is well to take note of the wise words with which Father Brandi concludes one of his articles : “ To attempt to treat ex professo of delicate questions, without even taking into account the changes which have taken place in the position of the Church, is always useless, and often imprudent and mischievous, by reason of the bitter controversies which are certain to follow ” (Civiltà Cattolica for June, 1902, series 13, vol. vii., p. 18, Del potere coattivo della Chiesa).

¹ Juris Ecclesiastici Institutiones, ed. ii., p. 42 sqq.

² De Religione et Ecclesia, d. 4, Art. 6, n. 704, 31, nota 1.

³ De Stabilitate et Progressu Dogmatis, pp. 174, 175 ; Rome, 1908.

The late Cardinal Cavagnis,¹ who was Professor of Law in the Roman seminary, did not hesitate to say that the great majority of authors deny to the Church the power of the sword—that is to say, the right to inflict capital punishment. Among these authors the celebrated Bianchi de 'Lucca deserves special mention ; he dedicated to the Prince of the Apostles a great work in six volumes,² devoted entirely to the defence of the rights of the Church, especially its political rights, against the novel theories of Pietro Giannone. His work was printed and approved at Rome in 1746. In the fourth volume (1. 2, c. 4, sec. 9) he deals with this objection : “In earlier ages the Church had not the power to condemn to corporal inflictions or to exile ; still less to mutilation or death.” “ When, then,” asks Bianchi, “ did the Church possess this power of punishing by death or mutilation ? Whoever pretended that the Church had the power of condemning to a bloody punishment ? Does she not expressly forbid it by her Canons, both of modern and of ancient law ? Who does not know that the desire of the Church, in punishing delinquents by corporal inflictions, has always been to bring about their repentance and conversion, and never their extermination ?”

¹ Institutiones juris Publici, first edition ; Rome, 1906.

² Della potestà e della polizia della Chiesa ; Rome, 1748.

It would be difficult to answer more categorically than this.

More recently, Vecchiotti,³ whose lectures at Rome were classical, and the late Cardinals Soglia¹ and Satolli,² similarly deny to the Church the power of inflicting capital punishment; and Father Brandi,³ the editor of the Civiltà Cattolica, on the same side, quotes three other courses of lectures on Canon Law delivered at Rome, and published in 1900 and 1901, by Solieri, Lega (afterwards Dean of the Rota), and M. Lombardi; and Mgr. Douais considers it an established truth.⁴

³ Institutiones Canonicæ, t. 2, l. 4, c. 1, sec. 4, pp. 37, 39 sqq., and 46 sqq. ; Turin, 1868.

¹ Institutiones juris publici, l. 1, sec. 8, p. 31 ; Modena, 1850.

² Conferenze storico-giuridiche di diritto pubblico ecclesi- astico, p. 47 ; Rome, 1889.

³ Series 18, t. 7, p. 18, June, 1902. Del potere coattivo della Chiesa.

⁴ Revue pratique d’apologétique, January 15, 1909, p. 602.

Following so many distinguished authors, we may, then, without temerity circumscribe the coercive power of the Church within limits other and narrower than those laid down by the theologians and canonists of the sixteenth century. The latter were led to their conclusions, perhaps unconsciously, by the bias of preconceived opinions, and we cannot accept their judgment on the point at issue.

Under what influence, then, was the rigorist theory constructed ? Under the influence of various factors which made it difficult to grasp the exact truth. We have to consider the psychology of an age which tolerated and applauded the pitiless Calvin—an age wholly given over to the most rigorous ideas. Absolutism reigned in the Courts, and a rigorist current of ideas ran through the Church. The former declared the Divine right of Kings, and the latter was the precursor of the icy blast of Jansenism. A Judaistic method of under-standing and practising their religion crept into Christian consciences, and one might have thought that the old Mosaic Law had been revived. The same spirit appeared in the highest lyric poetry of France. Moralists and heretics alike took their stand on the antiquated law of Sinai,¹ the former to explain and justify the ecclesiastical observance of Sunday, the latter to excuse themselves for removing the pictures of the Saints and breaking their statues. Even ascetic theology was imbued with an extravagant severity, which preached pure love while sowing the seeds of fear and keeping the soul far from that God to whom it owed all its affection. What wonder, then, if men searched in the institutions of the Jewish people for lessons of religious policy ?

¹ Even the moral precepts of the old law do not bind by- reason of their promulgation by Moses ; but their present force comes to them from the natural law, and the positive confirmation given to them by the Gospels. The Mosaic Code is, in fact, entirely abolished.

We must remember, moreover, that the intimate union which had existed between the Church and the State of the Middle Ages was dissolved, and with the separation began a readjustment of their respective powers—a division of rights never before attempted. Human efforts do not reach perfection except by repeated trials, and we have no right to expect a division of rights so perfect from the first as to require no subsequent amendment.

Should we be rash, then, if we ascribed certain claims to the effect of the shock which a great religious disaster naturally caused to hearts most devoted to the old Christian faith ?

During the lifetime of Bellarmine and those writers who were the first to claim distinctly for the Church the right to punish with death, the Protestant heresy dealt a deadly blow to Christianity and the religious unity of Western Europe. Religious authorities naturally sought to preserve that unity by enforcing the laws enacted for the punishment of heresy ; it was their duty. The secular rulers gave way, for to make the observance of those laws a matter for their exclusive jurisdiction was only to increase their desire to abolish them. We can easily understand, then, that the theologians of the time, disturbed and agitated by a catastrophe from which Europe has not even yet recovered, in spite of their wide learning, in spite of their excellent intentions, or rather, to some extent, because of those intentions, lacked the calmness and judicial spirit necessary to define precisely the law which had been in force until that time, and trace that law back to its source. The Church pressed for the execution of the old edicts of Frederic II., and had recourse to the secular arm to obtain an effective repression ; therefore, they thought, the Church was competent to regulate that repression herself. The Church, on the other hand, never ceased to make profession of clemency; therefore, according to their view, the secular arm became the medium, executing purely ministerial functions, by which the Church had to exercise her terrible power. Let us frankly admit it: the argument was faulty, and the expedient only half saved the clemency of the Church; for it is only common sense that a person is not more merciful merely because he gives effect to his severity through the medium of another.

Moreover, it appeared to these men that every position taken at any time whatever by religious authority was necessarily that of the primitive Church, and must remain that of the future. We ourselves, without seeing shifting sand where our Lord declared that He was building on a rock, have learned, from a more attentive examination of successive theories and facts, to make reasonable allowance for inevitable changes, and to admit that very few ideas and institutions remain for ever unalterable. In the sixteenth century men did not take sufficient account of the fact that, though the foundation was Divinely laid, the superstructure was only human ; Catholics and Protestants alike, with an exaggerated horror of any change, condemned a practice as new, or defended it as the expression of an unchanging principle. There was great risk that such a prejudice would distort all their views of history ; and, as Gratian, in his Concordia discordantium canonum, did violence to the texts in order to reconcile discrepancies which were most simply explained by differences of date, the theologians of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries gave to earlier events and statements a forced interpretation in order to bring them into agreement with contemporary institutions and opinions. We cannot, therefore, be surprised to see them appeal to the evidence of the Fathers, whose method of reasoning contradicts their own, and who, consequently, instead of strengthening their position, only show its weakness.

Two examples, taken from Bellarmine, will show how remarkable is this contradiction. In support of the argument that the punishment of death should be inflicted on heretics, the illustrious controversialist quotes the severe measures which the Old Testament directs to be taken against false prophets.¹ The Fathers refused to see in the politico-religious organization of the Jewish people the model of the laws which were to govern a spiritual society, thenceforward entirely distinct from the State ; and the spirit of the New Testament was to them a reason for not following the Old Testament in this matter. Origen answered Celsus in these terms : “ Jews, when they become Christians, are bound no longer to follow the laws of Moses, but those of Jesus. . . . Christians could not kill their enemies, nor could they burn or stone those who offend against the law, as the Mosaic Law directed.”² St. Theodore the Studite wrote to Theophilus of Ephesus : “ You may quote to me Phinees and Heli a thousand times ; Jesus reproved His disciples for using such language to Him, and thus showing themselves destitute of His mercy and His, kindness.”³ St. Cyprian draws attention to this contrast between the two Testaments : “ Formerly, under the old law of the carnal circumcision, rebels against the law paid for their rebellion with their lives ; but now that a spiritual circumcision distinguishes the faithful servants of God, the rebellious and obstinate fall under the edge of a spiritual sword when they are rejected by the Church.”¹ And yet Bellarmine appeals to the great Bishop of Carthage !² He relies also on St. Jerome, quoting his commentary on that passage from the Epistle to the Galatians³ which the Canon Law understood as referring, not to the penalty of death, but to separation from the Church.⁴ The ancient writers quoted the Parable of the Wheat and the Cockle against the punishment of heretics.⁵ This parable becomes an objection in the treatise of Bellarmine.⁶

¹ Controv. de Laicis, 1. 3, c. 21.

² Contra Celsum, l. 7, c. 26 (M.P.G., t. 11, cols. 1457, 1458).

³ Ep. 155 to Theophilus of Ephesus (M.P.G., t. 99, cols. 1481 sqq.).

¹ Ep. 62 ad Pomponium, n. 4. (M.P.L., t. 4, col. 371).

² Ep. ad Fortunatum de Exhortatione Martyrii, c. 51 (M.P.L., t. 4, col. 659). St. Cyprian reminds him of the severities of the old law against idolatry ; but when he says that, according to Christ, the precepts concerning the worship of God and contempt of idols ought to be more strictly observed, he means to speak, not of the punishments to be inflicted on idolaters, but of the generosity with which men should be willing to give up their lives rather than deny their God. The context leaves no doubt upon this point. The a fortiori argument of St. Cyprian is founded on the example of Christ suffering, who exhorts us to suffer and die ; and his conclusion inculcates contempt for death. The whole epistle is an exhortation, not to violence, but to martyrdom, which means death accepted without resistance.

³ In Epist. ad Galatas, c. 5.

⁴ Can. 16, Secundæ, c. 23, Q. 18. The Eighteenth Canon, Ecce autem, speaks more expressly of the amputation of corrupt flesh by the sword of excommunication.

⁵ For example, St. John Chrysostom, Hom. 46, on St. Matthew, n. 182 ; St. Simeon the Studite, Ep. 155 to Theo- philus of Ephesus (M.P.G., t. 99, cols. 1482, 1483) ; Wazon (eleventh century), Anselmi Gesta Episc. Leodiens. (Mon. Germ. Script., vii., c. 227, 228).

⁶ Op. cit., c. 22.

Great as is the authority of such distinguished writers, they are but human ; and without detracting from the respect which is due to them, we have in the present case very good reasons for declining to follow them.

2. The Argument from Tradition.

Summary : Tertullian, Lactantius, St. Cyprian, Origen, St. John Chrysostom, St. Euthymius the Great, St. Theodore the Studite, Alcuin, Rabanus Maurus, Wazon, St. Peter Damian, St. Anselm, Ivo of Chartres, Rupert, Hugo of St. Victor, St. Bernard, Peter the Venerable, Peter Cantor, Gratian.—Canonical legislation does not include capital punishment.—Taparelli’s conclusions.

Taparelli says in his Treatise on Natural Law (n. 1483) : " If I had to decide, as a canonist or theologian, the question of the extreme limits placed upon the coercive power of the Church, I should search tradition or ecclesiastical legislation to see what explanation the Church herself has given on this subject.”

We propose to follow this prudent advice, and to take the evidence of ancient writers and ecclesiastical laws as to the mind of the Church.

During the whole of her existence the Church has shown the greatest repugnance to the shedding of blood. Tertullian, naturally somewhat inclined to exaggeration, is disposed to forbid Christians to take any part in war or in the execution of a capital sentence.¹ Lactantius, with greater moderation, expresses the general rule of religious toleration in the antithetical form he was accustomed to use : “ Religion should be defended, not by killing, but by ' dying ; not by cruelty, but by patience ; not by crime, but by faith. ... If you profess to defend religion by bloodshed, by tortures, by wrongdoing, you do not defend it, you sully it, you violate it.”¹ The testimony of St. Cyprian, the illustrious Bishop and martyr of Carthage, and Origen, the learned doctor of the East, has been quoted above.

¹ De Corona Militum, c. 2 (M.P.L., t. 2, col. 92).

¹ Div. Inst., l. 5, c. 20 (M.P.L., t. 6, col. 516).

In time of persecutions these protests may seem natural, and no special merit attaches to them ; but they were repeated with equal energy in the hour of the first excitement of victory. It was at such a time that St. Chrysostom in the East showed his reluctance to have any threat held out over the heads of heretics. “ We must not put heretics to death, or we shall have war without quarter throughout the Empire. . . . The Master certainly does not forbid us to restrain heretics, to close their mouths, to reject their oaths ; what He does forbid is to shed their blood, and to put them to death.”²

² Hom. 46 on St. Matthew, n. 1 and 2.

It was at such a time that St. Euthymius the Great displayed against heretics a zeal which won the admiration of other Saints, both for its ardour and its gentleness.³ It was at such a time that St. Augustine in the West used all his eloquence to clear the Church from all complicity, even indirect, in sanguinary repression ; and yet he was dealing with those very Donatists whose cruelty and excesses he has painted in such vivid colours—vulgar criminals, plundering murderers, who wore out the patience of the imperial power. These are the men whose cause he pleads with the Proconsul of Africa : “ There is only one thing I fear from thy justice, and that is that it will consider the enormity of the offences committed without sufficient regard to Christian clemency. Do not act in that manner, we beg thee in the name of Jesus Christ. We do not desire to take vengeance on our enemies. . . . We love them, and pray for them. . . . We hope that terror of the laws and judges will enable them to escape from eternal condemnation. We do not desire their death. . . . Forget that thou hast power to kill, but do not forget our prayer. We pray thee not to put them to death, as we pray our Saviour to convert them. . . . Remember, moreover, that these ecclesiastical causes only come before thee for trial on the petition of the clergy. ... If thou shouldst pass sentence of death, thou wilt receive no more of our complaints. We would rather be killed by these criminals than institute proceedings which may result in their being put to death.”¹

³ See his Life by Genier, O.P.; Paris, 1909, p. 172.

¹ Ep. 100, n. 1 and 2 (M.P.L., t. 33, cols. 366, 367).

Augustine wrote this letter in 408 or 409, and therefore at a time when experience had already modified his earlier opinions on the treatment of heretics, by showing the usefulness or necessity of some degree of severity. Three or four years later (in 412) he renewed his entreaties in his letters to the Tribune Marcellinus² and the Proconsul Aprin- gius.³ Read, finally, his letter to Count Boniface (417), which contains his “ complete theory on the repression of heretics.”⁴ How can we help being struck by the distress which was caused to St. Augustine by the violent death of certain Donatists ? If he rejoices at the deliverance of many Christians who were kept in heresy by terror, he resigns himself to the temporal loss of a few wicked wretches only because it is rather their own act than that of the law.¹ Again and again he falls back on this same explanation—these heretics have put themselves to death. “ Such is their madness,” he says, “ that they are determined either to kill us in order to satisfy their cruel passion, or to kill themselves to show that they have not lost the power of killing.”² Such language as this is far from recommending the systematic repression of heresy by blood, and farther still from putting the avenging sword into the hands of the Church. On the contrary, St. Augustine declares that he does not desire the death of any.³ “ The charity of the Church labours to save these heretics from eternal damnation without any one of them being put to death.”⁴

² Ep. 133 (M.P.L., t. 33, cols. 509, 510).

³ Ep. 134 of a.d. 412 (M.P.L., t. 33, col. 510).

⁴ Portalié, Dict. de Vacant, Augustin, cols. 2278-2280).

¹ Observe that these laws did not prescribe capital punishment for the Donatists. See Code Théodosien, xvi., 5, l. 54.

² Ep. 185, n. 11. Cf. n. 14, 32, 33, 34 (M.P.L., t. 33, cols. 797, 798, 807, 808).

³ Ibid., n. 11 (col. 797).

⁴ Ibid., n. 32 (col. 807).

We may, then, come to this conclusion : St. Augustine gave up his opposition on principle to measures of severity, it is true ; but capital punishment always seemed to him opposed to that Christian rule of mercy from which we may not depart, even with the most unworthy, and he never thought of attributing to the Church the right to punish by death. To the very last he insisted on the distinction between civil and ecclesiastical proceedings which he had laid down in 412 : “ The mission of the Pro- consul is one, that of the Church is another ; the former may be accompanied by terror, but the latter must always be recommended by its clemency.”¹

¹ Ep. to the Proconsul Apringius (M.P.L., t. 33, col. 511).

The whole of the West was excited by the news of the punishment which the Emperor Maximus inflicted on the heretic Priscillian and certain of his associates ; and St. Martin, who exerted himself to save them, refused to hold any communication with those who had denounced them. How deeply rooted must be the Catholic opposition to the shedding of blood ! St. Leo the Great had no favour for the Priscillianists, whom he classed with the Manich- seans. He denounced their error, as fifteen centuries later Pius X. denounced Modernism, describing it as the common centre of all heresies;² he recognized, moreover, that the imperial severity had served the cause of religion, and induced many persons to return to the faith. And yet how carefully is the office of the Church distinguished from that of the State by that Pope whom Lea³ accuses of having distinctly pledged the Church to the suppression of heresy at whatever cost ! The Pope declares that the Church is content with an ecclesiastical judgment, and uses these words, which have become axiomatic : “ The Church abhors sanguinary vengeance.” He calls for prayers on behalf of heretics, for he says : “ In this life we must not despair of any, but hope for the conversion of all.”⁴

² Letter to Turribius (M.P.L., t. 54, col. 679).

³ History of the Inquisition in the Middle Ages, vol. i., p. 215.

⁴ Sermon 33 (M.P.L., t. 54, col. 249).

In the eighth century, St. Theodore the Studite, a Greek Saint, devotes the whole of his letter to Theophilus of Ephesus to the statement and demonstration of the same proposition ; his testimony is the more significant because he appeals to the New Testament and the Fathers. He concludes thus : “ It belongs to temporal princes to punish material offences, but not offences of the spiritual order ; these causes are reserved to those who have the direction of souls, and they inflict excommunications and other punishments. . . . The Church does not take vengeance by the sword. If you have another Gospel of which we know nothing, well and good ; but if you have not, remember the teaching of the Apostle.”¹

¹ Ep. 155 to Theophilus of Ephesus (M.P.G., t. 99, cols. 1485, 1486).

The question of the right of the sword was not raised for the Church in the ninth and tenth centuries, but there is no doubt as to the answer which it would then have received. At the beginning of the ninth century, Alcuin, who represents the science V and theology of his time, had been very energetic in condemning the forced conversion of the Saxons. His words, which we have already quoted, show us what he would have said of the introduction of the penalty of death into the Ecclesiastical Code.

Rabanus Maurus (786-856) complains, as Augus- fy tine did, of the violent excesses of heretics,² but concludes only that they should be excommunicated. " Let the heretic fall under the sword of the Church, and let his portion be with the unbelievers.”³ Hinc- mar of Rheims, in his synodal capitula of 881, makes too clear a distinction between the spiritual jurisdiction of the Pontiff and the temporal jurisdiction of the Sovereign ever to empower the Church to inflict capital punishment.¹ In the work known as the Collectio Pseudo-Isidoriana no temporal punishment is prescribed against heretics.

² Commentary on 1 Kings, c. 13 (M.P.L., t. 109, col. 42).

³ Commentary on Ezechiel, l. 12, c. 13 (M.P.L., t. 110, cols. 838, 839).

¹ Cap. I. (M.P.L., t. 125, col. 1072).

In the midst of the popular indignation aroused in many places by the antisocial heresy of the Catharists, Wazon, a great Bishop of Liège, whose voice was listened to even in Rome, expressly denies that the Church has the power to sentence to death. “ Let us remember,” he writes to the Bishop of Châlons, “ that in our episcopal consecration we do not receive the sword of the secular power, and that the Divine unction calls upon us not to kill, but to make alive ”²—words which are incorporated in the Canon Law ; and in the same eleventh century, neither in St. Peter Damian nor in St. Anselm do we find a single word to justify corporal inflictions on heretics.

² See Anselmi Gesta Episcoporum Leodiensium (Mon. Germ., Hist. Scriptorum, t. 7, c. 227).

In the twelfth century a celebrated Canonist, Ivo of Chartres, wrote : “ How can that Church which since her birth has never shed any blood but her own come to shed the blood of another?”³ The teaching of Abbot Rupert may be summed up in these few words : Heretics must be won by persuasion,⁴ and they must be put out of the Church like lepers.⁵ Hugo of St. Victor does not threaten, heretics with any temporal punishment, and he insists too strongly on the purely spiritual character of ecclesiastical power to think of giving supreme criminal jurisdiction to the Church.¹

³ Ep. 247 to John, Bishop of Orleans (M.P.L., t. 162, col. 364).

⁴ In Joannem, l. 8 (M.P.L., t. 169, col. 569).

⁵ De Trinitate, in Leviticum, l. 11, c. 36, 37 (M.P.L., t. 167, cols. 815, 816).

¹ De Sacramentis, l. 2, p. 2, c. 7 (M.P.L., t. 176, cols. 419, 420).

St. Bernard and Peter the Venerable, though not objecting to the repression of heresy by the secular power, were strongly opposed to extreme measures. St. Bernard allows the Church two weapons—viz., preaching and excommunication.² Peter Cantor more clearly declares against the sentence of death : “ The Apostle St. Paul tells us to avoid a man that is a heretic after the first and second admonition ; he nowhere tells us to kill him.”³

² Vacandard, St. Bernard, pp. 120, 121.

³ Verb. abbrev., c. 78 (M.P.L., t. 205, col. 231).

These quotations bring us down to the thirteenth century, and there is nothing of any authority on the other side. If there is anything remarkable in those who attribute to the Church the right of the sword, it is the extreme weakness of their argument from the Fathers, or rather the absence of any such argument. The ancient belief of the Church is, moreover, proved by the Canonical Code, the first book of which was written about 1150. Let us hear its author, Gratian. His collection, as is known, without being authoritatively promulgated, received, from its adoption by the universities and tribunals, a sort of official recognition, analogous to that which the teaching of the schools gave to the Summa Theologica of St. Thomas. “ Ecclesiastical discipline,” he says, “ commands that criminals shall be struck, not by the material sword, but by the spiritual sword,” and he corroborates this assertion by this passage, which he attributes to Pope Nicholas I.: " The Church possesses only the spiritual sword ; she does not kill, but she gives life.”¹

¹ Can. Inter hæc, 6, c. 33, Q. 2. The passage is taken from a letter said to have been addressed by Nicholas I. to the Bishops of Germany. Mansi fixes the date about the time of the Council of Mayence, 857.

This is the Canon Law of the twelfth century, and it is not altered by any subsequent legislation. Search the whole of the Corpus Juris, and in the whole of its provisions you will find nothing to legalize capital punishment; and Canonists fail so completely to find any such sanction in subsequent legislation that many, including Father Wernz, S.J., consider it unnecessary to discuss the question of law, because it never was a question of fact. Moreover, if capital punishment found a place in Canon Law, would the Church be acting logically in forbidding her clergy under such severe penalties to take any part in a sentence of death or mutilation ?² “ The sentence of death is on principle odious to the Church;³ she does not pronounce it herself,”⁴ recently wrote M. P. Viollet. Hinschius, so far as we know, is the only person to maintain that certain Popes have used their spiritual authority to pass a sentence of death or mutilation ; not for heresy, it is true, but for other offences. These last words refute the argument of Hinschius; the laws he quotes were enacted at a time when the Church was engaged in a fierce struggle with heresy, which she felt to be as dangerous to her as a revolution to an Empire. How could the Popes have shown, against crimes which concerned them far less, a severity which they spared to heresy ?¹

² C. Sed nec, 4 ; Clericis, 5 ; Sententiam sanguinis, 9 ; [That clerics or monks should not involve themselves in secular affairs] (iii. 50). The participation in a capital sentence is a cause of irregularity—that is, it puts an obstacle to the reception and lawful exercise of sacred orders. See Gas- parri, De Sacra Ordinatione, n. 451.

³ Hist. du Droit Civil Français, p. 373.

⁴ The Constitution of John XXII., Dierum, inserted in the Corpus Juris, Extrav. de Pœnis, t. 12, is specially significant in this matter. Directed against a populace which was in the habit of assassinating the authorities, it prescribes seventeen punishments for seventeen kinds of offences of which these wretched men were guilty ; and in this list of punishments there is no mention of either death or mutilation. John XXII. adds that he does not prevent the secular power from punishing the miscreants with all the rigour of their laws.

¹ We have taken the trouble to examine one by one the Pontifical letters to which Hinschius appeals, and find that not a single one of them gives him any ground for his argument. Of these letters—

(a) The Const. Cum primum, April 1, 1566 (B.R., t. 4, part 2, p. 284), of St. Pius V. is directed against blasphemers, who are threatened with various punishments, including piercing of the tongue ; and against sodomites, whom it is necessary to deliver to the secular arm. It is addressed to the feudatories of the Holy Roman Church and to secular princes.

(b) The Const. Cum sicut of Julius III., May 29, 1554 (B.R., t. 4, part 1, p. 309), against Jews who obstinately refused to give up their books containing blasphemies against Christ, could not make them amenable to spiritual jurisdiction, according to the well-known maxim, The Church does not judge those who are without.

(c) The Const. Effrenatum of Sixtus V., October 29, 1588 (B.R., t. 5, part 1, p. 25), modified by the Const. Sedes Apostolica of Gregory XIV., May 31, 1591 (B.R., ibid., p. 275), applies to abortion the ecclesiastical and civil laws against homicide. It cannot, therefore, emanate from the spiritual authority of the Sovereign Pontiff alone.

(d) The Const. Etsi alias of Clement VIII., December 1, 1601 (B.R., t. 5, part 2, p. 395), and the Const. Omnipo- tentis of Gregory XV., March 20, 1623 (B.R., t. 5, part 5, p. 97), punish the sacrilegious parody of the Mass, or Absolution by persons not in priests’ orders, and the practice of witchcraft, causing death. The guilty were to be made over to the secular arm, debitis pœnis plectendi, to be punished according to their deserts.

(e) The Const. Inscrutabilis of Urban VIII., April 1, 1631 (B.R., t. 6, part 1, p. 288), punishes as guilty of high treason persons who practised astrology on the subject of Christianity, the Holy See, the Sovereign Pontiff, and his relations to the third degree. (Secular princes protected themselves thus against the disturbing effects of astrological predictions.)

(f) The Const. Magnum of Urban VIII. (1631) directs that certain bigamists shall be punished by the secular arm.

(g) The Brief Cum Super of Urban VIII. (1643), addressed to the Auditor Cameræ (a judge of temporal matters), and directing him, in case of war, to judge the enemy and execute the sentences passed upon them, even capitalis- sima, concerns the Papal States only.

(h) Lastly, the Const. of Innocent XI., of March 12, 1677 (B.R., t. 8, p. 23), directs that persons who stole Hosts should, after the first offence, be delivered to the secular arm.

From this short summary it will be seen that these Constitutions apply to offences mentioned in all the criminal codes of the period. The Pope who issues them acts simply as temporal King and Head of Christendom, or, in virtue of his twofold authority (spiritual and temporal), which was recognized at that time in Catholic States, the spiritual and the temporal being often exercised in the same Act. Finally, the infliction of the punishments was not the concern of the ecclesiastical tribunal properly so called.

This, moreover, is the way in which the Constitutions were understood. If any other interpretation had prevailed, the authors who still attribute to the Church the right of the sword without any restriction would not have failed to use against their opponents this conclusive argument from the Canons. The Church is not deceived as to her own competence: what she has done, she has had the right to do.

♦

The ecclesiastical legislator has in later ages been true to his old tradition, and has never made capital punishment legal ; and those who attribute to the Church the right to pass such a sentence will find no corroboration of their opinion in the law. Taparelli, whose work suggested this examination of the facts, comes to the following conclusion : “ The Church has spoken strongly enough, forbidding her children to shed blood, and referring always to the secular arm for the inflicting of the more severe penalties. Thus she shows what is her spirit as a Christian Church.”¹ We are entirely of the same opinion as Taparelli. For twenty centuries the Church has had to deal with heretics and criminals, and never, even during the thousand years when she had every facility for doing so, has she passed an irreparable sentence. This forbearance, maintained in the most varied circumstances, which seemed sometimes to render the extreme severity necessary, raises a strong presumption against her power. Armed with formidable spiritual weapons to defend the faithful and preserve them from contagion, she has the power to punish her guilty children ; but it is the power of a mother, who never gives up the hope of a great joy, the joy of converting and saving them.

¹ Saggio teoretico di diritto naturale, n. 1485.

Such, in our opinion, is the conclusion to be drawn from the facts. If since the thirteenth century some great authors have thought otherwise, and if the language of the laws themselves (though containing no mention of capital punishment) is susceptible of a different interpretation,² we desire to express our opinion with due modesty, but we cannot change it without contradicting what seems to us the true tradition of the Church.¹

² Such, for instance, as the Bull of John XXII. against Marsilius of Padua, quoted above. Suarez (De Fide, d. 20, sec. 3, n. 22) appeals to the famous Constitution of Boniface VIII., Unam Sanctam. It is sufficient to remark that, although the question of the temporal power of the Pope is discussed in that Constitution, it does not even touch the special point of the power of sentencing to death.

¹ The direct power of the Pope over temporal affairs has also had its advocates, and more than one law has shown the influence of their opinion.

We now proceed to consider the argument from reason.

3. The Argument from Reason.

Summary : False arguments used for the Church’s right of the sword.—Conclusion too easily drawn from the State to the Church.—Too much stress on the Church as a society of natural law.—The concept of a perfect society proves nothing.—Why the State can punish with death.—Different position of the Church.—The mission of the Church, its moral apostolate, the blessings it is intended to procure, the spirit and name which are its glory, the very offences it is called upon to punish, disprove the power of punishing with death.—What is to be said in a case of exceptional necessity ?—Divine Providence allows us to put aside the supposition.