Christianity is Made Legal: The State Intervenes

The Inquisition & the Church

It is here that the problems start. The emperor legitimized Christianity with the Edict of Toleration in 325 AD. Almost immediately, the emperors, viewing themselves as the divinely established guardians of the temporal and material affairs of the Church, they also intruded into spiritual matters. Eventually the Catholic Church and the Christian faith would become the religion of the empire. As such, it would be seen as the GLUE of the empire. Such a mind set quickly led to aggressive measures in stamping out heresy.

• When the emperors entered into league with the Arian bishops, they persecuted orthodox prelates, imprisoning and sending them into exile.
• St. Hilary of Poitiers vainly protested the use of force in his region, contending that the severe Old Testament sanctions were replaced by the gentle laws of Christ (Liber Contra Auxentium, IV).
• Successors to Constantine issued many penal edicts against heretics, 68 in 57 years, which resulted in either exile or death.
• In 407 AD, a law against the Donatists deemed them traitors to the crown.
• St. Augustine of Hippo, repudiated such use of force (against the Manicheans) and sought to win the heretics by preaching and dialogue.
• The emperor Maximus ordered that Priscillian, bishop of Avila, found guilty of heresy and sorcery, be put to death in 385 AD in accordance to the appeal of the Spanish bishops. St. Martin of Tours, St. Ambrose, and St. Leo strenuously reprimanded the Spanish bishops for doing such a reprehensible thing.
• St. John Chrysostom thought that a heretic should be deprived of liberty of speech and that their assemblies should be dissolved, but proclaimed that "to put a heretic to death would be to introduce upon earth an inexpiable crime" (Homilies, 46: 1). Dr. O'Brien writes about this wonderful saint: He declares that God forbids their execution, even as He forbids us to uproot the cockle, but He does not forbid us to repel them, to deprive them of freedom of speech or to prohibit their meetings" (O'Brien, p. 13).
• In 1022 AD, King Robert had thirteen Carthari heretics executed at Orleans "because he feared for the safety of the kingdom and the salvation of souls." After 1022 AD, Mob action increased against heretics. The populace was taking the law into their own hands and putting heretics to death. Such lawlessness could not be tolerated by the civil society or the Church. The mobs had even stormed the prisons.
• Waso, the Bishop of Liege urged against using force upon the Carthari, arguing much as St. John Chrysostom had seven centuries earlier.
• The bishops during this period were virtually unanimous against appealing to the secular arm for the punishment of heretics, and all of them rejected the death penalty.
• Peter Cantor, the most learned man of this age, expressed the prevailing sentiment within the Church leadership: "Whether they be convicted of error, or freely confess their guilt, Catharists are not to be put to death, at least not when they refrain from armed assaults upon the Church. For although the Apostle said, 'A man that is a heretic after the third admonition, avoid,' he certainly did not say, 'Kill him.' Throw them into prison, if you will, but do not put them to death'" (De investigatione Antichrist 3:42).
• St. Bernard put down the law, in direct opposition to the mobs, "Fides suadenda, non imponenda." Men are to be won to the Faith, not by violence, but by persuasion. He censured the princes, arguing that "the obstinate were to be excommunicated and if necessary, kept in confinement for the safety of others" (O'Brien, p. 15).
• The views of Peter Cantor and St. Bernard were ratified by a whole series of synods during that time: Rheims (1049) under Leo IX, Tolouse (1119) under Callistus II, and the Lateran Council of 1139.
• The infrequent execution of heretics during this period must be considered the arbitrary action of secular rulers and the fanatical mob violence. They were not the result of Church law or authority.