Part 14 (1/2)
If, on leaving the torture chamber, the prisoner reiterated his confession, the case was at once decided. But suppose, on the contrary, that the confession extorted under torture was afterwards retracted, what was to be done? The Inquisitors did not agree upon this point. Some of them, like Eymeric, held that in this case the prisoner was ent.i.tled to his freedom. Others, like the author of the _Sacro a.r.s.enale_, held that ”the torture should be repeated, in order that the prisoner might be forced to reiterate his first confession which had evidently compromised him.” This seems to have been the traditional practice of the Italian tribunals.
But the casuists did not stop here. They discovered ”that Clement V had only spoken of torture in general, and had not specifically alluded to witnesses, whence they concluded that one of the most shocking abuses of the system, the torture of witnesses, was left to the sole discretion of the Inquisitor, and this became the accepted rule. It only required an additional step to show that after the accused had been convicted by evidence or had confessed as to himself, he became a witness as to the guilt of his friends, and thus could be arbitrarily (?) tortured to betray them.”[1]
[1] Lea, op. cit., vol. i, p. 425.
As a matter of course, the canonists and the theologians approved the severest penalties inflicted by the Inquisition. St. Raymond of Pennafort, however, who was one of the most favored counselors of Gregory IX, still upheld the criminal code of Innocent III. The severest penalties he defended were the excommunication of heretics and schismatics, their banishment and the confiscation of their property.[1] His _Summa_ was undoubtedly completed when the Dccretal of Gregory IX appeared, authorizing the Inquisitors to enforce the cruel laws of Frederic II.
[1] Lea writes (op. cit., vol. i, p. 229, note) ”Saint Raymond of Pennafort, the compiler of the decretals of Gregory I, who was the highest authority in his generation, lays it down as a principle of ecclesiastical law that the heretic is to be coerced by excommunication and confiscation, and if they fail, _by the extreme exercise of the secular power_. The man who was doubtful in faith was to be held a heretic, and so also was the schismatic who, while believing all the articles of religion, refused the obedience due to the Roman Church. All alike were to be forced into the Roman fold, and the fate of Core, Dathan and Abiron was invoked _for the destruction of the obstinate_.” (_Summa_, lib. i. t.i.t. v, 2, 4, 8; t.i.t. vi, i.) This is a travesty of the mind, and words of Saint Raymond. He merely called attention to the lot of Core, Dathan and Abiron to show what a great crime schism was. He never a.s.serted that heretics or schismatics, even when obdurate, ought to be ”destroyed.”
_Summa_, lib. i, cap. _De Haereticis_ and _De Schismaticis_.
But St. Thomas, who wrote at a time when the Inquisition was in full operation, felt called upon to defend the infliction of the death penalty upon heretics and the relapsed. His words deserve careful consideration. He begins by answering the objections that might be brought from the Scriptures and the Fathers against his thesis. The first of these is the well-known pa.s.sage of St. Matthew, in which our Saviour forbids the servants of the householder to gather up the c.o.c.kle before the harvest time, lest they root up the wheat with it.[1] St. John Chrysostom, he says, ”argues from this text that it is wrong to put heretics to death.”[2] But according to St. Augustine the words of the Saviour: ”Let the c.o.c.kle grow until the harvest,”
are explained at once by what follows: ”lest perhaps gathering up the c.o.c.kle, you root up the wheat also with it.” When there is no danger of uprooting the wheat and no danger of schism, violent measures may be used:” _c.u.m metus iste non subest ... non dormiat severitas disciplinae_.”[3] We doubt very much whether such reasoning would have satisfied St. John Chrysostom, St. Theodore the Studite, or Bishop Wazo, who understood the Saviour's prohibition in a literal and an absolute sense.
[1] Matt. xiii. 28-30.
[2] _In Matthaeum_, Homil. xlvi.
[3] Augustine, _Contra epistol. Parmeniani_, lib. iii. cap. ii.
But this pa.s.sage does not reveal the whole mind of the Angelic doctor. It is more evident in his exegesis of Ezechiel xviii. 32, _Nolo mortem peccatoris_. ”a.s.suredly,” he writes, ”none of us desires the death of a single heretic. But remember that the house of David could not obtain peace until Absalom was killed in the war he waged against his father. In like manner, the Catholic Church saves some of her children by the death of others, and consoles her sorrowing heart by reflecting that she is acting for the general good.”[1]
[1] St. Thomas, _Summa_, loc. cit., ad. 4m.
If we are not mistaken, St. Thomas is here trying to prove, on the authority of St. Augustine, that it is sometimes lawful to put heretics to death.
But it is only by garbling and distorting the context that St. Thomas makes the Bishop of Hippo advocate the very penalty which, as a matter of fact, he always denounced most strongly. In the pa.s.sage quoted, St. Augustine was speaking of the benefit that ensues to the Church _from the suicide of heretics_, but he had no idea whatever of maintaining that the Church had the right to put to death her rebellious children.[1] St. Thomas misses the point entirely, and gives his readers a false idea of the teaching of St. Augustine.
[1] Ep. clx.x.xv, ad _Bonifacium_, no. 32.
Thinking, however, that he has satisfactorily answered all the objections against his thesis, he states it as follows: ”Heretics who persist in their error after a second admonition ought not only to be excommunicated, but also abandoned to the secular arm to be put to death. For, he argues, it is much more wicked to corrupt the faith on which depends the life of the soul, than to debase the coinage which provides merely for temporal life; wherefore, if coiners and other malefactors are justly doomed to death, much more may heretics be justly slain once they are convicted. If, therefore, they persist in their error after two admonitions, the Church despairs of their conversion, and excommunicates them to ensure the salvation of others whom they might corrupt; she then abandons them to the secular arm that they may be put to death.”[1]
[1] _Summa_, IIa IIae, quaest. xi, art. 3.
St. Thomas in this pa.s.sage makes a mere comparison serve as an argument. He does not seem to realize that if his reasoning were valid, the Church could go a great deal further, and have the death penalty inflicted in many other cases.
The fate of the relapsed heretic had varied from Lucius III to Alexander IV. The bull _Ad Abolendam_ decreed that converted heretics who relapsed into heresy were to be abandoned to the secular arm without trial.[1] But at the time this Decretal was published, the _Animadversio debita_ of the State entailed no severer penalty than banishment and confiscation. When this term, already fearful enough, came to mean the death penalty, the Inquisitors did not know whether to follow the ancient custom or to adopt the new interpretation. For a long time they followed the traditional custom. Bernard of Caux, who was undoubtedly a zealous Inquisitor, is a case in point. In his register of sentences from 1244 to 1248, we meet with sixty cases of relapse, not one of whom was punished by a penalty severer than imprisonment. But a little later on the strict interpretation of the _Animadversio debita_ began to prevail. In St. Thomas's time it meant the death penalty; and we find him citing the bull _Ad Abolendam_[2]
as his authority for the infliction of the death penalty upon the relapsed, penitent or impenitent, in ignorance of the fact that this doc.u.ment originally had a totally different interpretation.
[1] Decretals, in cap. ix, _De haereticis_, lib. v, t.i.t. vii.
[2] _Summa_, IIa IIae, quaest. ix, art. 4: _Sed contra_.
His reasoning therefore rests on a false supposition. He advocates the death penalty for the relapsed in the name of Christian charity.
For, he argues, charity has for its object the spiritual and temporal welfare of one's neighbor. His spiritual welfare is the salvation of his soul; his temporal welfare is life, and temporal advantages, such as riches, dignities, and the like. These temporal advantages are subordinate to the spiritual, and charity must prevent their endangering the eternal salvation of their possessor. Charity, therefore, to himself and to others, prompts us to deprive him of these temporal goods, if he makes a bad use of them. For if we allowed the relapsed heretic to live, we would undoubtedly endanger the salvation of others, either because he would corrupt the faithful whom he met, or because his escape from punishment would lead others to believe they could deny the faith with impunity. The inconstancy of the relapsed is, therefore, a sufficient reason why the Church, although she receives him to penance for his soul's salvation, refuses to free him from the death penalty.
Such reasoning is not very convincing. Why would not the life imprisonment of the heretic safeguard the faithful as well as his death? Will you answer that this penalty is too trivial to prevent the faithful from falling into heresy? If that be so, why not at once condemn all heretics to death, even when repentant? That would terrorize the wavering ones all the more. But St. Thomas evidently was not thinking of the logical consequences of his reasoning. His one aim was to defend the criminal code in vogue at the time. That is his only excuse. For we must admit that rarely has his reasoning been so faulty and so weak as in his thesis upon the coercive power of the Church, and the punishment of heresy.