ed and discredited monitor, but by a bishop at the Council of
Trent, whose sermons had just been published: "Bisogna esser severo et
acuto, non bisogna esser clemente; e crudelta l' esser pietoso, e pieta
l' esser crudele." And the argument was afterwards embodied in the
_Controversies_ of Bellarmin: "Haereticis obstinatis beneficium est,
quod de hac vita tollantur, nam quo diutius vivunt, eo plures errores
excogitant; plures pervertunt, et majorem sibi damnationem acquirunt."

The divines who held these doctrines received them through their own
channels straight from the Middle Ages. The germ theory, that the wages
of heresy is death, was so expanded as to include the rebel, the
usurper, the heterodox or rebellious town, and it continued to develop
long after the time of Machiavelli. At first it had been doubtful
whether a small number of culprits justified the demolition of a city:
"Videtur quod si aliqui haeretici sunt in civitate potest exuri tota
civitas." Under Gregory XIII. the right is asserted unequivocally:
"Civitas ista potest igne destrui, quando in ea plures sunt haeretici."
In case of sedition, fire is a less suitable agent: "Propter rebellionem
civitas quandoque supponitur aratro et possunt singuli decapitari." As
to heretics the view was: "Ut hostes latronesque occidi possunt etiamsi
sunt clerici." A king, if he was judged a usurper, was handed over to
extinction: "Licite potest a quolibet de populo occidi, pro libertate
populi, quando non est recursus ad superiorem, a quo possit iustitia
fieri." Or, in the words of the scrupulous Soto: "Tunc quisque ius habet
ipsum extinguendi." To the end of the seventeenth century theologians
taught: "Occidatur, seu occidendus proscribatur, quando non alitur
potest haberi tranquillitas Reipublicae."

This was not mere theory, or the enforced logic of men in thrall to
mediaeval antecedents. Under the most carnal and unchristian king, the
Vaudois of Provence were exterminated in the year 1545, and Paul Sadolet
wrote as follows to Cardinal Farnese just before and just after the
event: "Aggionta hora questa instantia del predetto paese di Provenza a
quella che da Mons. Nuntio s'era fatta a Sua Maesta Christianissima a
nome di Sua Beatitudine et di Vostra Reverendissima Signoria, siamo in
ferma speranza, che vi si debbia pigliare qualche bono expediente et
farci qualche gagliarda provisione.--E seguito, in questo paese, quel
tanto desiderato et tanto necessario effetto cir