of the
Church, and the punishment of heresy.

. . . . . . . .

St. Thomas defended the death penalty without indicating how it was
to be inflicted. The commentators who followed him were more
definite. The _Animadversio debita_, says Henry of Susa (Hostiensis +
1271), in his commentary on the bull _Ad Abolendam_, is the penalty
of the stake (_ignis crematio_). He defends this interpretation by
quoting the words of Christ: "If any one abide not in me, he shall be
cast forth as a branch, and shall wither, and they shall gather him
_and cast him into the fire_, and he burneth."[1] Jean d'Andre (+
1348), whose commentary carried equal weight with Henry of Susa's
throughout the Middle Ages, quotes the same text as authority for
sending heretics to the stake.[2] According to this peculiar
exegesis, the law and custom of the day merely sanctioned the law of
Christ. To regard our Saviour as the precursor or rather the author
of the criminal code of the Inquisition evidences, one must admit, a
very peculiar temper of mind.

[1] John, xv, 6; Hostiensis, on the decretal _Ad Abolendum_, cap. xi,
in Eymeric, _Directorium inquisitorum_, 2a pars, pp. 149, 150.

[2] On the decretal _Ad Abolendum_, cap. xiv, in Eymeric, ibid., pp.
170, 171.

. . . . . . . .

The next step was to free the Church from all responsibility in the
infliction of the death penalty--truly an extremely difficult
undertaking.

St. Thomas held, with many other theologians, that heretics condemned
by the Inquisition should be abandoned to the secular arm, _judicio
saeculari_. But he went further, and declared it the duty of the State
to put such criminals to death.[1] The State, therefore, was to carry
out this sentence at least indirectly in the name of the Church.

[1]_Summa_, IIa, IIae, quaest. xi, art. 3.

A contemporary of St. Thomas thus meets this difficulty: "The Pope
does not execute any one," he says, "or order him to be put to death;
heretics are executed by the law which the Pope tolerates; they
practically cause their own death by committing crimes which merit
death."[1] The heretic who received this answer to his objections
must surely have found it very far-fetched. He could easily have
replied that the Pope "not only allowed heretics to be put to death,
but ordered this done under penalty of excommunication." And by this
very fact he incurred all the odium of the death penalty.

[1] _Disputatio inter catholicum et Paterinum haereticum_