is views. He then maintained that the
State could and ought to punish by fine, confiscation, or even exile,
her rebellious children, in order to make them repent. This may be
called his theory of moderate persecution.

[1] Lea (op. cit., vol. i, pp. 214, 215) says that St. Jerome was an
advocate of force. "Rigor in fact," argues St. Jerome, "is the most
genuine mercy, since temporal punishment may avert eternal
perdition." Here St. Jerome merely says that God punishes in time
that he may no punish in eternity. But he by no means "argues" that
this punishment should be in the hands of either Church or State.
_Commentar_., in Naum, i, 9, P. L., vol. xxv, col. 1238.

The revival of the Manichean heresy in the eleventh century took the
Christian princes and people by surprise, unaccustomed as they were
to the legislation of the first Christian emperors. Still the
heretics did not fare any better on that account. For the people rose
up against them, and burned them at the stake. The Bishops and the
Fathers of the Church at once protested against this lynching of
heretics. Some, like Wazo of Liege, represented the party of absolute
toleration, while others, under the leadership of St. Bernard,
advocated the theory of St. Augustine. Soon after, churchmen began to
decree the penalty of imprisonment for heresy--a penalty unknown to
the Roman law, and regarded in the beginning more as a penance than a
legal punishment. It originated in the cloister, gradually made its
way into the tribunals of the Bishop, and finally into the tribunals
of the State.

Canon law, helped greatly by the revival of the imperial code,
introduced in the twelfth century definite laws for the suppression,
of heresy. This regime lasted from 1150 till 1215, from Gratian to
Innocent III. Heresy, the greatest sin against God, was classed with
treason, and visited with the same penalty. The penalty was
banishment with all its consequences; i.e., the destruction of the
houses of heretics, and the confiscation of their property. Still,
because of the horror which the Church had always professed for the
effusion of blood, she did not as yet inflict the death penalty which
the State decreed for treason. Innocent III did not wish to go beyond
the limits set by St. Augustine, St. John Chrysostom, and St.
Bernard.

But later Popes and princes went further. They began by decreeing
death as a secondary penalty, in case heretics rebelled against the
law of banishm