hers, and councils continued to
declare that she had a horror of bloodshed: _A domo sacerdotis
sanguinis questio remota sit_, writes Geroch of Reichersberg.[1]
Peter Cantor also insists on the same idea. "Even if they are proved
guilty by the judgment of God," he writes, "the Cathari ought not to
be sentenced to death, because this sentence is in a way
ecclesiastical, being made always in the presence of a priest. If
then they are executed, the priest is responsible for their death,
for he by whose authority a thing is done is responsible
therefor."[2]

[1] _De investigatione Antichristi_, lib. i, cap. xlii, 1oc. cit., pp.
88, 89.

[2] _Verbum abbreviatum_, cap. lxxviii, Migne, P.L., vol. ccv, col.
231.

Was excommunication to be the only penalty for heresy? Yes, answered
Wazo, Leo IX, and the Council of Reims in the middle of the eleventh
century. But later on the growth of the evil induced the churchmen of
the time to call upon the aid of the civil power. They thought that
the Church's excommunication required a temporal sanction. They
therefore called upon the princes to banish heretics from their
dominions, and to imprison those who refused to be converted. Such
was the theory of the twelfth century.

We must not forget, however, that the penalty of imprisonment, which
was at first a monastic punishment, had two objects in view: to
prevent heretics from spreading their doctrines, and to give them an
opportunity of atoning for their sins. In the minds of the
ecclesiastical judges, it possessed a penitential, almost a
sacramental character. In a period when all Europe was Catholic, it
could well supplant exile and banishment, which were the severest
civil penalties after the death penalty.

CHAPTER IV
FOURTH PERIOD
FROM GRATIAN TO INNOCENT III
THE INFLUENCE OF THE CANON LAW, AND THE REVIVAL OF THE ROMAN LAW

THE development of the Canon law and the revival of the Roman law
could not but exercise a great influence upon the minds of princes
and churchmen with regard to the suppression of heresy; in fact, they
were the cause of a legislation of persecution, which was adopted by
every country of Christendom.

In the beginning of this period, which we date from Gratian,[1] the
prosecution of heresy was still carried on, in a more or less
irregular and arbitrary fashion, according to the caprice of the
reigning sovereign, or the hasty violence of the populace. But from
this time forward we shall see it carr