Untitled - Shattering Denial

THE INQUISITION 133
This Pope was, in certain respects, a very slave to the
letter of the law. The protests of St. Augustine and
many other early Fathers did not affect him in the least.
In the beginning while he was legate, he merely insisted
upon the enforcement of the penal code of Innocent III,
which did not decree any punishment severer than banish
ment, but he soon began to regard heresy as a crime
similar to treason, and therefore subject to the same
penalty, death. Certain ecclesiastics of his court with f
extremely logical minds, and rulers like Pedro 1 1 of Aragon
and Frederic II, had reached the same conclusion, even
before he did. Finally, in the fourth year of his pontificate,
and undoubtedly after mature deliberation, he decided
to compel the princes and the podesta to enforce the law
condemning heretics to the stake.
He did his utmost to bring this about. He did not
forget, however, that the Church could not concern her
self in sentences of death. In fact, his law of 1231
decrees that:
"
Heretics condemned by
the church are
to be handed over to the secular courts to receive due
1
punishment (animadversio The debita)." emperor Fred
eric II had the same notion of the distinction between
the two powers. His law of 1224 points out carefully
that heretics convicted by an ecclesiastical trial are
to be burned in the name of the civil authority: auc-
i"Dampnati vero per Ecclesiam seculari judicio relinquantur, animadversione
debita puniendi." Decretales, cap. xv, De Hareticis, lib. v, tit. vii.