Untitled - Shattering Denial

216 THE INQUISITION
human and. divide authority, 1
he enacted the severest
laws possible against heresy. What therefore might have
remained merely a threatening theory became a terrible
reality. The laws of 1224, 1231, 1238, and 1239 prove
that both princes and people considered the stake a
fitting penalty for heresy.
It would have been very surprising if the Church,
menaced as she was by an ever increasing flood of heresy,
had not accepted the State s eager offer of protection.
She had always professed a horror for bloodshed. But
as long as she was not acting directly, and the State
undertook to shed in its own name the blood of wicked
men, she began to consider solely the benefits that would
accrue to her from the enforcement of the civil laws.
Besides, by classing heresy with treason, she herself had
laid down the premisses of the State s logical conclusion,
the death penalty. 2 The Church, therefore, could hardly
^ Cum ad conservandum pariter et fovendum Ecclesiaa tranquillitatis
statum ex commisso nobis imperil regimine defensores a Deo simus consti-
tuti . .
., utriusque juris auctoritate muniti, duximus sanciendum," etc.
Constitution of 1224, Mon. Germ., Leges, sect, iv, vol. ii, p. 126. Cf. the
Constitution of March, 1232, ibid., p. 196, and the Sicilian Constitution
Inconsutilem tunicam, where we read: "Statuimus in primis, ut crimen
hasreseos et damnatae sectas cujuslibet, quoqumque nomine censeantur (prout
veteribus legibus est . indictum) inter publica crimina numerentur." In
Eymeric, Directorum Inquisitorum, Appendix, p. 14.
2 "Cum enim secundum legitimas sanctiones reis lessee majestatis punitis
capite bona confiscentur eorum . . .; cum longe sit gramus aternam quam
temporalem ladere majestatem," etc., said Innocent III in a letter of
March 25, 1199, Ep. ii, i. "Cum longe sit gravius aeternam quam tempo
ralem offendere majestatem," said Frederic II in his Constitution of 1220,