Untitled - Shattering Denial

32
THE INQUISITION
after it had been condemned by Pope Adrian I, and several
councils. 1
provincial
A more important heresy arose in the ninth century.
Godescalcus, a monk of Orbais, in the diocese of Soissons,
taught that Jesus
Christ did not die for all men. His
errors on predestination were condemned as heretical by
the council of Mainz (848) and Quierzy (849); and he
himself was sentenced to be flogged and then imprisoned
for life in the monastery of Hautvilliers. 2 But this
punishment of flogging was a purely ecclesiastical penalty.
Archbishop Hincmar in ordering
it declared that he was
acting in accordance with the rule of St. Benedict, and a
canon of the Council of Agde. 3
The imprisonment to which Godescalcus was sub
jected was likewise a monastic punishment. Practically,
it did not imply much more than the confinement strictly
required by the rules of his convent. It is interesting to
note that imprisonment for crime is of purely ecclesias-
1 Einhard: Annales, ann. 792, in the Mon. Germ. SS., vol. i, p. 179.
2
"In nostra parochia . . . monasteriali custodies est." mancipatus Hincmar
s letter to Pope Nicholas I, Hincmari Opera, ed. Sirmond, Paris, 1645,
vol. ii, p. 262.
8 "Verberum vel corporis castigatione . . . coercendus, says Hincmar,
secundum regulam sancti Benedicti." De non trina deitate, cap. xviii, in
Hincmari Opera, vol. i, p. 552. The rule of St. Benedict provided for the
acrior correctio, id est ut verberum vindicta in eum (monachum) procedat,
xxviii: "In monachis
cap. xxviii; cf. Concilium Agathense, ann. 506, cap.
quoque par sententiae forma servetur: quos si verborum increpatio non
emendaverit, etiam verberibus statuimus coerceri." Recall what St.
Augustine said of the use of flogging in the episcopal tribunals of his
time.